Education

This week, representatives from UN member states meet to discuss progress on six goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.  

It is widely recognized by Nigerians that a significant barrier to their country’s social and economic development is the limited extent and poor quality of public education, especially at the primary and secondary levels. As of 2010, it is estimated that only 66 percent of primary-age children are enrolled in school. Nigerians commonly recognize the importance of education. With respect to higher education, successive military and civilian governments at the federal and state level have greatly expanded the university system without providing the necessary funding, leading to disastrous consequences for the quality of what had once been an excellent university system. The wealthy enroll their children in private schools domestically or send them abroad. There are now 79 private universities in the country. However, for the poor—a majority of the population—private education is not an option. School fees, especially at the primary and secondary levels, are a high barrier for the poor to overcome, and many Nigerians struggle to find the funds to keep their children in school. Hence, the abolition of all school fees in Rivers State by its governor, Nyesom Wike, appears to be a highly positive step. On June 24, he announced, “From today, no child either in primary and secondary schools should pay fees and levies in any school across the state.” He also prohibited the charging of fees for examinations. He promised government grants to replace the lost revenue from fees. Implementation will be everything. Will the state government, in fact, find the funds to replace the school fees? Will school administrators cease charging fees? The governor charged the State Ministry of Education, the Rivers State Senior Secondary Schools Board, and the State Universal Basic Education Board to monitor state schools to ensure compliance. The governor also said, “If I hear that any school head collects any fees or levies…that school head would be sanctioned.” The governor also appears to have acknowledged the ‘elephant in the living room;’ too often school administrators have pocketed the fees they collected. The governor stated: “The monies you collect from these children are just used for your personal purposes.” The governor’s statement did not refer to other costs poor students often face, such as mandatory uniforms or the purchase of books and other supplies.  

Boosters often like to talk about an “emerging middle class” in Africa. Leaving aside definitional issues—who is middle class varies from country to country—in some African countries a middle class does seem to be growing, though it is not as big or growing as fast as some of the media hype implies. Nigeria, with its huge population, is one of the countries that commentators often look to.  But Quartz Africa identified the fact that many of those who are tech-savvy or have other job qualifications in demand—current or potential members of such a middle class—are leaving. Many seek to raise their families abroad and do not intend to come back. Popular destinations include Canada and Australia, both of which have skills-based immigration programs. Others, for example, deliberately overstay their visas in the United States, which has led to a crackdown on U.S. visas for Nigerians.  Drivers of middle class immigration, according to Quartz, include the breakdown of the Nigerian educational system at virtually all levels, high unemployment and poverty levels in Nigeria, and a general disillusionment with the country’s political leadership. In the March 2019 presidential elections, only 35 percent of those registered actually voted. Even taking into account voter suppression, which did occur, the figure is not encouraging.   Quartz acknowledges that emigration is not cheap, that it is the well-off, not the poor, who can leave. According to an Afrobarometer survey of thirty-four African countries, the younger and more educated a person is, the more likely they are to consider emigrating. About half of Nigeria’s population lives in “extreme poverty,” in absolute number more than any other country in the world. The poor can emigrate, but they are more likely to cross an adjacent border in the search for work. According to the same Afrobarometer report, most Africans that consider immigrating, consider doing so to another African country. 

In modern economies, people may have jobs, but they still harbor major concerns in a wide range of areas, including security, health and work-life balance, income and distribution, training, mobility, and opportunity. By focusing solely on the unemployment rate, policymakers are ignoring the many dimensions of employment that affect welfare.

     

Governments and industry like to talk about the 'cybersecurity skills shortage,' but does the shortage actually exist? And are countries adopting the right policies to address it? 

By Penny Pritzker, chairman and founder of PSP Partners; and Edward Alden, Bernard L. Schwartz senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. (Note the following excerpt is from a chapter written for a new Aspen Strategy Group book called Technology and National Security: Maintaining America’s Edge. You can find the full chapter and the book here.) The United States today faces twin challenges — building its global leadership in the next generation of transformative technologies and rebuilding economic opportunities for more of its citizens. The first cannot be done successfully without also doing the second. Innovation and competition are the great drivers of prosperity, but they have also created a growing gap between the economic winners and those struggling to get by. Unemployment in the United States has fallen below 4 percent, and the well-being of Americans has been improving as the economy continues to grow at a strong pace. Yet four in ten US households still report that they are unable to cover an unexpected $400 expense without borrowing money or selling something they own. More than a decade after the last recession, economic insecurity remains widespread. This continued economic insecurity poses a growing and fundamental threat to America’s economic competitiveness and national security. While technology and global competition have helped raise incomes and living standards around the world, they have also created huge new challenges in the labor markets of many of the advanced economies, from the disappearance of once well-paying manufacturing jobs to the growth of the gig economy and other contingent work that comes without traditional employment benefits. Americans need far better access to the education and retraining opportunities required to prosper in this rapidly changing economy, and government support systems must be updated so that working Americans can again have greater confidence about their futures. The reality is that for more than thirty years we have failed as a nation in this regard. In the United States, where the social safety net is especially porous and support for job retraining is weaker than in any other wealthy country, labor market disruption has already contributed to social and political upheaval. Donald Trump was elected president in 2016 on a platform that promised greater restrictions on both international trade and immigration to the United States, blaming both for the economic challenges facing many Americans. Since taking office, the president has approved the largest increase in tariffs on imports since the 1930s, has slashed refugee admissions to their lowest levels since the refugee program was created in 1980, and has taken a series of steps to reduce the entry of highly skilled immigrants to the United States. Such restrictions on trade and immigration will erode America’s technological and economic leadership. Immigrants today — many of them initially attracted by the high quality of American universities — are more than twice as likely to start a business as native-born citizens; from 1996 to 2011, the business start-up rate for immigrants increased by more than half, while the native-born start-up rate fell by 10 percent, to a three-decade low. Of the eighty-seven start-up companies that had reached a value of more than $1 billion by 2016, immigrants founded more than half, and over 70 percent had immigrants as part of the top management and product development teams. On trade, internationally engaged American companies — those that both export and invest abroad — are America’s most innovative companies, accounting for nearly three-quarters of private sector research and development. The success of these firms depends on markets that are open to both trade and investment. And while the United States has imposed few restrictions on the deployment of new technologies, some 75 percent of Americans today are worried about a world in which computers and robots do more of the work, fearing for their job prospects, their family’s future, and that inequality will worsen. Polls indicate that the public does not favor tariffs on imports, sharp restrictions on immigration, or regulations that curb technological innovation. But the public is wary about what technology and global competition mean for their jobs and their future. Public support for economic openness can no longer be assumed; it must be rebuilt. That requires rebuilding the connection between economic openness, innovation, and better work and life opportunities for Americans. The US education system must do a better job of preparing Americans for the world of work by expanding career-related offerings; better support is needed to allow mid-career workers, or those displaced by technology or trade competition, to return to school and retrain for new careers; and the benefits that are now available to most full-time workers — health care, sick leave, vacation pay — need to be available to everyone with a job. Improving and rebuilding the links among education and workforce training, good jobs, and greater economic security is vital to our future security and economic competitiveness. As technological change is accelerating, the United States needs to show the same level of public and private commitment to meeting this challenge as it showed when the country transitioned from an agrarian to an industrial economy just over 100 years ago. Meeting the twin challenges of technological leadership and rebuilding opportunity must be the primary goals for US economic policy. Given the seismic forces of innovation, automation, and globalization, the nature of work is fundamentally changing; we must help more Americans adapt, adjust, and thrive. America needs a more forward-looking, comprehensive economic competitiveness strategy that includes an innovation leadership agenda, modernization of our workforce training and education systems, immigration reform, and expanded multilateral trade. If the United States fails to meet these challenges, it will have neither the resources nor the political support needed to play a large global role. The United States won the twentieth century because it finally got the big challenges right — education, scientific excellence, innovation, immigration, and trade. Yet, in recent decades we have not done all that we can as a nation to adapt government policies and approaches to the rapid pace of economic and technological change. Too many Americans have been left behind by the rapid changes in the economy, without the necessary tools and resources to prosper. The reality is we can do better. With diminishing opportunities, it is not surprising that Americans have been susceptible to populist promises. The United States has been here before and risen to such challenges in the past. We must do so again as our national and economic security depend on it. (For the full paper, go to https://www.asgbooks.org/technology-national-security/)

Investing more in human capital is the region’s best hope to escape the middle-income trap.

The Five Questions Series is a forum for scholars, government officials, civil society leaders, and foreign policy practitioners to provide timely analysis of new developments related to the advancement of women and girls worldwide. 

Once attracted to the many freedoms that American society offers, Chinese students and scholars are now struggling to find reasons to stay due to the Trump administration's new policies.

We’ve been told smartphones will save education—and even better, on the cheap. From hackathons for refugee students to helping women in developing countries earn university degrees, we’ve been sold the idea that technology is the key to making higher learning equitable and accessible to everyone. But is mobile education snake oil? Thanks to AI, big data, and automation, we’re on the edge of an education revolution. But due to gender barriers as old as time, it’s one that risks leaving the next generation of women behind. Mobile education holds tremendous promise for millions ready to learn—but only if we solve some social and infrastructure problems first.  Read the full article on Quartz.com >>

The World Bank has recently released its Human Capital Index, part of the Human Capital Project. The index seeks to measure how much economic productivity per capita is being lost because of underinvestment in human capital. For example, the index estimates that in Nigeria, a statistically average child has an earning potential of only 34 percent of what it could be if the country were fully invested in human capital, which it defines as “the knowledge, skills, and health that people accumulate over their lives.” The index therefore takes into account child survival, school enrollment, quality of learning, healthy growth, and adult survival.  It is no surprise that the bottom of the list is mostly made up of poor African states. What may be surprising to American readers is that the top-four on the list are in Asia: Singapore, Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong, respectively. The small European states of Finland, Ireland, Sweden, and the Netherlands, as well as Canada and Australia, make up the rest of the top ten. The United States ranks twenty-fourth, above Macao but below Israel, and below its Western European NATO and OECD partners. In Singapore, a statistically average child will earn 88 percent of what he or she could if the country fully invested in its human capital; in the United States, it is 76 percent; in the Russian Federation it is 73 percent.  The stated purpose of the index is to spur governments, especially poor ones, to invest in human capital. World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said, “For the poorest people, human capital is often the only capital they have.” It is a “key driver of sustainable, inclusive economic growth, but investing in health and education has not gotten the attention it deserves.” The index is yet another measure of under development. It is also a rhetorical device intended to call attention to the measurable costs of low investment in health and education and to spur governments to do more. Governments of those countries near the bottom will not like the index, and already there are questions and criticism about its methodology and rejections of its findings. Yet, unappetizing though it is, it is intuitively obvious that the statistically average child born in Singapore will have better chances in life than his fellows born in Nigeria or the United States.