The Other Side of Outsourcing

It's been a very long time since I last logged on to this web site.... but that's besides the point. It's a little too late to start reading "The World is Flat" (now that "Hot, Flat and Crowded" is out there), but I believe in "better late than never", so finally I joined a reading circle and started reading the book. While reading the book I realized that Tom actually made a documentary for BBC called "The Other Side of Outsourcing" and while making this film he met with Nandan Neelkani from Infosys who gave him the title of his next book/the phrase. The book is good and so is the film... I was so excited while watching the film that I decided to share it with my GGC1000 students. This is a 1 credit hour course that no one wants to take (and every student needs!!!) and no one wants to teach, it's supposed to prepare the students for college (can you imagine this luxury in India?). 

So I was all excited to share this movie with my students. The theme of my class is "what is liberal education and what should you learn from college to prepare for a successful career". The students had to research different jobs in their area and summarize results. So we had some discussion about what the jobs required and what they should expect from GGC... Then we moved on to why do we need to go through this, what is the purpose of core courses and so on and that's where the topic of outsourcing came up.... 

Students: Outsourcing takes away American jobs!!! 

So I showed them the first few minutes of this documentary and I asked a simple question: 

I: Who can do this job?

One older student (slowly):Anyone?

I: If anyone can do this job what does that allow you to do?

Students: We don't have jobs (Most disappointing answer....)

I: Or maybe it allows you to do other better things, be more creative, do more research, do more innovative work. You are at the front end of this cutting edge technology, a rich nation with many resources, you can do better than answering a phone...

Anyways, this conversation went on for long and gave me a very good perspective on how my students think..... And I thought... what a waste of resources. A rich country where all primary education is free, in a state like Georgia college education is almost free (all lottery money goes into HOPE scholarship for college education), visit any college and check out the infrastructure (every classroom has computers, high-end software, wireless access, etc.) and the students use these to check Facebook, play games, etc and then have this sense of entitlement that they deserve a job and the same standard of living that they have been enjoying for so many years.... Someone suggested that we should keep our jobs in the country and I was thinking this is so similar to some conservative Indians (like the Thacks saying Maharashtrians in Mumbai should get this and that!!!). It is like expecting your class mates to not study hard and apply for jobs so that you can get a good job.... I am still thinking how can I give them a wake up call and say "If you keep your jobs here and live in denial, you will end up being a poor nation, while other countries will get far ahead of you in the competition"...... Any suggestions??