I had a conversation with a friend recently where we considered the importance of higher education from the perspective of our parent’s generation and from ours. The point here is that it became fairly clear that for people growing up in the early post WW2 years, higher education was the difference between a good living within a given social strata and a real opportunity for social/economic mobility.
But why? I suspect that the reason is because our education system is simply another part of an industrial assembly line, and this is what begs the questions of - does this education system still apply and is it appropriate for our post-industrial society?
So, lets take a step back. Public education systems came into being shortly after the industrial revolution began in the UK around the 17 hundred and something, and something. It did not come into being out of the good graces of the industrial capitalists classes. Rather, and this is an oversimplification, it became evident that an industrial society required a new breed of person with a level of proficiency in various aspects of a practical education, in order to prepare them for operating, fixing, maintaining and designing mechanical equipment and systems of work that were conducive of higher production outputs.
This is a typical story that most of us know. That is technology drives social and moral change. Evidence of the assembly line mentality is seen in the manner that we educate children. For instance, we put a group of children (male and female), determined by age, despite that fact the girls tend to develop intellectually at an earlier and at a different rate to boys, into school and then we educate them for many years. They all come out the other end with a base level of knowledge and skills, which is quantifiable. This allows us to sort them easily into a work context depending on the vocation that we need more of or they are best suited to (a good recent example is Australia, during the mining boom was in desperate need for engineers, so more were churned out). To be clear, I am not proposing that people don't have a choice, and that they are coerced into being part of the machine. No, the levers that are pulled are more subtle at times. Another example of this that we may look at was Obama’s transformation of two public schools in two of the poorest neighbourhoods in Chicago into military schools. This of course makes it more likely that by the time children finish their education, they will enlist to serve their country, and we could wonder whether this kind of transformation would occur in 2 schools in the richest neighbourhoods. But this is a discussion for another day.
Anyway, this is a long way of saying that, at one point in the not too distant past, if you wanted a job, a higher education degree would guarantee that. Enter the commoditisation of education. By making degrees paid for, we slowly started to see a shift away from academic performance as the condition for staying in the education process, and towards systems that permitted academic mediocrity as long as you can continue to pay. So by letting education become a commodity (and the graduates by extension), the markets that spring up around it create a supply and demand situation that ultimately drives the value of each degree down, resulting in academic inflation. So, what you would needed a bachelor degree for, you would have to have a masters, and what you needed a masters degree for, you would have to have a Phd.
Now we can see sets of graduates, with the same level of qualification, but with wildly different abilities and skills, leaving the exceptional with the mediocre all lumped into one category of professional.
This is one point to keep in mind. What is the real value of a higher degree, given that their practical intent is to make a person hireable and socially mobile?
The other thing to consider is the cost of a higher degree. They currently leave you with a sizeable debt (albeit in a low interest lone), unless you are lucky enough to be able to afford to pay for it outright. Further, keeping in mind that fee structure deregulation is more or less inevitable, the cost is only going to up.
Finally, there is the opportunity cost. That is, during the time that the person is getting their degree, they could be out making lots and lots of money. Now this element would not ordinarily factor into my analysis, if were we living in a different time (maybe 20 years ago), because the opportunity cost would amount to the sum total of the wages of a casual worker, trades person, or an unskilled worker, multiplied by the number of years of the average university degree. But in this day and age, its a different game altogether.
In an industrial society, the majority of the workforce operates within certain industries that generate the most value for a given country (e.g. manufacturing in china). These industries, have traditionally had relatively high cost of entry, that is they require a large amount of capital. Capital, not being easy to come by, creates a situation where the few that have it, also end up owning the means to produce. That is the tools that generate value. Things are changing in this regard too. Industries that are generating tremendous value, are those that are in the digital world. Games companies, youtube and other forms of online entertainment, apps, etc. And what are the means of production? They are a lap top, a camera, a set of lights and a good internet connection. These are all relatively cheap when compared to the investment required to create a mining company. A fantastic example of this is Maker Studios. They are a Youtube production company that sold to Disney for $450 million and will receive another $450 million if they meet certain financial targets within a given time frame. I could name the classics like Facebook, twitter and so on. And to bring it back, what part did university play in the development of these companies? Not much I would argue.
So what do these companies have in common? Well, for starters they are providing content by simply establishing a platform for actual content creators (you and me) to help attract viewership and patronage. This is worth a tremendous amount and it is sending the message that we each have value to contribute in a freelance way, without having to go through the traditional gatekeepers of the entertainment industry. That is, you and I are more or less free to own the means of production of value.
The education that our children need to be successful in the future that we are creating, appears to be less and less, the education that they will be given in a higher learning institution. It seems that true success will come down to the motivation that they have to self learn, to be creative and to be confident that they have something to contribute to society.
Yes, the gate keepers will need to be appeased for some time to come, but like what we are seeing with the music industry’s loss of control over what we hear and how we hear it, I believe we are likely to see a similar trend in most creative industries.
Thank you very much for reading, I will catch you again soon.
-Rod Peredo - SOCM Services
Watch the video to this post at: https://youtu.be/Uk80mMz4IWE
