The well respected Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has produced the latest of their annual report on corporate innovation, drawn from surveys of nearly 2,500 senior executives from 58 countries and all major industries. The report, Innovation 2007: A BCG Senior Management Survey, also offers suggestions on how companies can make themselves more innovative and increase their return on innovation spending. (A companion report focuses on how companies are attempting to measure their innovation efforts.) BSG found that innovation remains a top strategic focus, with 66 percent of companies ranking it one of their top three strategy priorities. BSG also found that while 67 percent of companies will increase spending on innovation, over half remain unsatisfied with the final returns on their company’s investments.
Access the report here

The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently granted a $9 million award to the Arkansas Science & Technology Authority to establish the Arkansas ASSET Initiative (Advancing and Supporting Science, Engineering and Technology). The ASSET initiative will focus on the development of bioenergy and nanotechnology for economic development. ASSET joins together the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, the University of Arkansas Little Rock, and Arkansas State University in Jonesboro to create a multi-institutional and multi-disciplinary initiative.
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The state of Oregon has recently adopted an interesting plan designed to boost innovation. The new Oregon Innovation Plan focuses on supporting place-based innovation capacity. It proposes to spend roughly $38 million to support initiatives in three areas: enhancing the competitiveness of existing industry, improving technology commercialization, and increasing the state’s overall capacity for innovation. Among the Plan’s specific recommendations are the creation of new angel networks across Oregon; the opening of new research centers for wave energy technology, nanotechnology, and drug discovery; and extensive new efforts to support existing firms in the manufacturing, food production and seafood industries.
Access the report here

Rusty Weston’s “My Global Career” blog focused this past week on a series of articles that Weston wrote for Monster.com. On September 7, his lead was “How Globalization Improves Working Conditions.” Weston quotes Stanford economist Robert Flanagan’s book Globalization and Labor Conditions, which examines international trade, migration and the activities of multinational companies (MNCs). Flanagan says that global trade drives improving labor conditions and that labor rights tend to improve with improvements in capital. Weston notes that The Economist disagrees with some of Flanagan’s conclusions, saying “Real wages are growing less than half as fast as productivity.” However, he says that the magazine’s main complaint is that managers are overpaid relative to workers and that that is not a case against globalization. For Weston, the question is not so much about global winners and losers but about our responses. “What I want to know,” he asks, “is whether governments, corporations, educators and individuals are doing everything within their power to prepare workers to compete in the global economy.”
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Eighty percent of high school students and 44 percent of middle schoolers have personally seen illegal drug dealing, possession or use, or students drunk or on drugs on school grounds, according to the 12th annual survey conducted by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse. This represents a 20 percent jump for high school students and a 35 percent jump for middle school students since 2006.
Access the report here

According to a new study from the Center for Housing Policy, the number of low-to moderate-income working family renters paying more than half their income for housing doubled between 1997 and 2005—increasing from one million to 2.1 million families. While the number of homeowners with similar cost burdens also grew significantly, it did so at a lower rate according to, The Housing Landscape for America’s Working Families, 2007. The report contains data profiles for 31 metropolitan areas, including Atlanta, Charlotte, Kansas City, Memphis, Oklahoma City and St. Louis.
Access the report here

“We’d better be prepared,” is the message from Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial writer Cynthia Tucker, regarding the downside of globalization. She quotes Princeton economist Alan Blinder (a long-time globalization advocate) who, writing in Foreign Affairs magazine, argues that “...the social and economic upheavals created by free trade will be much more severe...” than he first thought. Tucker points out that “...such highly skilled medical jobs as radiology are being outsourced.” Blinder opines that 30 to 40 million American jobs will be shipped overseas in the next two decades. He identifies graphic designer, film and video editor, financial analyst, microbiologist and economist as being among the most vulnerable occupations. Tucker closes her essay with a broadside, “Our political rhetoric is hopelessly outdated—conservatives dismiss attempts to broaden access to health insurance as ‘socialized medicine’--and our prejudices consume too much of our energy. The overheated rhetoric about illegal workers is just a distraction. They didn’t kill the American industrial base. They’re just scapegoats—an easier target than the vast and amorphous forces eating away at our life.”
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J. Michael Adams and Angelo Carfagna have published “Going Global 101” in the September 7 issue of The Globalist. The article is designed to help educators prepare students to succeed in the global economy. The authors explain that “...there is no single path to creating a global university or a global curriculum.” They provide a checklist of ten ways for educators to globalize. Among the suggestions, “Welcome global experts”--encouraging globe-wandering guest lecturers and speakers to present their experiences in classroom settings. Another suggestion is to tap into the vast resources of the United Nations, bringing UN webcasts and video conferences to students, for example. Other suggestions include using international food or music as avenues to excite students about other cultures.
For more information, visit the link

The Economist CEO Briefing: Corporate Priorities for 2007 and Beyond summarizes interviews with more than 1,000 multinational CEOs on their current and forthcoming management priorities. A growing number of CEO’s have a positive outlook on global business opportunities. “Nine out of every ten executives polled for this report consider global business prospects over the next three years to be either “good” or ‘very good.’” While many of the executives spoke to an increasing demand in emerging markets, a significant number CEOs mentioned the “talent gap,” a shortage of skilled workers in emerging markets, especially India and China. “One in two respondents identify a lack of available talent as the primary barrier to growth. ‘If there’s one limiting factor to growth, it is people and talent,’ says Tejpreet Chopra, the president and CEO for GE’s Commercial Finance business in India. Despite the vast numbers of graduates entering the workforce every year in both India and China, a relatively low proportion of them have the skills required by global firms.”
Access the report here

The U.S. Department of Labor released a snapshot of August 2007 employment trends, Employment Situation: August 2007. From July to August the number of American workers remained unchanged with a marginal decline in payroll employment (4,000 workers). Manufacturing employment declined by 46,000 in August and the industry lost 215,000 jobs over the past year. Employment in local government education and construction also declined from August 2006 to 2007, while healthcare and leisure and hospitality employment grew. During the same period, weekly wages for all private sector workers increased by four percent. Those employed in professional and business services, leisure and hospitality, and computer and electronic manufacturing experienced the most wage growth.
Access the report here

In just twenty-five years, the number of “globalized” workers quadrupled, according to the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI). Defining globalized workers as those who make products and services for export, or cross borders for work, the number of global employees grew from 225 million in 1980 to 900 million in 2005 to represent 26 percent of the world labor force. Today's “poor-world workers” are earning a bit more money than they did in the nineties. “Workers paid less than $2 a day made up 55 percent of the global workforce in 1996; but after a decade of global growth, and a continuing developing-country shifts from rural to urban work, the figure has dropped to 47 percent as of 2006.”
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The Urban Institute is collaborating on a conference about China's and India's growing scientific and technological capacity, particularly in such key industrial sectors as software, biopharmaceuticals, telecommunications and energy. The conference, The Dragon and the Elephant: Understanding the Development of Innovation Capacity in China and India, is organized by The National Academies' Board on Science, Technology and Economic Policy and will take place on September 24-25th in Washington, D.C. Although the agenda for the conference has not been posted, the following speakers are already confirmed: Sam Pitroda, Chair, Indian National Knowledge Commission; V.S. Ramamurthy, Chair, Indian Institute of Technology; Mu Rongping, Institute of Policy and Management, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing; Edward Luce, Financial Times Washington Bureau; K. J. Dewoskin, PriceWaterhouseCoopers; Pete Engardio, Business Week Senior Writer; Nicholas Lardy, Peterson Institute for International Economics; AnnaLee Saxenian, UC Berkeley School of Information Management; Lee Ting, WR Hambrecht and Lenovo; Ashok Vermuri, Infosys Technologies and Jim Jarrett, Intel, Inc.
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SSTI's 11th Annual Conference, Transforming Regional Economies, will be held Oct. 18-19, 2007 at the Renaissance Baltimore Harborplace Hotel in Baltimore. This year's keynote speakers include Kevin Plank, Chairman and CEO of Under Armour, Inc and William "Brit" Kirwan, Chancellor of the University System of Maryland. Breakout sessions will address topics such as TBED business models, community colleges' role in TBED, effective technology entrepreneurship, and new strategies for rural TBED.
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A new study effort by Statistics Canada surveyed companies about generating benefits from innovation. The results, in the Report on Interviews on the Commercialization of Innovation, show that small firms rarely have a well-established resources plan for commercialization. Instead, the companies adapt “on the spot” to demand from customers or to market changes. Small firms rely on “word of mouth” as the main method to advertise. A key problem for these films is the quickness of market change, which produces huge risks in product and process investment. The report also summarizes the leading commercialization models.
Access the report here

Graduate schools are experiencing a rebound in applications and admissions for those outside the U.S., according to Inside Higher Ed. In an August 28 report, the Council of Graduate Schools says that international applications are up nine percent and admissions offers up 12 percent in 2006-07. However, 78 percent of graduate schools are still reporting a decline in both categories since 2003. Life sciences and business had the greatest increase in applications, but engineering had the largest increase in admissions offers. The biggest jumps came in applications from China, India and the Middle East. The same survey reported that the number of collaborative programs (both dual degree and joint degree) up also up, with Europe having the largest share of collaborative programs. Business and engineering were the top fields for collaborative endeavors.
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New President Nicolas Sarkozy told his nation to get serious about globalization, but in a French way, according to The International Herald Tribune. Although he referred to the free market as an illusion, Sarkozy said, “We will not obtain growth if we don’t play the game of globalization collectively. He vowed to build a more business-friendly climate for French companies. Sarkozy also promised to cut payroll taxes, relax the 35-hour workweek, and adopt an American style “Small Business Act.” The comments were made before 4,000 business executives with Medef, France’s biggest employers’ federation.
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“Globalization works both ways,” is the title of an editorial in the August 27 Charleston Daily Mail. The opinion pieces notes that German-owned ThyssenKrupp AG is investing $4.2 billion to build a new steel factory in Alabama, creating 8,000 jobs in the process. Another mill, owned by a joint Russian-American company, will build a new facility in Columbus, MS. Peter Marcus of World Steel Dynamics is quoted from The Wall Street Journal, saying, “The U.S. Is a great place to build steel mills.” And it’s the same with cars, according to the editorial, which notes a new production record at Mercedes-Benz in Alabama and the doubling of production at BMW in South Carolina. Part of the turnaround in all this, according to Goldman Sachs analyst Aldo Mazzoferro, is, “This is one of the few times where steel prices outside the U.S. are higher than in the U.S.” All good things, according to the editorial, which concludes, “With that, it seems, the United States can compete.”
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According to the latest figures (see the link for state poverty rates 2004-2006) from the U.S. Census Bureau, the nation’s official poverty rate declined for the first time this decade, from 12.6 percent in 2005 to 12.3 percent in 2006. Eight Southern states also showed declines over the year. The Census Bureau’s put out a report on the subject, Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2006.
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Join experts from the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED) on September 12 for an online discussion of the 2007-2008 Assets and Opportunity Scorecard. The Scorecard ranks all 50 states on 46 performance measures in the areas of Financial Security, Business Development, Homeownership, Health Care and Education and also provides state-by-state information on 38 key policies that affect citizens’ abilities to succeed financially. The presentation will include an overview of the structure and content of the Scorecard and a summary of this year’s findings. Participants will also have an opportunity to find out what is happening in their states and ask questions. The event will begin at 11:00 am ET. For information on joining the online chat, or to listen via a toll-free conference call, visit the website.
Visit the website here

Two-thirds of those released from prison this year are likely to be rearrested within three years, emphasizes a new report from the U.S. Department of Justice and the Police Foundation. The report, Mapping for Community-Based Prisoner Reentry Efforts, examines how data and mapping can be used to plan and coordinate resources both to assist returning prisoners as well as to alert police to potential safety threats. The Knoxville, Tennessee Police Department’s reentry collaboration is one of the examples highlighted.
Access the report here

The National Center for Education Statistics released Back to School Statistics, a brief featuring interesting facts about American elementary, secondary and postsecondary education. “Nearly 50 million students are heading off to approximately 97,000 public elementary and secondary schools for the fall term, and before the school year is out, an estimated $489 billion will be spent related to their education.” An additional six million students will be attending the nation’s 28,000 private elementary and secondary schools.
For more information, visit the link

The Pew Partnership for Civic Change launched the Finish Line Calculator, an easy to use high school graduation rate calculator. “Graduation rate statistics are used widely, but they are often misleading or not properly represented,” according to Dr. Suzanne Morse, President of the Pew Partnership for Civic Change. The Finish Line Calculator provides high school graduation statistics for most American school districts and users can simultaneously compare local estimates to state and national outcomes. The tool is just one component of the Learning to Finish Wiki, a compendium of best practices and a discussion forum designed to address the country’s alarming high school dropout rate.
For more information, visit the link

A new report from the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) states that 72 percent of Americans now have access to broadband and slightly more than half of American households now subscribe to broadband. This means that more than 57 million households subscribe to broadband. Broadband subscription rates jumped 21 percent over the past year. Expense is the major obstacle for broadband deployment. However, as competition increases, CEA researchers predict prices to drop and subscription rates to increase. Let’s hope so, since the U.S. lags behind many of its trade competitors in adoption rates. See the press release and the report for purchase, Broadband in America: Access, Use, Outlook.
Read the news release here

Which university receives the most science and engineering funds from the federal government? John Hopkins, with $1.234 billion, followed by University of Washington ($663 million), University of Pennsylvania ($558 million), University of California-Los Angeles ($526 million), and University of Michigan ($513 million). The highest-ranking southern university is Duke at $459 million, with 86 percent coming from the Department of Health and Human Services. The only other southern institution in the top 20 is the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill at $363 million, with 85 percent from the Department of Health and Human Services. The South does much better in terms of the top 20 Historically Black Colleges and Universities, where the region has at least three fourths of the top 20 federal fund recipients. Statistics are also available for Hispanic and tribal colleges.
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In the realm of alternative energy, hydrogen research continues to make headlines. The Institute for Public Service and Policy Research at the University of South Carolina has continued to keep hydrogen on the policy docket with a recent paper examining the role of South Carolina in the hydrogen economy. The paper gives a laymen's description of what hydrogen is and the current state of the technology. In addition, the paper reviews the major hydrogen initiatives taking root in South Carolina including those at the Savannah River National Laboratory, the Center for Hydrogen Research, University of South Carolina, Clemson University, and a number of other collaborative policy and commercial initiatives.
Access the report here

A new report, Intellectual Property, the Immigration Backlog, and a Reverse Brain-Drain, from the Kauffman Foundation says that more than one million skilled immigrant workers are competing for 120,000 permanent U.S. resident visas annually, creating what its authors refer to as a “reverse brain-drain.” The National Dialogue on Entrepreneurship reports that the immigrant workers contribute “...significantly to the innovation process as foreign nationals residing in the United States were named as inventors or co-inventors in 25.6 percent of international patent applications filed from the U.S. in 2006.”
Access the report here

Literary piracy, adulterated foods and willfully mislabeled products: are we talking about China here? No, writing in The Boston Globe, University of Georgia historian Stephen Mihm is talking about the United States in the Nineteenth Century. According to Mihm, “...even America’s closest trade partners were despairing about our cheating ways. Charles Dickens, who visited in 1842 was stunned by the economic ambition of our nation’s inhabitants, and appalled by what they would do for the sake of profit.” Among other things, Dickens found Boston’s bookstores stuffed with pirated copies of his own novels. Mihm attributes the behavior of the U.S. 150 years ago and China today to “adolescent capitalism.” He notes that international pressures on American exports contributed to regulatory reform in America, and he anticipates a similar path for China.

Mihm is also the author of A Nation of Counterfeiters (due out this week from Harvard University Press), which examines the “incredible” levels of counterfeiting that also took place in Nineteenth Century America.
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India’s technology industry is casting a wary eye towards China, but concludes, in a new report, that India will remain dominant in global services outsourcing for the next three to five years. Nasscom, India’s technology industry association developed the report, which says that China must overcome a series of challenges to seriously threaten India’s position. According to Business Week, Nasscom VP Ameet Nivsarkar says that India’s use of English—the most commonly used language in the global IT industry—is an important advantage. He also notes that China has few significant players, with most companies having fewer than 5,000 employees. He believes that more experience could lead to China developing a significant position in business process outsourcing, but sees China as being about five years behind India at present. Business Week reports that software and computer services represents about 5.5 percent of India’s GDP in 2006, and only about 0.5 percent of China’s GDP.
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Robert Putnam’s latest publication on diversity and social capital has been the subject of many headlines, talk shows and commentaries. In the article, E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century, Putnam says, “In the long run immigration and diversity are likely to have important cultural, economic, fiscal, and developmental benefits. In the short run, however, immigration and ethnic diversity tend to reduce social solidarity and social capital.” He notes that his research in the U.S. has revealed that in ethnically diverse neighborhoods, “trust (even of one's own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer.” On a positive note, however, he observes that “successful immigrant societies have overcome such fragmentation by creating new, cross-cutting forms of social solidarity and more encompassing identities.”
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Cityscape, published three times a year by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Policy Development and Research, is accepting submissions to its new Refereed Papers section. They are seeking papers in all areas of housing and urban policy, including economic opportunity and self-sufficiency, homeownership and housing finance, housing technology, regulatory barriers to affordable housing, rural housing, housing for persons with special needs, subsidized housing, university partnerships, urban revitalization and community development. For more information, and to view current and prior issues, visit the Cityscape website.
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The Department of Labor (DOL) recently announced a new round of Community Based Job Training Grants (CBJTG), grants designed to assist community and technical colleges. DOL will award $125 million in the form of three-year grants with amounts ranging from $500,000 to $ 2 million. Applications must include regional strategic partnerships between the workforce development system, business and economic development, four-year colleges, adult education and K-12. The deadline for proposals is October 10th.
For more information, visit the link

Mentoring programs produce tangible outcomes for students “including decreases in drug and alcohol use, enhanced peer and parent-child relationships, better school attendance and improved attitudes about performance and school.” A new report by Public-Private Ventures, Making a Difference in Schools, features the outcomes of participants in 10 Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) programs across the nation. In just five months of mentoring, BBBS students, when compared to their non-mentored peers, improved overall academic performance, quality of class work and homework completion rates. BBBS students also reported feeling more competent academically and skipping school less.
Access the report here

The National Association of Manufacturers’ (NAM) Center for Workforce Success released two new reports—step-by-step guides on how to implement sector initiatives with an "employer-driven" focus. Sector initiatives reduce overlap by combining workforce, education and economic development resources to provide workers with the training and support that leads to upward mobility while serving industry. Reflecting the NAM recommendations, Southern Growth will launch the Southern Sector Initiative in Jackson, MS on September 13th at the Mississippi Telecom Center. The NAM guides are designed for a variety of audiences including employers, business associations, community-based organizations, and public workforce system professionals and training providers.

To learn more about sector strategies and register to participate in Southern Growth’s Southern Sector Initiative, visit the link below.
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Intuit, working with the Institute for the Future, has produced a report that predicts the technological future for small businesses. The report found that tomorrow's entrepreneurs would be far more reliant on technology than todays. They'll be more connected in a mobile world, market to customers in more ubiquitous and complex ways, and blur the lines between the virtual and physical worlds. The report, Intuit Future of Small Business Report: Technology Trends and Small Business, is the second in a three-part Future of Small Business series. Other findings suggest that new analytical tools will increase productivity and ease management burdens, and that high-tech will no longer be a barrier to small size as costs and complexity-of-use fall.
Access the report here

Last week, President Bush signed the America COMPETES Act—legislation focused on improving the technological capacity of the country. Areas targeted by the legislation include research & development, STEM (science-technology-engineering-mathematics) education and energy independence. It authorizes $33.6 billion over fiscal years 2008-2010 for STEM education and provides grants to help educate current and future teachers in STEM areas. The act also supports doubling funding for basic research in the physical sciences, and creates the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to engage in high-risk, high-reward research that can lead to clean energy technologies.
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How long must all Americans wait for ubiquitous, affordable broadband? Even heavily industrialized states such as Massachusetts and Ohio are still identifying broadband needs. Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick declared that the state would invest $25 million into a new broadband incentive fund. Under the plan, private companies will compete for funds to install equipment such as network fiber and wireless towers in rural areas that currently do not have broadband. Thirty-two towns in Massachusetts lack broadband access and 63 municipalities only have broadband in a limited area. The program's goal is to make broadband available to all communities by 2010. See the broadband article at the Massachusetts Technology Corporation’s website. In Ohio, Gov. Ted Strickland signed an executive order that extends and strengthens the state's broadband network to all of Ohio's counties and creates an organization to oversee future high-speed internet development. A new umbrella organization, the Broadband Ohio Network, will be dedicated to the consolidation of service delivery and improved connectivity for state and local government, county and city networks, public safety, the courts system, underserved populations, and additional public/private initiatives. Another part of this organization will concentrate exclusively on computing and connectivity resources for Ohio colleges and universities, small- and medium-sized companies, K-12 schools, hospitals, public broadcasting stations, and local, state and federal research centers.
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The National Dialogue on Entrepreneurship’s e-newsletter reports that the U.S. public is somewhat less supportive of globalization than in previous years, according to the results of a new survey conducted by the Financial Services Forum. On the overarching question of how Americans classify their views on globalization, 49 percent responded with either a very or somewhat favorable answer, down from 54 percent in 2006. However, the percentage of those responding with either very or somewhat unfavorable also dropped, from 35 percent in 2006 to 24 percent this year. The big jump was in the “not sure” category, which jumped from 11 percent in 2006 to 28 percent in 2007. Those surveyed were also asked to respond to a series of statements about globalization in terms of whether the statements made them more favorably or less favorably inclined towards globalization. Fifty six percent of respondents said that understanding that globalization and free trade contribute more than $1 trillion in annual U.S. economic growth caused them to be more favorable about globalization.
View the survey link here

The International Herald Tribune of August 20 profiles a professor from the South under the headline “New breed of migrant worker.” According to the newspaper, “An economist with a Louisiana doctorate and a Mississippi drawl, he shocked his friends when he left a tenured job in Virginia for the American University of Sharjah, a school conjured by a sheik in the suburbs of Dubai.” The subject is Peter Mitias, who is called “the migrant professor” and talks about his free housing and utilities, the new international experience on his resume, the cheap household help, good schools, absence of income tax, and presence of American fast food (“Papa John’s delivers to my house”). According to the Herald-Tribune, “This is migrant work, Ph.D.-style—a lesson about labor, a comment on class, a window onto globalization and a phenomenon on the rise. The article goes on to note that while common workers face increased barriers to migration, professionals like Mitias are given welcome mats. “Everybody wants smart people in their country,” says Mitias.
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The U.S. Chamber of Commerce will bring its TradeRoots initiative South for a one day best practices seminar in Atlanta on October 3. “From Advocates to Activists: Mobilizing for the Key Trade Battles Ahead” is the theme for the seminar, which will be held at the Renaissance Concourse Hotel in Atlanta. According the Chamber, “TradeRoots is bringing together advocates from chambers, world trade centers, state economic development offices, and other partners, for an intense, day-long program on how to mobilize for success in this increasingly difficult trade environment.” For more information, contact Kelly Kirk at kkird@uschamber.com or see the link.
For more information, visit the link

Need a helping hand for a project in your hometown? Hamburger Helper is currently accepting applications for community projects as part of its Hometown Helper program. Grant awards will range from $500 to $15,000 and can be used for a wide variety of purposes – from tutoring or job training initiatives to playground equipment. Past award recipients have included Bismarck, Missouri, where funds were used for firefighter safety gear, and Calico Rock, Arkansas, where funds helped with a Main Street makeover.
For more information, visit the link

Pointing out that most states are increasing their investments in early childhood education, a new report from the Local Initiatives Support Corporation and Rutgers University’s National Institute for Early Education and Research addresses the resulting need for additional early childhood facilities. The report outlines strategies and provides examples related to successfully financing, designing and developing high quality preschool facilities. Among the policy recommendations are: 1) provide capital subsidies to renovate or construct state-of-the-art facilities; 2) promote sound design and real estate development practices; and 3) create a supportive policy and regulatory environment.
Access the report here

“School districts may want to consider reexamining their policies and practices and explore ways in which they could use social networking for educational purposes,” recommends a report by the National Association of School Boards. According to the report, Creating and Connecting, 96 percent of students with online access use social networking technologies and 71 percent use said tools weekly. The most common conversation topics include education. Fifty percent of online students talk specifically about schoolwork. Despite the frequent use of social networking sites in student’s personal lives, 62 percent of schools have rules against participating in bulletin boards and more than 80 percent have rules against instant messaging or online chatting.
Access the report here

A large majority, 93 percent, of experienced educators (those graduated from college in 1992-93 and were teaching in K-12 education in 2003) expressed overall satisfaction with teaching, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The NCES report, To Teach or Not to Teach, compares the academic preparation, employment status, and job satisfaction of current and former teachers. Teachers are more satisfied with their schools’ learning environment than other employment factors including parental support, student behavior and discipline and class size.
Access the report here

The 2008 National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) budget request for Federal R&D funds is over $1.44 billion, more than triple the estimated $464 million spent when the initiative began in 2001, and an increase of 13 percent over the 2007 request. The growth in investments in the NNI over the past seven years has brought the total investment to over $8.3 billion. The 2008 budget for the NNI supports a coordinated program of 26 Federal agencies, 13 of which have budgets for nanotechnology research and development. The five leading agencies in the request are the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
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A new report by the Information Technology Association of America discusses the possibility of the U.S. developing a niche for lower cost domestic sourcing. The report identifies the reasons companies choose to send their IT operations offshore (such as lower cost and access to talent pools) and reasons others keep their operations in the U.S. (such as protecting intellectual property and regulatory barriers). The authors propose that one way for U.S. IT firms to compete in the global market is to locate in mid-sized metropolitan and rural communities where the cost of living and conducting business is relatively low. In addition to location, the report states that the crux of a successful U.S. IT industry is to have a highly talented workforce to meet this demand.
For more information, visit the link

NC's Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) is hosting a free eScience workshop on Oct. 21-23 at the University of North Carolina's

Friday Center for Continuing Education. The Microsoft eScience Workshop will bring together scientists from a variety of disciplines to share their research and their experiences of how computing is shaping their work. Insights made possible in disciplines through computational resources catalyze change and accelerate discovery in other areas. More and more, researchers must communicate and share

information with colleagues in other disciplines. The conference seeks presentation ideas on topics related to all areas of e-science. Some examples include:

* Modeling of natural systems

* Knowledge discovery and merging datasets

* Science data analysis, mining, and visualization

* Healthcare and biomedical informatics

* High performance computing in science

* Innovations in publishing scientific literature, results, and data

* The impact of eScience on teaching and learning

* Applying novel information technologies to disaster management

* Robotics in science


Abstracts are being accepted online. The deadline for abstract submissions is Aug. 30.


For more information, visit the link

The International Herald Tribune reports on how garment makers in China, insurance salesmen in France and factory workers in Brazil are all affected by what has become a global credit crunch stemming from a U.S. sub-prime crisis. According to the newspaper, “Bad lending decisions to ordinary folks in places like Minnesota and New Jersey have been tearing through world economies like a tsunami, causing stock markets to plummet, threatening pensions, and affecting the prices of everything from oil to refrigerators. At times like these, globalization can sound like a dirty word.” The article goes on to explain that much of the debt from U.S. sub-prime mortgages has been packaged into securities sold to pension funds, banks and others interested in high yields. Harvard professor Kenneth Rogoff says, “It’s very, very similar on a lesser scale to what happened in 1998, when Russia defaulted on its debt and all of a sudden a farmer in Kansas was having trouble getting money.”
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A poll conducted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and WorldPublicOpinion.org finds widespread support for economic globalization. The results come from a series of country-based polls conducted in China, India, the United States, Indonesia, France, Russia, Thailand, Poland, Iran, Mexico, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, Argentina, Peru, Israel, Armenia and the Palestinian territories—more than half the world’s population all told. However, in four of these countries, a plurality considers trade to be bad for the environment (France 66%-29%, United States 49%-45%, Argentina 46%-27% and Russia 44%-25%). Between 60 and 93 percent of respondents in 10 countries said that trade agreements should include “minimum standards for protection of the environment.” Despite policy differences, respondents in the U.S. and France share similar views regarding the impact of trade on jobs, with 80 percent of the French and 67 percent of the U.S. Respondents considering trade as harmful to job security.
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The Augusta (GA) Chronicle reports on Georgia’s role in the global economy in its August 13 issue. “In 2006 alone, Georgia companies exported more than $20 billion of its products—up from $12.6 billion in 1996, the year the Olympic Games came to the state,” says Georgia Commissioner of Economic Development Ken Stewart. Stewart also points out that more than a third of the $5.7 billion in Georgia investments came from international companies last year, along with 20 percent of the jobs created. The Georgia Department of Economic Development reports significant growth in international investment leads, up from 349 in fiscal 2006 to 5000 in fiscal 2007. The State of Georgia maintains offices in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Canada, Central America and South America.

The use of Transferable Development Rights (TDR) to preserve land in Georgia’s Chattahoochee Hill Country is being tracked by environmentalists nationally, says a recent article in USA Today. TDR involves a landowner selling their development rights to a land conservancy, pledging not to develop a particular piece of land. The land conservancy, in turn, sells the rights to a developer, enabling the developer to use the rights to develop property in designated growth areas at a higher density than would normally be allowed. According to the article, TDR has never been tried in Georgia and has rarely been tried in the South.
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Tourism Cares distributes grants to tourism-related non-profit organizations worldwide for capital improvements that serve to protect, restore, or conserve sites of exceptional cultural, historic, or natural significance, and/or for the education of local host communities and the traveling public about conservation and preservation of such sites. Program goals for 2007 call for a balanced distribution to U.S. and non-U.S. recipients. Typical grants are $10,000; however, grants of up to $100,000 will be considered. Letters of inquiry are due by October 1, 2007.
For more information, visit the link

Nearly one in ten of the nation’s counties now has a population that is “majority-minority,” reports the U.S. Census Bureau. East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana was one of the largest counties passing this threshold between 2005 and 2006, having experienced the second largest numerical increase in the black population among the nation’s counties. The Census Bureau’s latest release also included tabulations by age.
Read the news release here

A recent Chicago Federal Reserve article advocates for the use of more effective and comprehensive benchmarks to measure community college performance. Community colleges serve local constituents through a vast array of initiatives including contract training, academic remediation and low cost baccalaureate-level courses. Despite providing a vast array of services, community college funding is often tied to credit-bearing programs instead of workforce development initiatives. Graduation rates tend to be the only consistently used performance metric. The paper, Measuring Community College Performance, argues that performance metrics and funding should linked not only to academic success, but also to economic success, such as pre and post training employment and wages.
Read the paper here

The National Governors Association (NGA) recently awarded $500,000 grants to six states to improve K-12 Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education. According to NGA, “Governors recognize the links between a rigorous STEM education program and our leadership in a global economy.” In that vein, the grants will create STEM centers in Colorado, Hawaii, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia building a network designed to: 1) align K-12 STEM education with industry needs, 2) improve the quantity and quality of STEM teachers, 3) benchmark STEM performance and curricula using international standards, and 4) garner public support to improve STEM outcomes.
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The Richmond Federal Reserve article, Academic Alternatives, reviews the pros and cons of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, an initiative providing vouchers to low-income public school students. Concerned that the public schools that were producing an “army of illiterates,” the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, a series of governors, and the state legislature enacted a school choice program. As a result, both the city’s public and private school students exhibited higher test scores. The Milwaukee voucher program is not without challenges. Student turnover is a big problem and many private and charter schools do not have the staffing oversight and rigorous background checks required in public schools.
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The Annie E. Casey Foundation has released its 18th annual KIDS COUNT Data Book, providing national and state-by-state information and statistical trends on the conditions of America’s children and families. According to the book, the nation has seen improvement over the past five years in key areas such as child death rates, teen birth rates, high school dropout rates, and teens not in school and not working. However, four areas have worsened, including low-birthweight babies, children living in families where no parent has full-time year-round employment, children in poverty and children in single-parent families. Southern states did not fare well on many of the indicators, with nine Southern states in the bottom ten in the nation in terms of the overall KIDS COUNT ranking. Data is also available in an online database that enables users to generate custom graphs, maps, ranked lists, and state-by-state profiles.
For more information, visit the link

The National Governors Association announced two new reports as part of their year-long initiative highlighting the economic importance of innovation. Innovation America: A Final Report, summarizes the project and recommends actions to foster innovation, including improving science, engineering, and math education, and investing in innovation projects. Investing in Innovation, the more interesting document, concentrates on the creation of an Innovation System with six guidelines focusing on the creation, strategic analysis, collaboration, expert advice, consistency, and measuring results.
Access the report here

A new paper from the Brookings Institution analyzes asset-based approaches to poverty reduction by international non-governmental organizations. The study found that an organization’s history often has more to do with its development strategy than does its formal mission or current development theory. The researchers identified five key trends that relate to the usefulness of an asset framework. They are “increasing emphasis on aid effectiveness stressed by both government agencies and foundations; emergence of new sources of funding and a new breed of development actors; shifting North-South INGO power relationships; growing convergence of conservation and development concerns; and, increased awareness of the impact of climate change on development and conservation.”
Read the paper here

The General Accounting Office (GAO) has released a new report that catalogs and analyzes federal efforts to help smaller manufacturers. The report, Information on Federal Programs and Interagency Efforts That Support Small Businesses Engaged in Manufacturing, identified 254 federal programs that provide services to support the business sector, of which only five provide services specifically to small manufacturers and an additional 15 target manufacturers, regardless of size. The GAO also identified 20 federal interagency efforts that focus on supporting the business sector. Of these 20, only four specifically focus on small businesses engaged in manufacturing.
Access the report here

The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) is preparing for its 8th annual conference on business incubation in Johnson City, TN on August 19-21, 2007. This year's conference theme is Strategies for Rural Development: Business Incubation & Clean Energy. The focus of the conference will be on "how Appalachian communities can increase local job growth through sustainable business incubation and green energy practices and technologies."
For more information, visit the link

According to an essay in the International Herald Tribune, another major industry can be added to the list of those restructured by the forces of globalization: illegal drugs. The article tells the story of Ye Gon, who stands accused of smuggling tons of pseudoephedrine and other chemicals from China into Mexico. The chemicals are used to supply methamphetamine labs run by Mexican drug cartels in Mexico and U.S. border states. The article says, “The new Mexican-made drug has virtually replaced American homegrown meth, which used to be made by small producers that often sourced their pseudoephedrine at the local pharmacy. Seizures of imported meth along the southwest border increased from 2,706 pounds in 2003 to 4,346 pounds in 2005. The number of methamphetamine labs seized in the United States plummeted from 10,212 to 5,846 over the same period.” Pseudoephedrine shipments are hard to track, and Mexican officials note that many of the shipments of illegal chemicals entering Mexico pass through the United States with fake papers.
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In testimony before Congress earlier this summer, the Cato Institute’s Daniel Griswold said, “Congress and the administration can and should do more to open new opportunities for U.S. Small businesses to remain competitive in a globalized economy.” Griswold, who serves as Director of Cato’s Center for Trade Policy Studies, emphasized that the nation’s engagement in globalization is not exclusively the province of large companies. “Small businesses that shun global markets are missing the opportunity of our time,” according to Griswold. He noted that according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, more than one-third of the nation’s exports to China are produced by small and medium-sized manufacturers. He also said that for companies of all sizes, trade and prosperity are directly linked. “The more we prosper, the more we trade; the more we trade, the more we prosper,” said Griswold.
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The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, in partnership with the American Planning Association (APA), is currently accepting applications for the 2008  
Opportunity and Empowerment Award, which honors a community project that improves the quality of life for low- and moderate-income families. The emphasis is on how creative housing, economic development, and private investments are used in, or in tandem with, a comprehensive community development plan. The winner will be announced at the APA’s National Planning Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, which takes place April 27 - May 1, 2008. The application deadline is September  
10, 2007.
For more information, visit the link

The Fund for Southern Communities is accepting grant proposals from organizations that are working to create inclusive and sustainable communities in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. Previous grants have included projects focused on promoting economic development through cultural tourism, empowering low-income people through leadership training and introducing organic and locally grown agriculture. In order to be eligible, organizations must have a budget of $150,000 or less. Grants are in the range of $1-5,000.
For more information, visit the link

“Rural matters” and is even more important in the South, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The NCES report, Status of Education in Rural America, measures education conditions in America’s remote schools. The South has a higher percentage of students attending rural public schools (28 percent) than any other region, including the Midwest. Rural areas maintain a disproportionate number of school districts and buildings, when compared to their city, suburban, and town counterparts. Though only 21 percent of the nation’s students are in rural areas, 31 percent of the nation’s school buildings and 56 percent of districts are located in rural areas.
Access the report here

Southern Growth Policies Board, the National Network of Sector Partners (NNSP) and the Mississippi Department of Employment Security will convene a one-day Southern Sector Initiative meeting on Thursday, September 13, 2007, in Jackson, Mississippi at the Mississippi Telcom Center. The meeting will gather state officials, regional leaders, economic developers and foundation executives to explore sector based strategies for economic development, best practices and to discuss the creation of a regional system that has quantifiable outcomes (reduced TANF case loads, wage increases, job creation, etc.)
For more information, visit the link

A new study by Deloitte and the National Venture Capital Association shows that U.S. venture capitalists aren't diving into foreign deals, but are taking calculated risks overseas. Even when investing internationally, VCs said they preferred investing in U.S. firms that had offshore operations instead of directly investing in foreign firms. VC firms indicated that they invested less than five percent of their capital overseas and those investments were going largely to China, India, Israel and Canada.
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The Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) recently released An American Imperative: Transforming the Recruitment, Retention, and Renewal of Our Nation's Mathematics and Science Teaching Workforce. Anticipating an acute shortage of science and mathematics teachers, the BHEF suggests a three-prong strategy of recruitment, retention and renewal to build a talented teaching workforce. Specific strategies include increasing professional development opportunities, improving data collection on teachers and students, and recruiting STEM professionals to the teaching profession. BHEF is an organization of Fortune 500 CEOs, college and university presidents, and foundation leaders addressing educational challenges in order to enhance U.S. competitiveness.
Access the report here

The Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) at the Georgia Institute of Technology recently announced that their companies have raised more than $1 billion in venture capital since 1999. Two ATDC companies received the largest deals made in the whole state of Georgia in 2006. The billion dollars is made up of 160 deals with more than 90 of those deals coming from investors outside of Georgia. Thirty-one of the 112 companies ATDC has turned out have either been acquired by public companies or gone through and IPO.
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The Export-Import Bank of the United States will host a one-day seminar on "How to Find International Buyers and Extend Credit" in Nashville, TN on August 30. Targeted at exporters and exporting companies, the seminar will be held in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Commerce, the Small Business Administration and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. Case studies and classroom discussions will facilitate understanding of the various trade financing products and services offered by the Bank. According to the Bank's website, "Attendees will learn how to obtain working capital loans to fulfill foreign sales orders, offer competitive terms to overseas buyers, minimize risk in emerging markets, protect against buyer default as well as how to enter new international markets with assistance from the U.S. Department of Commerce and Ex-Im Bank."
For more information, visit the link

"International migration not only reduces poverty in the poorer nations where most journeys begin, but can generate a range of generally positive social and health effects in the home countries," according to a new book from the World Bank, International Migration, Economic Development and Policy. The book reports that migration can help close the gender gap and put more girls in school, reduce child labor, improve children's health, and promote entrepreneurship. The book covers migration patterns in Latin America, the Caribbean, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt and Morocco. According to the World Bank's website, "In rural Pakistan, the impact of migration in reducing household discrimination that deprives girls of education was dramatic." Amazingly, in many cases, the gains experienced by migrants are not lost when they return home. The website notes, "In Egypt, returning migrants earn nearly 40 percent more than non-migrants."
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"All Roads Lead to China" is a centerpiece resource on the Federation of International Trade Association's (FITA) China web portal http://china.fita.org/ FITA intends for the portal to serve as a guide to doing business in China. It includes links to a country profile and general information, market access resources, economic indicators, market research reports, risks, agricultural data, tax information, labor market indicators and an overview of the media. Other links are to sourcing fairs and information on manufacturers in China by sector. The China pages are part of FITA's global web portal, http://fita.org/ a source of trade leads, information and links to more than 8000 related websites.
Visit the website here

Forging Civic Partnerships for Comprehensive Change is the title of an upcoming webcast sponsored by the Local Initiatives Support Corporation. Questions to be addressed include: How can partnerships help lead agencies mobilize assets of other organizations, without becoming encumbered by the process? How can the extra financial costs of partnerships be supported? How does the formation of systems-level partnerships support those happening within neighborhoods, and vice versa? The Webcast is scheduled for September 5, 2007 from 2 - 3:30 PM EST.
For more information, visit the link

A new paper from the Urban Institute provides a framework for linking the varied public programs and private benefits that can help low-income working families work towards economic stability. While a narrow, program-driven approach to policy development is unlikely to meet the needs of these families, say the paper's authors, they recognize that a broad, crosscutting approach that covers many relevant issues at once-workplace conditions, work-based benefits, and public programs-can easily get bogged down in complexity. The paper recommends a framework that is centered on five key goals: 1) enabling parents to meet their family's needs while working in lower-wage jobs; 2) helping families weather gaps in parental employment; 3) supporting parents' job advancement; 4) helping parents combine work and child-rearing; and 5) improving children's well-being and development.
Read the paper here

Why has America's poverty rate remained stagnant between 11 and 15 percent since the early 1970s? What should be done to reduce poverty? According to a new MDRC report, Hearing on Proposals for Reducing Poverty, America's stagnating poverty rates can be largely attributed to rising rates in single parenthood and a decline in real wages, particularly the wages of unskilled men. The report suggests two strategies to reduce poverty, a long-term strategy-investments in preschool through postsecondary education-and a short-term strategy-" 'making work pay' by supporting low-wage workers with earning supplements and other kinds of supports."
Access the report here

Jobs for the Future (JFF) recently announced Double the Numbers 2007, a conference urging the nation to adopt the goal of doubling the number of low-income students who earn postsecondary credentials. The conference will address four strategies for improving high school graduation rates and promoting postsecondary attainment: