Education
The Occupy Wall Street movement is so anarchic as to be impossible to name one “mentor” or group behind it – although that’s not stopping some people from claiming influence over it. Ultimately, in investments or revolutions, it’s all about the key people – it’s vital to understand their real motivations, aspirations, personalities and incentive/moral systems. Not what they say it is, what it really is. And that’s why it’s so hard to define “OWS”. We highlight three articles about it that may shed some light in a few spots.
We present updates on two story lines we’ve published this year: Salman Khan’s very promising education initiatives deserve a large story at Wired, and George Soros’ departure was discussed further on Bloomberg and the Financial Times.
Reading an article about an interesting Education business had us thinking of regulation and, primarily, goals for Education. The current debate about Public Education in the US focuses on adjustments/ improvements to the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which is all about accountability. In a separate story, Tom Friedman reminds us that the top-notch jobs of the future may require skill-sets (and individual attitude) that current education models may simply be unable to provide. But when you’re a Brazilian public education student and the debate isn’t even close to scratching the surface of the “accountability” trend, it’s definitely a scary future.
BigThink.com has two interesting videos on Education. We’ve written before about the future/ quality of Education, and Salman Khan is the subject of the first video, a much shorter version of the TED speech we posted before. From the first video we navigated to another one, this time with Harvard’s Louis Menand. Customization/data analytics coming to Education is great news.
The subject is very dear to us: Education and how technology can improve its productivity (and accountability), reduce costs, leverage social aspects and increase reach, convenience and even – dare we say it – the fun factor in education… A TED 2011 talk by former hedge-fund analyst Salman Khan almost has it all, and the technology is here now. It appears to address many – obviously not all – of our “wishlist items” for Education, not the least of it the empowerment of teachers, education managers, parents and even students themselves through data and its analysis (individually, by classroom, school, district, demographics, whatever).
High-profile article on Valor on Thursday about how Laureate Education is ready to invest R$ 1.1 billion in Brazil by 2015 (some US$ 660 million). Understandably, the part most likely to “stick” is the “we will triple enrollment” bit. We’ve been following Laureate since 2002 and even invested in the stock for a while until it was taken private in 2007, so we found the story even more interesting.
One month or so ago we received a newsletter from another asset manager with links to TED talks by Sir Ken Robinson. Today is a holiday in Rio (yet another one), and our state has been hit with torrential rain and subsequent land slides that killed over 650 people – the type of tragedy that unfortunately keeps occurring in Brazil. We can’t help but be reminded of the power of education in changing societies: it’s not all about short-term economic growth. It’s not just “any” education either, although Brazil is still at such a low level that literacy rates still matter, it’s about the quality of education as well. That’s the subject of the inspiring and often funny talks inside. We hope you will enjoy them and think about the issue as it applies to your country.
China now graduates over 6 million people per year, many of whom leave their less-developed cities for the big centers and get nothing in return – forming a mass of disenchanted, poor, jobless or sub-employed supposedly educated people. That’s never been a recipe for stability… Ultimately it can be just a matter of time to adjust supply of specific courses and demand. That said, it’s inevitable to think about the differences between, say, Brazil, China and the US. Finally, the article shows how much “magic” China still has to do in order to support its own growth. As much as they must try to control inflation, they remain “aligned” with growth, growth, growth. Tough balancing act!
A long interview with two IP partners (in Portuguese – we’re having it translated and will post it here), Cristiano Fonseca Filho and Fred Trigueiro. The talk was very informal and spanned IP’s pioneering story in the Brazilian financial market. It gives insight into how we apply some of the most important aspects of our [...]
What took it so long? Now people can get an internationally-accredited MBA using the same platform they’re already so used to. The people behind this initiative claim that it didn’t take a lot of capex $$ to port their Moodle-based e-learning solution to an Facebook app. We’ve studied online education and while it is definitely not just about the underlying tech, going to Facebook can potentially help some schools leapfrog other schools’ sunken investments in proprietary technologies.
