Archive for the 'Education' Category

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If you work in high-tech or pharma and collaborate with co-workers, customers, suppliers or partners located in other countries, there’s an increasing likelihood that your company will offer you some form of training to help you master cross-cultural or virtual work challenges.

Beyond those two fields, however, it’s hit-and-miss, according to top cultural trainers. Without the insights of cross-cultural training, many American managers - who often lack international travel or global business experience - face a heightened risk of project failure.

The return on investment in training global workers isn’t always evident to senior management, many of whom have never played a globally collaborative role in the organization. “What I have learned is that it’s extremely difficult to [initiate] formal training,” says Natasha Crundwell, President of People Going Global, a Washington-D.C. cultural consulting firm. “In many cases executives may not see the need for structured training.”

Yet, companies that hire third-party trainers typically approve group classes that last just one half day up to two days at most. Is some training better than none at all? Absolutely - I went through Berlitz training shortly before assuming a cross-cultural editorial management role in the fall of 2005. I came out of it with a better understanding of Indian culture, which improved my ability to absorb other information later. However, I felt eight hours was just scratching the surface.

Archives for Education

Though we hear media reports about casualties of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan there is no spotlight shining on the thousands of U.S. soldiers who are unable to return to the jobs and careers that they had before the war.  Even less well understood are the steps that government and corporations are taking to help retrain or prepare these brave men and women for the next phases of their professional lives.

Even as the injured veterans undergo treatment or therapy, the Walter Reed Equal Employment Opportunity Office (EEOO) offers classes to help prepare them for careers in information technology (IT) and tech support.  As a part of the Assistive Technology Training Program (ATTP), educators guide participants to develop the knowledge and skills they need to become Microsoft and Network + certified technicians or even engineers. 

Early on, the program was a huge success with a number of men and women passing their first level of certification and, more importantly, gaining needed confidence to excel in a new career.  However, many in the program were discharged from the hospital before they were able to complete the program. They were unable to learn the full set of skills necessary to pass certification exams.

Archives for Education

Sometimes it is better to be lucky than good. But in fact the Kansas Jayhawks were both lucky and good last night, winning the NCAA Men’s Basketball Title in overtime. Before the season began, I posted about the surprisingly global nature of one Jayhawk program.

Ever since my post about studying abroad in which I suggested that it was becoming a bit of a business, my e-mail in box has become the beneficiary of notices about various college courses and services.

As a blogger and journalist gazing at college life like earth through the Hubble telescope, I wanted to talk to David Gaston, Director of Kansas University’s Career Center, to discuss rumors that Jayhawk students have been seen tramping the streets of London in search of a global career.

“The main thing we were trying to do,” Gaston says of the group of seven students he brought to London, is “realize there’s an opportunity out there but you have got to take risks to understand what it’s all about.”

Archives for Education

Wait, is this the year that education rises to the top of the national agenda? Don’t count on it. For the most part, America has terrific colleges but getting there is a bit of an adventure.  

The latest evidence - you guessed it - those pesky SAT scores.

• The average math score dropped from 518 in 2006 to 515 in 2007
• Critical reading dropped from 503 in 2006 to 502 in 2007
• Writing scores fell from 497 in 2006 to 494 in 2007

For its part, the College Board, which administers the SAT to American high school seniors, insists that the decline wasn’t “statistically significant.”

Perhaps, but the needle isn’t pointed in the right direction either.

Archives for Education

Have you ever visited a poorly translated foreign website and wondered why the company hasn’t bothered to get it right? Building a “culturally-customized” website is not an action item for most businesses, except for those seeking an edge in global commerce.

Effective global websites require much more effort than simply translating content: from rewriting marketing pitches to reflect different cultural values; to reconceptualizing website design and colors; to getting small details right, such as formatting or currency, explains Prof. Nitish Singh, California State University, Chico, author of a pioneering book on this topic.

Archives for Education

Do foreign students realize that the university they chose is targeting them as part of a burgeoning billion-dollar industry? The fact that a few thousand colleges dispatched 7,000 educators to Minneapolis, Minn. this week to exchange ideas at a conference about global workforce development indicates that there is quite a bit of money and prestige at stake for these institutions of higher learning.

It’s no secret that foreign students pay higher tuition fees than domestic ones and colleges will go to considerable lengths to reel them in. Even the U.S. Congress is getting into the act.

A new piece of bi-partisan legislation called the Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation Act sets an ambitious goal for 1 million U.S. students to study abroad by 2017. The bill authorizes $80 million for grants to individual students, colleges and universities and nongovernmental institutions that provide study abroad opportunities.  The bi-partisan bill is in tribute to the late senator from Illinois. (I remember Simon’s bow ties, and recall that he jumped into a presidential race in 1988.)

One of the session highlights involved a presentation by Hobsons spotlighting data from a 2006 study of college students planning to study overseas from their bases in China, US, Nigeria, and India. By far, the most popular reason to study abroad was this: “Standard of education is better abroad than in my home country.”

Students from more affluent countries prefer to study abroad more for the ‘experience’ than to learn a particular skill.  Have you studied abroad and would you recommend it to others?

 

Archives for Education

If you possess enough time and money, there are dozens if not hundreds of worthy executive education programs vying for your attention. A cool job would be to evaluate these programs for a living.

I would start with an innovative program launching this summer in India and the U.S. by two of the world’s top business schools, called the Global Leaders Program: Growing and Innovating in a Flat World. Students will spend eight days in Ahmedabad, India, followed by eight days in North Carolina. The program is staffed by professors from the Indian Institute of Management - (IIM-A) and Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

Sounds cool, but for US$19,000 it had better deliver the goods, right?

The program will include interactive sessions with both Indian and American business leaders. A key takeaway is that participants will be asked to create and present a leadership plan that has to stand up under multicultural scrutiny.

One of the key advantages of a program like this is an intangible - networking. “Part of the role of this program is not just learning it’s also networking - you meet people from the rest of the world who are leaders,” says S. “Vish” Viswanathan, Robert L. Dickens Professor of Finance at Fuqua.  

If you are a manager with global aspirations but little international experience, you should evaluate whether executive education will better prepare you to realize your ambitions. There is still plenty of time to sign up for the Global Leaders program: Session 1 is in India, August 20-27; followed by Session 2: USA, Sept. 17-24.

Do you plan to attend any cool educational programs this summer? Would you check out this program if you had means to do it?