Why Students Need Marketing!

The Economist ran an interesting article last week entitled Angst for the Educated with the subtitle that ‘a university degree no longer offers financial security’. It is an important, timely and challenging commentary. As we know, there is a high correlation between educational qualifications and earnings – an American with a professional degree can expect to earn $3.6 million in a lifetime compared with a high school graduate who can expect to earn $1.3 million. It is this promise of greater returns that keeps many students sane during the apparently endless routine of projects and examinations!

But with everything else in the world of work and business changing rapidly, what if this relationship was to loosen significantly in the future? Well it would already appear that this is already happening. And the main reason is competition. The article reports research which estimates that the number of students going to university grew by 74% in Europe between 1990 and 2007, but the increases were by 144% in Latin America and 203% in Asia. Graduate competition for the best jobs is growing in a marketplace that is global. Add to this the fact that technology is removing the needs for some white collar workers in the same way that it has already done to blue collar jobs – for example, software packages do you tax returns at a fraction of the cost of an accountant, and the challenge becomes even more serious.

The other main point of the piece is that technology will cause the main elements of brain work to be broken down into smaller pieces – the routine bits being completed by machines or outsourced to where labour is cheaper. So Western graduates will need to recognise that the qualification will only get you so far. What core skills and abilities can you combine to give you an advantage in a competitive jobs marketplace? How are you different and better than your peers? What are you doing to develop a marketing plan for yourself? These are the kinds of questions that you will increasingly need to be able to answer.

Book Review: Future Minds

Future Minds is the latest book by futurologist Richard Watson and it is both stimulating and interesting while at the same time being frustrating and even somewhat misleading. Let’s begin with the misleading bit. The book’s subtitle says that it is about ‘how the digital age is changing our minds’ or as Watson puts it – rewiring our brains, all of which is very interesting except that this is not what it is about at all. Instead it is largely a discussion of the problems of information overload caused by the digital age and a call for a return to a slower pace and deeper thinking.

To claim that our brains are being rewired is also problematic and emotive. Brains are characterised by plasticity and unlike plugs cannot be wired but rather adapt to the stimuli that they are exposed to. The book cites some evidence that neural patterns maybe changing due constant exposure to digital stimuli but it is insufficient to provide a compelling argument and anyway changes in stimuli will provoke further changes in the future. Equally brains and minds are not interchangeable – they are two different things! Furthermore, a potpourri of issues is covered in this book ranging from creativity to artificial intelligence to open plan offices and so on. This, along with a penchant for randomly including box exhibits on all sorts of issues such as ‘gardening as a metaphor for business’ is where the book gets frustrating. And comments like ‘if you want creative thinking in your organisation, you need to attract and retain overtly creative people’ are hardly insightful.

However, the book does raise some fascinating issues. The early chapters provide some details on the pervasiveness of digital media in life and work. For example, it is estimated that the average British child aged 10-11 spends 900 hours at school, 1,300 hours with their family but also 2,000 hours in front of some form of screen such as computer, phone or television. Inevitably this is going to have an impact on development. How can education cope most effectively with these changing mindsets? What will be the role of books in the future? Will convergent or divergent thinking be favoured in the future? Are we no longer getting enough sleep? These are some of the range of interesting questions that are generated in the book. However, the important issue of how all this exposure to digital technology is impacting on our brains and/or minds is a subject that will be worthy of more of deep thinking that Watson cherishes. His book is valuable in initiating this process. 

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