Education should better serve social needs: MIT president

Education should provide the workforce with necessary skills to serve future social needs in a globalized world, said Susan Hockfield, president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on Wednesday.

"Education is very important as what we demand of our workers is changing more quickly than ever before," Susan said at the ongoing 2012 Summer Davos Forum held in Tianjin.

"One of the important directions of education is to preserve the traditional in-person educational model, as we are just on the tipping point of new-style online education." Susan noted.

"Big corporations invest billions of dollars to train and retrain employees but that doesn't work for small and medium enterprises, which we all know are responsible for jobs creation," she added.

The online education will provide a good opportunity for employees to acquire new skills to meet challenges, she emphasized.

Susan also stressed the importance of bringing the needs of industry, market place closer to education, so that the talents the universities are delivering can better suit social needs in this changing globalized world.

Earlier when taking questions from Xinhuanet on the sideline of the forum, Hockfield hailed China is doing an incredible job in focusing on education and innovation, adding that technology is playing a critical role in its transformation.

"Education prepares people with content but also with ambition to innovate," she added.

When asked how to foster talents with creative minds, she said that inspiring creativity has a lot to do with the environment but also with potential, "When people sense there is an opportunity to innovate, then there is creative space; they will pick it up."

She said that during her various visits to Chinese universities, the students there have impressed her with their intelligence, with their ambition and also with their creative potential.

The three-day forum, themed "Creating the Future Economy", has attracted some 2,000 participants from 86 countries and regions.