Molly Corbett Broad
Spring Commencement Greetings
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Greensboro Coliseum
May 12, 2006
10:00 a.m.
So This is the World You Are Inheriting
This is a time of great joy and well-earned celebration. I am proud to offer congratulations to each and every one of you for reaching this very important milestone. In an event that carries great symbolic meaning, I am also pleased to share the platform with distinguished leaders and dignitaries.
Our medieval academic robes and the rituals of commencement serve as important symbols that reaffirm the significance of the university—one of the oldest, and indeed most valued institutions of the post-Renaissance period of modern history. These ceremonies help to remind us that we are links in the very long chain of university education, stretching over centuries, connecting one generation of students to the next. Our state’s strongly held belief that education is the key to a better life reaches back more than two centuries, when North Carolina’s citizen leaders of that time chartered a university within days of becoming a state. But our pride in this University is based on more than age alone; it is deeply ingrained in what defines North Carolina—a bedrock belief in the transforming power of education.
It is UNCG’s faculty whose accomplishments we also celebrate in this commencement. Their role is central in creating this unbroken chain of education. Their teaching, research, and sustained pursuit of new knowledge create the fire in which each new link in this chain is forged. The history of this University is captured in these links as each new generation of University leaders transformed this historic institution to meet the requirements of the changing environment of that time. Over the generations, the University of North Carolina has responded to the call by applying its principles of scientific inquiry, cultural understanding and fact-based analysis to the issues of the day --whether those issues were textile mills in the industrial era, agricultural productivity, military operations, urbanization, or social change.
As you look to the future that awaits you, it is useful – indeed heartening—to look back upon the progress made by earlier generations. President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously labeled the South as “the nation’s number one economic problem” in 1938. He said, in part, “The paradox of the South is that while it is blessed by Nature with immense wealth, its people … are the poorest in the country.”
Amazingly, by the time we reached the turn to the 21st century, half of all the new jobs in America were being generated in the South. Among the most important explanations of how that profound change occurred, was a massive investment in university education, beginning with the GI Bill.
Then research and development began to soar. Those investments and the work of our universities translated that R&D into benefits that ranged from national security to health care to our economic competitiveness in the world. Experts analyzing this amazing transformation have concluded that those investments in our scientific and technological prowess accounted for half of the growth and two thirds of the productivity improvements in our national economy over the past 50 years. The graduating GIs provided the industrial leadership that insured our economic superiority for the remainder of the 20th century.
UNCG’s faculty has helped you to develop 21st century capabilities that will enable you to bring strong creative leadership in this still new century. These skills include: inquiry, critical and creative thinking, and analytical as well as ethical reasoning, ability to communicate effectively orally and in writing, ability to work in teams, to value diversity and develop intercultural knowledge, to develop skills in the use of information technology and to understand globalization. Consequently, you are now better equipped to face this dramatically changing world and to continue the learning process throughout your life.
Employers across America tell us that they do not seek graduates who are educated in narrow specialties. If there ever was a time when a university education provided the mastery of a body of knowledge that would last a lifetime, those times are long gone. The explosion of new knowledge makes obsolete what we may have learned even a short time ago. It is estimated that if we were to place on discs all the new information written each year, that stack of discs would measure more than 2 million miles high!
Rather, as Robert Jones, my colleague in the work of the Business-Higher Education Forum put it, “… specialized knowledge will more and more be integrated …with judgment, communication, collaboration and analytical skills.” And I would add, emphatically an understanding of globalization. You have been the beneficiaries of UNCG’s longstanding commitment to internationalization as a core value of the campus. Several hundred of you have had the opportunity to study abroad and all of you have had the chance to learn from the 500 international students and scholars here on the UNCG campus.
Now that you have completed your academic programs at UNCG and many of you will newly enter the workforce, you will confront problems that are as great – if not greater – than those faced by prior generations of graduates. You will also find a world marked by unrelenting and accelerating change. This pace of change and the blurring of regional and national economies into a single world economy are dramatically increasing the importance of your education and the need for you to keep learning. The forces of global change are truly transforming our state and nation – both rural and urban. The evolution and integration of technology, knowledge and economics is fast creating a single global market. As the Internet and emerging technologies proliferate, they will continue to drive globalization forward. This intensified global connectedness will insure that how we communicate, invest and work will be increasingly global. In the digital world of the internet, Beijing, Bangalore, Boston and Boone are but a mouse click away from each other!
The message is the same whether we use the metaphor of “economic warfare” expressed by Lou Gerstner, former CEO of IBM when he described the global competition confronting North Carolina. Or, turn to Peter Drucker, the wise and canny seer who asserted that the “only comparative advantage we have is our people,” their knowledge, know-how, and capacity for innovation.
The rest of the world is catching up! China will soon become the largest producer of university graduates in the world. In fact, in 2004, China graduated 600 thousand engineers and India graduated 350 thousand. The US in that year graduated only 70 thousand. Combined, “Chindia”- the Chinese and Indian counterpart to the European Union—is graduating 14 times as many engineers as we are. While their enrollments in science and engineering are accelerating, ours are declining. We are not even replacing the scientists and engineers among the retiring baby boomers. Consider that for the cost of one chemist or one engineer in the US, a company can hire 5 chemists in China and 11 engineers in India. So, it is no surprise that the US is outsourcing 1.5 million service jobs with projections to grow to 4 million by 2008.
When I was a child, my Mother would say, “Clean up your dinner plate, there are hundreds of thousands of children in China who are starving.” Today at the dinner table, Mothers are saying to their children, “Clean up your dinner plate and get busy on your homework. There are hundreds of thousands of children in China who want to get our jobs.”
We have permitted investment in research and development as a share of GDP to slip below countries like Sweden, Japan and South Korea. Foreign inventers now account for half of the patents issued in the US. Only six (6) of the world’s twenty five (25) most competitive information technology companies are based in the US. Fourteen are based in Asia. The large developing countries are on the move. Brazil, Russia, India and China – the so-called BRICs have added 3 billion people to the global trading system in the past 15 years. They are rapidly creating a middle class and the economies of the BRICs are projected to exceed those of the G6 nations by the middle of the 21st century. That is astonishing!
Strong competition from other parts of the globe, graduates of 2006, defines the world that awaits you. And you must help this nation pick up the pace. The spirit of competitiveness, creativity and innovation is wired in the DNA of America, I believe, and you must help us tap into that great competitive capacity. When the Russians launched Sputnik in the late 50’s, this nation responded with compelling and passionate commitment to regain leadership in aero-space and to “put a man on the moon.” At that moment, we had no strategy for putting a man on the moon; but we did it! We need no less today than another Sputnik moment!
You now live in an American society that cannot sustain itself or prosper without an exceptionally well-educated work force. Yet with just 5% of the world’s population, the US still maintains a position of economic and technological superiority in the world. So, for all of the challenges and uncertainties that confront us now and lie ahead, this remains a time of great opportunity. Globalization is not a zero-sum game.
As you leave your alma mater and embark on new endeavors, you must be emboldened by this knowledge and by the 21st century skills you gained here. We are counting on you to draw on those capabilities and use the 5 “i”s: imagination, ingenuity, impact, insight and invention to build a strong future for the generations to come. We are counting on you to draw upon your creativity, entrepreneurship and innovation to transform North Carolina, the South and our nation – just as your predecessors, fifty years ago, brought this nation to its current leadership position. You stand at the threshold of this new global order with an America that is very well positioned to maintain leadership, both economically and socially. As we pay tribute to each of you for the accomplishment of your dream –one attained through hard work and perseverance, we open the door to the world you are inheriting.
