Dr. Simeon Djankov:

I thank the Senator for her question. In some senses it goes to the core of this issue in that when people think of technology, typically it is presented, at least in much economic writings and in many business writings, in the frame of machines versus workers. We found in our report that in a number of economies - there are not many, the Senator is correct about that - as they upgrade human capital, basically their education systems, and I will speak about the ways they do that, they manage to benefit tremendously from new technology and bring businesses, which previously were not in these economies, both from richer countries and from emerging economies. Much of this is happening in east Asia. East Asia includes not only China, but Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Korea. These are economies we document in the report that are pulling in extra business.

How are they doing this? It is exactly with respect to what the Senator mentioned. Their education systems seem to be much more nimble than ours, by which I mean European ones, in terms of reflecting the need for new skills. What are these new skills? We have written extensively about this in the World Development Report. As I mentioned, transitions between enclosed jobs in enclosed sectors are becoming much faster than they were in past. What does this imply for educational systems? It implies that what is called the vertical system, where a person decides at the age of 15 to be, for example, an engineer or an economist, like myself, and pursues an engineering or economics degree by taking the right courses in high school and then in university, is not especially responsive to technology because technology is developing quite fast. Many of the skills we thought were required for sophisticated jobs like, say, high-level engineering and not just for menial jobs will be, in some sense, obsolete by the time children graduate from college.

What can be done about that and what can be done specifically in Ireland? We observe that many of the countries that are becoming more globally competitive do not even wait until high school to prepare their children for the future of work. Preschool, in particular, is the area where much investment in human capital is being made. One answer is that rather than looking at tertiary education, particularly university education and adult learning after that, as the way to prepare for the future, we and US policymakers should look maturely at this area and acknowledge that children are starting to learn technology at a very young age.

If the Senator has children or even grandchildren, I am sure she will attest to the fact that they understand technology better than she does herself. Many four year olds have a better understanding of how to use technology than we do because their minds are wired that way. We have looked at the latest evidence to try to determine the best years in which to learn technology. Up until now, we thought it was during high school or college, but now we know that the best time is between three and six, which means that even primary school is too late. We need to think about addressing this in the preschool years. This is a major focus of the World Bank. Going forward, we want to work with governments to design programmes for children aged under six or seven.

On the curricula specifically, we have found that vertical curricula, where one studies only one subject like engineering, do not work. Curricula need to be much more flexible and multidisciplinary. Furthermore, the so-called soft skills, including the social and emotional skills that are essential to teamwork, are very important, particularly in circumstances where team members can be located in several different countries. There is a need for people to use technology to work independently as well as in virtual teams, but the current curricula in Europe do not prepare students for this. As a result, we have very good technical experts who cannot work at the pace of either American or Asian companies, so to speak. This is why out of the top 100 platform companies, the most high-tech global companies, only nine are European. What does this mean? In summary, we need to see much more focus on the early years, before primary school. We also need to see more of a focus at high school and university level on multidisciplinary curricula and not just on how we do things, that is, on cognitive knowledge but also on how we use that knowledge in team environments.