Evaluation, statistics and OR

Do graduates drive the UK economy?

The OECD have just published another report comparing education across member states.  The BBC are reporting on the fact that the UK doesn't do so well (again) in international comparisons.

The statistician in me quibbles over shock statements that Australia, Poland, Iceland and Finland have higher numbers of young people entering university than the UK.  These particular 4 economies are very different to the UK, with smaller populations, different social security regimes, different economic bases.  Even the geography is very different, with in each case for nearly half the year, the weather making any sort of outdoor life rather difficult (either too hot or too cold).

The learning policy person in me is rather sad that the UK is slipping down the league tables of getting young people into higher education.

However the wider pragmatist in me wonders if there aren't two particular issues here.  Firstly, with £28 billion earnings from overseas students, has Higher Education made itself seem a bit like a finishing school for foreigners?  More importantly - how do we use our graduates when we have produced them and are they any good?  Are our PhD students still heading for lives of serving at MacDonalds, sweeping the labs at GlaxoSmithKlein or driving fork lift trucks at distribution warehouses, as was once the case and the popular joke?  Or are they gainfully employed, helping British businesses to compete in the international economy?

I suspect that there is still quite extensive under utilisation (I won't say under employment as that phrase is generally banned in skills circles) of the talents of our graduates.  For every mythical one graduate one knows that got that dream job at McKinsey's, and is on mega-bucks with a company Merc at age 27, every one knows the ones that are working in sales, restaurants, recruitment agencies, call centres and warehouses, and not actively using the specific skills they learnt at University.  I hope they will be using the generic skills they learnt (problem solving, team work, researching and writing skills), though they might deny either learning those things or using them in their job.

There is nothing wrong with working in sales (we all need to buy things, and it helps if the sales person knows a thing or two), restaurants (we all like to eat out, but someone has to cook, to serve and to clean up after us), recruitment agencies, call centres (yes, they are annoying, but the 24 hour lifestyle dictates someone has to help us out with banking, insurance, computer queries etc) and warehouses (if you want to go to your local supermarket on Boxing Day, someone will have had to work Christmas to ensure there are things in store for you to buy).  However in the UK we do not value these roles, and while it is fine for someone else or someone else's children, husband or wife to do them, it is not for us.

If we took pride in some of the less glamorous occupations and stopped expecting everyone to be a brain surgeon or web designer or model or TV star, then the graduates we do have might take on jobs where they can make a difference to UK plc.  And that has got to be good for all of us.

Getting projects implemented

I review books from time to time for the Operational Research Society - it is a nice way of keeping up with new techniques and ideas in the business world and sometimes I get to read some real gems like Managing Green Issues by Tom Curtin.  The latest book I have reviewed looks at a system for managing multiple projects, in order to optimise benefit to the organisation.

Optimisation of resource, activity, profit, output - all these are standard areas of OR and management concern and some of the classic OR techniques have arisen from the desire to optimise.  Linear programming and integer programming are good examples of this - I remember struggling for hours with working out the Simplex Algorithm by hand as a student in preparation for exams!  Similarly I remember one of my earliest OR assignments was to look at allocation of IT staff to IT projects at British Gas Northern using integer programming (an elegant solution but not taken up by the client, as it was a bit too Black Box).

Similarly, identification of waste and prioritisation of mission critical (to use a horrid management term) work has long been the Holy Grail of business improvement strategies.  I was involved in a Zero Based Budgeting exercise at British Gas - again I don't think anything changed from the project, other than I made some new friends, learnt a new technique - personal wins rather than benefits to the business.  That project had a top level sponsor as well, but it was cumbersome and expensive.

The project portfolio management methodology was heavy on acronyms, advocated a special team responsible only to the top level sponsor, but with powers to determine which projects would be undertaken and how much resource they would receive to be implemented.  At the age of merely 43 I shouldn't be overtaken by a wave of cynicism when I read about such techniques.  All I could imagine while reading the book, was the spoiling tactics that could be used by colleagues unwilling to change, the challenges to the project team posed by senior managers who were not the project sponsor and an overwhelming vision of Dilbert cartoons about cubicle workers!

In building a solution for a client, I have learnt that it is important that the client is fully with you, keen to find something that will make a difference and that the client's colleagues and partners are willing to sign up to.  Without hearts and minds, even the project that will make your organisation number 1 in its field, will not be implemented.