Hello together

just yesterday I was complaining to a friend about how the value of education is being eroded. Today I stumbled upon the following ted-talk which some of you might already be familiar with:

(Ken Robinson just mentions the subject briefly but I still wanted to post this great talk)


What are your thoughts and how does the value of the education one gets fares in other countries?

I can only speak of Germany for this is where I actually went through high school and the university. Here a university education has become ubiquitous. In the 50^th hardly 50% percent of young people completed the Abitur (an equivalent to high school). Today the numbers are much higher. With that more people are actually entitled to enter the university and they seldom forgo that chance. What is more there are institutions like universities of applied sciences where a diploma is much easier to attain. A bachelor’s degree has become mandatory to do jobs which a decade ago only required an apprenticeship.


Right now I can not really say whether this development is good or bad.

What I observe is that smart people who successfully went to college are often forced into positions they are clearly overqualified for – most of them are not really happy about it. To them their job inadvertently becomes just a means of earning money and not a means to develop and fulfill themselves.

We are becoming smarter but at the same time we also outsource most of the thinking to computers -  where does that leave us?