Comprehension and Discussion Questions. 1. What do you think of the educational reform?
1. What do you think of the educational reform? Is it in the air?
2. Was the educational reform effective half a century ago?
3. What was the state leaders’ contribution to the educational reform?
4. Education is treated today as a productive asset, isn’t it?
5. What do you understand in solving quantity and quality problem in the education system of today?
6. Why the world governments have moved their emphasis from education to training?
7. What are the new approaches and innovations in the comprehensive reform programmes of the British and other governments?
8. Does education pay to the improvement of a country’s productive asset?
Text II. Education and employment
Does education pay? If virtue gets its reward in heaven, education is a highly remunerative investment.
Take employment. The longer you spend in being educated, the less likely you are to end up on the dole. In America in 1989, 9.1% of people who went no further than lower high school were unemployed, compared with 2.2% of people who completed university. In Japan the equivalent figures were 7% versus 2.3%. The troubles of people who fail at school are getting worse by the decade. Over the past 30 years, each economic downturn has pushed a larger proportion of the uneducated into unemployment; and each upturn has rescued a smaller and smaller proportion of them for the labour market.
Or consider real incomes. It is hardly surprising that the well-educated have always been richer than the poorly educated. But the gap is getting steadily bigger. In 1980 a college-educated American ten years into his career earned 31% more than a contemporary who had finished only high school. By 1988 the earnings gap had yawned to 86%. Over the 1980s male college graduates saw their real incomes rise by 10%: high-school graduates saw their incomes fall by 9% and high-school drop-outs by 12%. College graduates will fulfil the American dream of earning more than their parents. The average high-school drop-out will not.
Or take future prospects. Educational success in youth seems to pay mounting dividends in maturity. People who leave school early rapidly run out of rungs on the earnings ladder; university graduates not only find plenty of rungs, they also discover that each step upwards is increasingly remunerative. One reason for this is that the well-educated land jobs that provide them with more training, while the uneducated are locked out of opportunities to improve their skills.
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Throughout the advanced world, employers complain that a shortage of skilled workers is holding up economic growth. Schools and universities seem to be incapable of producing an adequate supply of properly trained and technically qualified workers. The shortages come in two distinct trends: quantitative and qualitative. The general workforce is insufficiently educated to do the jobs available. There is also a mismatch between the skills offered by people and the skills needed by industry. The universities continue to churn out humanities-trained generalists at a time of soaring demand for scientists and engineers.
The skills deficits show no signs of abating, even during today’s economic downturn. All advanced countries predict a significant fall in demand for unskilled labourers and significant increase in demand for skilled workers and high-grade administrators and scientists.
Vocabulary notes
remunerative [ri'mju:nərətiv] –выгодный, доходный
to be on the dole –получать пособие по безработице
lower high school – младшие классы средней школы
economic downturn (upturn) – экономический спад (подъём)
drop-out – исключенный (из школы)
earnings ladder –шкала роста зарплат
remunerative –хорошо оплачиваемый
maturity –зрелые годы
а rung –ступенька (вверх по лестнице)
to hold up economic growth – сдерживать экономический рост
mismatch –несоответствие
a trend – направления, тенденция
to churn out –производить, выпускать что-либо в большом количестве
to soar –стремительно повышать(ся)
the Humanities – гуманитарные науки
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