The rise in the educational level in other nations, coupled with the ability to move information via satellite and the Internet worldwide, continues to have an impact on the U.S. economy. In India, some of the world’s largest corporations employ English-speaking, low-wage, tech-savvy and well-educated young people. As a result, India has $60 billion in foreign reserves, a figure that has doubled in the past three years. Bangalore is India’s Silicon Valley. GE has a research center there with 1,700 engineers and scientists, Nokia designs the brain chips for its cell phones, Avis manages its online rental car service, and Dell provides its service technicians. British Air tracks down missing luggage in India, and Ernst & Young uses Indian accountants to prepare tax returns. While most Americans seem unaware of this fundamental shift in where work is being done, these huge U.S. companies have a giant investment in the Indian work force.

Source: Thomas L. Friedman, "India, Pakistan and GE," Times Union, August 11, 2002

Earnings Tied to Schooling

Educational attainment still plays a central role in an individual’s lifetime income. While simply receiving a college degree is no longer a guarantee of employment success, it is also clear that higher education, especially if it is in a field in demand, will lead to greater income. In a Census Bureau survey conducted between March 1998 and March 2000, the lifetime earning estimates in millions of dollars for full-time workers ages 25 to 64 with the following educational attainment levels were:

Source: Census Bureau, as reported in Daily Gazette, July 18, 2002, p. A4

Women Outnumber Men at College

An extraordinary shift has occurred in the U.S. relative to the education of young men and women. About 8.3 million women are in college today compared to 6.4 million men, and women earned 170,000 more Bachelor’s degrees than men, according to Thomas Mortenson of the Pell Institute.

Source: Ellen Goodman, "Women Replacing Men at College," Daily Gazette, September 3, 2002

The Purpose of School

Much of the debate about school improvement, I believe, is centered around the reality that schools were designed to accomplish something quite different from what they are now being asked to do. Historically, schools served a societal purpose by standardizing what children learned and communicating a common national culture. In many ways, today’s schools are being asked to customize the educational experiences they offer to meet the individual needs and abilities of students. Should schools be designed to meet individual needs or the broader needs of society? These purposes are often at odds and need to be resolved before we can move forward with new, clearly focused school improvement initiatives. An excellent overview of the issue of customizing our schools can be found in the source below.

Source: Scott Willis, "Customization and the Common Good: A Conversation with Larry Cuban," Educational Leadership, Volume 59, Number 7, April 2002

Tattoo for Diabetics

Biotechnology continues to have wide applications in the health care field. One of the more innovative areas under development is the use of a "smart tattoo" to monitor the glucose level of diabetics. Polyethylene glycol beads coated with fluorescent molecules would be injected under the skin. The tattoo would set off an alarm if the blood sugar level fell out of acceptable range. Diabetics could abandon the daily finger-pricking and blood samplings. The design work is underway at Texas A&M and Penn State universities.

Source: "Tattoo to Monitor Diabetes," BBC News World Edition, September 1, 2002

Pharmaceuticals Down on the Farm

Animal proteins are an important ingredient in pharmaceuticals. Now some of these proteins are being grown in agricultural crops, such as corn. Animal genes are inserted in seeds and result in transgenic crops that make proteins much cheaper and faster to produce than via other methods. Animal protein is used to make insulin and in drugs for treating such diseases as cystic fibrosis and cancer. It is projected that the market for biopharmaceuticals will hit $140 billion by 2020.

Source: "Putting the Farm in Pharmaceuticals," Wired Magazine, October 2002, p. 40

Home-based Health Care Through Telemedicine

Today’s medical technology requires patients to go to a hospital or other facility for diagnostic testing. In the future, according to the Battelle Memorial Institute, we will be able to perform tests from home using advanced diagnostic technology now found only in hospitals. We will then send the results to the doctor via the Internet or telephone. Diagnostic equipment appears to be evolving the same way computers did. Not that many years ago we needed a mainframe computer to do basic data analysis. Today, a PC can do more computing than many of those older mainframes and can often do it cheaper, faster, and from a remote distance. In fact, even some of today’s PDAs can do more than many mainframe computers did at one time.

Source: David Bragi, "Virtual Housecalls and More: Home-based Health Care of the Future," SF Gate August 5, 2002   www.sfgate.com