A New Start

FT: Zuckerberg wannabes squander careers

July 26, 2011 11:21 pm

Zuckerberg wannabes squander careers

By Luke Johnson

I used to think Mark Zuckerberg’s achievement with Facebook was a fabulous inspiration to entrepreneurs everywhere. Now I’m not so sure.

I’m not referring to his alleged ethical failings, as highlighted in The Social Network. Rather, I am concerned that he sets an example of meteoric success that virtually no one else will ever be able to repeat. But wannabes are trying to copy him, and consequently squandering their careers on false hopes.

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I have lost count of the number of business plans I’ve seen from “digital pioneers” who want to build the next Facebook or suchlike. They are full of extraordinary upward projections of income, mind-boggling growth assumptions, spectacular valuations and heroic demands from backers. I put them all in the shredder. As Samuel Johnson put it: Almost every man wastes part of his life in attempts to display qualities which he does not possess, and to gain applause which he cannot keep.”

The truth is that no other company has ever expanded like Facebook . The vast majority of start-ups do not raise formal venture capital – they fund their operations via family and friends, bank debt, savings, angel investors and supplier credit.

This is the real world of new business, rather than the near-fantasy land of Silicon Valley. Moreover, every VC portfolio is littered with dozens of flops and write-offs – the clones of Twitter, LinkedIn and Zynga that no one talks about.

Besides, while I encourage youngsters to become their own boss, most winners are actually in their 30s or 40s by the time they make it. Experience counts when it comes to management – even VCs know this. To expect to hit the big time just out of university is to court disappointment.

This illusion of instant technology wealth is relatively new. Thomas Edison and other inventors took years to establish fortunes – and many, like John Logie Baird and Charles Goodyear, never did. But for virtually the first time in the history of capitalism, the internet bubble permitted early-stage companies with no tangible assets to raise significant capital based on a plan – but without property, franchises, revenues, patents and certainly no profits.

Astonishing winners such as Google and Amazon distorted the financial world, by demonstrating that enormous amounts of money could be made even though there appeared to be no proven business model. But they did not really change the rules: they were the exceptions.

My experience is that companies generally take from five to 10 years to break through. Those enterprises that are doomed will fall by the wayside in this period – only the viable ones remain. These are the enduring undertakings that are self-sustaining and have potential. They are led by determined founders who are persistent and who have invariably matured over the life of their creation.

The best businesses are not built to sell in a hurry. I am innately suspicious of proprietors who focus from the beginning on an indecently swift exit. I like projects that will last, that can generate cash to pay dividends as a form of financial return, and where the owners are not obsessed exclusively about making a quick capital gain for the financiers. I prefer managers who concentrate on customers, competitors and beating this year’s budget. These are the underpinnings of a genuine commercial venture.

The romantic mythology of a student starting a business on a laptop needs adjusting. Most companies service mundane requirements, quite possibly business applications rather than sexy consumer projects like Facebook. And many companies will be lifestyle businesses, while hardly any will be record-busters. But that doesn’t make them any less valid or worthwhile to the founder.

Warp speed businesses that rise in vertiginous fashion usually decline in a similar manner. The web encourages many entrants, but also seemingly unassailable monopolies – until they are not. For online users are fickle: look at the collapse of social networks MySpace and Bebo.

But at least Mr Zuckerberg is more inspirational than the bombastic television gurus, Lord Sugar or Donald Trump.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011.

FT: Business diary: Brewster Kahle

July 18, 2011 11:08 pm

Business diary: Brewster Kahle

As told to Zoë Corbyn

The 50-year-old entrepreneur is the founder of the Internet Archive, a non-profit organisation that is working to digitise the world’s books. In the 1990s, Mr Kahle founded two companies, WAIS and Alexa Internet, which he later sold to AOL and Amazon respectively. He is based in San Francisco.

● Last week we added another 2m gigabytes of data storage capacity. It cost $200,000 to buy the servers but it was worth it to protect our ever-growing collection of digital material. We are digitising 1,000 books a day as well as collecting music, movies and internet sites.

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Data storage is a challenge for many organisations and there is a big move to use the cloud. The idea of trusting things in the cloud frightens me. We are not against the cloud per se, it is just that you should always maintain a copy of what is important to you.

● I was in Berlin this month for the Open Knowledge Foundation’s annual conference to discuss how to open up access to content and data. I gave a talk about how technology is allowing us to collect all the published works of humankind and make them accessible to everyone via the internet.

It is absolutely critical that the digital sphere is open and the best thing commercial and non-commercial entities can do is understand that openness is a friend. Being open in the internet world makes you more useful to consumers and potential customers and that makes good business sense.

● Before that trip I was at the American Library Association’s annual conference in New Orleans. It was fun walking down Bourbon Street with librarians everywhere. You could pick us out.

We announced the latest figures from our e-book lending programme, where we work with libraries to lend recent e-books that we buy or digitise. Since we started in February, 1,000 libraries from six countries have signed up and we have a pool of 100,000 modern e-books available. Some ask if we even need libraries any more. Of course. People have always both bought and borrowed books. Libraries and bookstores answer things in different ways. And libraries are evolving just as much as bookstores.

● E-books were one of the big topics of discussion. Their moment has arrived. For the publishing industry, it is the equivalent of how the MP3 changed the music business. And e-book publishers seem to be making some of the same mistakes that the music publishers did before they started selling their products. They are doing complicated licensing deals and working through a few central distribution points – Google, Apple, Amazon – and this is not good for an industry.

Businesses should want to control the relationship with their customers. We want to widen it so there is a broad market in which many publishers sell books to lots of different people in lots of different ways. There is now a library consortium committing millions of dollars to buying e-books. So if publishers are willing to sell to us we will buy them up a storm.

● Most of our funding comes from libraries. We have book-scanning arrangements with them and we provide them with technology to crawl websites for their own archiving, creating a revenue stream. We also get donations and I put in some of my own money.

I love running a non-profit organisation. It is like running a normal business but without the secrets and instead being able to give away everything we do. It does require different skills. I am focused on the mission, not on money.

We are seeing the development of quite a few tech non-profits – us, the Linux Foundation, Mozilla, Public Library of Science, Creative Commons, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Wikipedia. Some of the most interesting internet developments are coming from this sector. These non-profits are thriving because they are well adapted to a sharing-orientated environment.

● We have a great group to work with and this is a fun project. If you are here for three years we honour you with a little statue inspired by the Terracotta Army in China. We are all on display in pews at the archive – our building was previously a church.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011

FT: Making the world of work child’s play

June 23, 2011 11:25 pm

Making the world of work child’s play

By John Paul Rathbone

Royal Canin-branded care at KidZania Tokyo

Gemma, an 11-year-old dentist, has scrubbed up with Procter & Gamble soap and is inspecting back teeth. Jaime, a toddler firefighter, is spraying water next to a sign advertising home insurance. Meanwhile, little Carlos is landing an American Airlines jet while a gaggle of 12-year-old couriers passes through his cabin, wearing TNT livery.

Welcome to KidZania, perhaps the only place in the world where child labour is actively encouraged. The idea was born in Mexico just over a decade ago when Xavier López Anconca was approached by a friend to co-invest in a day care centre where children would play at working and businesses.

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That was when the 47-year-old former private equity whizz, who once managed bottling companies for GE Capital, had a revelation. “It was the first spark,” remembers Mr Lopez, now KidZania’s chief executive. “Nobody owns role-playing.”

Now they do, and KidZania has gone global with it. The first KidZania role-playing theme park for four- to 14-year-olds opened in a Mexico City shopping mall in 1999. “We were expecting 400,000 visits in the first year; we got twice that,” says Mr López. The second KidZania opened seven years later in Tokyo.

It has since been franchised to six other centres, including Dubai, with a dozen more under way in cities as far-flung as Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai, Istanbul, Moscow, São Paulo and Santiago. By the time they open, Mr López expects KidZania’s parks to attract 13m visits a year – about the same number as are drawn to Disneyland annually.

Although KidZania’s beginnings may have been happenstance, the model for Mr López’s edutainment empire has evolved into a well-honed strategy. First, identify a dense urban centre where relatively prosperous young parents will pay repeatedly for their children to play safely indoors. That mostly means the expanding middle classes who live in the megalopolises of emerging markets such as Mexico. “It’s why we only have one centre in Europe; it doesn’t offer the urban density we need,” says Mr López.

Second, ensure the city is home to a slew of corporate headquarters – especially companies with large social responsibility budgets that will pay KidZania to build its branded mini-cities: as much as 40 per cent of each centre’s construction costs are met by sponsors.

That is also why entrance tickets to the Mexico City centre are boarding passes given at an American Airlines check-in counter, and why children build houses using Cemex-branded materials, call each other on mobile phones provided by Telcel and bottle fizzy drinks in a facsimile of a bottling plant. In other jurisdictions, local brands are used: Emirates is the airline in Dubai; Sony runs the Tokyo photographic studio.

To be sure, KidZania can be seen as a grim training ground for the next generation of consumers. But Mr López counters “we are only copying the real world”. Besides, he adds, children learn valuable social skills, including the value of money. “The ATM ceases being a magic machine where money miraculously appears,” he says. “Here kids learn, experientially, that you have to earn it; nobody teaches that at school.” About a third of KidZania visits in Mexico are from schools.

The fantasy has become highly elaborate. Every KidZania centre has a “government”. Children are paid in “KidZos”, which they can redeem for sweets or stash in their bank account. They are also addressed with an adult “Mr” or “Ms”, and the greeting is always “Good night”, never “Good day” because, as one teenage KidZania supervisor explains, it is at night that children’s dreams come true.

Mr López’s next step is to roll out 12 centres across the US, in conjunction with a yet to be determined strategic partner. “It’s the biggest but also the most competitive market,” he says. “You don’t get a second chance at the US.” And beyond that, an initial public offering perhaps? “Of course,” he says, with no trace of the fantastical.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011

FT: Book Review - Free Radicals

some of the biggest breakthroughs have comes from ruthless rogues

 

July 8, 2011 10:07 pm

Free Radicals

Review by Clive Cookson

Free Radicals: The Secret Anarchy of Science, by Michael Brooks, Profile, RRP£12.99, 312 pages

Fraud and data manipulation, suppression of rivals’ research, huge egos, intensive PR campaigns, drug-induced inspiration ... The world of science described by Michael Brooks is far from the image of sober, sedate rectitude long promoted by the scientific establishment.

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Free Radicals is fun to read. Brooks, a professional science writer, capers through the exploits of scores of brilliant and often ruthless rogues – some living, many long dead – who have won Nobel prizes or otherwise pushed science forward. Some of its biggest names turn out to be the dirtiest players.

Albert Einstein, whose name is synonymous with genius, crops up in several chapters – “a perfect example of the character that will produce great science and think nothing of the misdemeanours that such breakthroughs demand,” as Brooks puts it.

The author starts by reminding us of Einstein’s unappealing personal life – among other things making passes at his mistress’s daughter, breaking his promise to give all his Nobel prize money to his wife Mileva, evading tax and abandoning his schizophrenic son to die a “third-class” patient in a mental institution.

Then the book analyses the many “shady moments” in Einstein’s professional life: cherry-picking data to support his theories, appropriating advances made by others and, once he had made his name, using fame shamelessly for further self-advancement.

The equation most closely associated with Einstein, E=mc2, did not come as a surprise to those in the know when he first proposed it in 1905, Brooks claims. And Einstein failed in eight attempts to prove E=mc2 during the next 41 years, though others succeeded – yet he had appropriated the equation as his own and he dismissed attempts to set the record straight, with aggressive assertions of his “priority”.

Although Brooks denies doing his own cherry-picking by focusing on a series of celebrated scientists who blatantly cut corners and promoted their own careers, I do not accept his assertion that such behaviour runs through the whole of science. There may, indeed, be extensive low-level cheating among the scientific grassroots, as Brooks maintains, but to compare this with what happens at the top is like equating the fiddling of expenses among junior commercial staff with serious disregard for business ethics by senior executives.

All we can really conclude, if we accept the accuracy of the stories in Free Radicals, is that brilliance alone is not sufficient to shine in science, any more than in other fields. In science, just as in business, politics, sport and the arts, you also need ambition and self-promotion. It’s very rare to win honours and gain recognition if you’re spending decades quietly in the scientific wilderness.

Charm and charisma help, too. So do persistence and hard work. Honesty is more important in the more open and transparent, and I would say more moral, scientific world of today than it was in the past, though even now really clever deception can get you a long way.

Brooks believes that scientists must let their “secret anarchy” come into the open if research is to advance at the pace society needs to solve an overwhelming set of problems during the 21st century.

He is right to some extent. Scientists have been too quiet for half a century, complying with Winston Churchill’s famous observation that they “should be on tap but not on top”. They need to mobilise, agitate and kick up more of a stink on important issues, as Brooks says.

But encouraging selfish determination to succeed at any price, as exhibited by Newton, Einstein and some other great names of the past, will not help the cause of science, or society.

Clive Cookson is the FT’s science editor

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011.

FT: Entrepreneurship

 

Dropouts look to learn from Zuckerberg

By April Dembosky in San Francisco

An increase in the number of students dropping out of US universities to follow their dreams and launch start-up companies in Silicon Valley may be the latest sign of an internet bubble, according to industry experts.

Professors at MIT, Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley, three universities with a strong tradition as IT powerhouses, confirm an uptick in entrepreneurial dropouts as students seek to emulate the examples of famously successful non-graduates such as Bill Gates at Microsoft, Steve Jobs at Apple and Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook.

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About a dozen college dropouts interviewed by the Financial Times said that they knew others who had made a similar choice. All confirmed investor willingness to fund them.

“They want to see that you believe your story enough to risk everything for it,” said Julia Hu, who left MIT when she got funding to build her sleeping device company, Lark. “They don’t like to fund non-committed entrepreneurs. In that sense, it’s in their interest not to deter you when you say you are dropping out of school.”

Harj Taggar, a partner with Y Combinator, an incubator founded in 2005 that funds young entrepreneurs, said applications from students were rising. He noted that there was strong interest from angel investors who were “willing to fund these 18 and 19-year-old kids”.

Part of the reason, he said, was that it was a lot cheaper to start an internet business today than during the internet bubble of the late 1990s. Laptop computers have become less expensive and web-based companies do not have manufacturing costs. Young people without families or mortgages were also willing to live in cheap apartments, eat noodles and work long hours, he said.

“Mark Zuckerberg showed that a guy sitting in his dorm room can code a website that’s worth $100bn,” Mr Taggar said, referring to the explosive growth of Facebook. “Now others have realised, next time we hear a 19-year-old who has a smart idea, we should listen.”

As investors scramble for a stake in the frenzy of online start-ups, university students are attracting funding from venture capitalists and angel investors, and are in turn choosing, or in some cases being asked, to abandon their studies.

“The environment encourages students to leave,” said Andre Marquis, director of UC Berkeley’s entrepreneurship centre, who had three students drop out of his programme last semester alone. “In Silicon Valley, it’s almost a badge of honour to have left school for your start-up,” Ms Hu said.

“Certainly people leave when there’s not a bubble,” Mr Marquis said. “It’s just more people do when there is.”

In a culture where risk-taking and making unconventional choices are seen as necessary traits to finding the next technology trend, skipping a conventional education is often celebrated rather than shunned.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011

Why many star students are dropping out of college

By April Dembosky in San Francisco

When 19-year-old Ben Yu decided to drop out of Harvard in the middle of his freshman year to launch a price-comparison website for travel gear, his mother could not understand.

“In China, during the Cultural Revolution, she was sent to the farms when she was in elementary school,” he said. “She never had an opportunity for an education of any kind.”

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For Mr Yu, the choice to walk away from an Ivy League school was easy. “It seemed like it was unnecessarily postponing the future,” he said. “I realised there was no reason why I couldn’t pursue what I wanted to do entrepreneurially, now.”

In Silicon Valley, investors who are clamouring for a piece of the internet action are more than happy to help entrepreneurs like Mr Yu get started.

Peter Thiel, a prominent Silicon Valley investor, said the emphasis in US society on having a college degree has created “a bubble in education”, in which the professional value doesn’t match the $200,000 price tag. He is countering that by giving $100,000 each to 24 people under 20 to pursue an entrepreneurial idea in Silicon Valley instead of going to college

“We need more innovation,” he said. “There’s a tremendous cost to having the most talented people in society take on enormous debt, then take well-paying but dead-end jobs to service those loans for the next 15 to 20 years of their lives.”

Investors often prefer to have young founders at the helm of internet companies, because they grew up with the technology and are intimate with the young audiences many are targeting.

“The technology that young people use, it’s almost critical to have young people driving it,” said Andre Marquis, director of the entrepreneurship centre at the University of California at Berkeley. Three of his students dropped out last semester when they got funding to start a website that offers daily deals to students.

College dropouts and recent graduates also have ties to broad networks of other students, who have become prime targets in an increasingly tense talent war for engineers.

“I’m inclined to ask people to drop out,” said Jessica Mah, 19, founder of the money management site inDinero. Though Ms Mah was offered venture funding during her final year at UC Berkeley, she chose to graduate, in part to give herself more time to recruit her classmates. Now she is racing to hire more engineers and is offering summer internships to college students in hopes they will become employees, perhaps before they graduate.

Though small start-ups cannot offer huge salaries, they often promise a big chunk of equity. That prospect sometimes succeeds in luring students from school, as it did with several early employees at Facebook.

“If you have an opportunity to be an early employee, that’s justification to drop out,” said Aaron Levie, founder of Box, a document management company. He dropped out of the University of Southern California after billionaire Mark Cuban invested in his start-up. He now has 200 employees and says he’ll never go back to school: “God, no. I learnt so much in the process of building the company and there’s so much excitement. Receiving a B in advanced accounting wouldn’t do much more for me now.”

University officials defend the value of degrees, but acknowledge that schools struggle to provide the most relevant training to future entrepreneurs.

“Young people doing start-ups, they’ve got to juggle 20 things at a time, how to get financing, how to manage people, how to meet commitments,” said Joel Schindall, an engineering professor at MIT who believes the lack of these “soft skills” among engineers drives the talent war.

“There was not a shortage of engineers, but a shortage of the kind of engineer who can take the responsibility of doing the engineering and also follow through on the cost, getting it done on time, and making it well suited to what the customer needed,” he said.

Even if a start-up fails, the founder is not a failure, said Max Hodak, 21, who dropped out of Duke University to start an education company. The skills one learns at a start-up make any founder a desirable employee, he said. Mr Hodak was hired by another start up as was his co-founder, who also dropped out .

“People always say Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg are the exceptions,” said Mr Hodak. “The truth is, it’s way more common. You can be a dropout and not be famous, but still be really successful.”

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011.

FT: Marriage

The decline of marriage

For richer, for smarter

The traditional family is now the preserve of a minority

Jun 23rd 2011 | SEATTLE | from the print edition

MARRIAGE, and its many ups and downs, still exercises a powerful hold over newspapers, magazines and the airwaves. Nearly 23m Americans watched Prince William being joined in holy matrimony to Kate Middleton. Millions more have wallowed in the break-up of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s marriage after revelations that he fathered a son with a maid. And the tumescent tweets of congressman Anthony Weiner have stirred up endless speculation about the health of his own year-old marriage and the forbearance of his newly pregnant wife.

Less titillating are revelations about the sorry state of marriage across the United States. Data from the Census Bureau show that married couples, for the first time, now make up less than half (45%) of all households.

The iconic American family, with mom, dad and kids under one roof, is fading. In every state the numbers of unmarried couples, childless households and single-person households are growing faster than those comprised of married people with children, finds the 2010 census. The latter accounted for 43% of households in 1950; they now account for just 20%. And the trend has a potent class dimension. Traditional marriage has evolved from a near-universal rite to a luxury for the educated and affluent.

Related topics

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There barely was a marriage gap in 1960: only four percentage points separated the wedded ways of college and high-school graduates (76% versus 72%). The gap has since widened to 16 percentage points, according to the Pew Research Centre. A Census Bureau analysis released this spring found that brides are significantly more likely to have a college degree than they were in the mid-1990s.

“Marriage has become much more selective, and that’s why the divorce rate has come down,” said Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. The project found that divorce rates for couples with college degrees are only a third as high as for those with a high-school degree.

Americans with a high-school degree or less (who account for 58% of the population) tell researchers they would like to marry, but do not believe they can afford it. Instead, they raise children out of wedlock. Only 6% of children born to college-educated mothers were born outside marriage, according to the National Marriage Project. That compares with 44% of babies born to mothers whose education ended with high school.

“Less marriage means less income and more poverty,” reckons Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. She and other researchers have linked as much as half of the income inequality in America to changes in family composition: single-parent families (mostly those with a high-school degree or less) are getting poorer while married couples (with educations and dual incomes) are increasingly well-off. “This is a striking gap that is not well understood by the public,” she says.

Do not expect the Democratic Party, however, to make an issue of the marriage gap in next year’s elections. Unmarried women voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. “You don’t want to suggest to someone who isn’t married and has children that they should be married,” says Ms Sawhill. “That is a denigration of their lifestyle.”

from the print edition | United States

FT: Manufacturing, Services, Jobs, Pay, Zappos

The second, including such routine service work as care assistants and home health aids, retail sales clerks and food preparers, is less good. Pay for such jobs is roughly half that of manufacturing jobs.

Tips on jobs from Zappos for US

By Richard Florida

Published: May 3 2011 23:28 | Last updated: May 3 2011 23:28

America’s job market is barely treading water. The rate of unemployment might have dropped below 9 per cent, but jobless claims have risen in recent months. This Friday’s non-farm payroll figures are expected to show slower growth than in previous months, while the average time a worker stays unemployed is now 39 weeks – the longest on record.

Some commentators – such as Christina Romer, who formerly chaired President Barack Obama’s council of economic advisers, and economist Paul Krugman – maintain that the problem is one of demand. They note unemployment is high across many occupations, and argue for increased investment and aid to local and state governments. Others reply that the problem will fix itself as growth picks up. But a closer look suggests neither analysis is right. Yes, we face a cyclical recession, but there is a structural shift too, which has left many workers high and dry.

EDITOR’S CHOICE

Lex: US employment - May-02

Economic Outlook: US slowdown to hit jobs - May-01

Fuel prices push up US consumer spending - Mar-28

US jobless claims decline as lay-offs slow - Mar-24

US Treasury eyes $20bn profit on crisis securities - Mar-21

Lex: unproductive America - Mar-20

This process isn’t new, of course. As the US economy has evolved, its job make-up has shifted too. By the middle of the 19th century some 60 per cent of the US workforce had been absorbed into industrial jobs, but those were often low-wage, long-day, dirty and dangerous. It wasn’t until a mixture of the New Deal, labour unions and postwar prosperity that these blue-collar jobs were transformed from bad to good.

America and other advanced nations are now in the early throes of a new jobs transformation, which requires an equally imaginative response. It creates two new distinct categories of jobs. The first includes millions of the best jobs America has ever seen: high-pay, high-skill jobs in professional and creative fields. The second, including such routine service work as care assistants and home health aids, retail sales clerks and food preparers, is less good. Pay for such jobs is roughly half that of manufacturing jobs. The result is as simple as it is tragic: a bifurcation of the job market and an increasingly unequal and polarised society.

Once we see this it becomes clear that neither a counter-cyclical approach to job creation, nor ideas of educating more people for higher-paying jobs, will work. The numbers don’t add up: some 45 per cent of the workforce are already toiling in low-wage service jobs that will remain so even when growth returns. These are also the fastest-growing jobs: the US will add a projected 7m more in the coming decade.

A successful jobs strategy must, therefore, focus on upgrading this entire job category. Thankfully much service work is not vulnerable to offshoring or automation: we need humans to care for our children and ageing parents, to cut our hair and steam our lattes. But we also need to see service work as a potential source of future profit and innovation. Some private sector organisations, such as the online retailer Zappos, show how this might be done, with their focus on helping service workers move through an internal career ladder from entry ranks to managers of divisions. These companies view workers as a potential source of innovation, and build a culture and community that delivers better services to customers. Others need to learn from them.

Instead of just focusing on training to push some into higher paid work, Mr Obama should make upgrading service jobs the next step in repairing America’s broken job machine. A national initiative, bringing together “service innovators” – such as Zappos, Starbucks or outdoor clothing retailer REI – would be a good start. Most services companies are small, however, so help is also needed to partner such organisations with universities, community colleges and industry groups. The administration should also consider using tax incentives to nudge such companies to upgrade service jobs.

Some of this may mean all of us paying a little more to those who cut our hair and sell us our clothes. But this is exactly what we did a half century ago to spur recovery by paying more to the workers who make our cars and appliances and build our homes. But these costs are modest, and unlikely to derail any recovery. The payoffs, both in terms of productivity gains and an upgraded American jobs machine in which all workers are given a fair chance, would surely be worth it.

The writer is author of ‘The Great Reset’, director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and senior editor with the Atlantic

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011.

ST: Cramming for healthy grades at KTPH

Singapore

Home > Singapore > Story

May 11, 2011

Cramming for healthy grades at KTPH

Yishun hospital's foodcourt is new study hot spot

By Melissa Lin & Kon Xin Hua

The NTUC Foodfare foodcourt in Khoo Teck Puat Hospital (above) is set to be a new hot spot for students, with views of greenery and a large pond. It seats more than 300 people. -- ST PHOTO: ALPHONSUS CHERN

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WITH her attention focused on a book and her lecture notes strewn all over the table, Mangalan Bal looks just like any other student preparing for her mid-year examinations - except that her choice of location for studying is a foodcourt at the Khoo Teck Puat Hospital.

While it is not unusual to see students cramming with their books at public places during exam crunch time, the Yishun hospital is set to be a new hot spot, with its lush greenery and large pond.

Mangalan, 18, who was with friends, said: 'There is greenery, and it is rather peaceful. Compared with the public libraries that can get very noisy during peak periods, studying here is a better choice.'

The O-level private candidate, who lives in the area, said she was not bothered by the fact that hospitals treat sick people. 'I don't see patients around at all,' she said, adding that the NTUC Foodfare foodcourt is sited away from the clinics, and its patrons are usually visitors.

A Foodfare spokesman said staff have noticed more students since the foodcourt, which can seat more than 300 people, opened last year: 'The lounge chairs facing the pond seem to be a favourite.'

Other reasons cited by students - there were at least five when The Straits Times visited the foodcourt yesterday - were the close proximity of the hospital to their homes and schools, as well as overcrowding at public libraries.

'You have to be there before the library opens if you want to choose your seats, especially during the weekend. It's like the Great Singapore Sale - crowded even before the shutters are up,' said Singapore Institute of Management student Lai Pei Yin, 21, who was studying at the Subway outlet in the hospital.

She lives just a five-minute walk away, and has gone there five times since the start of this month, spending around 10 hours each time.

A supervisor at the outlet, Mr Chandra Mogan, 34, notices about five students dropping by to study daily. He usually leaves them alone, as they spend on food.

'However, during peak hours, we would give priority to customers who are there to eat,' he said, adding staff would politely ask the students to make way.

But an old favourite remains a hit.

At Changi Airport Terminal 3, Secondary 2 student Haziq Sani was with schoolmates in Basement 1 when The Straits Times visited yesterday afternoon.

According to a recent post on citizen journalism website Stomp, the open area next to the carpark is where students tend to congregate. It is away from the retail outlets, and there were few passers-by when The Straits Times visited.

Most students cited similar reasons for 'landing' at the airport - it was quiet, peaceful and air-conditioned.

A Changi Airport Group spokesman said the public was welcome to use the public areas, but the airport was not intended or designed to be a studying place.

'Our duty managers monitor the situation in the terminals closely, and auxiliary police officers will request students who inconvenience passengers or disrupt operations to leave,' he added.

Teachers said students can make use of school premises in the exam run-up.

Pasir Ris Secondary School principal Cheng Hwee Yeang encourages students to stay in school to do their revision 'because of the conducive environment and the fact that there are teachers around'.

Ngee Ann Secondary School principal Adrian Lim said a month before exams, the school would extend opening hours till 9pm to cater to those staying back.

He added that the initiative 'is quite popular, with over 50 students staying back on average during this period'.

[email protected]

[email protected]

Additional reporting by Heather Marie Lee and Ng Huiwen

ST: Top Ngee Ann Poly student gets 'blank cheque' for varsity

Singapore

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May 12, 2011

Top Ngee Ann Poly student gets 'blank cheque' for varsity

By Amelia Tan

Ms Lee, who received a bond-free scholarship, will apply to US universities, while Mr Steven got a scholarship to study at Nanyang Technological University. -- ST PHOTO: DESMOND FOO

 

NGEE Ann Polytechnic student Merissa Jane Lee knew it would be hard for her parents to afford the $150,000 tuition for a film and TV degree in the United States.

But the 19-year-old mass communication student no longer has to worry, as she has received a 'blank cheque' from the Ngee Ann Kongsi foundation, which she can use to pay tuition fees at any university she chooses.

The scholarship has no limit on the fees it can fund and does not require students to work for any particular organisation after graduation. It comes with the Ngee Ann Kongsi Gold Medal, given out each year to the poly's top student, who will also receive $10,000 in cash.

Top students in the poly are interviewed by a panel of judges, made up of the poly's senior management. To get the award, students need to have good grades and exceptional all-rounded qualities like maturity, resilience and drive.

Ms Lee, who has a Grade Point Average (GPA) of 3.83, said she had been aiming to win the medal since her first year at the poly. She added that she was 'filled with a sense of relief' when she learnt she had landed it two weeks ago.

'It really feels like a dream come true,' said Ms Lee, who hopes to pursue a career in TV and film in the US.

She is among 4,850 full-time students who will graduate from Ngee Ann Polytechnic in two weeks.

Ms Lee will apply to American colleges such as Boston University. She found she had to pursue a specialised film and TV course overseas as no universities here offer it. She was drawn to American universities but knew the fees would not be affordable to her mother, a human resource manager, and her father, a freelance horticulturist.

Mr Lourence Steven, 25, is another top graduating student who is reaping the rewards of his hard work. He failed his A levels but turned his life around when he came to the poly three years ago to study mechanical engineering. He scored a perfect GPA of 4.0 and won a scholarship to study mechanical engineering at Nanyang Technological University.

He said: 'I would like to tell other students who are not doing well to not give up. If you work hard, you can be like me and can achieve your dreams.'

FT: Teaching Empathy to Children

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/6b3fd4c8-6570-11e0-b150-00144feab49a.html#axzz1LB7t1uGX

. Others have been studying people with borderline personality disorder, who often rage against those they are closest to. They too show atypical functioning of the empathy circuit of the brain. Disturbingly, 80 per cent of those with borderline personality disorder also suffered abuse or neglect in their childhood, reminding us that while biology may predispose us to a certain level of empathy, our early environment is also a massively important risk factor and represents an opportunity for intervention.