Sustainable Through Education

McKinsey and Robert Bosch Stiftung present joint study

Stuttgart, October 15, 2008 – In order to sustain growth and prosperity in Germany, the educational efforts must be strengthened and quickly accelerated. At the current time, neither the job market nor the educational system is prepared for the growing demand for highly qualified professionals. In fact, the opposite is true: The educational gap between Germany and the most important industrialized countries continues to widen. How high the investment requirement is, which measures should be initiated, and which educational innovations are recommended are described in the study “Zukunftsvermögen Bildung” ("Education: future wealth") which was conducted by the management consultants McKinsey & Company on behalf of Robert Bosch Stiftung. The study shows how Germany's educational reform can be accelerated, how the shortage of skilled employees can be eliminated, and how growth can be secured.

"In the year 2020, Germany will lack about 2.4 million skilled employees. This deficit is a direct result of non-investment, of failure to promptly enact educational reform legislature as well as due to demographic changes. As a result, the negative economic impact could potentially reach €1.2 billion," Nelson Killius, partner at McKinsey, estimates. "We will only be able to close these gaps if we synchronize our activities between the job market and the educational policy and give our young people the necessary qualifications they need to succeed," summarizes Dr. Ingrid Hamm, Member of the Board of Management at the Robert Bosch Stiftung. In order to show which specific changes are needed, the study deals with two core areas: In the school area, it discusses the leadership qualities at the schools; in the apprenticeship area, the academic qualifications of the trainers.

International comparisons show that a crucial driver for a school's performance level is the leadership quality of its board members. With a more focused preparation of these duties and a further developed quality management, bottlenecks could be eliminated. In the apprenticeship area, it is, at the same time, necessary to motivate more skilled workers to pursue a higher educational qualification. By the year 2020, Germany will need roughly 1.2 million university graduates. Through an increase in the employment rate, this gap can be further reduced by 300,000, through immigration by another 200,000, and through educational measures by an additional 170,000. In order to cover the remaining need of approximately 600,000 university graduates, "around 8 percent of the skilled workers under 35 today will have had to complete a three-year university degree by then," explains Nelson Killius.

The study shows: The necessary acceleration of educational reforms into a campaign for better education is only possible if a paradigm shift takes place in politics and in the overall educa-tional situation. In the future, the educational success must be measured by the number of qualified students graduating from the schools and universities. For teachers and instructors that means that they can no longer rely on their expertise, but rather their measuring stick is the individual support of their students. This will only be successful if significant improvements are achieved on all levels of the educational system – for both the weaker and the elite schools. "That's the reason why we have to define binding ratios in our educational policy, test their practicability on a regular basis, and make the results transparent," says Dr. Ingrid Hamm.

Guest contributions from well-known educationalists such as Peter Fauser, Hartmut Ditton, and Manfred Prenzel as well as "best practices" from Switzerland and Great Britain complete the study. "Education: future wealth" promotes a new way of thinking, discusses models, and possibilities for funding and explains the job and the financing of the reform process. Education is, according to the expert, an investment necessary to secure competitiveness, the prosperity of the society as well as the future prospects of each individual.