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An I For Development - January 2012

Welcome to our new blog series where we will be sharing novel approaches to development that show great promise. We will seek to highlight efforts that we see as cutting-edge—bringing new partnerships, people and methodologies to address development challenges in multiple sectors.

IBM’s Partnership for Employment-Focused Education

Deirdre White | January 24th, 2012

 

“We don’t have a jobs problem in this country; we have a skills problem.” This was how Stan Litow, quoting Thomas Friedman, began his presentation to the participants at CRO’s CommitForum! last September.

As President of the IBM International Foundation and a former Deputy Chancellor of the New York City schools, Stan has been following the startling education statistics in this country – an overall high school drop-out rate of 25%, with only 30% of high school graduates ever completing a bachelor’s degree. The global economy is increasingly knowledge-based, with an associated increase in the need for workers with post-secondary educations. Because of this, IBM and more than half of US employers report that they cannot find qualified workers.

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