Youth and entrepreneurship, what role does education play?
By Dahoud Mouhamdy
In the mid-19th century, society in England shifted from a predominantly agrarian and craft society to an industrial one, marking a historic event for humanity: the industrial revolution. At that time, many areas of higher education were to follow the spiral of mass production, standardisation and normalisation. Cambridge was a witness to this shift, it was essentially focused on mathematics until the 19th century and the study of this subject was compulsory to obtain a degree. After the industrial revolution the prestigious university agreed to supply the market and therefore standardised certain courses by abandoning one of these obligations.
At the beginning of this historical revolution, it was economically marked by a supply inferior to the demand. As time went by, the two market indicators reversed and this had an impact on competition and therefore on business failure and unemployment.
Indeed, the age of first employment has increased due to the lengthening of schooling but also due to the difficulties in finding a job quickly after leaving school. It rose from 17.3 years to 20 years between girls born in the 1950s and those born in the 1980s, and for boys, from 16.8 years to 19.6 years.
These years will mark the decline of the industrial revolution and the birth of a digital revolution. In 1971, the events that led to the birth of the internet began, 10 years later Steve Jobs launched the Apple II personal computer and it was exactly at this time that personalisation began to be made up by its industrial predecessor. Indeed this personalization will be wanted by everyone as if the world is fed up with standardization and wanted a margin of freedom which social networks will offer a few years after the beginning of this digital revolution which is in full expansion in 2022, we talk about crypto, NFT a virtual world, iot and ia. But what impact on education?
It is noted that education is trying to make efforts to adapt. But the half-baked episode of the universities is the neglect of the notion of time and the weak personalization of the training. A generation can no longer accept to stay 18 years on the sidelines to get a degree in order to find a job when this generation already masters the tools to create its own job without ever being on the sidelines.
However, the role of education is the creation and transmission of knowledge and I think that the root of the problems of education today is that it cannot keep up with the pace that has become measured by 5G and fiber optics and not by module and subject to validate.
The youth lost between the two worlds are perplexed, they know that their essors are in the entrepreneurship and wanting at the same time to respect the heritage of the oldest humanity. So who will adapt to whom, question and challenge that will be answered in the years to come, HarverdX and Coursera are indeed attempts to answer this question.
