Published Monday, May 10, 2004
Murnane: Education Must Adapt to Changing Jobs
In a "Google" World, Cognitive Skill Trumps Content
By Michael Lisman
APPIAN STAFF WRITER

“My only crime is being an American,” commented one frustrated audience member at the May 3rd Askwith Forum, referring to his recent lay-off from a tech company that he says replaced him with a worker overseas.

The forum, titled “Computers, Off-Shoring, and the Future of American Work,” tackled the idea that the globalization of the job market has significant implications for U.S. education—and was an occasion to showcase the new book, The New Division of Labor: How Computers Are Creating the Next Job Market, by Thompson Professor of Education and Society Richard Murnane and his co-author Frank Levy, of MIT.

Murnane and Levy joined Boston writer/commentator Charlie Stein and forum moderator Richard Lester (also of MIT) to discuss the nature and forecast of job types in America, the effects of increased technological advances and “offshoring” trends, and how education might impact and be impacted by these changes.

Cutting to the core of the issues, Stein defined the key question being dealt with as “how fast will the pie grow, and how will the pie get sliced up?”

The authors revealed the central findings of the research that went in to making the book, such as the potentially permanent loss of unskilled American manufacturing jobs, now being sent overseas.

Likewise, the authors addressed the noticeable trend towards the market need for new laborers with “expert thinking” and “complex communication” skills.

Levy outlined these trends, while Murnane discussed the prospect for U.S. public education to accommodate these changing needs.

Leveraging public education to accommodate these needs, Murnane warned, will be tricky given the lack of appropriate incentives and with an increasingly standards-based education system that often rewards rote learning.

Discussing what appropriate learning models for the new job market might look like, Murnane said schools should focus less on precise content knowledge and more on process in order to give future American workers the cognitive skills that are held at an increasing premium. He provided the example of memorizing an historical date for an examination, as opposed to learning the historical context of any given event, even without exact dates.

“In a world with Google on every computer,” he added, “getting the date is no problem.”

Increased efforts at better aligning the US education system with the permanently changed job market, the authors suggested, would ultimately work towards assuring a stable domestic job market.

Murnane, who teaches the popular HGSE microeconomics course (A-205) in the fall semester, personally invited his students to the panel via e-mail. Students from the course, who turned out in large numbers, said they were happy to get the chance to hear about the new book.

“He’s been my favorite professor here,” said Reino Makkinen, an Ed.M. candidate in Administration, Planning and Social Policy. “If he asks me to come, I’m there.”

Other students said they were pleased to get the chance to be able to use their nascent economics knowledge to follow along with the presentation.

Sara Lam, an Ed.M. candidate in International Education Policy, said she was “interested to hear about something that I could find meaningful in the context of having taken A-205.”

Michael Lisman, an Ed.M candidate in the International Education Policy program, also works at LASPAU: Academic & Professional Programs for the Americas.