Bits Blog: A Tech Veteran Takes on the Skills Gap

Lynn Holmlund Gary J. Beach

Gary J. Beach has long been a close observer of technology, a frequent speaker on the conference circuit and a confidante of senior technology executives. He is a former publisher of Computerworld, Network World and CIO Magazine, where he is currently publisher emeritus.

More than six years ago, Mr. Beach decided to begin studying in earnest a much-debated issue, and a subject of ritual complaint among technology executives — the apparently lagging skills of the American workforce. The result, published on Thursday, is his book, “The U.S. Technology Skills Gap: What Every Technology Executive Must Know to Save America’s Future” (John Wiley & Sons).

Much of the book is an illuminating, idiosyncratic history of education in America, dating back to 1941. “The skills gap is really an education gap, and it affects us all,” Mr. Beach explained in an interview on Thursday.

Today’s headlines about the sorry state of math and science proficiency of American children are nothing new. In 1964, Mr. Beach writes, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement tested the math skills of eighth graders in 13 countries, and the American students came in next to last.

A scathing indictment of the United States public education system came in 1983, from an expert commission appointed by Ronald Reagan, “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform.”

Then, America’s formidable economic challenger was Japan, a nation of high achieving math and science test-takers. Today, the ascendant power is China, which produces engineers at a torrid rate.

The Japan challenge faded. What’s different this time?

One difference, Mr. Beach suggests, is the historical moment. And he makes the argument by showing off his research chops, pointing to a fascinating if obscure source: the Yuasa Phenomenon. This is a theory expounded by a Japanese physicist and historian, Mitsutomo Yuasa, in the 1960s. Since 1540, he declared, the mantle of global scientific leadership has moved from one country to another every 80 to 100 years. The United States, by his reckoning, became the leader in science in 1920.

Gary Beach’s new book, which was published on Thursday.

America, Mr. Beach writes, cannot compete with China or India in churning out engineers. Instead, the Untied States can thrive by being more innovative. Stronger math and science skills are needed, he writes, but so are other skills, which he calls the “5C’s — critical thinking, communication, collaboration, creativity and confidence.”

“A nation,” Mr. Beach writes, “whose citizens excel in the 5C’s, but not math and science, is a nation of liberal arts majors! A nation of math and science wizards who can’t think, communicate, collaborate or create, is a nation of machines. The successful countries of the 21st century will, and must, do both well.”

Mr. Beach has some reasonably fresh recommendations for improving education in America. He would nearly double the starting salaries of bright young teachers to both attract more of them and place American starting salaries on a par with Finland and South Korea, two high-achieving nations in education.

To pay for that proposal, Mr. Beach suggests the creation of state education trust funds, modeled after the “Highway Trust Fund,” the Eisenhower creation to finance the construction and maintenance of the nation’s interstate highway system with a tax on gasoline.

Under the Beach plan, businesses would pay a yearly tax of $10 a worker and parents would pay $10 for each child between the ages of six to 17. That would raise $4.3 billion a year and pay for hiring 143,000 new math and science teachers.

Now, the whole notion of a skills gap has been challenged recently by some academics, notably Peter Cappelli, a professor of management at the Wharton School. They point to stagnant wages; if there were real shortages, businesses would pay more.

Mr. Beach sees a different world, based on his conversations with technology executives. “The skills gap is not fiction,” he said. But in the technology industry, he said, there is a global market for skills — a market accessible to workers anywhere with the know-how and an Internet connection. The online worldwide labor pool, Mr. Beach suggests, slows wage growth for many technology jobs.

Advertising: A Campaign to Help People Learn Internet Skills

THE Advertising Council and Connect2Compete, a nonprofit group whose goal is to eliminate the digital divide in the United States, are introducing a public service campaign to help those who are not digitally literate find free training to obtain these skills.

In remarks prepared for a speech in Washington last month about Connect2Compete’s efforts, the Federal Communications Commission chairman, Julius Genachowski, said approximately one in three Americans, or 100 million people, still do not have broadband in their homes, with low-income Americans and minorities “disproportionately on the wrong side of the digital divide.”

This matters, he continued, because “over 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies post job openings exclusively online. Over half of today’s jobs require technology skills, and nearly 80 percent of jobs in the next decade are projected to require digital skills.”

According to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, one in five American adults — about 62 million people — do not use the Internet. The 2012 Pew Internet and American Life Project said the main reason these people “don’t go online is because they don’t think the Internet is relevant to them.”

To reach adults who share this sentiment, Connect2Compete approached the Advertising Council last year for help creating a public service campaign “with messages that get at the relevance of the Internet, how you can do something, or do something better that you may already do, by being online,” said Zach Leverenz, chief executive of Connect2Compete.

To that end, the Ad Council and the New York office of Young & Rubicam, part of the WPP Group, created a multimedia advertising campaign that begins on Thursday, a date chosen because its numbers (3-21) stand for a three-two-one countdown to get “everyone on” the Internet. The campaign’s Web site is EveryoneOn.org.

Advertising being distributed by the Ad Council includes a TV spot featuring Reginald, an actual truck driver from California whose instructor shows him how to use a computer, get on the Internet, and buy a plane ticket as a surprise for his wife. “She’s going to love me all over again now,” he says. The spot concludes, “But first, he’s going to surprise himself. Get online. Find a free class near you.”

Radio ads feature actors portraying individuals who do not know how to use the Internet. One is a man named Peter, whose instructor shows him how to look for electrician jobs online. The voice-over says, “This is Peter. Recently he got help going on the Internet for the first time to look for a new job. In the past, Peter’s gotten work through people he knew. But he heard there were more jobs online.”

One outdoor ad features a row of people — resembling paper doll cutouts — holding hands; the text says “1 in 5 Americans don’t use the Internet. Luckily help is all around.” These ads include the campaign’s toll-free telephone number.

Once the audience for all advertising — which is running in both English and Spanish — calls the toll-free number, they are asked for their ZIP code and given the location of free training classes nearby. Class information is also available via texting. In addition, the campaign’s Web site locates classes — which are being offered by over 21,000 libraries and other centers — by ZIP code.

The advertising being introduced on Thursday was preceded this month by related digital advertising and Facebook and Twitter outreach, directed at those who are already digitally literate and encouraging them to help those who are not.

Cheryl Chapman, a creative director at Young & Rubicam in New York, said the agency “knew we couldn’t scare people into using the Internet, so we wanted the advertising to feel disarming, to capture the real emotion of learning something new.”

According to Dzu Bui, campaign director of the Advertising Council, the campaign is directed primarily at adults who are not digitally literate, “since they are the ones who have control over accessing the Internet, they are the decision makers, they make choices for their families.”

Peggy Conlon, president and chief executive of the Ad Council, said the goal of the campaign — the group’s first to address digital literacy issues — was to “overcome the barriers people have to going online.”

She also predicted media outlets — which donate time and space to run all Ad Council advertising — might be motivated to carry this campaign, because it could “help increase their audiences. An informed citizenry is a stronger citizenry. There are many reasons this is good for everybody.”

Experts differed about the campaign and its strategy.

Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor who teaches the economics of information at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management, called the campaign’s goals “on target,” since, he said, the median wage of Americans today is lower than it was 15 years ago, in part because they have “not kept up with digital technologies.”

Ruth Small, director of the Center for Digital Literacy at Syracuse University, commended the campaign for addressing specific subjects that interest people, like job hunting.

Although Dan Wagner, Unesco chair in learning and literacy at the graduate school of education of the University of Pennsylvania, said “anything that helps people, especially the poor, get access to technology is good,” he called creating relevant content for those who are not digitally literate just as important as showing them how to get online.

James McQuivey, who follows consumer technology adoption for Forrester Research, questioned the campaign’s prospects. “I don’t think it will have the impact they want it to have because most people who are not connected to the Internet are not there by choice. It’s not that these people are sitting and waiting for the Internet and can’t get it.”

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