With an increasing demand for highly skilled workers, this nation will

Question :
The following appeared as part of an editorial in a campus newspaper:

“With an increasing demand for highly skilled workers, this nation will soon face a serious labor shortage. New positions in technical and professional occupations are increasing rapidly, while at the same time the total labor force is growing slowly. Moreover, the government is proposing to cut funds for aid to education in the near future.”

Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion, be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.

Answer :
In the passage above author intends to say that there is a increase in the demand for highly skilled workers like in technical and professional positions while the over all demand is growing slowly. Also as govermenet is proposing to cut funds for education we may see further impact on the labour market. Authors line of reasoning can be questioned.

Firstly , the author intends to suggests that if the goverment cuts its spending on educational aids we could see a shortfall in the number of highly skilled workers. In this , author is forgetting that in the current world, most educational universities run like cooperate houses who have less depend on the goverments and more on the external fund sources like alumni and charity grants. If we look at MIT or Stanford or Yale , we would see that these universities are totally independent in nature and have a commitment to produce highly skilled workers in various fields of science and businesses.

Secondly, even though the overall labour force is growing slowly , we could find ourselves in a position where the highly skilled workers from abroad are attracted towards the nation and asked to provide their expertise in the fields. This could easily fill out positions in academia or cooperate houses. Also it will increase the diversity in our colleges and offices which will provide new learning and networking opportunities to the students and as well as the working professionals.

However if the author provides arguments stating that the demand for highly skilled workers can't be meet from the local as well as international market , we could see a serious labour shortage. Also if author provide another argument in the technical and professional occupations which states that the industry that requires these workers is heavy dependent on goverment support and aid, we could believe the autors line of thought.