Further confirmation that the “World is Flat”: According to the New York Times’ Steve Lohr, Outsourcing Is Climbing Skills Ladder.

The globalization of work tends to start from the bottom up. The first jobs to be moved abroad are typically simple assembly tasks, followed by manufacturing, and later, skilled work like computer programming. At the end of this progression is the work done by scientists and engineers in research and development laboratories.

The implications for students in “The West” are profound. Forget competing with a handful of classmates for admission to the best universities. You are actually competing with literally millions of other students who are just as bright and - because they hunger for what we take for granted - probably more determined to succeed. The error is to think of these “best and brightest” from India and China as our competition. They are actually our colleagues and co-workers.

Still, more companies in the survey said they planned to decrease research and development employment in the United States and Europe than planned to increase employment.

Rather than moan about the inevitable, one real positive is that we can forget the lie that we are educating students for the workforce. We can focus on the Truth of Learning and Education: can’t our job be to help students reach for their own individual fulfillment? Isn’t an inspired, enthusiastic and engaged country of learners the best we can offer? Why don’t we test them on this every year?

Asking the question: “Globalisation may be unavoidable, but what impact will it have on our lives?” BBC NEWS presents the ideas of Tom Friedman as related to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. As Bill Gates said:

It doesn’t matter whether you sit in Boston, Beijing or Bangalore, if you are smart you can now compete directly with the rest of the world “on a level playing field” - in a world that is flat.

To make the point clearly, Mr Gates said that when he recently met his firm’s ten best-performing employees, nine of them “had names I couldn’t pronounce”.

According to David Arkless of Manpower, four million people will see their jobs transferred over the next five years. “On a macro level,” says BT’s Ben Verwaayen, “it is easy to see the win-win.” But if your job goes overseas it is difficult to be positive, he warns. The fate of the victims of globalisation worried many Davos participants. was a much debated question.

“How can workers in the West hang on to their jobs?” The “Bottomline” for education may be:

1. Make your job, your work, your knowledge ever more valuable.
2. “Be flexible and don’t specialise too much,” said Jagdish Bhagwati of Columbia University.
3. Lifelong learning.