This Map Paints a Grim Picture of America’s Economic Divides. Colleges Shouldn’t Run From Them. By Goldie Blumenstyk JULY 17, 2019 Spoiler Our country’s economic divides will get worse. Colleges should act. Think the country is divided now? Wait till you see what it might look like a decade from now, when the economic upheavals wrought by continuing automation bring 60 percent of net job growth to 25 “megacities” and their high-growth hubs and peripheries, leaving vast swaths of the nation even farther behind. That geographic divergence is what first caught my attention as I paged through a new report, “The Future of Work in America,” from the McKinsey Global Institute. The divide shows up clearly on the shaded maps in the report, including the map just below, in which the darkest-colored counties represent regions where job growth is projected to be greatest by 2030 — above 15 percent for the regions in black, negative for the areas in the lightest gray. (For a clearer look at this map and the full key, see Page 10 of the report’s Executive Summary.) The executive summary also includes another color-coded map showing the megacities and the locations of 12 other “community archetypes” that the McKinsey institute uses to describe the mosaic that is the American labor market. That work force is polarized now, and projected to become even more so, with education levels one of the key dividing points. “Individuals with a high-school degree or less are four times more likely to be in a highly automatable role than individuals with a bachelor’s degree or higher,” the report states, and “as much as 14 times more vulnerable than someone with a graduate degree.” (Memo to Alaska lawmakers: Most of your state is characterized by low-growth indicators.) And the impacts won’t hit evenly. The institute predicts workers who are Hispanic or black are most at risk of having their work lives upended (because of the jobs they now hold). It also estimates that automation could displace nearly 15 million jobs now held by people ages 18 to 34, and 11.5 million more held by workers over age 50. And some of the largest occupational categories — administrative support, food services, and production work — have the highest potential for displacement. ADVERTISEMENT If the current state of American political discourse isn’t enough to get you down, I suspect reading the full 124-page report could do the trick. But I don’t think the lesson here is to curl up in a little ball and hide. If anything, the findings in the McKinsey report (and maybe the recent spate of venomous political tweets, too) are just the latest in a series of wake-up calls to higher-education leaders of the opportunities ahead. Tens of millions of people will need new and higher-level skills throughout their lifetimes to sustain themselves and their families, and as the report notes, “not just digital skills but also critical thinking, creativity, and socioemotional skills.” Want Goldie’s insights delivered to your inbox each week? “The Adult Student” and “Career-Ready Education” — I know that some colleges are already deeply engaged in such challenges, and those just getting started have plenty of good advice upon which to draw. But many still are on the sidelines. With an eye toward the economic changes ahead, the McKinsey authors describe the range of decisions that employers will be making about investments in training and retraining, and they note that “this period of transition could be a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform many ‘dead end’ jobs into more interesting and rewarding work.” Higher education needs to find its way into as many of those conversations as possible. All of which brings me back to that first map. I find myself imagining an overlay that shows the locations of colleges across the country. Many of the gray areas on the McKinsey map would be covered by dots, representing many of the same small, private and regional public institutions now facing enrollment and financial challenges. You get my drift here, right? The regions of the country likely to face the biggest economic challenges in the next decade because of automation are also the places filled with established educational organizations that may need a new agenda. Talk about an opportunity. Read these books. For the panel I moderated last month at Columbia University (part of a conference that also had “the future of work” in its title) I received several great suggestions from newsletter readers for questions to ask my panelists on colleges’ relevance for “a work force in flux.” In return, I asked each panelist to suggest a book that might be useful to readers on that topic, or the future of higher education in general. Here’s what I got. From Chris Dede, a professor of learning technologies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education: Artificial Intelligence in Education, a new book from the Center for Curriculum Redesign. Dede said he recommends it because the influence of AI should change the goals of education: “Since the division of labor is changing, we need to change the curriculum in powerful ways.” From Kelly Otter, dean of Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies: Robot-Proof, by Joseph Aoun, although she doesn’t buy all of his predictions for the future. “I do not look at it as a road map,” Otter said. “Read it with a grain of salt.” From Chris Mayer, associate dean for strategy and initiatives and an associate professor of philosophy at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point: The Fuzzy and the Techie, by Scott Hartley. The book focuses on the technology sector but shows how the people with “human skills” — the fuzzies — “actually do quite well in the tech world.” To those I’ll add one of my own: The just-published How to Win in a Winner-Take-All World, by Neil Irwin. (Irwin, a New York Times reporter, was a fellow moderator at the conference.) This book, copies of which I’ve already given to two of my early-in-their-career nephews, is a smart look at how to create a successful career in a world that has evolved to favor large, global, digitally advanced companies. Through interviews, Irwin makes the case for a “winding career path,” showing how people who take on a variety of experiences and roles become the “glue people” best positioned to help connect silos to one another and to help their organizations advance.
well I'll be damned. I came across the article in a food industry journal and it never occurred to me that TMB would have had it first. keeping it for the likes
I tried googling vanilla ice cream. You won't believe what happened next. Spoiler: spoiler every result was about how to make vanilla ice cream. i guess that make sense. I was confused why anyone would need to know anything about vanilla ice cream that they didn't already learn by the time they were 4 years old.
And the most vilified (at least on movies/tv that I've seen) is not listed...Comanche Seemed like every third John Wayne movie had comanche 'antagonists'
I’m not sure when and where that’s from but I have a few issues with some of the Alaska names/locations.
Here's another one. I used the other one first because it seemed a little bit easier to swallow, and I don't know where the Apache, Utes, or Creek are on this one (She died before I was born, but I was told my great grandmother was Creek). I don't see Seminole on either map. It's huge so I have to post link, and I think it's more an early map of the USA vs actual map for Native American tribes. http://www.emersonkent.com/map_archive/united_states_indian_tribes.htm ETA: And this one might be the best of the 3, though it's kind of hard to read.
I went metal straw a while back. Trying to do my part by getting 100 (idk how many I actually use) less straws produced next year.
Someone died in the UK recently when they tripped and fell on their metal straw. Pretty sure it was a Dark Knight disappearing pencil situation. Horrible way to go. Be careful out there.
I have some at the house and one in the glove box. I don’t carry it inside. I also rarely stay and eat places that issue straws anymore.
my wife carries around a set of these and we have a set at home. I just give them back whenever theyre handed to me.
It’s like a soul patch. But for the Ocean. Kind of like our Ocean is a member of Nickleback. It just wants us too look at this photograph IMO.
It's not a traditional Ford-style assembly line where you do one thing on one car forever; the same line makes all the cars and the computer makes sure the parts go to the line in the right order. It keeps the workers engaged cuz they do different stuff all day and its cheaper/more efficient than having a different line for each product. They also rotate workers to different parts of the line periodically so they don't get bored and therefore inattentive. I went to the Triumph motorcycle factory in England a few weeks ago, but they also have the option to pull a bike off the line if they need more time on it, rather than stopping the whole line. The computer adjusts the parts and also lights up the next part and tool the worker will need on a computer screen as a QA check.
Depends on what they consider a full week of work for employment full time. Most other countries don’t work a 40 hour week like we do.