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Summary
Summary
Ed Gordon marshals a vast amount of data to illustrate how various trends are converging to create a labor vacuum--with potentially disastrous consequences for economic competitiveness and individual opportunity. He sounds a wake-up call to business leaders, policymakers, educators, and concerned citizens, employees, and parents--anyone with a stake in our economic future. Moreover, he highlights innovative initiatives in training, education, and community development in the United States and around the world that can serve as models for positive action. Ultimately, The 2010 Meltdown is an optimistic book about social change, setting an agenda for reforms in education, policy, and business investment that will promote economic freedom, renewal, and prosperity.
It's the economy, stupid, is a refrain the United States will never live down, and not without reason. The relentless march of technological development and globalization continues to put pressure on all national economies, providing opportunity for some and marginalization for others. Around the world, nations will need to overcome twin economic shocks: a wave of baby boomers will retire and leave the workforce, while too few young, well-educated people will be available to fill a rising tide of high-skill, technology-related jobs. Ed Gordon marshals vast amounts of data to illustrate how these trends are quickly converging, creating a labor vacuum--with potentially disastrous consequences for economic competitiveness and individual opportunity. In the United States, for example, major studies agree that the majority of the jobs now being created require skills possessed by only 20 percent of the current workforce; meanwhile, a large pool of under-trained workers are seeing their jobs exported to developing countries, automated, or outsourced, while millions of high-paying jobs, in such fields as engineering, computing, and health care are going unfilled.
In The 2010 Meltdown , Gordon sounds a wake-up call to business leaders, policymakers, educators, and concerned citizens, employees, and parents--anyone with a stake in our economic future. Beyond the demographic issues, he notes that such cultural factors as Wall Street's obsession with short-term results (which favors cost-cutting over long-term training) and neglect of math and science skills at school are contributing to a fundamental mismatch between labor supply and demand. But the news is not all grim. Gordon highlights innovative initiatives in training, education, and community development in the United States and around the world that can serve as models for positive action, and he outlines a plan for reversing the destructive trends before we reach a crucial crossroad by the year 2010. Ultimately, The 2010 Meltdown is an optimistic book about social change, setting an agenda for reforms in education, policy, and business investment that will promote economic freedom, renewal, and prosperity.
Author Notes
Edward E. Gordon is president of Imperial Consulting Corporation in Chicago and Palm Desert, California. He is an internationally recognized expert on the future of labor market development and many education reform issues, applying a broad multidisciplinary approach to today's complex business and socioeconomic problems. During his over thirty years of consulting experience, he has assisted a wide variety of clients-- from Fortune 500 corporations to universities, school systems, and trade/professional organizations--and has taught at DePaul, Loyola, and Northwestern Universities in the Chicago area. He is the author of sixteen books, including FutureWork (Praeger, 1994), Skill Wars (Butterworth-Heinemann, 2000), and Literacy in America (Praeger, 2002), and has been quoted in or written over 200 articles in newspapers, popular magazines, business publications, and education journals.
Reviews 1
Choice Review
Gordon, business and education consultant, challenges policy makers to address the anticipated shortage of highly educated and technically trained workers, which he attributes in large part to technology growth, globalization, and baby-boomer retirements. He describes a cultural lag that has led to "techno-peasants" who drop out of high school, have outdated career skills, and seem destined for low-paying jobs, and a business environment that focuses too much on short-term profits, outsourcing, and importing temporary workers. To produce a more educated and technically skilled workforce, he recommends a cultural change in which parents are more involved in their children's education. He also discusses how community involvement in education can be enhanced with the development of NGOs that involve businesses in local community organizations such as chambers of commerce and service clubs to guide students to new careers. A wide variety of schools such as the Fargo Skills and Technology Training Center and corporations such as Hewlett-Packard have aided technical education. The book includes numerous examples of education programs and tables comparing American education to that of other countries. See also Gordon's Literacy in America (CH, Oct'03, 41-1049), coauthored with Elaine Gordon. The 2010 Meltdown is especially useful for business professionals, policy makers, and educators. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduate through professional collections. G. E. Kaupins Boise State University
Table of Contents
| Acknowledgments |
| Introduction: People, Jobs, and Culture America's Meltdown |
| The 2010 Crossroad The Rise of the Techno-Peasants |
| Feeding the Sharks |
| Where Has the Schoolhouse Gone? |
| Help Wanted in America and the World Structuring |
| Renewal Signposts at the Workforce |
| Crossroad The "Sixth Discipline" |
| Beyond the 2010 Crossroad |
| End Notes |
| Index |
