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This article provides information about the acquisition of new skill and training for work in knowledge society:
The key characteristic of the knowledge economy lies in the belief that wealth (or productivity) is increasingly dependent on the development and application of new knowledge by specialist knowledge workers. It has been increasingly recognised that in knowledge society people’s endowment of skills and capabilities and investment in education and training constitute the key to economic and social development.
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It is not so much physical capital, or human skills that determines economic growth. It is the nation’s capability to apply knowledge to knowledge itself that is essential to economic development. Economies are increasingly being built on a foundation of information, learning and adaptation. Here both the quantity of knowledge increases and the production of knowledge accelerate.
So an important aspect of the emergence of knowledge society is the readiness to acquire new skills. ICT represents an augmentation of human skills and capabilities. In examining the skills it is vital to develop measures that indicate the state of readiness to enlarge the use of information to develop knowledge. A principal indicator of such readiness is literacy level. Literacy is the first indicator of the attainment of the skills level needed for the productive use of ICT – an imperative of the information age.
Here literacy means more than knowing how to read, write or calculate. It involves understanding and being able to use the information required to function effectively in the knowledge-based societies that will dominate the twenty-first century. Illiteracy is a fundamental barrier to participation in knowledge societies. Vast majority of the illiterate population will be excluded from the emerging knowledge societies. The skill attainment is hierarchical. The hierarchy begins with the attainment of basic literacy. All the work processes in which ICTs can make a contribution to economic growth require basic literacy.
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In knowledge societies it is recognised by governments and organisations that knowledge contributes to individual well being, societal and economic growth. This recognition is translated into action when new models for lifelong learning are encouraged. By investing in their human resources enterprises can improve productivity and compete successfully in increasingly integrated world markets. For e.g. in Denmark enterprises that introduced process and product innovation combined with targeted training were more likely to report output growth.
Countries with highest incomes are also those where workers are most educated. Studies indicate in high-income countries primary education is universal, secondary education is almost universal and tertiary education is approaching 50% of the relevant age group. In contrast in poor countries (least developed) primary education is around 71.5% secondary education is around 16.4% and tertiary education enrolments a mere 3.2% of the relevant age group.
Even though higher education has always been formally designed as a structure for the production and organisation of advanced knowledge, the emergence of a knowledge economy and the importance of globalisation and ICT place new demands on higher education. Firms that wish to compete in the global economy will have to possess the organisational abilities/knowledge that enables them to maintain or increase their competitive advantage in a turbulent market environment.
It implies that for firms there is a need to have and/or train a flexible and versatile workforce. Firms, therefore, will express a continuous demand for courses in which their employees are retrained. In other words, great emphasis has been given to lifelong learning and the realisation of learning society. For the education of students, one of the implications of the knowledge- driven economy is that students will have to be prepared for a labour market in which they could change jobs many times during their working career.
This means that students should acquire appropriate skills for this, and this will have to be reflected in the higher education curriculum – in its content, structure, length and mode of delivery. Thus in knowledge society higher education has itself become a tradable product.