If there is a sector of human activity that requires a fundamental rethinking of its way of working and its role in society, it is certainly education. Starting with higher education.
At a time when, more than any other time in history, knowledge has become an essential requirement of democracy and employment, the exponential growth in discoveries and the increasingly rapid obsolescence of technologies and practices are transforming the transmission requirements of knowledge, while new technologies are pushing its boundaries: book, then newspaper, radio, after that television, today the Internet and tomorrow the MOOCs dictate this evolution, which has called, calls and will call into question more and more, the role of teachers.
Today, there is no option but to admit that it is also necessary to call into question the role of diplomas.
For centuries the knowledge acquired at university remained valid across the life-course. This is not the case today.
Admittedly, the initial acquisition of knowledge remains a fundamental necessity, and illiteracy along with the lack of mastery of basic knowledge on the part of a significant number of young people, in all countries, need to be tackled more vigorously than ever. But it must also be recognized that knowledge, as assimilated as it might be, is hit by an accelerating process of obsolescence: knowledge acquired in medicine, engineering or business schools, at all universities, are now out of date less than five years after graduation. Nevertheless, these diplomas continue to create access to professions and social positions without, all too often, the universities and schools that awarded them being necessarily concerned about updating them. Apart from in certain very special professions, in the fields of health or security.
To compensate for these weaknesses, we are witnessing everywhere the proliferation of commercial companies, the so-called « lifelong learning » companies, with sometimes questionable credentials, whose trainings are usually not controlled or validated by anyone. Hence diplomas are increasingly brought into disrepute, and we see the growth of the importance of “on the job” skills training through work-activities. Hence recruiters are increasingly attaching greater importance to curriculum vitae than to degrees.
There is therefore an urgent need for the universities, if they do not want to disappear one day from the higher and vocational education landscape, to attend fully to this task of life-long learning, by ensuring its proper progression themselves. There is also an urgent need for companies to obtain from universities that a working life may constitute the equivalent of a degree, by linking the exercise of certain functions in the company to the corresponding acquisition of academic skills. There is an urgent need, finally, for the State to lead them on this path, by only giving university diplomas but a temporary validity, to remain verifiable at regular intervals.
This should also lead to a reduction of the duration of initial studies as it is already the case when they are spiced with training periods in businesses. It should lead, in particular, to the real control of the educational value of these apprenticeships; and to ensure that industry and academia enhance dialogue so that all jobs can provide a real opportunity to learn. That is to say this should finally result in the training obtained through work or e-learning be validated by a university certificate.
In the end, everyone should have an electronic CV containing all of this information, with a reference to the certification bodies accrediting the sincerity of the skills listed. Companies would then recruit not by looking for a graduate from any particular school, but for someone who has specific and focused competencies, which online resumes could help to identify easily. This would drastically reduce the cost of higher education and would cause students to have a much more modular approach of their training that they should think for their whole life.
In France, the reform that has only just begun of vocational training could provide an opportunity to do so. But it will still be necessary to have the courage to tackle the many strongholds: the commercial companies of lifelong learning, that want to hold on to the monopoly on their markets. Alumni associations who want to preserve the situation of rent of their members, even if these students have abandoned all attempts after a postgraduate degree lasting for or five years.The universities that are shamelessly closed five or six months out of every year. And many more…
j@attali.com