Reasons Why Higher Education Needs to be Disrupted!!!

On the surface, universities are a nice idea!! You go in, pick a subject you like, learn from the experts, and leave being job- and future-ready.

 That's why so many people (around 40 percent in rich countries) want to go to college, even though if it means making major financial and personal sacrifices. And just because it's done by so many people doesn't automatically mean it's a positive thing.

No clear alternative to universities has yet emerged, and while there’s no clear path to disrupting higher education, there are pain points which those of us in the education field and beyond could be confronting. At some point a viable alternative will likely emerge and I see the reasons that make the case for demanding something different:

Employers need skills, not just knowledge or titles:

The industrialized world is experiencing an unprecedented job boom. There has never been a better time in history to find work — this should no doubt be cause for celebration. However, there is still a significant mismatch between the jobs people want and those that are actually available. For example, the current U.S. unemployment rate is just 3.6%, yet there are 7.4 million job openings. Why? First, some of those jobs are unappealing to “overqualified” graduates, which is why Walmart is offering up to $108K to truck drivers, and still has vacancies. Second, some jobs require a different skillset than what job seekers offer, which is why 60% of organizations can’t find qualified cybersecurity analysts, for example. Third, while the number of college graduates keeps rising, there is a general questioning of how university qualifications translate to work, with a growing number of employers expressing reservations about graduates’ job-readiness and potential to add immediate value to the workplace. For example, employers often complain that even when graduates come with stellar academic credentials they will probably not have learned what they need to learn to be able to do their job.

Students are paying more and more to get less and less:

Other than healthcare, nothing has risen as much as the cost of higher education, which in the U.S. has increased some 200% in the past 20 years (145% above the inflation rate). Actually, there is one thing that has risen far more: student debt, increased 600%, reaching an all-time-high of $1.4 trillion in America (higher than credit card debt and higher than car financing debt). Believe it or not, some people have managed to accumulate $1 million in student debt. To be sure, there’s still an ROI to most college degrees, and you are generally better off having one than not having one. 

Students have unrealistic expectations (understandably) about college:

Irrespective of their global ranking, all universities market themselves as an engine of growth, employability, and success, and a college education is still a promise to upgrade someone’s talent. Understandably, this produces high expectations, but it is just not feasible to fulfill them at scale. Not everyone can be a leader, a CEO, a manager, or a highly sought-after knowledge worker. By any objective measure, we’ve come a long way in the past 100 years, transitioning from monotonous assembly lines and routine jobs to flexible and meaningful careers and “the start-up of you.” But let’s not forget that it is just not possible to give everyone their dream job. If our career aspirations surpass the available opportunities, and our self-perceived talents exceed our actual talents, we are surely destined to be miserable at work, and perhaps this explains the prevalence of low employee engagement ratings despite more and more money being devoted to giving employees a consumer-like experience.

Instead of boosting meritocracy, universities reinforce inequality:

The value-add of a university degree is inversely related to a student’s socio-economic status, as most top college graduates would have enjoyed high levels of career success anyway because of their initial wealth, privilege, and contacts. This is what makes the recent college admissions scandal in the U.S. so ironic: the people who could afford to pay such high bribes were the ones who needed to do this the least – their wealth, privilege, and contacts virtually guaranteed that they would land in a good place in life regardless of whether or where they attended college.

At the same time, universities tend to increase rather than decrease inequality. As research reports have noted, rich people are not just more likely to buy a more expensive education, but also to marry equally rich and educated people, which in turn will produce more affluent and privileged offspring. And as Anthony Jack noted in a recent book, even when elite universities focus on enrolling minorities, they tend to prioritize what he calls the “privileged poor,” such as Black or Hispanic people from higher socio-economic status. The fundamental question we see is this: If a university claims to be a top educational institution, shouldn’t it admit the people with the lowest test scores, and turn them into the leader of tomorrow (as opposed to admitting the people with the highest income and test scores, who would probably rule the world tomorrow regardless of those three or four years in college)?

In short, there is much that we need to rethink about the current model of higher education. Tomorrow belongs to the companies and individuals who are approaching education in parallel with work, with continuous loops of learning. Success in the future won’t be defined by a degree, but by potential and the ability to learn, apply, and adapt.

Education should not be sold for personal gains..