Three Cheers,Ireland ranks higher on The Economist's IT Competitiveness index

[patslatt]

Amid the economic gloom,this is good news: Ireland has moved up to 11th place from 15th out of 66 countries in the 2008 index of IT industry competitiveness compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit. EIU Media Directory

Key conclusions of the study are that investment in broadband is critical as more services come to be provided over the internet,coupled with improvement in the quality of technical training. It will also be important to encourage students to study mathematics and science.

As for the latter point,Ireland needs urgently to proceed with proposed reform of the Leaving Cert points system to encourage enrollment in honours maths and science.

As a small country,Ireland can be proud to rank higher than much bigger countries like France and Russia. However,we should have something to learn from small Scandinavian countries,all of which ranked higher than us,probably because of their heavy investment in education at all levels.

In this regard,proposals by the Green Party to freeze registration fees of Irish universities and prevent the restoration of fees could lead to the terminal decline of university standards in all departments,making Irish degrees worthless internationally.

[toughbutfair]

The people on this site don't do good news. They'll continue the thread by pointing out all that is wrong.

[Tiernanator]

It is good news. I don't know how many directors of companies makes decisions on reports like this but if I was a managing director of a company looking to set up in Ireland then I would find this very heartening. You are so right about education and economic growth. You cannot have one without the other imo.