Dr Jeffrey Crelinsten

Preparing our youth for success

By Jeffrey Crelinsten

RE$EARCH MONEY readers are familiar with policy debates on how to stimulate growth in a knowledge economy. The focus is typically on research and how to "commercialize" it. We call for more researchers to generate more ideas and more entrepreneurs and companies to "bring ideas to market." We machinate about how to increase Canadian research activity in order to become more successful globally. We worry that Canada's GERD/GDP ratio is too low, that Canadian industry doesn't do enough research, that we're not maximizing the commercial benefits of our investments in university research, and that we lack industry "receptor capacity" for university-generated research.

A new approach to these conundrums struck me after attending two conferences involving communities that typically do not interact. Only a handful of people were at both meetings. The third annual conference of the Science and Technology Awareness Network (STAN) brought together organizations engaged in public awareness of science and technology, S&T outreach, informal and formal S&T education, and firms and government agencies that fund these activities. Days later, the second annual conference of the Alliance for the Commercialization of Canadian Technology (ACCT) assembled university technology transfer experts, researchers, venture capitalists and government.

STAN participants wrestled with the fact that young people are not taking up S&T studies and S&T-related careers in the numbers that we need for Canada to succeed in the knowledge economy. Despite many effective programs that engage young people in S&T, postsecondary enrolment and graduation rates are not growing fast enough, declining in some disciplines.

A recent OECD study found that a major reason is young people's lack of awareness of diverse career opportunities available to graduates with S&T education. Many students drop science and math because they think that these subjects primarily lead to academic research jobs. They're not made aware of opportunities in industry, business, finance, journalism, government, law, education and other careers.

Another reason is that the way S&T are taught simply turns off a lot of students. Inflexible curricula at the postsecondary level exclude those who drop key courses in secondary school. Overly specialized university curricula turn away students interested in a broader approach to S&T and their societal and business applications.

Primed by these discussions when I arrived at the ACCT meeting, the penny dropped during a session entitled "Benefiting Canada in the Global Economy: What's the Vision and the Strategy?" A panelist from a university spin-off firm illustrated the well-known weakness of Canadian business ("hewers of wood and drawers of water") with an example from plant biotechnology. Publicly funded Canadians did most of the research work on canola, but the intellectual property went off shore. He lamented Canadians' willingness to sell the seeds, rather than adding value to produce oil and sell it to the world. He offered two areas where change must occur:

* more university professors must be willing to work with industry on industry-relevant problems

* more Canadian firms must be willing to develop value-added products rather than be content to sell our natural resources

Yet the STAN discussion tells us that the current university population has self-selected to do what they are doing now. Convincing them to do otherwise is like pushing on a rope. Most don't want to work with industry. Ironically, a majority of university graduates end up working for industry and are ill-equipped for success. Interviews with over 60 CEOs of knowledge-intensive firms in Canada indicate that graduates have excellent technical skills but lack the commerce skills needed in industry. Clearly the solution is to have more (and more diverse) young people entering the pipeline and to broaden the way we educate them for success.

All OECD countries are facing these challenges. Studies reveal that S&T enrolments and graduations are flat or declining. S&T graduates from European and Japanese universities are over-educated in their technical disciplines and under-qualified in problem-solving, economic reasoning, planning, coordinating and organizing.

Some countries are aggressively pursuing solutions. Japan, Australia, the Netherlands and Sweden are making major investments in curriculum reform, public awareness and entrepreneurship education and training. These initiatives require collaboration among ministries responsible for Science and Technology, Industry, and Education. Canada is disadvantaged, because the federal government has no education mandate. It must rely on strong cooperation between federal and provincial levels of government to match the efforts of other OECD countries. Yet even at the provincial level across Canada, there is little interaction between the education, economic development and S&T portfolios.

The current policy debate is too narrowly focused on research and how to capitalize on it. We don't need to justify our investment in research, just as a hockey team does not have to explain why it hires players who can skate and handle a hockey stick. A hockey league must attract, train and retain skilled practitioners who can work as a team under tremendous pressure and win over stiff competition. To excel in the knowledge economy, we need more young people with diverse technical and human skills who can solve problems for customers, create value and succeed globally.

The only solution is to attract the much larger number of students who are turning away from S&T education because it is too specialized and academic. We need to attract more diverse types of people into postsecondary S&T studies – including lots who WANT to create value and sell it to customers worldwide – and to provide them with learning experiences that prepare them for the task.

We need a vision that focuses on how to prepare young people for success in the knowledge economy. Governments, schools, universities, companies and other institutions should challenge themselves to attract youth with diverse interests, abilities and aspirations, and equip them with the skills and experience to succeed. If we can do this, within a generation we will have the "receptors" and the "commercializers" we need.

Dr Jeffrey Crelinsten is a partner with The Impact Group and co-publisher of RE$EARCH MONEY.