Over the past months I have noticed a new trend among forward thinking governments.
Massive investment in education as a tool to increase their advantage in the world economy.
The trend is on supporting education, and countries are lining up and investing in education to insure they are poised to take advantage of the future.
Read this excerpt from Value Driven in FORTUNE.
“We’ve known for a long time that this day was coming, and now it’s here: Countries are finally realizing that their future prosperity depends not on natural resources or even on financial capital, but on human capital. Companies have been battling for years to attract and keep the best people. Now countries are engaging in the same fight”
Read the entire article here: The battle for brainpower.
For years the USA, Europe and Japan had the money, universities and jobs that attracted talent, and paid for it.
These countries are filled with national and imported global talent, and the benefits can be measured in dollars and cents, Gross National Product, number of patents, and technological leadership.
Things are changing.
What happens when this imported talent stays home?
The ability to attract or retain top talent in a country will result in more patents, more and better processes and products.
The overall increase in education in a country plus the import of talented people, will provide huge economic benefits to a country.
Future economic growth, it’s not about cheap labor anymore.
Lee Iwan Accumulated Experience 
I agree: Education leads to innovation which leads to productivity which leads t a higher standard of living.
See:
[…] Educating the workforce = strategic advantage? Yesterday I mentioned the move toward global government investment in education as a means to assume leadership status and to remain competitive in the future. Link […]
Cheap labor is only as good as the skills the laborers bring to the job.
In South Carolina, we are the offshore workforce for Germany (BMW, LSP, and others), and our local institutions in the Upstate are providing funds thorugh grants for training to raise skills of the existing workforce. We offer both basic skills (reading comprehension,math and writing) as well as apprenticeships for advanced manufacturing.
http://tomorrowsjobskillstoday.wordpress.com
This is something that Finland (where I live) realised years ago, and you can really see in their whole culture the high value they place in education.
As people above have mentioned, cheap labour is only as good as the value they add.
Much has been made of offshoring US jobs overseas – not that it isn’t a big issue for our workers – but if you think it, over the long term as the economies of those other countries gain steam, their workers will start buying our goods and services, and those countries will take over some of the responsibility of driving global prosperity.
You’re exactly right about education – the countries and cultures that value education will be the prosperous ones; the ones that don’t will fall by the wayside. In fact you could argue that the US decline is directly linked to our faltering educational system.