Your Career and Globalization According to Thomas Friedman, Part Two
Monday, July 13th, 2009Yesterday we shared a brief excerpt from Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat, in which he talked about the skills you need to succeed in a globalized world. Today, I’d like to share another excerpt, in which Mr. Friedman discusses the ways in which U.S. universities support exactly these skills.
Before I do, and for the benefit of those interested in the ongoing debate about globalization (what it is, whether it’s good, etc.) I want to mention that Mr. Friedman certainly has his critics (for example, here). Nonetheless, his views are valuable at the very least because they represent a strong current of thought regarding globalization and its impact.
With that disclaimer out of the way, here is Friedman on U.S. universities (with a big assist from Bill Gates):
It is a truism, but the more educated you are, the more options you will have . . . “Our university system is the best,” said Bill Gates. “We fund our universities to do a lot of research and that is an amazing thing. High-IQ people come here, and we allow them to innovate and turn [their innovations] into products. We reward risk taking. Our university system is competitive and experimental. They can try out different approaches . . . It is a chaotic system, but it is a great engine of innovation in the world . . .”
“America has 4,000 colleges and universities,” said Allan E. Goodman, president of the Institute of International Education. “The rest of the world combined has 7,768 institutions of higher education. In the state of California alone, there are about 130 colleges and universities. There are only 14 countries in the world with more than that number.”
. . . [I]n 2003, American universities reaped $1.3 billion from patents . . .
In other words, U.S. universities innovate and take risks in order to adapt to a changing world. What’s more, because of the sheer number of universities, they do so on an unprecedented scale, and in a vast array of fields.
For that reason, if you are interested in sharpening you skills in terms of innovation and adaptability, you won’t go wrong by investing in a U.S. university for your higher education.
