The skills debate - skills & happiness
Following on from the comments of Joel Silver at ISATT 2007, as outlined below, there has been a fair bit in the press about the Government focus on skills and perhaps a change in opinion. For example Maria Misra,
in the THES 3/8/07 "There's lots of life beyond skills", tells us that "our leaders now claim to recognise that we cannot live by business skills and high-tech achievements alone. Happiness, it turns out, is not the consequence of earning more, of climbing international league tables or of deploying our skill sets in some great global economic machine, but of creativity, self fulfillment and the sense of living for a purpose." She cites economist
Richard Layard as the influential thinker in this case. His work is also cited in a
Guardian article in the context of an article about possible Tory policy and a newly published report on "
Happiness, Economics and Public Policy" which critiques Government attempts to promote happiness through policy.
On a totally different tack Jim Hillage from the
Institute for Employment Studies tells us that " Universities should be focusing on building relationships with different, often smaller, workplaces, and that will require more understanding of this group, along with greater flexibility about meeting their individual needs." (THES 3/8/07 Everyone has the right to better skills).