The Smart Society. Peter D. Salins

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       © 2014 by Peter D. Salins

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Encounter Books, 900 Broadway, Suite 601, New York, New York, 10003.

      First American edition published in 2014 by Encounter Books,

      an activity of Encounter for Culture and Education, Inc.,

      a nonprofit, tax exempt corporation.

      Encounter Books website address: www.encounterbooks.com

      The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).

      FIRST AMERICAN EDITION

      LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

      Salins, Peter D.

      The smart society : strengthening America’s greatest resource, its people / Peter D. Salins.

      pages cm

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      ISBN 978-1-59403-701-6 (ebook)

      1. Intellectual capital—United States. 2. Labor supply—Effect of education on—United States. 3. Education, Higher—Economic aspects—United States. I. Title.

      HD53.S243 2013

      658.4'038—dc23

      2013030019

      PRODUCED BY WILSTED & TAYLOR PUBLISHING SERVICES

      Project manager Christine Taylor

      Designer and compositor Nancy Koerner

      Copy editor Nancy Evans

      Proofreader Melody Lacina

      Indexer Andrew Jroon

      Dedicated to my greatest resource, my family:

      Rochelle and Jonathan Salins, and Jessica, Mike, and Marissa Malloy.

      Contents

Preface

One How America Became the World’s Smartest Society—And How It Can Stay That Way

Two American Education: The Keystone of a Smart Society

Three Closing the Megagap

      Four Closing the Mainstream Achievement Gap

      Five Making College Pay Off

      Six The High-Technology Workplace

      Seven Ending Idleness as We Know It

      Eight Importing Smart Americans

      Nine Getting It Done

       APPENDIX

       Basics of the United States Immigration System

       Notes

       Index

Preface

      What impelled me to write this book? During my long academic career in planning and public policy, I have weighed in often on many critical policy issues, generally driven by an optimistic outlook on the possibilities for constructive change, offering what I have believed were reasonable solutions to long-standing local, state, or national concerns. So it is with The Smart Society.

      What is different this time, however, is the subject matter. I have written most extensively on issues related to urbanization, specifically on policies tied to physical places: housing, land use regulation, and the economic and social vitality of New York City. My first important foray in considering policies that directly affect the welfare of people rather than places was my last book-length work, Assimilation, American Style (Basic Books, 1997), which looked at America’s remarkable history in welcoming and assimilating immigrants. That was also my first venture in reflecting on American human capital, the focus of this book, because—as The Smart Society emphasizes—immigrants are above all one of its most indispensable wellsprings.

      My intense interest in policies that can strengthen the capabilities of the American people (in other words, their human capital) took a quantum leap in the nearly ten years (1997 to 2006) that I served as chief academic officer—provost—of the State University of New York system (SUNY), the country’s largest public collection of colleges and universities. In this role I needed to give serious thought to the university’s underlying mission and how that related to the day-to-day operations of the system’s institutions. Being an agency of the state of New York, heavily dependent on revenues provided by the state’s taxpayers, we needed to be very clear on what the citizens and political leaders of the state expected of us and what our contribution to the state’s welfare might be.

      On reflection, the answer was simple: New York, like every other American state, was in a desperate competition for human capital—with other states as well as other countries—and we were the state’s most comprehensive, and hopefully effective, vehicle to help New York grow its human capital and win that race. Because of the university’s vast size, and the great diversity among its sixty-four campuses, SUNY touched just about every aspect of human-capital development. Our thirteen teacher training programs and thirty community colleges prepared teachers, aides, and administrators for preschool through high school; our Charter School Institute oversaw half the state’s charter schools; all of our campuses together turned out the lion’s share of New York’s college graduates; our research universities, medical schools, and partner Cornell University conducted path-breaking research and development that enriched the human capital of American workplaces; SUNY’s alliances with educational institutions and industries abroad generated human capital across the world; and, finally, great numbers of our faculty and students were immigrants, what I refer to as imported human capital.

      My efforts as university provost to help our campuses СКАЧАТЬ