Business
Critique of Education
(Note: the following are critiques of education from the
"viewpoint" of business; some authors are academics.)
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- Joseph H. Boyett and Henry P. Conn, Workplace 2000: The Revolution
Reshaping American Business (New York: Plume / Penguin, 1992), pp. 266-98
("It was as if those in charge of education were entirely oblivious to the
revolution occurring all around them.")
- Canadian Assoc. of University Teachers' Bulletin Online,
"World Bank
Promotes Its Agenda in Paris" (Nov. 1998) (report on the World
Conference on Higher Education held at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, Oct. 5-9,
1998: "For the powerful forces seeking to control post-secondary
education, led by the World Bank and its allies, the enemy are university
teachers around the world; and war has been declared. The battle cry is that
higher education 'must proceed to the most radical change and renewal it has
ever been required to undertake.' And that means radically changing the
'traditional' or 'classical' or 'research based' university and its personnel
to meet the ravenous needs of the knowledge-based global economy")
- William H. Davidow and Michael S. Malone, The Virtual Corporation:
Structuring and Revitalizing the Corporation for the 21st Century (New
York: HarperBusiness / HarperCollins, 1992), pp. 187-95, 257-60 ("Liberal
arts programs produce students who are technically illiterate, incapable of
dealing with the technical content of a modern economy. Meanwhile, science and
engineering majors, by being spared a leavening of humanities, are woefully
unprepared for the social structures and interpersonal relations that are at
the heart of virtual corporations," p. 259)
- Peter J. Denning (George Mason U.),
"Business
Designs for The New University" (1996) (Educom Review)
- Larry Keeley (Doblin Group, Perot Systems),
"Designing
for an Educational Revolution" (1997) ("Most educational advances
amount to timid improvements on the margins, ignoring the underlying and
permanent tectonic shifts of our everyday lives") (Educom Review)
- David Stern, "Institutions and Incentives for Developing Work-Related
Knowledge and Skill," in
P. Adler (1992), pp.
149-86
- Don Tapscott, The Digital Economy: Promise and Peril in the Age of
Networked Intelligence (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996), pp. 197-216
("Some educational institutions are working hard to reinvent themselves
for relevance, but progress is slow")