Where Will Next Generation of Scientists (NGS) Come From?

Answer can be found from the global survey of math, science and reading abilities conducted by OECD (h/t: @dangraur) and is consistent with the forecasts homolog.us blog made a year ago (check Our Vision for Biology of 21st Century, A Chart to Back our Forecast for 21st Century and A Real-life Example of Our Forecast for 21st Century).

More details are available from the OECD press release:

The survey reveals several features of the best education systems. Top performers, notably in Asia, place great emphasis on selecting and training teachers, encourage them to work together and prioritise investment in teacher quality, not classroom sizes. They also set clear targets and give teachers autonomy in the classroom to achieve them.

Children whose parents have high expectations perform better: they tend to try harder, have more confidence in their own ability and are more motivated to learn.

What should a biology/bioinformatics-student do with these information? Our suggestion from 2012 still looks useful.

Instead of being all negative, we also like to make some constructive suggestions to young students. If there is one thing homolog.us blog would recommend to young biology students, that is to learn Chinese and translate a biology paper to Chinese. It is far more important language to learn at this point of your career than C, C++ or Java.