BID2WIN Software in the News
BID2WIN Software Vice President Dave Todaro Speaks at Technology Summit
Published: September 20, 2007
Union Leader
MANCHESTER – Arguing that education is an investment rather than an expense, inventor Dean Kamen made an impassioned case for higher education yesterday in a luncheon speech at the Tech North event in the Radisson-Center of New Hampshire.
“If this country gives up the idea that everybody—everybody—should have the highest possible education required so we can globally stay No. 1, we've lost it,” Kamen said.
“If you start with the premise that education is enormously valuable... we shouldn't be arguing about who should pay for it, we should be arguing how to get as much of it as possible into every body that we have,” he said.
“We've got to find a better model to make it fair, to get the near-term cash flow problem out of the problem of 17 year-old-kids,” he said.
Addressing the affordability issue with some universities priced at $40,000 a year or more for tuition, room and board, Kamen suggested a “radical approach” of getting investors to fund students in return for a promise of repayment later in the form of a percentage of their increased future earnings based on the difference between their post-university education wages and the average wages of workers without a college education.
“Let's change the debate,” he said.
Kamen also called on the University of New Hampshire to expand its presence in the Manchester Millyard with more engineering and technology programs.
“We need more technology faculty, more students engaged in becoming engineers and scientists that are within the Millyard and certainly within the very local reach of Manchester, so that all the companies here have a bigger, better pool of talent to grow,” Kamen told the New Hampshire Union Leader following a question-and-answer period. Kamen is founder and president of DEKA Research and Development, which is celebrating its 25th year this year.
About 100 attended the luncheon which also featured guest speakers Mark Huddleston, president of the University of New Hampshire and Dave Todaro, chairman of the Software Association of New Hampshire.
DEKA hired 65 engineers this year, Kamen said, but Todaro said New Hampshire high-tech companies, including his own BID2WIN Software, are struggling to find the talent they need.
Todaro said enrollment in computer science programs at UNH has fallen more than 50 percent from 2001 to 2007. Students, and parents, seem to have gotten an incorrect message that there aren't jobs in high-tech.
“We need to get the word out that there are in fact technical jobs. There are more and more technical jobs being created every day,” Todaro said.
The day-long Tech North event also featured a job fair, break-out sessions and Barcamp. In the old armory, employers as diverse as broadcaster Clear Channel, which organized the job fair, GN US Inc., a maker of wireless headsets, and defense contractor Insight Technologies of Londonderry sought to make connections with future employees.
Insight, for example, currently has openings in engineering, quality, and other areas such as contracts administration.
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