The Outsourcing Threat Is: a) Big b) Small c) Both

D'Aveni: This process may be more difficult for service industries than for manufacturing, where an auto worker could be redeployed to make higher-end equipment. Tax accountants can't be retrained in three months or four months, as a factory worker can. They have to put in years of school and apprenticeship to develop the expertise needed for a higher-value-added position.

Rosemary Batt: Things don't look very promising either at the low-wage end of the workforce. Although we've supposedly been creating this knowledge economy, about 40 percent of U.S. workers are in low-wage service and sales. Historically, the thinking has been that the way to get wages up was through enhanced productivity, which has been difficult to achieve in services. Now, lo and behold, we have new technologies . . . that would seem to offer the promise of increased productivity and good office jobs, as, for example, in call centers. The problem is these technology-enabled jobs can be eliminated at the drop of a hat. There are no leverage points to raise wages. The minute a unionization effort gets under way, management will close up shop and move.

Rynes: A piece of conventional wisdom for some time has been that the more skills and education one has, the more likely one will be to escape the negative effects of globalization. In view of the increased offshoring of technical and white-collar jobs, is this still the case? What career advice would you give to workers and to students?

Cappelli: The idea that a college degree protects you is very much a traditional notion in the U.S. economy and the U.S. workforce. It was true into the 1980s, but it's absolutely not true now. . . . Another traditional notion that has now gone by the wayside is that developed nations would lose low-skill jobs through globalization and would be left with high-skill jobs. That is not true, either, which makes it very difficult to give career advice to people, particularly if they're concerned about having a stable, secure job.

Thomas Kochan: I agree that some jobs requiring advanced education are at risk, but I think it would be a mistake to stray from the notion that we should encourage education. What we should be trying to foster is the right mix of strong technical skills and communication skills. We've created too many people who have kind of generic MBAs.

Rynes: Ouch!

Rajan: If flexibility contributes to job security, I'm not sure that the MBA is the worst form of education. It does prepare you to change jobs, if necessary, and gives you general skills that may be useful if your career is not going anywhere.

Cappelli: Clearly, it makes sense for the economy as a whole to invest more in education. But for individual workers, more education doesn't necessarily provide protection, and it's not evident what type of education would do so. This is a difficult notion for some people to grasp. The idea that getting a computer-science degree might not necessarily provide much job protection seems to stand traditional notions and values on their head.

Rynes: Is there enough urgency about offshoring?

D'Aveni: There is plenty of urgency right now, but it's politically motivated and not attentive enough to the larger change destined to take place in the world economy. We are going to see the relative role and power of the United States diminish over the long term as a result of the rise of China and India, even if that development doesn't reduce our standard of living. . . .

Batt: The problems we have been addressing . . . are not unique to the United States or even to the developed world. India, the Philippines and South Africa . . . are concerned about preventing jobs from being outsourced down the line to lower bidders. The overarching international challenge is how to keep wages at the low end from falling in a perpetual race to the bottom.

Rynes: When Richard [D'Aveni] commented that the public discourse about offshoring has been too politically motivated and too narrowly focused, I thought I heard a collective "yes" from the panel. What is it going to take to get informed discussion out of Washington about the big issues that have been raised in the past 10 minutes, such as our role in globalization or our relationship to other countries?

Kochan: Ultimately, I think, the pressure is going to come from our kids. . . . I expect this group will be the vanguard for reform in this country, because they are well educated and are going to be frustrated by their inability to achieve their parents' standard of living and by the number of hours it takes to earn a decent living. Our job is to have the ideas ready, because they're going to demand change, and the ideas will not come from Washington or from the current labor force.