Eric Schmidt laid into British IT education today -
BBC:
"The UK is home of so many media-related inventions. You invented photography. You invented TV. You invented computers in both concept and practice.
"It's not widely known, but the world's first office computer was built in 1951 by Lyons' chain of tea shops. Yet today, none of the world's leading exponents in these fields are from the UK."
Television transformed
There are 3 reasons for this - economics,entrepreneurialism,and education
The Economics is simple - the US is a far larger homogenous market, so any company that starts to get momentum there can grow far larger than a comparable British one. The usual plotline is that British companies either Go West (eg MicroMuse) and becomeamerican or get bought by Americans (eg not-so-Autonomy). The Commonwealth - the engine that once allowed British companies to grow larger than the home UK market - is gone and the EU, with its polyglot cultures and (often subsidised) local heroes - is a far tougher prospect to expand into.
The Entrepreneurialism issue is well known too - study after study shows that the barriers are higher for startups in the UK than the US - less money available, ,unVenturous capital, tougher labour laws, more business red tape. The only things on our side are that we speak a reasonably understandable dialect of American and our conditions are still marginally better than most other Western European countries. The US gets a Silicon Valley with universities and an ecosystem, we get a Roundabout as a PR wheeze with a contraflow.
And then there is Education. Schmidt said he had been flabbergasted to learn that computer science was not taught as standard in UK schools, despite what he called the "fabulous initiative" in the 1980s when the BBC not only broadcast programmes for children about coding, but shipped over a million BBC Micro computers into schools and homes.
"Your IT curriculum focuses on teaching how to use software, but gives no insight into how it's made. That is just throwing away your great computing heritage," he said.
Its more than that though. In the UK, Engineering and Science have always been lower class things. In every other country I have worked in or lived in (and that encompasses Europe, US, Asia and Africa), being good at Maths and Science are hugely respected abilities and parents agonise about how to improve kids skills at these subjects. Engineering is a registered profession like Accounting, Law or Medicine.
And then I fly back into the UK and its like being on another planet. The guys that fix my boiler are Engineers. Universities are warning (my) teenage kids that ICT and Computer Science are not seen as a "real" subjects for University entrance - rather do (say) Geography and Chemistry. The way to get ahead is still the Oxbridge PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economics) rather than the Sciences. The thinking man (and woman's) airwaves are more full of Luvvies than ever, often giving technology a good kicking en passant. The Luddites seem to have have won. PhDs in Physics and maths Tutors in Universities get paid a less than Bar owners, never mind Accountants or Lawyers. Quids (or lack of) Est Demonstratum.
I think Schmidt had it right when he talked about a "back to Renaissance Man" necessity (albeit Victorian ones):
"the UK needed to bring art and science back together, as it had in the "glory days of the Victorian era" when Lewis Carroll wrote one of the classic fairy tales, Alice in Wonderland, and was also a mathematics tutor at Oxford"
In the US when I go to a magazine stand there are lots of publications on Science and Technology, in the UK there are more on faux metaphysics and (typically very British centred) history. That is the difference.
I think there are things the Government can do to help all of the 3 areas, but the key is to do them holistically. No point in making a big deal of maths and science and computing in Education if the job outcomes are crap, or if companies starting in the space can't get money/cant take on subsidised rivals/strangle under the red tape.
But Eric's right too. A start is making damn sure that the top Universities can't get away with the attitude that ICT and Computing are not "real" subjects, whereas say Georaphy and Chemistry are. It'll need some reforming of the syllabuses I'm sure, but it also needs some knocking old attitudes out of heads.
