Supporting Research and Teaching in the Information Age

By Dr Douglas Barber, President & CEO, Gennum Corporation

In the 20th Century, work changed from being predominantly physical, to being predominantly knowledge-based. As a consequence, we are reaching the point where 100 per cent of the workforce will need to be educated to levels significantly higher than historical levels. To do that requires teachers involved in research. Today's mechanisms for funding academic research are not adequately addressing the enormous changes we are facing.

The average education required for work has been increasing at about 3/4 of a year per decade since 1900. The compulsory and expected levels of education have been increasing to keep up. At the beginning of the Century not everyone finished high school, but today, we expect to educate 100% of our population through both the primary and secondary levels. However, the really exciting opportunities today require post-secondary education, which means more than 15 years of learning and teachers with 16-20 years of education.

This transition from post-secondary learning as an option for a small fraction of the population to a necessity for most of the population has been going on for some time. However, it is not clear that we have fully embraced the changes that this implies:

1) The increasing knowledge level of the workforce now places them as peers with their teachers.

2) Learning how to learn and how to "make the unknown known" (what we call "research") are increasingly important aspects of education.

3) Scholarly activity in post-secondary educational institutions must find a new equilibrium in a more demanding teaching and learning environment. More simply put, our teachers need to do research in order to be good teachers.

4) Our post-secondary institutions must be especially responsive to areas of rapidly evolving specialization.

The Information Technology industry exemplifies these changes. It is economically larger than the food industry globally and is growing at about 8% per year. It employs a workforce about 70% of which have post-secondary qualifications. For more than two years now, the post-secondary institutions of the world have not been able to meet the industry's needs for knowledge-skilled people. The competition has raised remuneration to unprecedented levels.

In Canada, industry, educators and government have joined forces to double the capacity for the specialized learning needed in information technology. Some funds have been provided for more faculty and for teaching facilities.

However, that is not enough. Funds for faculty salaries and teaching facilities will not attract the people we need without adequate support of academic research. That is why the microelectronics industry, for example, is urging the federal government to increase its support of academic research in this rapidly-growing field by at least $160 million over five years. We cannot grow the education programs without providing a dynamic research environment for teachers, professors and students. Some of these people go on to work in industry, and others become teachers and professors.

We are fortunate in Canada to have a highly disciplined and well-supported education system. It will take committed support of academic research in rapidly-evolving specializations to successfully make the transitions that are needed, to keep us strong in the developing world.