Monday, June 15, 2009

Race Summary

by Andrew Gillen

Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz have a nice summary of the main idea in their recent book, The Race Between Education and Technology, over at Voxeu.
Ever since the beginning of the twentieth century, technological change has operated to increase the relative demand for educated and skilled workers... educational advance increases their relative supply. This “race” between education and technology can produce rising, declining, or stable levels of economic inequality...

Our book shows that the educational slowdown caused much of the recent rise in economic inequality...

The bottom line is that the future of inequality and this nation depend on increasing the supply of highly educated workers. Too many youth drop out of high school; too many high school graduates are not college-ready...

1 comment:

RWW said...

Something that comes to mind when I read or hear "education" and "technology" in the same sentence, I think of what I call "education lag". And what I mean by that is, ostensibly, what students are being taught in colleges and universities (especially engineering, technology, and information systems) will become outdated by the time the student graduates.

I remember when I was in college and we were studying President Lincoln. Well, when I graduated, Andrew Johnson was president.

Just a comment - I don't know how this can be overcome. It's why I consider one's first 1 to 2 years of work their last 1 to 2 years of college.