By Erik Sass
TES Editor
It was surprising to hear this critique delivered by professors in a university lecture hall to attentive undergraduates, to say the least. Universities are failing systemically and poised to undergo the kind of massive disruption through digital technology that has already upended first print and then broadcast media, and is now burrowing into targets as varied as banking, manufacturing, and hospitality. That was the substance of the conversation at the Free Market Road Show’s conference at Belgrade’s University of Economics on April 10, 2019 – and it was all the more striking that it was academics issuing the warning.
Universities have undoubtedly contributed to progress in the past, according to Ivan Jovetic, president of Montenegro’s RCTG broadcast media organization and a professor of business at Montenegro’s University of Donja Gorica, who reminded the audience that “universities liberated Europe from the grip of the Church.” Now, however, “In general they’re stuck, they’re waiting to be disrupted like any other sector.”
Jovetic took particular issue with the high proportion of university graduates who don’t possess any employable skills: “I don’t think universities gave appropriate skills to young people to succeed on the labor market.” Even universities offering supposedly more saleable degrees in areas like business are “hyper-specializing,” according to Jovetic, with classes often mired in backwards-looking case studies. To counter this trend, Jovetic explained that UDG is moving towards a model that encourages students to launch start-ups while they’re still in school: “Universities must create an environment that enables students to start companies… [and] require from each one of us to create jobs.” Acknowledging it might not be a politically correct point of view, Jovetic warned: “Universities must start viewing students as a products, not as clients. If you’re the client you can demand whatever you want. That approach, the student as a client, delivers unemployment.”
In a withering aside Jovetic also took a double dig at universities and politics: “I blame universities for unemployment and for politicians. I don’t know any [politicians] that failed from university. Many of them finished universities. If we don’t have any good politicians, universities must [share the blame].”
These points were echoed by Federico Fernandez, a senior fellow with the Austrian Economics Center: “Universities are in many ways failing. It’s difficult to find capable people to work in companies.” On that note he pointed out that many talented individuals never even make it to university, yet are still managing to find high-powered jobs in innovative industries: “There are a lot of talented people who are not going in the traditional channels… In Silicon Valley many companies are not (requiring) university degrees to work there anymore.” Innovators are actively encouraging the trend: “For example Peter Thiel, the technology tycoon, has launched a fund where he invites young people who want to start a startup to skip or postpone university education.”
Fellow panelist Chris Lingle, a professor of economics at Guatemala’s University Francisco Marroquín, went even further: “This is heretical from a professor, but formal education is neither necessary or sufficient for the economic success of an individual or a country.” On the negative side of the ledger he pointed to Cuba, which “has the highest literacy rate in Latin America, but there are no jobs. It’s a propaganda idea that the state must provide [higher] education because education is necessary for economic growth.”
More promising – both in terms of democratizing higher education and breaking the grip of the ideological left on institutions of higher learning – is the spread of online courses, according to Fernandez: “There’s all that talent that we can reach now, and we can reach them via channels that are not traditional, and they don’t have the certain deadweight that traditional channels have. We can do it basically for free.” The implications for widening ideological diversity are especially promising: “Why do classic liberals have think tanks? Because it’s very difficult for us to access the traditional system of education. But that is changing, and it’s changing dramatically.”
The result could be a revolution in education and training practically without precedent in the modern era, although Fernandez acknowledged that the important question of accreditation remains: “What we are about to witness soon is a total change in the way we acquire skills and knowledge. Once we have a way for the market to accredit the knowledge you get online, the change will be complete, and I think it will be a cultural happening comparable to the invention of the printing press.”
