Knowledge, skill and innovation

Formal education should be regarded as one link of an integrated system of generating and transferring knowledge. Other links are research institutions and the production system (industry) itself. A many-faced system of documentation functions as an intermediary:

In modern society, this is a highly diversified and complicated system. On its efficiency depends the progress of technical knowledge and its application. One of the main innovations in modern society is that the functioning of this system is not regarded in a ‘laissez-aller’ fashion. It is an object for policy. We may invest in its various parts so as to speed up the rate of economic growth.
The efficiency of this system can be formulated in terms of the relation between input of resources and output in the form of production of goods and services. One would not, however, expert easily to arrive at a measurement of the yield of various types of investment in this field. This is for several reasons. First, the process within each sector is of a complicated cumulative nature. Second, there are complicated circular chains of interaction between the various sectors of the system - research, education and industry. Third, it is not only in the sector of formal education that the gestation period may be long, the effects on production may also be scattered over a long period. Fourth, the relation between input and output is stochastic, especially in the case of research and industrial innovation. Research in this field has, in any case, to begin with partial studies of the behavior of the system. A vast literature on such problems has grown up in late years.
I shall here restrict myself to a few observations, which seem to be relevant from a policy point of view.

I. The functional Integration of the System
In reality, research, education and industry are not entirely organized as separate institutions with different specialized functions, they merge into each other. Higher education is, or should be, integrated with research. Research may be conducted within industrial units. The distinction between basic and applied research is tending to disappear as industrial production becomes more scientific. On the other hand, the ‘development’ of process and products cannot be sharply distinguished from ‘research’. Formal education is combined with training in ‘production’. Education may take place in ‘built in’ units within industry and production itself may be regarded as a ‘learning process’, which may be speeded up by systematic education.
Innovations in the organization of this system may accelerate economic growth. Research may become better integrated with industrial activities, education with research and industry with education.

II. Innovations and the ‘learning process’
Innovations may be defined as shifts in the production function, resulting in increased productivity. On all levels, a ‘learning process’ may develop that gradually increases efficiency. In some special cases, it has been possible to study the course of such ‘learning processes’. The improvement in efficiency, which takes place this way, may only partly be described as the result of increased technical ‘knowledge’, in part it takes the form of growing ‘skill’ acquired by repeated experienced and training.

Reference:
Robinson, E. A. G & Vaizey, J. E (1966). The Economics of Education: Proceedings of a Conference held by the International Economic Association. Macmillan: St Martin’s Press.

Education - What it's mean?

In the context of national education system, its have five stage which include:
- Pre School
- Primary Education
- Secondary Education
- Tertiary Education
- Post Graduates
Resource: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

While, education at tertiary education level comprise of educational programme at community colleges, polytechnics, public and private training institutes, public universities and private higher education institutes (IPTS). But, here I will be focus on those at the university education level only. Before we go beyond to the issue/problems and the aspect which related to the quality of education, what it’s mean by education?
To me, education is equipping us with the knowledge and skills that will be needed for our future and hoping our lives would be successful in every aspect of live. So, automatically quality of life will be increase if we have good education. But, nowadays most people are viewed simply that education is just about gaining good result and after graduation can get good job. Normally all known that education is a ‘general public services’ which, through its implied consequence, affects not only those who directly benefit by it, but also society as a whole (G.U. Papi, 1966). But somebody told me that today; education is known as ‘commercial service’ because every student tries to be more successful or better than others. We try to compare our CGPA result so that to get a good job without ignoring the knowledge and skill… Is it true??

Education and economic development

Education is very important to encourage development of a country’s economy at a higher level. Hence, the basic factor of development is definitely education. Indeed, Education and economic development are closely associated. The increase of output from production is one of fundamental objective of economic progress. Hence, it involves the complex mechanization of industrial process, aimed ultimately at their full automization, the widest use of chemistry in national production, the development of new economically effective types of production, new types of energy and materials, full and rational use of natural resources, close co-operation between science and industry, the most rapid scientific and technical progress. All these demand that labour forces should continuously have higher and higher qualifications, that they should be trained, educated and used appropriately (K.G. Nozko, 1966). Thus, a continuous advance of the educational standard and the availability of a large number of specialists in all fields of the national economy is one of the most important conditions of a high rate of economic growth of our country. If we have a higher level education and skills, we can easily get a good job and improving our quality of life. It is a fact that education will improve the quality of people live and enabling each people to obtain what they needs. The most important, education will produce sufficient manpower for the development of a country. But, now the question is how about the quality of manpower that will be produced?

Issues in Education

What is the quality of education that would produce intellectual manpower? Why in our country is there unemployment graduates? The main issue falls under the education, consists of the increase in the numbers of students in tutorial room and the increase in the teaching burden on faculty members. This means that the universities increase the quantitative dimension of graduates and this do not contribute to the improvement of the quality of graduates so they can't get easily into the labour market. So, it will increase in unemployment in general especially among graduates as a result of the increase in the student explosion phenomenon. The important point that we should know, the jobs could not be produced as fast as university graduates were produced. Besides, most of our lecturers do not upgrade their module and sometimes our lecturer still using their module more than two or three years. What I’m worried now, sometimes the module and the process of teaching still in ‘bahasa Melayu’. How our graduates can enter the job market especially in the private sector if our graduates are not well speaking in English. But we don’t just blame university hundred percen if the rate of unemployment is still increase because graduates should equipping oneself with the knowledge and skills needed for work especially in the private sector and do not only depend on the Government sector.

Quality of education will be the key to long-term benefits for our country. The ability to produce manpower that have certain criteria such as creative, analytical and great thinking skills depends greatly on the way education is structured. Nowadays, our local graduates are very difficult to enter the private market and this can be proven if we look in the private sector, shows that there are more overseas graduates than local graduates. There are many factors have been contributed to this problem such as lack of language and communication skills, experience, and creative and critical-thinking skills and versatility of graduates slowly must have be improving. Frankly, our local graduates are not fluent in English and do not know how to communicate effectively. Important as they lack confidence to face future challenges in the world of work. Most of students are very good in taking note and following lecturer’s instructions. They just memorize their lecture note. They can not to think critically, creatively and to manage the information. This is probably true when we look how student answer the question during the examination.

resource of image: http://www.robrogers.com/cartoons/2003/images/052203%20Unemployment.gif

Expand our Knowledge and skills

Hence, our education’s quality is very important in producing qualified and skilled manpower that would meet the economic demands of the future. Knowledge and skills that they get can influence the ability of graduates whether can succeed in the labour market or not. The ability of graduates to succeed is determined, not only by the pointer that they get, the degrees that they have, and the activities in university that they involve, but also by the quality and relevance of subject that they learn to enter the labour market. Also, our graduates must be equipped with other knowledge and skills to meet the economic demands such as administration and entrepreneurial, that would also contribute to the development of the country in the long term. Besides, universities must be always evaluate all subject to ensure its still relevance with current needs in labour market. Besides, to reduce unemployment among students in which nowadays the labour force is abundant, we should change of the structural weakness of secondary schools especially in guiding our students into the most suitable careers or profession to them.