High Skills

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Abstract
Economic globalization has led to intense debates about the competitiveness of nations. Prosperity, social justice, and welfare are now seen to depend on the creation of a ‘high-skilled’ workforce. This international consensus around high skills has led recent American presidents to claim themselves ‘education presidents’ and in Britain, Tony Blair announced that ‘talent is twenty-first-century wealth’. This view of knowledge-driven capitalism has led all the developed economies to increase numbers of highly-trained people in preparation for technical, professional, and managerial employment. But it also harbours the view that what we regard as a ‘skilled’ worker is being transformed. The pace of technological innovation, corporate restructuring, and the changing nature of work require a new configuration of skills described in the language of creativity, teamwork, employability, self-management, and lifelong learning. But is this optimistic account of a future of high-skilled work for all justified? This book draws on the findings of a major international comparative study of national routes to a ‘high-skills’ economy in Britain, Germany, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and the United States, and includes data from interviews with over 250 key stakeholders. It offers a comparative examination of ‘high-skill’ policies — a topic of major public debate that is destined to become of even greater importance in all the developed economies in the early decades of the twenty-first century.

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