How can we get students to think about the topic of human capital?
I ask them, what is the most valuable resource in the world?
Oil, water, air?
“People” is usually a tentative answer, indicating uncertainty about the resource’s meaning.
Resources Produces goods and servicesperson, or Human capital I can fully understand that.
I ask for examples. This is always interesting. High school students are immersed in the college application frenzy and convinced that “declaring a major” signals confidence in their future academic plans. Outside of fields like Engineering, Computer Science, International Relations, and Psychology, students rarely have exposure to the vast array of tasks that exist within their future fields of study.
Then, here are some examples: Deep sea welders are scuba specialists who spend about two hours a day welding pipes and equipment hundreds of feet under the ocean. Radiation oncologists spend a lot of time building relationships with their patients over the course of their treatment, consulting closely with surgeons and various other medical professionals while examining scans, blood tests, and other data. Iceberg movers are experts in offshore navigation who work closely with oil companies and environmental agencies, using technology to monitor icebergs and towing them with ships and tugboats to secure offshore infrastructure. Pet food inspectors use their five senses to work closely with nutritionists and product developers to ensure recipe quality, taste, texture, consistency, spoilage, and overall mouthfeel. I enjoy this ever-changing part of the presentation as I introduce images of workers in unusual environments.
In reality, most of us will spend more than 100,000 hours in our lifetimes exchanging valuable human capital for income in a nonlinear continuum of jobs, likely both within and across fields, and only some of us will develop expertise in any given work domain. The concept of scarcity Thinking about human capital at the individual level helps students relate the concept to the macro level of a country’s factors of production.
Forever presented as land, labor, and capital, with entrepreneurship added in recent decades. Factors of Production These are the foundations of understanding economics. Humans (not governments) decide how to combine these factors of production into goods and services in response to the changing needs and desires of individuals and groups. A scarce resource – the labor force – of a world population of 8.25 billion people provides the physical and intellectual labor that produces those goods and services.
Here I would like to revisit the profound wonderfulness of living in a free and responsible society where our tastes and preferences differ. The ability to choose among so many options is as important in work as the ability to choose products that satisfy our needs and desires in everyday life. Moreover, related to our personal choices, is the ability to pursue the direction of our community and country’s choices and to elect representatives who make decisions about the use of scarce resources. I remind my students that this stage of life, which for most people includes college and their first job (they come from the elite high school where I teach), is temporary. Some will get their degree, while others will leave before getting their degree and start their first “real” job. They will face many professional and personal decisions in their lives that will affect their career trajectory.
The next assignment is to lead students on a brief guided tour. BLS WebsiteI told my students, Occupational Outlook Handbook For at least three jobs, gather information such as the level of education required, average salary, and projected growth rate. Also, ask them to list five or six specific jobs within broad career categories, including jobs they may have never heard of or imagined before. The site has a wealth of regularly updated data that is more interesting to young people than they could have ever imagined before their daily classes.
Related but quite different factors of production require separate teaching days. EntrepreneurshipI’ll share that soon.
Alice Temnick is an IB Economics Lecturer at the United Nations International School in New York City.
