Technology and Education: MIT Takes A Dip

It is possible that I have not searched diligently enough but I have not seen any publication with a coherent view for how education in general and learning will be affected by the rise of the new tools and ideas from the digital field. The closest I came to how much the Internet and related tools will affect education was in the Biography of Steve Jobs in addition to the report by MacArthur Foundation on The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age. The former states that Steve Jobs thinks that the major effect of technology would be in digitization of text books and learning materials. The advantage here would be that updates would be regular, less costly and that the parents and the public sector would take the initiative away from publishers.  I thought then that that was not really profound but that Jobs was being uncharacteristically real in the possible effects on education from technology. The latter publication was more sanguine but also profound in stating that most learning will involve de-centered teaching and with young learners getting skills from diverse places and methods.

I accidentally encountered this piece by Tamar Lewin of the NYT in which it is reported that the MIT has introduced an e-learning course for which it will be possible to gain certification and credentials. This new development is a step forward because open courses have been offered by leading universities in the world but many have not had certificates and my interpretation was that this would eventually lead to the death of certificates and "credentialism". My reading of this is that universities may be responding still to the heavy demand for certificates as evidence of proficiency.  What is profound is that the costs of acquiring good quality education are tending towards zero. This is worthy of keeping a keen eye upon.    

Contrasting Income Growth for Africa and Asia

Keen observers of the growth trajectories of countries cannot help noticing that apart from the larger economies in Asia, sub-saharan africa has registered unprecedented growth levels in the last decade. The argument is relevant because one of the major problems that the latter region has had is the inability to hold on to an upward growth momentum for meaningful periods of time. Instead, Africa's example has been fluctuations of growth rates that coincide with commodity price changes. The summary of this experience from the mid-1970s is that dependence of petroleum and agriculture-based commodities is not a reliable path to growth and improvement of welfare. 

And that's why the contention is that it is yet not possible to state with confidence that sub-saharan Africa has overcome the mix of economic and political problems that it faces. That brings me to this fascinating article in the East African which makes the credible and well-based claim that the countries in the eastern region of africa will be leaders in overall growth in the coming two decades. It is an article worthy of reading because it is based on a complicated but sensible method for assessment of the complexity of an economy and concludes that the countries of the region under reference have economies that are more complex and diverse in production than is warranted by the incomes today. 

The author of the article concentrates on a list of manufacturing firms to illustrate the claim derived from the index of complexity. it is less clear to me that all these firms confer a comparative advantage to the region because it is unlikely that all are able to compete internationally. My view is that given the fact that manufacturing industry is a smaller proportion of the overall GDP of these countries, there is scope for growth but not necessarily for all existing firms. A final point that is worthy of note is that in spite of the prediction that the region will lead in GDP growth, it will still fall behind India and China in respect of per capita income growth. I think the reason is that this region has a large and youthful population and is expected to maintain strong moderately population growth for a few more decades.  

Apple's Effect on Competition in E-Book Market

This blogger has maintained in posts including this that the book publishing industry has chosen to go the way of music producers by burying their heads in the sand. iIn particular, I am of the view that it is preposterous to sell digital copies of books at the same cost as the paper version. For a while Amazon seemed to be acting in the interest of the reading public by ensuring that new publications were available at lower cost in digital format and thereby ensuring that the gains from digitization broke the existing model of book publication and pricing.

Indeed, there was a danger that Amazon could have used its market power to depress the margins for publishers. And then came Apple with a deal for the publishers for an agency model for digital books on the iPad. This gave greater power to the publishers as they were able to apply new clout to ensure that books were sold through an agency model with retailers keeping 30% of the sale price. The effect of this is that prices of books not only went up but that the odd fact of digital books going at higher costs became real again.

Juliette Garside reports on the effort by antitrust officials in Europe who are questioning the new arrangement. Their main claim, with which I am in agreement, is that the agency model has placed consumers at a disadvantage in the sense that books have gone up by a margin of up to 50%. To my mind, there is no price war anymore as the publishers are back in the driving seat, with Apple's help, and are dictating costs and seeking uniform prices again. Like most windy antitrust cases, this will probably go on for long but on this score, i am confident that the bureaucrats are on the side of the consumers.   

Ode to Christopher Hitchens

While 2011 may have been a year of confusion and economic difficulty in Europe, nothing beats the very interesting outcomes for a number of despots. I am certain that nobody would have guessed that Muammar Gaddafi, Zine Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak are no longer leaders and some barely alive. And one would think that the troubles facing Syria's Bashar Assad and Khalifa's of Bahrain would be enough for the year and yet another strong arm leader, Kim Jong Il,  with no respect for life and political opinions has passed on in North Korea.

And yet to be philosophical about it, the latter passed on on the same date as Christopher Hitchens, an unapologetic advocate for reason and vociferous defender of the right to free expression. There is no better way to tie all this together than to refer to this fantastic piece by Hitchens on life in North Korea. In there, he talks about his visit to North Korea and the experience with the effects of aggressive ideology and the use of conflict to organize all society. Most interesting is the fact that the separation of the Koreas and the racist nationalism of the North exists side by side with the fact that the average citizen of this totalitarian regime is six inches shorter than those of south Korea. I agree as well with the statement that nothing is more totalitarian that "racist nationalism". 

Champagne or Wine for Consumption Growth

Many times, economists and business people use the movement of inventory and other consumption indicators as proxies for the state of the economy. Consumer sentiment is a reliable one but it is often not possible to conveniently aggregate all consumption in even the smaller economies, leave alone one as large and complicated as the US. Writing in the NYT here, Adam Davidson explores the simple ways in which consumption of certain items reflect the recovery of sustained lack of confidence in the United States today.

As the article states, the trend in consumption of some items are far better indicators of the improved economic conditions than others. To my mind, it is sensible that the rising purchase of high cost wines may not be a representative of the whole economy because this good is primarily consumed by high income individuals whose consumption is not affected much because they have not had a squeeze on incomes. This merely shows that tracking the sales volumes of high cost wines is not the most useful way to assess the state of national consumption. It turns out that lipstick and nail polish sales go in different directions and that the latter has lost the predictive ability perhaps because of a structural change in the industry and consumption. It turns out that while sales volumes of high cost wines is not useful, the most consistent predictor is the consumption of champagne. And with the figures suggesting that consumption champagne going up, US citizens are popping corks for the right reasons. The world needs the US citizens to pop the champagne corks.

Intelligence and Creativity

"Intelligence is not enough for creativity. So intelligent people defend the position given them by their intelligence  by claiming that creativity is not a learnable skill but an inborn talent-which they cannot be expected to acquire".  Edward De Bono in, Think! Before Its Too Late. p. 25

Tiger Wins Again

I have stated here and here before that the general view among sports commentators that Tiger Woods is unlikely to regain imperious form and win golf tournaments had to be wrong. As the Guardian reports, Tiger's performance at the Chevron World Challenge tournament shows that this player still maintains the skill set that has enabled him to retain the admiration of dispassionate sports fans.  In my view, while one win does not mean that the player will continue to do so, it merely states that the bets against Tiger winning a major again must shift decisively because this player has time, history and skill on his side.

It is understandable that there are the questions about what the strength of the field was, but a number of those on the list were far ahead of him and yet he won. Skeptics must be allowed their say but many professional golfers would like to take away the Chevron Challenge prize while only a select few do.

Watch the guy.