Adviser Update Spring 2011

DOW JONES NEWS FUND

SPRING 2011

VOLUME 51, NUMBER 4

INSIDE

Copyright © 2011 Dow Jones News Fund, Inc.

Update’s
annual
summer
journalism
workshop
listing

https://www.Newsfund.org

A dd r e s s in g

the

Global Achievement Gap
By DAVE CORNELIUS
chools at all levels around the
S
world fail to prepare students
for the workplace.

ship Group at Harvard Graduate
School of Education, defines the
core 21st century survival skills
as:
• critical thinking and problem
solving;
• the ability to create, collaborate and communicate across
media-rich networks and systems;
• agility and adaptability;
• initiative and entrepreneurship;
• effective oral and written
communication;
• accessing and analyzing

See GAP on page 2A

P01.VV51.I04

oral and written form; and
• students entering the work
place (including those leaving
university and graduate schools)
are generally unable to produce
immediate results.
Business leaders recommend
several core competencies or
“survival skills” necessary for success in a 21st century workplace.
These universal requirements are
in addition to mastery of job-specific theoretical knowledge and
technical skill. Dr. Tony Wagner,
co-director of the Change Leader-

black

• 30 percent of available jobs
internationally remain unfilled
because companies are unable to
find qualified talent;
• 70 percent of students leaving school at all levels lack practical experience;
• 56 percent of students leaving school lack any specific career
training;
• 58 percent lack a sense of
work ethic and professional conduct;
• 62 percent lack the ability to
adequately communicate in both

cyan

Thirty percent of available jobs internationally remain unfilled because companies are unable to find qualified talent says Dr. Mona Mourshed during session on healing the ills of global higher education.

information; and
• curiosity and imagination.
Increasingly, the worldwide
challenges are remarkably similar. Wagner suggests three areas
of global concern.
Global equity must be achieved
in the areas of basic literacy,
access to education and availability of web-based access/infrastructure.
The methodology of teaching
and assessing knowledge and
skills must be drastically overhauled to accommodate divergent
learning styles as well as motivational and knowledge-based
economy demands.
The understanding of what

magenta

Dave Cornelius
is the director of Digital Media
Outreach Programs for High School
Journalism at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of
Journalism and Mass Communication. He recently participated in
Bahrain 2010 where he met with
industry, government and education leaders from more than 50
countries. The general topics of
discussion included educational
reform, workplace development
and 21st Century skills.

yellow

This was the clear message
from business, government and
education leaders of 50 nations
participating in the Bahrain 2010
Global Education Conference. The
global achievement gap between
what industry expects and what
education delivers is not caused
by a lack of content but of context
and practical application.
The basic problem stems from
the fact that educational institutions mistakenly interpret rigor
as adding more difficult coursework rather than demanding
mastery of existing content at
all levels. They are also mired
in an archaic assembly line system that fails to deal with the
requirements of an agile, pulloriented, media-rich and increasingly accessible knowledge-based
economy.
The result is that both business and students are unhappy.
Fewer jobs require a four-year
degree. More jobs require a higher
level of technical skill. All jobs
require increased communication
and collaboration skills.
Productivity is less time and
space dependent. Knowledge and
information are commodities.
Geographic and job mobility have
increased. These shifting conditions leave students at all levels
feeling increasingly unprepared
to meet the challenges of a 21st
century workplace.
According to Dr. Mona Mourshed, partner and co-leader of
Global Education Practice of
McKinsey and Co.: