It's bitter but reality is that the so called thing called "market" value people as factors of production, in spite of the embellishment of storytelling of how much a company cares about people.

The capital a person invested in education is translated to a return per hour that usually is not even sufficient to buy the product you're contributing to produce.

I see corporate education is going to erode the "execution" side of people - last majority : you gotta perform. As well, for there is a "commoditification" of labour (see the "free hustles" of the millenials, who'll need to market themselves in spare time to find the next gig, competing with people living in other parts of the world where life cost is a tenth : result, who has monetary power can gain even more, who has not will tend to become poorer or see own private time blurring with working time).

However, I want to believe university is still valuable, in terms of forging problem solving - but that could be not much in the areas of data, IT, digital things.

While remain true for sciences that are not cannibalised yet by corporate certificates.

In Europe the situation is a bit different than US : University is much cheaper.

But still job markets tends to pay very very low.

In Italy, it is a disaster, for researchers in Uni are paid between 1200 - 1500 €/mo.

Very different than Germany and Netherlands, where one can still make a life.

So I will value anyway higher education, also because it is a space where one can develop critical thinking and is encouraged in doing so.

Online education is filling a need (also mine) however I see a risk that people will need to pack getting skills to sell in the shortest amount of time, and thinking (time to think, that unvaluable necessary precious time you need to embrace complexity) is less and less valued in job market.

So certificates can get you a job to execute, or refine areas, but not a domain knowledge. University could be valuable in organising a pathways of different competences.

At the end, the fundamental question is:

what is human capital ?

is education and freedom of thinking truly valuable ?

Or at the end the price of working time determines the how much individual freedom and creative thinking is worthy ?

I believe that how much people get paid determines the value of uni, to the point of putting a serious threat on education and people find more convenient paying a corporation to navigate uncertainty and increase changes to sell own time.

So to improve education, we also need to be vocal against too asymmetric payscale distribution at companies, that approximate (unfortunately, if no other factors are pulled into the equation to negotiate life) the value of human beings.

Great article, Juliet.