| Tony Blair says UK must invest in ''human capital'' |
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British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said that the UK must invest in its "human capital" if it was to survive the cutthroat competition in the global arena.
Speaking at the official opening of Central Sussex College, which was formed in August by the merger of Crawley College and Haywards Heath College, Mr. Blair said that the UK was in a "race to keep up" with India and China as far as the number of skilled workers was concerned.
"Countries cannot succeed unless they develop their own human capital. I was in China and India recently, and what was interesting was that these countries, which we think of as cheap-labour, low wage countries, are now moving into highly skilled areas," Mr. Blair told students who were leaning to be plumbers. He pointed out to the fact that China was churning out 600,000 science and computer graduates every year and that this figure was more than that of all European Union nations put together. "Wherever you are in the world today, education and training in schools is going to be the future," he stressed.
Mr. Blair unveiled a plaque to mark the occasion and said that Central Sussex College was the symbol of what the government was trying to achieve in the higher education sphere. "There's a big investment that we are putting in but we have to keep it going. The world is moving on at great speed," Blair commented.
The Central Sussex College has more than 1,000 staff and 18,000 full and part-time students is investing around £30 million towards the development of vocational services. The college already has centers for care studies, construction and retail and is in the process of adding engineering and cultural industries centers.
Posted
on : Sun, 16 Oct 2005 00:35 GMT | General News
By : Pippa Fielding
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