Opinion: IT Trends to Lure Investment in Schools

In the Jakarta Post, one of the founders of the UN ICT Task Force writes a four-point opinion about how educators can lure investment into schools. His focus is issues of digital divide in Indonesia.

It's pretty interesting. His first point aptly notes that as advanced markets are being filled, the remaining task for IT businesses is to start tapping the developing market, e.g., producing low-cost computers for the poor. Second, wireless technology also allows broadband Internet access to communities that previously lacked access. Thirdly, as international aid agencies are looking to invest in ICT, they're going to want to partner with local ICT organizations--which will then hopefully invest their resources into their developing communities. Lastly--and perhaps the most debatable--is that the education sector is the place where all the aspects of ICT come together: IT infrastructure, telecom, and software to serve students.

Because of the author's last tenable assertion that the education sector is where "it's all at," the implication is that the education sector has to realize the first three trends and then create an environment where all the parties involved will converge upon investing in the education sector. I don't know if that's ever going to fly--I'll claim that business interests in developing economies can't handle the long-term horizons for investments in education, unless the government intervenes and creates the proper incentives.