Respect our values or Leave

[Antoine]

We need people to feed the R&D, IT and services (including Law, health care and buisness-finances) sectors that required graduates from BA/BSc to PhD.

For example, I just came from a seminar given by Dr. Bill Tenn from The Dow Chemical Company

https://www.chem.ubc.ca/local/event_details.php?id=1100

He said: (Not an exact quote) To stay competitive and profitable, due to cost of feedstock and energy required for transformation, we either improve the economics of our current plant base or move our integrated production to new locations with cheaper feedstocks and cost of exploitation. By improving the economics, he didn't mean lowering the salary of employees and cut corner on regulations (environments, benefits,...) but more improving for example the technology at home which involved a lot of R & D.

Also for people living in BC, at knowledgenetwork channel, an interresting documentary to watch: BRITAIN FROM ABOVE

http://tvschedule.knowledgenetwork.ca/knsch/KNSeriesPage.jsp?seriesID=16182910&seriesTitle=britainfromabove

The Host explained how London has changed from an industrial city with a lot of plants to an IT city without many plants around.

Sorry, I got on a tangent again !

 

[Edward Campbell]

I don’t know much about “street level” business, nor do I know any millionaire truck drivers (but I do know a pretty prosperous heavy equipment owner/operator), but the data, international  data, shows, consistently, that the rate of PhD production leads a country's productivity. Put simply more PhDs = higher productivity. The data is consistent and persuasive.

Of course there are PhD holders who cannot tie their bloody shoes – there are equally inept grammar school drop outs.

The fact is that more PhDs in a country gives a higher standard of living for all in that country. I am happy to consider any data that contradicts that fact, but I don’t expect to see it.

Education is a nearly perfect predictor of productivity and prosperity.

That’s why we need more and more PhDs; in all fields, especially but not only in science and engineering.

 

[tango22a]

ER Campbell:

I'm sure you know what B.S. is

ergo.....M.S= More of same...and

Ph.D .......Piled higher and deeper                  J/K....of course


Cheers,


tango22a

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

I don’t know much about “street level” business, nor do I know any millionaire truck drivers (but I do know a pretty prosperous heavy equipment owner/operator), but the data, international  data, shows, consistently, that the rate of PhD production leads a country's productivity. Put simply more PhDs = higher productivity. The data is consistent and persuasive.

Of course there are PhD holders who cannot tie their bloody shoes – there are equally inept grammar school drop outs.

The fact is that more PhDs in a country gives a higher standard of living for all in that country. I am happy to consider any data that contradicts that fact, but I don’t expect to see it.

Education is a nearly perfect predictor of productivity and prosperity.

That’s why we need more and more PhDs; in all fields, especially but not only in science and engineering.

Does higher education cause higher productivity and prosperity or is it correlated? A higher education can certainly lead to higher income for an individual, but does that hold true for a whole economy when all else is held equal? Would giving every Icelander a PhD save that countrie's economy?

I can see the benefits of the knowledge-based economy, but I sometimes get the feeling that the West came up with education as a place to put kids once those do-gooders stopped letting children perform productive work in matchstick factories, mills and mines.

Regarding the thread, does a PhD from the University of Tribleckastan carry the same weight as one from here?

I like the 50s/60s model. Come to Canada. Work hard in resource extraction/mining/construction/paving. Save money. Sends kids to school. Have them blend in.

 

[Brad Sallows]

>The fact is that more PhDs in a country gives a higher standard of living for all in that country. I am happy to consider any data that contradicts that fact, but I don’t expect to see it.

Then we may just be looking at the data differently.  PhD candidates require a feeder stream; the breakdown of data may show that people holding PhDs contribute directly more than their share of productivity gains but it may just be the case that the number of PhDs is a proxy for a general measure of a well-educated work force.

But the claim that having more PhD holders causes (not merely correlates with) greater overall productivity (by whatever measure) is not the same as what I read to be a suggestion that PhD holders are - or should be - the cadre in whose hands we leave the development of productivity TTPs.  We need to understand and separate the contributions of dramatic innovation and incremental process improvements.

Although in the abstract productivity gains are good, there are potential social downsides.  For creative destruction to work in a human context, the displaced employees must be able to find new employment within their capabilities.  We have probably already reached the point at which jobs can be rendered redundant (or moved elsewhere) faster than they can be created.  We may soon be reaching a point at which the tools of productivity become necessarily more complex so as to exclude an ever-increasing segment of the population from meaningful employment.  Finally, we will be sunk in a deep pothole in shit creek if we become overdependent on fragile (easily disrupted) technologies and infrastructure and no-one remembers the "old ways" to do things.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I agree with Brad Sallows that we are running short of the low skill/high wage jobs that have, traditionally, underpinned our standard of living.

The problems are:

1. Some jobs are inherently low skill and can be exported to very low wage economies; and

2. The low skill jobs that cannot be exported – resource extraction, for example – can be made much, much more productive, and, therefore, far less plentiful by automation. Consider just the giant T282B truck. One, with one driver, is able to do more than 10 other trucks, with ten drivers, at a lower cost.

The big truck does require a few high skill/high wage mechanics, but overall it increases productivity and destroys low skill jobs.

There is no near term solution, at least none of which I am aware or can imagine, to the destruction of low skill jobs. Some, but only some people, can be retrained and/or re-educated to make then fit for new, higher skill jobs – but not all. But: That situation obtains in every advanced and advancing economy so it is a net economic draw. (I am not ignoring the very real human problems but they are there for another part of the social policy discussion.)
 
To Tabgo2Bravo’s points: Maybe not oddly, but in retarded economies – those that typically exist in failing states, the correlation between educational production and productivity is negative. I say it’s not odd because we should be able to understand that a retarded economy education is a cost which drains output away from the balance sheet.

In advancing economies I have been unable to find any examples of educational  production that is counter-productive. (Now, in fairness, this is the first time I have ever looked. All of the research with which I am familiar says that more/better education = better productivity = greater prosperity. But I have now looked for more than an hour and I cannot find anything that contradicts the received wisdom.)

The correlation between education and productivity is related to both quantity and quality.

Quantity is terribly important at the secondary and immediate post secondary levels. All the data I have ever seen says that overall productivity rises directly with increases in the quantity of secondary and post secondary  education – post secondary being, very broadly, trade schools/programmes, community colleges and university undergraduate programmes. If more young people stay in school longer, then productivity will rise. If young people leave secondary school in increasing numbers then productivity will grow more slowly and, if enough young people leave secondary school too early, productivity will actually decline.

The qualitative effects are, as far as I have read over the years, more startling – especially at the graduate Master and Doctorate levels. Specifically a PhD from the excellent University of Somewhere Quite Nice might well be far more productive, in an advancing economy, than one from the lesser quality University of Tribalstan.

(Either or both might be immediately unproductive for Tribalstan itself because the resources needed to operate a university represent a current loss to the economy.)

The problem with the ‘50s/’60s models is that increased productivity means there are fewer of those low skill jobs and the ones that remain are being overfilled by native born Canadians. We are importing PhDs because we cannot produce enough from our own people. The children of the imported PhDs and of the taxi drivers and pizza cooks, too, are, now, filling our universities and graduate schools in disproportionately high numbers. But: The immigrants’ kids are not exactly blending in because they are better educated, more productive and more prosperous than their peers.

Finally, nothing would have rescued Iceland from fiscal and monetary irresponsibility but maybe a few more PhDs would have prevented some of it. The potential liabilities of Iceland’s three largest banks exceeded the entire GDP of Iceland by a multiple of five; that’s a sign of poor bank regulation. (There are  six governors and deputy governors of the Bank of Canada; all have at least an MA and four of the six have PhDs.)

 

[Kat Stevens]

Pardon my poorly educated high school dropout input, but perhaps if the major financial institutions had a few less PhD's on staff, and a few more common sense prairie farmers, our economy wouldn't be in the shyte state it's in now.

 

[Edward Campbell]

We, the entire "West" need more and more better educated people, but we also need more of the fiscally prudent 'values' of those prairie farmers and small town, independent businessmen.

 

[Antoine]

Well said Mr. Campbell !

It sums up what I was trying to say in my approximative English. 

 

[Dennis Ruhl]

To Tabgo2Bravo’s points: Maybe not oddly, but in retarded economies – those that typically exist in failing states, the correlation between educational production and productivity is negative. I say it’s not odd because we should be able to understand that a retarded economy education is a cost which drains output away from the balance sheet.

Another thing I've seen mentioned is that in underdeveloped countries educated people will not resort to a subsistence living when not finding employment to use their skills.  There often tends to be a large unemployed/underemployed group of young men educated in western technolgy for which few local jobs exist.  Many countries maintain large armies to employ enough of these men to get them onside and keep them occupied.

 

[gcclarke]

We, the entire "West" need more and more better educated people, but we also need more of the fiscally prudent 'values' of those prairie farmers and small town, independent businessmen.

And this, my good people, is a large part of our problem. The sons and daughters of our "good old Canadian" prairie farmers and small town, independent businessmen are not pursuing higher education at a rate high enough to meet the demands of the Canadian economy. We don't have enough PhDs and MScs with home grown western values, but we still have the positions to fill. Thus, when we do import them, they may indeed not share the same values as most of the rest of society. This becomes especially problematic when we are bringing them in from places where the concept of capitalism and a market economy are new and exciting.

 

[Edward Campbell]

See here and here for data and observations on what is happening in our universities.

In productivity terms – and I know almost everyone hates the word and the idea – we are not getting our country ready to work smarter because we are failing to ready our own children to be smarter. (Smart ≠ educated; it means better prepared for whatever comes in the workplace. Education and training are part of being and working smart but so are R&D and good management. It’s easier to be and work smart if you boss provides the right tools and make the organizational superstructure support your work.)

Maybe, Mods the posts from here to this one could be moved to the Making Canada Relevant Again- The Economic Super-Thread thread.

 

[GAP]

In no way should we emulate the European Mentality in many things, but one thing they did very well and that has held them in good stead with productivity and R&D, is the apprenticeship programs. We think our dropouts/post secondary students are adequately served if we throw them into a 10month to 2 year program at a Technical Institute and off they go.

The Europeans, from the Industrial Revolution on, created Guilds/equivelants that indoctrinated the work ethic/reward system into young people. North America was populated largely by this high work ethic, and now we are bemoaning it not being in our future generations, but we are doing little about it.

Companies use people like a stove uses coal. Then we get rid of the ashes....

 

[YZT580]

Guilds have been prevalent in Europe since probably the 12th century: if not earlier than that.  In H.S. guidance departments throughout at least Ontario the emphasis has been on getting to university.  Well, we don't need university graduates as much as we need skilled labourers.  We need the skilled heavy equipment operator, the mechanic.  Try finding a school that offers this type of training.  There are at least 10 that are training people for non-existent newspaper, radio, TV positions (more positions in the schools than there exists total jobs in the market) and only 2 that offer heavy equipment.  We have taught our children that common labour is beneath them, that is why we import labour now. 

High schools used to offer trade courses, skills training etc. but the industrial arts departments were shut down years ago.  Some schools still have some options but nothing like the industry-linked courses that were offered.
As for the statements regarding more productivity I would ask you to look at agriculture.  A mennonite farmer with 100 acres and two teams of horses makes an equivalent profit to the farmer with a full section or more of land and 300,000 dollars worth of equipment. 

 

[Edward Campbell]

...
As for the statements regarding more productivity I would ask you to look at agriculture.  A mennonite farmer with 100 acres and two teams of horses makes an equivalent profit to the farmer with a full section or more of land and 300,000 dollars worth of equipment.

You are quire correct. There is considerable evidence that indicates that small ≠ unproductive, and not just in agriculture either. Broadly, larger enterprises are able to lower some costs and, if they reinvest the savings, become more productive. But small farms, especially, family farms can be very productive for many reasons, including:

There's a good deal of controversy about why this relationship exists. Some researchers argued that it was the result of a statistical artefact: fertile soils support higher populations than barren lands, so farm size could be a result of productivity, rather than the other way around. But further studies have shown that the inverse relationship holds across an area of fertile land. Moreover, it works even in countries such as Brazil, where the biggest farmers have grabbed the best land.

The most plausible explanation is that small farmers use more labour per hectare than big farmers. Their workforce largely consists of members of their own families, which means that labour costs are lower than on large farms (they don't have to spend money recruiting or supervising workers), while the quality of the work is higher. With more labour, farmers can cultivate their land more intensively: they spend more time terracing and building irrigation systems; they sow again immediately after the harvest; and they might grow several crops in the same field.

Source

I don’t think the relationship (smaller can be more productive) is limited to agriculture but I do not have data to support that belief. What we know is that capital tends to promote a grow or shrivel model – which might be wrong.

 

[Antoine]

"Thursday's release of a new citizenship guide will mark a shift in what it means to become Canadian, emphasizing for the first time Canada's military and political histories and the responsibilities bestowed upon the quarter-million newcomers who migrate to Canada each year." from www.nationalpost.com

Let see if it is going to help.

 

[1feral1]

I'll sum up by saying I lived with Yank Sheila from Southern California, who aside from being a gym junkie, was a Doctor of mathamatics at ANSTO (Australia's one and only nuclear reactor) in Sydney's south. She was a whiz at her job, yet could not change a 9v batt in a smoke detector (yes I am serious), and in many ways seemed to be 'socially retarded'.

Just because one has an education does make them the sharpest commando dagger in the Regiment.

My two cents.

PS - She was an asset at tax time  :nod:

OWDU

 

[mariomike]

I'll sum up by saying I lived with Yank Sheila from Southern California, who aside from being a gym junkie, was a Doctor of mathamatics at ANSTO (Australia's one and only nuclear reactor) in Sydney's south. She was a whiz at her job, yet could not change a 9v batt in a smoke detector (yes I am serious), and in many ways seemed to be 'socially retarded'.

Like the old joke about how many mathematicians it takes to screw in a light bulb.
Answer: A mathematician can’t screw in a light bulb, but s/he can easily prove the work can be done.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I'll sum up by saying I lived with Yank Sheila from Southern California, who aside from being a gym junkie, was a Doctor of mathamatics at ANSTO (Australia's one and only nuclear reactor) in Sydney's south. She was a whiz at her job, yet could not change a 9v batt in a smoke detector (yes I am serious), and in many ways seemed to be 'socially retarded'.

Just because one has an education does make them the sharpest commando dagger in the Regiment.

My two cents.

PS - She was an asset at tax time  :nod:

OWDU

And all that anecdotal evidence is worth, precisely, two thirds of five eighths of bugger all.

I too know PhDs who have difficulty walking and chewing gum at the same time. But, equally, I know some PhDs who are very good at damned near everything: their specialties, sports, auto repair, home carpentry, hunting and fishing and so so. Additionally, I know some high school dropouts and high school graduates who are inept and stupid, one or two of them were senior NCOs in the Army who no one would trust with a hammer and nail.

And my anecdotal evidence is equally meaningless.

If you think education is unrelated to productivity please provide some data to support that thesis. I have looked, a bit, and I haven't found any.

So I stand by my contention: more PhDs and more education and training, in general ≈ greater productivity at the national level ≈ greater prosperity for all.

 

[JackD]

From the perspective of someone working in (Central) Europe, in the educational field (for how long, I don't know - Poland is rather xenophobic). i'd say the Canadian educational system is superior. Why? Because it teaches you to think and plan. The (Central) European system teaches you to memorize trivia - but not how to do research - and if you introduce items like that into your classroom, you get dinged. As to academic credentials - especially in the soft sciences, lots of masters papers and PHD's are purchased and the research is forged. There is little original work done in these parts. In addition, in many research papers, what good and original research work done is often accredited to individuals who never set foot into the laboratory/class/whatever - they are either the department chief who is never seen, or a relative of the department chief - never seen. The Canadian system is far superior. it is not perfect. The university system (i encountered) is elitist and frankly, something of a waste of time (from my perspective, having a bachelor degree in agronomy). The community college system is the key - I also did forestry and geology training in Sault College. The instructors were enthusiastic, knowledgeable and experienced - and could teach. Moreover, the curriculum was meaningful.  As an aside, standards of education in Canada have slipped. My brother went back to university in the middle 90's at age 40 something. He obtained degrees with honours in history and English.  He could not afford the assigned textbooks  and this was pre-Internet.  He used as his main texts  some second-hand  1950's high school grammar books/literature books, and a history book  originally written for elementary pupils dated 1962. In a sense, what it comes down to is the individual: are they learned despite the system or because of the system? More people in Canada are learned because of the system.