Smarter Education for a Smarter Planet

There has never been a better time to make our education technology system smarter all around the world.

School and higher education systems are straining under budget cuts. The demand for knowledge workers with specialized skills is growing by 11 percent a year. Many jobs will require lifelong training and a continuous updating of skills. And the education industry has grown increasingly complex and difficult to quantify, as students pursue a variety of alternative learning paths.

The good news is that there have been advances in education technology—cloud computing, open source systems, virtualization, analytics—that can help our systems refresh outdated infrastructures with new functionality. They can become more interconnected, instrumented and intelligent. In one word, smarter. And it is already happening.

Also, IBM is collaborating with more than 250 universities in 50 countries that are offering degrees in Service Science, Management and Engineering (SSME). This new academic discipline combines technology and business skills and focuses on complex service systems, such as healthcare and transportation networks.

Find out more on:

IBM @ Workshop on Real Life Applications

Presentation: IBM Academic Initiative: Skills for a Smarter Planet
Speaker: Theodor Borangiu, Manager Relatii Universitare IBM Romania.

As you know IBM Academic Initiative mission is to work closely with colleges and universities that have interest in supporting open standards, seek to use open source and IBM technologies for teaching purposes, to better educate millions of students for a more competitive information technology workforce and help reverse a troubling trend: the lack of enough qualified science and technology students with skills to lead the future of the IT industry. As part of the initiative we provide faculty and students with no cost access to a range of IBM software, courseware, hardware and services.

Global forces are altering the educational landscape as many countries face a serious skills shortage in the technology industry that’s fueled by huge numbers of retiring professionals and declining enrollments in science, technology, engineering and math-related fields of study. These skills will be required to help build a “smarter planet”.