I've touched on this before on the blog, but its interesting to hear Matt Moran, director of IBEC's Pharmaceutical Ireland, warning of a 'clear mismatch' between economic policy encouraging the growth of key sectors such as pharmaceuticals, medical devices, biotechnology and information technology, and fewer young people leaving school with the requisite skills and interest.
He said growth in the high-tech information technology sector was contingent upon top quality numerate school-leavers going on to take science and engineering at third level.
"The IDA has predicted that biotechnology will prove to be the next big driver of Ireland's knowledge-based economy, and this is reflected in the government's stated goal of establishing Ireland as a centre of excellence in the area.
"Virtually no quality career will be available in the high tech sectors without a high-level knowledge of science."
Its interesting to think about what way the dynamic should work between aggregated occupational choices and industriual policy. Obviously biotech, pharma and ICT are global growth opportunities, so Ireland should focus on reaping them.
However, in an analysis of Leaving Cert subject choice at an earlier date on this blog, I emphasised the numbers of Leaving Cert students taking biology and geography, and for this reason suggested that Ireland's industrial policy should be primarily geared towards biotechnology, geographic information systems, and other related information technology. This would seem to be a meeting-ground between aggregated occupational choices and industrial policy.
See the story in the Irish Independent with Matt Moran's comment here.
2 comments:
martin,
not mad but its still a big leap to suggest that industrial policy should be based on leaving cert choices. certainly leaving cert choices should be given strong weight in education policy as they reflect what the students actually want to study at that time in their lives but you would need to flesh out a lot more why the government would get involved in tailoring industrial incentives to this. it might be a clever way for some industries to spot a gap whereby they could get stronger employees for a given wage pool on the basis that some sectors are more intrinsically interesting to young people than others.
Agreed - it is big leap to suggest that industrial policy should be based on leaving cert subject choices.
I must emphasise that I really wanted to get at the benefits of there being a meeting-ground between aggregated occupational choices and the formation of insdustrial policy, as oppoosed to be insustrial policy being solely dependent on leaving cert subject choices. Thats why I mentioned the global growth opportunities in biotech, ICT and pharma.
Still, even to suggest that there be a meeting-ground between aggregated occupational choices and the formation of insdustrial policy is radical enough in itself I guess, but provides a nice macro level perspective on how my PhD topic interacts with supply-side developments in the economy.
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