Cisco CEO: Schools need to improve tech training

Chris Jones

Thursday, May 9, 2002 | 11:05 a.m.

New technologies are gradually leveling the world's economic playing field -- and that could spell trouble for the United States, a top technology executive said Wednesday.

John Chambers, president and CEO of Cisco Systems Inc., said the world's most powerful high-tech innovations are useless without the support of a well-trained workforce. And as technology is integrated into diverse lines of business, Chambers said America's economic dominance is at risk unless the nation's educators can better prepare students to succeed in an increasingly high-tech world.

"If your education system doesn't keep up, you're just going to get left behind. Not 5 percent of your population, but 30 to 40 percent," said Chambers, whose company is one of the world's top developers of Internet hardware. "This country is in trouble because of its education system, and a decade from now jobs will go wherever an educated workforce is."

Hal Berghel, chairman of UNLV's computer science department, agreed that schools in the United States must do more to improve the high-tech skill levels of the nation's workers.

"(Chambers) is right on the money," Berghel said. "The major players that led the industrial revolution came from England and other parts of Western Europe. Over the next 50 to 100 years, they became minor players in the information age, which was led by North America and Japan.

"Now the pace of development has accelerated and world (economic) leaders can change in as little as a decade, and I think the United States has a real problem at the high school and elementary education level. We're not investing enough to prepare our students to excel in college, and that could be dangerous."

Berghel said the United States is likely to remain a world leader in technology research and development because its top students are still among the world's best. He's not as confident the nation's mid-level workers will remain capable of holding technology-related positions, however.

"Our greatest challenge is to maintain a highly skilled and well-educated work force," said Berghel, who believes a solution could be achieved through more cooperation between educators at the secondary and post-secondary levels.

Despite those challenges, Chambers said continued improvements in computer technology will help businesses to achieve greater productivity worldwide.

"From 1975 to 1995, productivity only increased by about 1 percent per year," said Chambers, who was in Las Vegas to speak at the NetWorld+Interop trade show. "From 1995 on, when technology began to play a huge role changing productivity in this country and around the world, we've seen increases of about 2 to 3 percent per year.

"In the future, 4 to 5 percent improvements are very doable, and the implications on the standard of living are huge."

Chambers remarks came a day after his San Jose, Calif.-based company reported quarterly net income of $729 million, or 10 cents per share, for its fiscal third quarter ending April 27. During the same quarter a year ago, Cisco had a net loss of $2.7 billion, or 37 cents per share.

"Last year was a classic downturn," Chambers said. "We took the critical steps to position ourselves for the upturn, and we are beginning to see the very positive results."

Cisco's stock price increased 24 percent in Wednesday trading to close at $16.27.