Endgame of Education?

Fellow travellers on the Jubilee line in London may recall an ad campaign for a university last year. The ad read, “Think Different, Think Employability, Think xxx University”.

The ad set me thinking.

While considering a university degree if you are thinking employability are you really thinking different?

I believe better copy for the ad would have been, “Think Different, Think Value Creation”.

After you have got your university degree you think of a job, self-employment or entrepreneurship and in today’s world all three require the ability to create value.

To thrive in the 21^st century you need to become “Creative Creators” (a term coined by Friedman and Mandelbaum in their book ‘That Used to be Us’) and cultivate the ability to do, what Seth Godin calls, ‘remarkable’ work.

What was even more fascinating to me about the ad was a university implying that the endgame of education is employment, or what we can call ‘Learning to Earn’.

We really need to question this. Why earn, Why earn, Y-earn, till we ‘Yearn to Learn’!

One of the main objectives of a good university should be fostering a yearning to learn, all life long.

Building character, encouraging ethical behaviour, enabling and empowering a person to pursue a life of meaning and purpose - with passion and compassion and encouraging joyous living are the other raison d’etre for education. Or so I believe.