IB vs AP: WHICH IS THE BETTER OPTION?

Both are placement programs, but take different formats and for different situations. People who take AP have a reason – probably because they are Americans. Those who take IB too have their own reasons which we will break down in this blog. The IB vs AP duel suffices mostly in the US, along with Canada, where AP is actually offered. 

IB, on the other hand, is a global program with an international outlook. That of course does not deduct the fact that AP credits are compatible with universities in over 60 countries across the world. Americans have a big decision to make, as the rest of the world embraces IB as the only & acceptable international university placement program. 

Small History of IB vs AP

IB

International Baccalaureate (IB) was established in the year 1968 by the IBO, a non-for-profit group of scholars, primarily to offer standardized international education. 

The IB Diploma, the highest level in the program, was introduced with an aim of “providing an internationally acceptable university admissions qualification suitable for the growing mobile population of young people whose parents were part of the world of diplomacy, international and multinational organizations.”

IB was initially conceived in Geneva, Switzerland, but has since spread its wings across the world, gaining global approval. The program is now practiced in over 150 countries across the world. IB is still headquartered in Geneva with the Global Center for the Americas region situated in Washington DC, the United States.

AP

The Advanced Placement (AP) program is actually considered as an exam for transitioning to university, since nothing matters in AP as the exam. 

AP traces its roots to the United States and was developed by the College Board, a non-profit organization, in the 1950s. The primary goal was to provide high school students with college-level courses and exams to demonstrate their readiness for higher education.

AP exams are conducted on a placement basis for students in grades 11 and 12, to prepare the students for college studies. Credits earned from AP in high school are sometimes forwarded to the university to alleviate credit scores.

Structure of IB

IB has four programs for learners aged 3-19. These are the Primary Years Program, the Middle Years Program, the Diploma Program, and the Career-related Program. The Diploma Program is the most common, taken up by students around the world who seek international university placement.

IB Diploma is structured into core components, subject groups, assessment, and the Creativity, Activity, and Service program (CAS).

The three subject components are the Theory of Knowledge, Extended Essay, and the Creative, Activity, and Service (CAS) project. These three are compulsory. The student is expected to deliver a TOK essay and exhibition as part of Theory of Knowledge. 

The Extended Essay is a 4000-word essay on a topic of choice. CAS, on the other hand, is a long-term project lasting from the beginning of the IB Diploma all the way to the end. While the CAS is not graded, it is a mandatory requirement for IB Diploma.

Students are also mandated to select six subjects from the various subject groups.  Internal assessment (exams) are tested on these subjects. The extended essay is also based on these subjects. It is advisable to select topic combinations with your eyes cast at the university. Pick the subjects you plan to major in for higher education.

Structure of the AP

AP is not as complex as IB. Apart from the AP Capstone project, everything else is tested at the exam. Interestingly, there is no requirement to take the AP course in order to sit for the AP exams. The important thing is to register for these exams quite early. 

AP Capstone project consists of seminar or research which have deliverables to hand in at the close of the AP exams. AP exams are done in May before the summer break. Once scores from these exams become ready, students get a chance to send them to their preferred universities for placement. Here is the exam schedule for 2024.

Criticism of the AP Program

The AP program has been here for a while, and all this time concerns have been raised regarding the quality of this program:

Emphasis on Memorization: Critics argue that AP courses often focus on memorization and test preparation, rather than fostering critical thinking, problem-solving, and deep understanding of the subject matter. The heavy reliance on multiple-choice exams can encourage rote learning.

Variable Quality: The quality of AP courses can vary significantly from school to school and even from one teacher to another. Some AP courses may be rigorous and well-taught, while others may fall short of providing a college-level experience, leading to inconsistent outcomes for students.

Focus on Test Scores: The emphasis on AP exam scores can overshadow the true purpose of education, which is to foster a love for learning and develop a well-rounded, informed individual. Critics argue that the pressure to achieve high test scores can lead to a “teach to the test” mentality.

College Credit Challenges: Despite the promise of college credit, not all colleges and universities accept AP credits, and some may only accept them for certain subjects. This can be frustrating for students who took AP courses with the expectation of receiving college credit.

Exclusivity and Elitism: Some critics contend that the AP program perpetuates elitism by creating an academic hierarchy where students who take AP courses are seen as superior to those who do not. This can lead to feelings of exclusion and inferiority among students who do not participate in the program.

Advantages of the AP over IB

Subject-Specific Focus

The AP program is known for its subject-specific approach, allowing students to dive deep into their areas of interest. This can be particularly appealing for students who have a strong passion for specific subjects or career aspirations that require in-depth knowledge in particular fields. With AP, students can select courses that align perfectly with their academic and career goals, creating a tailored educational experience.

Flexibility in Course Selection

AP offers a high degree of flexibility when it comes to choosing courses. Students can pick and choose from a wide array of subjects, often based on their interests and strengths. This flexibility allows them to create a well-rounded education while specializing in areas they are most passionate about. In contrast, the IB program has a more rigid curriculum structure, which may not provide the same level of course selection freedom.

College Credit Opportunities

One of the standout advantages of the AP program is the opportunity to earn college credit through the successful completion of AP exams. Many colleges and universities across the United States and in other countries offer credit or advanced placement to students who score well on AP exams. This not only accelerates their academic progress but can also save them both time and money in the long run. IB, while internationally recognized, may not provide the same level of college credit opportunities as AP in some regions.

Focus on Exam Performance

AP is centered around end-of-course exams, which means that students primarily need to focus on their exam performance to earn college credit or advanced placement. This format can be advantageous for students who excel in exam-based assessments and feel more comfortable with this type of evaluation. In contrast, the IB program emphasizes continuous evaluation through various components, including extended essays, projects, and presentations, which may not suit everyone’s learning style.

Well-Established in the United States

For students in the United States, the AP program is well-established and widely recognized. Many high schools offer a range of AP courses, and colleges are familiar with the rigor and content of these courses. This strong presence makes it a seamless transition for students aspiring to attend U.S. colleges and universities.

Easier Integration with Extracurricular Activities

The flexible nature of AP courses allows students to better balance their academic commitments with extracurricular activities such as sports, clubs, or part-time jobs. This can be especially beneficial for students who want to maintain a well-rounded lifestyle during high school.

Why Choose IB

Before anything else, your decision to take the IB Diploma should be aimed at getting a global university placement. This applies for students who wish to study abroad, and a global program like IB would be highly useful. 

Apart from this, IB has a myriad of other benefits:

A World of Opportunities:

The IB program offers a unique international perspective that goes beyond the boundaries of traditional education. It’s designed to equip students with a global mindset, making them well-prepared to thrive in an increasingly interconnected world. If you have a passion for exploring different cultures, languages, and global issues, IB can be an exciting choice.

A Holistic Approach:

Unlike other high school programs, IB doesn’t just focus on academic excellence. It emphasizes holistic development by requiring students to engage in Creativity, Activity, and Service (CAS) activities. This not only enriches your personal growth but also looks impressive on college applications. If you believe in the importance of well-rounded education, IB might be your ideal fit.

College and Career Advantages:

Many colleges and universities worldwide highly value the IB diploma. In addition to the advanced coursework, the program demonstrates your commitment to rigorous academics. It may even grant you college credits, allowing you to potentially graduate early or explore more advanced coursework in higher education.

I do hope that finally the IB vs AP rivalry is finally decided, and if not, you can consider reaching out. Choose your poison and do it wisely, as this is a lifetime and irreversible decision.

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Caregiver Burnout

Caregivers are faced with one major challenge – and that is emotional fatigue from attending to people they love and want to care for. Burnout is detrimental to caregiving as when interest fades the care receiver may not get the right care. 

What is a caregiver?

Former first lady Rosalynn Carter was quoted; 

“there are four kinds of people; those who have been caregivers, those that are caregivers, those who will be caregivers, and those that will need caregivers”.

Caregivers are normally volunteers who offer to help a loved one without necessarily getting paid in exchange. Essentially, caregiving is offered to people who need it, that is the elderly, disabled, the chronically ill, mothers in maternity, survivors of accidents, and seldom people with mental incapacitations. 

Some of the services offered by caregivers include preparation of meals, running errands, assistance with bathing, assistance with using the toilet, manual assistance in walking and making body movements, handling medical equipment and performing paramedical tasks, and engaging the person in chats, fun games and activities. In as much as infant children are given the same attention, it is often not counted as caregiving unless the child grows to an independent age and still requires personalized care out of the aforementioned reasons.

Caregivers are often relatives and close friends who take care of their loved ones. However, some would be employees who offer care in exchange for a wage/salary. The former are often unpaid and may go without much appreciation, killing their  morale and partly accounting to burnout. 

What causes caregiver burnout?

Caregiver burnout is an emotional experience that affects the whole physical and mental well-being, and that is the reason it affects loved ones more than those that get paid to offer care. Either way everyone is in the risk if they are exposed to these factors;

1. Overcommitment

The primary cause of caregiver burnout is overcommitment. Due to many other reasons the caregiver may drain their physical and emotional energy out of dedicating too much time and energy to offer care. Burnout comes as a result of this exhaustion along with emotional interferences caused mainly by overcommitment. Caregivers are workers too, and require frequent rests in order to offer quality care to their loved ones.

2. Huge workload and insufficient support

Too much work and less hands to support lead to overcommitment aforementioned. Some caregivers are tasked with every part of the care receiver’s life, and since they have great concern for the person they end up bearing all the responsibilities without negotiating with the care receiver and without requesting for support from other relatives and friends. If the workload is too much, there is always the option of hiring an additional hand.

3. Conflicting Obligations

Caregivers may have other commitments in their lives apart from the current role of caregiving. These are family members belonging to other families, they bear responsibilities to provide for themselves and their families, as well as take care of the person in need. Dilemmas draw so much interest from either of the two conflicting commitments. Caregivers will reduce their interests in taking care of their loved one, as they find a balance between the two conflicting commitments.

4. Lack of control over the welfare of the care receiver

Not everything is manageable, affordable, and achievable in human health. However, this is not in the minds of many caregivers. They always believe everything is in control and get frustrated when it becomes imminent that they are short-handed. Finances may lack, the deteriorating health of the care receiver may exacerbate, and the disability may be permanent to the point of no repair. Caregivers find it difficult to stomach this, and it’s the hopelessness that burns them out.

Signs of caregiver burnout

• Loss of interest in offering care, as well as in doing other things that were formerly fun for the caregiver.
• Drained energy – to offer care as well as perform other functions. The caregiver is grossly exhausted.
• Anger and irritability – pointless things irritate the caregiver. He/she may also get irritated by the care receiver, something that would rarely happen before.
• Feelings of desolateness, emptiness, hopelessness; depression. It all starts from lacking interest, and the feeling graduates to desolateness and within no time the caregiver is suffering from depression. At this point there is no return, and the remedy is giving up care for someone else.
• Imposter syndrome where the caregiver doubts their abilities, skills, and potential, and sees no impacts of their efforts.

Solutions to caregiver burnout

Reach out – Burnout is emotional more than physical, and the first responder is always someone who can assist with emotional stress. This could be a physiotherapist, counsellor, or any qualified specialist. However, in the meantime the caregiver can share with just someone; family, friends, or even the care receiver.

Establish open communication – inform the care receiver of any thoughts you reserve, make sure they understand the prevailing circumstances and seek if they have any preferences themselves. Sometimes caregivers give so much more than the receivers want. Care receivers will want to be independent, and a way can surely be worked out to alleviate demands.

Accept realities – some conditions are irreversible, a sickness may be long-term, and old age is inevitable. Caregivers should understand their capabilities, that caregiving has red lines and they have to take breaks. 

Rest and intermittent shifts – in the case where there are more family members, friends, or other potential caregivers, arrangements should be made such that an individual is not overburdened with attending to the care receiver. It is important that everyone gets to rest, and also have time for other commitments in their lives.

Alternative respite care – Respite care is short-term relief for caregivers through simple services like food delivery and a half-day stay at a nursing home. Family members and friends have always dreaded the idea of “abandoning” their loved ones in nursing homes, thus strain so much offering care at home. Respite care preempts the need for 24/7 home-based care and permanent stay at the nursing home. 

Love makes caregivers blind to the extent that the love starts to fade and anger creeps in. Caregivers ought to separate their relationship to the receiver with their responsibilities as a caregiver. Employing someone else to offer care is not very welcomed, as family members feel they are abandoning their loved ones. A holistic approach is the best approach – divide labor, include outsiders, and invoke respite care.

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The Nursing Process 101

The acronym ADPIE is perhaps the most recited in nursing school. It stands for Assessment, Diagnosis, Planning, Implementation, and Evaluation. This is the nursing process, which is defined as a systematic plan based on patient-centered and evidenced-based care, administered to a patient to attain health success.

The nursing process is fragmented into five steps as elaborated by the acronym ADPIE. Introduced into public healthcare education in 1961 as the Deliberative Nursing Process Theory by Ida Jean Orlando, the nursing process has attained international acclamation as the ultimate guide to systemic administration of healthcare. Since 1961 the process has remained intact; very simple yet so complex to eradicate any room for risks and losses.

Importance of the Nursing Process

The nursing process is a complete go-to manual for provision. It provides a framework from the onset of the patient’s visitation up to discharge.

• Acquisition of background information on the patient for purposes of treating.
• Establishment of health risks, hazards, and concerns within a patient.
• Determination of the disease mitigation discourse suitable to the patient’s needs.
• Preparation of a detailed and successful health care plan.
• Eradication of healthcare administration risks due to misinformation.
• Evaluation of patients’ progress during and after treatment.

The nursing process is both a deliberate and precautionary plan. Deliberate because it becomes the basic manual to administration of healthcare for patient success, and precautionary because it helps avoid healthcare catastrophes, and prevents the repercussions of errors, omissions, and general mistakes. Healthcare mistakes attract legal retribution that may be costly to the facility but also to the practitioner’s career. 

The Nursing Process

ADPIE

Assessment

This is the nurse’s first interaction with the patient. The remaining steps highly depend on assessment, as this stage is dedicated to acquisition of information on every aspect of the patient’s life. Some common types of information collected include: 

• Medical history of the patient’s past and currently prevailing health conditions, 
• Social information on the patient’s family and relationship with everyone else. Cultural information is also relinquished at this stage, to allow the nurse premeditated communication amidst prevailing cultural differences/similarities.
• Objective data is information acquired from the patient through interaction with the patient’s body. Nurses feel senses of sight, touch, and conduct other processes to get signs necessary for a diagnosis. It is in this stage that blood samples are taken and imaging conducted to establish a diagnosis.

Some information gathering tactics during assessment are:

• Patient interview (questions directed to a patient for them to express their feelings and give any information relevant for treatment.
• Relative interview – friends and relatives are questioned on how they observe the patient at home.
• Other sources include books and the internet.

#Information from the assessment stage should be preserved not just for treatment purposes, but because the patient has that right.

Diagnosis

The second step entails investigation into the specific illness or prevailing health concerns suffered by the patient. While the first step entails collection of data, diagnosis entails the analysis of this data. The following are some of the objectives of diagnosis;

• Analyse patient information to arrive at a conclusion, through this the nurse arrives at the illness affecting the patient.
• Detect any gaps or irregularities in the information provided by the patient. The resulting discourse would be reporting the irregular responses to the patient and relevant handler. Misinformation is fatal to the patient’s health.
• Notice any health concerns not mentioned by the patient.

Nursing diagnosis takes four forms as shown below:

• Problem-focused nursing diagnosis, whereby nursing diagnosis is targeted to the specific concern raised by the patient.
• Risk nursing diagnosis, whereby diagnosis is targeted to establish health risks.
• Health promotion nursing diagnosis focuses on maintaining the patient’s growth of well-being.
• Syndrome diagnosis incorporates predictive diagnostics and possible syndromes that may attack.

Diagnosis results in needs that require solutions in the form of interventions.

Preparation

The health care plan is developed at this stage. Other literatures have divided preparation into two; outcomes, and planning. Outcomes are the expectations anticipated by the nurse out of the healthcare plan. These are the SMART goals set by the nurse and set to be achieved through the health care plan to be prepared.

The care plan is a composite document that elaborates the interventions to be taken by the nurse to achieve the set goals for the well-being development of the patient. Registered Nurses (RN’s) are mandated with developing and supervising care plans, although some interventions may be delegated to Licensed Practical Nurses and Nurse Assistants. These plans are documented and permanently maintained so that they are followed by different nurses during shifts, ensuring a congruent and consistent healthcare administration.

Implementation

The plan in writing is now put to work, hospital staff holistically applying the healthcare plan to chip in each with their own interventions. Implementation stage is the administration of healthcare to patients using the stipulated healthcare plan. The following activities take place in the implementation stage:

• Distribution of resources for patient care. Some of these resources include supportive equipment, accommodation in the stay will be lengthy, and any other necessary health resources.
• Delegation of responsibilities. The nurse establishes the different interventions, and assigns them to different specialists.
• Communication. Every step taken by the nurse on behalf of the hospital is communicated to the patient and consent is affirmed.
• Documentation. All activities, interventions, and resources used are documented for the record.

Patients are highly monitored during the implementation, and any discordance with the intended expectations are immediately dealt with. These are risks that result from errors and omissions.

Evaluation

Finally, after the patient has been assessed, diagnosed, a plan prepared and implemented, there has to be evaluation on the progress of the patient in reaction to the various interventions used during the implementation stage. Evaluation is also another process which comprises of six steps;

1. Collection of data on the progress of the patient
2. Comparison of the collected data with the set objectives and the expected outcomes
3. Analysis of the patient’s responses to the interventions, and generally activities carried out by the staff to improve the patient’s well-being.
4. Identifying the key indicators of success or failures in the performance of the patient
5. Action on the care plan as per the results; to either halt, suspend, continue, or make adjustments to the healthcare plan, and
6. Planning for discharging the patient from one stage to another. 

And the nursing process is done, from the introduction of the patient to the nurse up to the point of discharge. One important aspect stands out, and that is the nurse-patient relationship. Communication is paramount, as it builds a trustworthy rapport between the two, with the patient exhibiting positive responses from treatment care plans.

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Mental Disorders

Depression Bipolar Anxiety Psychosis – Demystified

For the simple reason that there are uncountable mental disorders in existence, this article would go to lengths and still not manage to mention all psychological/psychiatric conditions. There are statistically about 450 recorded mental disorders, which can be grouped into major categories i.e. mood, anxiety, neurodevelopmental, post-traumatic stress, and psychotic disorders.

Mood Disorders

Majority of mental patients suffer symptoms along mood extremities and sometimes fluctuating extreme moods. Patients suffering from mood disorders will experience either extreme sadness, happiness, or a fluctuation between these two from time to time. Sadness has been commonly associated with depressive disorders, extreme happiness with manic disorders, while a fluctuation of the two becomes bipolar disorder.

Major Depressive Disorder is commonly known as Depression, with patients exhibiting extreme low interest in people, things, and activities. Common causes of MDD are family genes, serious illnesses affecting the brain, drugs and substance abuse, and degenerative personality traits such as low self-esteem, pessimism, and confinement to personal spaces. If unattended to, MDD patients risk having suicidal thoughts and taking their lives all the same.

Bipolar Disorder is a serious mental condition. Bipolar patients experience the two ends of emotions; extreme happiness (mania), and extreme sadness (depression). In most cases Bipolar patients are characterized by too much activity/reaction. Patients will exhibit abnormally high sex drive, eat excessively, become dangerously agitated, passionately rapid speech – altogether high energy in everything they do.

Even though causes of Bipolar are insufficiently studied, the condition is associated with biological peculiarities in the brains, genetics, and a host of risk factors like drug abuse, traumatic stress, and negative personality traits.

Other mood disorders are Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder associated with menstruation, and Seasonal Affective Disorder, a condition caused by fluctuating seasonal changes.

Anxiety Disorders

Two terms are prominent – worry and fear. This is the definition of anxiety, which is the experience of patients who suffer from a myriad of conditions under anxiety disorders, whether periodically or permanently.

Agoraphobia is anxiety that stems from worry/fear associated with particular terror weaknesses called phobias. There exists innumerable phobias which can be categorized to natural environments (height, darkness, confined spaces), animals, injury/blood, activities (flying, using elevators, driving), and others like drowning and public speaking. Patients with agoraphobia only experience anxiety when exposed to risk factors, and therefore have to avoid the risks as much as they can, or get treatment.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder is when individuals experience normal life anxiety about day to day activities but on an advanced scale. GAD makes life become permanently anxious where everything worries the patient. The condition is fortunately curable.

Panic Disorder subjects its patients to frequent rushes of anxiety accompanied by physiological exhibitions such as palpitation, sweating, and shortness of breath. This rush is commonly referred to as a panic attack, and is also curable.

Social Anxiety Disorder refers to increased levels of fear of interacting with others, especially new people. 

Selective Mutism is a condition associated with children where the child may have speech failures in exterior settings such as school, while communicating normally with closely related people such as family members and friends.

Anxiety disorders transcend beyond mental/emotional symptoms. Actually, it is the physiological symptoms like sweating, heart palpitations, shortness of breath, and uneasiness. Mental symptoms like panic, nightmares, and obsessive thoughts prompt the physiological anxiety episodes.

Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Some psychiatric conditions develop gradually as a person (child) grows, and have lasting impacts on the neurological composition of the person’s brain. Neurodevelopmental Disorders are often diagnosed in childhood, and the condition becomes untraceable when it progresses with the person to adulthood. Common Neurodevelopmental Disorders are Attention Deficit/Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) and Autism Special Disorder (ASD).

Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a condition of significantly increased activity exhibited by the child and subsequently in adulthood, and lessened attention to even serious events. ADHD children have academic performance deficiencies, poor relationships and low self esteem.

Autism Special Disorder (ASD) causes developmental impairments to the neural composition of the patient, particularly resulting in social interaction and communication challenges. Patient children exhibit impaired communication, reduced social interaction, and low coordination of body functions.

Psychotic Disorders

Patients are usually referred to as deranged, as they exhibit “mad” characteristics. In professional books, Psychosis covers a bunch of illnesses characterized by inter alia, hallucinations, delusions, inhibited communication, poor hygiene, incompetent decision-making, unusual walking and body movements, strange and sometimes dangerous behavior, inability to express emotion, and mood disorder symptoms such as mania or depression.

Schizophrenia is sometimes used interchangeably with Psychosis, but falls under the latter as a form of psychotic disorder. Schizophrenia and other psychotic illnesses are counted as disabilities, since affected patients cannot perform many human and other functions on their own. Medics and researchers have unsuccessfully settled on definite causes of Psychotic disorders, but common risk factors have been mentioned as genetic heritage, environmental factors, and drug abuse.

Delusion Disorder is a less severe edition of Schizophrenia. While in the latter the patient has an abnormal interpretation of reality and considered a disability in comprehension and decision making, Delusion Disorder entails formation of untrue delusions without specific formation of hallucinations. 

Psychotic illnesses at their worst break relationships, threaten the patient’s and other’s lives, and risks destruction of property – generally these people have their souls detached from their bodies such that their minds cannot implicate sound stimuli for normal body functioning.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

PTSD is a stand-alone psychiatric condition caused by extremely traumatic events such as physical attacks, terrorism, accidents, mistreatment in a phase of life, and medical experiences such as childbirth or sickness. Patients suffering from PTSD will experience guilt, fear, and uneasiness frequently. They may also have episodes of flashbacks and nightmares periodically, episodes that trigger stress. PTSD is readily diagnosable and curable by a variety of means such as behavioral therapy, medication, and physiotherapy. 

Sometimes conditions such as eating disorders, sex disorders, and substance used disorders are classified as mental disorders on their own. However, it is important to understand that these are symptoms caused by other prevailing conditions, some of which may include the above listed disorders.

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O

Globalization has turned international trade upside-down, dislocating and redefining the various aspects of production, distribution, and most catastrophically, labor. Through globalization, businesses like E-bay and Amazon realize huge sales across the world, from Africa to Asia, and Europe, while the parent company remains domiciled in the USA. 

One child of globalization is offshoring, which is defined as the relocation of fragments of a business’s functions to foreign lands with a myriad of objectives, chiefly, cheap labor and production costs in the foreign countries.

Before going further, one major seismic shift that takes the shape of offshoring is happening in the US, whereby companies that are primarily based in the US are relocating some of their functions, mostly manufacturing, to other parts of the world. Asia has been a widely preferred offshore destination for US businesses and others in Europe, while India and Philippines are worthy mentions.

In the US and several other European countries, offshoring has reportedly been catapulted by too stringent rules and institutionalization of labor. 

In the US, for instance, governments and labor unions have constantly been pushing for significant rises in the minimum wage. Furthermore, large companies have often been jeopardized by exorbitant tax obligations.

The persistent politicization of production and labor has culminated in massive layoffs and offshoring by US companies to other countries that have less strict regulations. 

Offshoring vs Outsourcing

These two are significant dynamics of labor. Outsourcing refers to the delegation of labor to an external entity on a contract basis. Outsourcing differs from offshoring in that while offshoring mandates the physical relocation of some functions of the business to foreign countries, outsourcing does not necessitate any geographical relocation of labor. Well, outsourcing may also take the form of offshoring when labor is outsourced from a different country but it does not always have to be the case. 

Moreover, while outsourcing seeks to contract the services of another company in any location, offshoring retains all functions of the business within the precincts of the parent company. It is only that more branches are created but the company remains one.

Furthermore, even if offshoring entails physical relocation, the business may as well relocate together with its workforce, such that there is no outsourcing of labor from the foreign country.

Mostly, companies offshoring to other countries usually shift functions with top officials in the management to oversee the functions even as they relocate geographically, while less essential and manual duties are done by laborers hired from the offshore country.

Offshoring may also happen hand in hand with outsourcing, as the latter is part of a business strategy devoid of any geographical barriers. 

The objectives of outsourcing are always to delegate peripheral tasks to other firms while  the business in question focuses on its primary functions. For instance, a media house may delegate printing to an external company such that the media company remains focused on its primary aim of sourcing and preparing news while other peripheral functions like printing are handled by companies that are actually specialized in those functions.

Microeconomics of Offshoring Labor

• Reduced labor costs 

One of the main reasons for offshoring is to evade high labor costs in, mostly, developed countries. Economies like the USA have always been keen to protect laborers, with collective bargaining groups continuously advocating for more to the employed. These demands are no good news to the employers, who will have to shift camp to less-developed areas with lower wage standards.

For instance, the minimum wage in the United States currently stands at $7.25 per hour. In a developing country like the Philippines, this amount is tantamount to a day’s wage. Philipinos will be delighted by a $4 minimum wage, and the company offshoring to the Philippines will have significantly reduced labor costs.

• Lower costs of raw materials 

Some companies will offshore to zones that are near sources of raw materials for production. Oil companies will take production near oil rigs, and will now not have to transport oil in its crude form but rather have refined oil piped to final distributors. Production costs are largely saved and other logistics costs as well.

Mining and agriculture companies are the most common to practice offshoring to reduce raw materials. Thus, offshoring is not exclusively aimed at seeking cheaper labor but may target other objectives such as reducing transport costs and the cost of tariff-charged imported raw materials.

• New opportunities

Offshoring business functions is more of a business adventure to register new business opportunities. New markets may open up, partners may come by, and the business may be empowered by new talent hired. 

Now let’s look at some of the disadvantages of offshoring on a microeconomics level:

• Impaired coordination: A Tower of Babel

Time zone differences, distanced geographical locations, language and cultural differences – all these surmount to a disjointed business, one that suffers the syndrome of confusion and imminent failure like the Tower of Babel. Even in the most advanced technologies, a business that is not physically together will suffer major inconveniences, as the old adage goes – out of sight out of mind.

• Quality Control Conundrum

Businesses operating through different branches, even within the same country, are encumbered by the conundrum of quality control. It becomes costly to monitor the different inputs and production procedures undertaken by branches overseas as compared to the procedure laid out by the parent business. 

• Elongated Supply Chain

Logistics is a treadmill that freaks out companies with overseas branches. As much as the production happens overseas, most of the products’ markets are domiciled in the parent country and elsewhere, and the produced commodities have to be re-imported into the parent state. Moreover, some companies will have to export raw materials from the parent country to foreign lands and then re-import the finished goods back. This is the treadmill that’s a nightmare in offshoring.

Macroeconomics of Offshoring

• Lost Jobs

By driving production to a foreign land, the company is simply protesting the employment conditions of the current state. People that’ll benefit more from offshoring are those in the offshored country, as they receive jobs formerly held by those in parent countries.

Check this article on types of unemployment for more insight on the consequences of offhsoring on the labor market.

• Savings on Production

Reduced costs of labor, reduced cost of raw materials and logistics, all of these result in less production and overhead costs. Companies make a lot of savings and realize increased profits.

• Low-cost Commodities

As the business spends more on production, the final product will cost less in the parent country. This is a delight for the consumers, who will also save more and invest in other areas.

The debate as to whether or not off-shoring is better for the economy is well polarized. However, it is settled that offshoring is advantageous to production, and firms will always seek refuge where they are set to benefit rather than where they are forced to act in the welfare of employees.

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