Education for Employment’s Sake

When education becomes the means to an end

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

When I was still an undergraduate, an emotive Israeli lecturer of mine, now turned friend and colleague, told me what it meant to study a PhD.

“If you study a PhD in search of jobs or opportunities, you’re going to have a bad time.” He remarked to what was a promising cohort of final semester students. “More than anything my years spent as a PhD candidate taught me how to think, it changed the way I perceive the world and interact in it.”

Back then the professors’ words seemed to have little impact on me. I hadn’t intended to continue with formal study, although intuitively I knew I would not put the skills I learned to waste as so many graduates seemed to do upon leaving university and entering the routine world of work. Here, increasing specialization of jobs, competitive environments, and monotony of tasks to be done attached to a fortnightly wage and your means of survival leaves little space for continued learning.

Few co-workers I have encountered in such environments have been willing to engage in meaningful conversations that extend beyond the scope of organization objectives, politics or relations. Upon entering this world, it quickly dawned on me that our society doesn’t care much for personal education past a formal piece of paper…