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This article provides information about the impact of the accelerating development of scientific and technological progress:
The developed countries have a higher access to ICTs than the developing countries. Fast proliferation of ICTs in developing countries is widely due to sustained investment in education, research and development activities. These countries invest an average 2% of their GDP. In research and development, while countries like India do not spend even 0.1 % of the GDP for the same purpose.
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Similarly the developed countries have been consistently spending a higher proportion of their public expenditure in higher education. Advanced countries invest at least 30 times more per student in education and training than in the LDCs. However, the developing countries started spending more on education than being spent previously. It becomes evident that human resources development and training contributes to improved productivity in the economy, reduces skills mis-matches in the labour market and promotes a country’s international competitiveness.
Another important consequence of the acceleration of scientific and technological progress is the diminished emphasis on remembering countless facts and basic data and the growing importance of methodological knowledge and analytical skills — the skills needed for learning to think and to analyse information autonomously. Today, in a number of scientific disciplines, elements of factual knowledge taught in the first year of study may become obsolete before graduation.
The learning process now needs to be increasingly based on the capacity to find and access knowledge and to apply it in problem solving. Learning to learn, learning to transform information into new knowledge, and learning to translate new knowledge into applications become more important than memorising specific information.
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In this new paradigm, primacy is given to analytical skills; that is, to the ability to seek and find information, crystallise issues, formulate testable hypotheses, marshal and evaluate evidence, and solve problems. The new competencies that employers value in the knowledge economy have to do with oral and written communications, teamwork, peer teaching, creativity, envisioning skills, resourcefulness, and the ability to adjust to change.
Lifelong Learning:
The second dimension of change in education and training needs is the short “shelf life” of knowledge, skills, and occupations and, as a consequence, the growing importance of continuing education and of regular updating of individual capacities and qualifications. In OECD countries a lifelong-education model is progressively replacing the traditional approach of studying for a discrete and finite period of time to acquire a first degree after secondary school or to complete graduate education before moving on to professional life. Graduates will be increasingly expected to return periodically to tertiary education institutions to acquire, learn to use, and relearn the knowledge and skills needed throughout their professional lives.
This phenomenon goes beyond the narrow notion of a “second chance” for out-of-school young adults who did not have the opportunity to complete much formal study. It has more to do with the updating and upgrading of learning that will be required in order to refresh and enhance individual qualifications and to keep pace with innovations in products and services. The concept of “lifelong learning for all” adopted in 1996 by the OECD ministers of education stems from a new vision of education and training policies as supporting knowledge-based development. Lifelong-learning requirements may lead to a progressive blurring between initial and continuing studies.