Publish at March 19 2025 Updated March 19 2025
If you're lost in the desert, thirsty, and have a gold coin, and a traveler offers to exchange it for a liter of water. You'll probably accept. But what's your gold coin worth right now? Almost nothing. Its value, however high in other contexts, collapses in the face of your vital need to survive.
This example illustrates a fundamental truth: the value of an object depends on its usefulness in a given context. In this day and age, with influencers, athletes and other web-entrepreneurs earning money without having studied, education seems to be losing its value in the eyes of many people. Why is this? Because it no longer meets their needs, supplanted by alternatives such as the Internet or artificial intelligence (AI). Let's try to answer the following question: how can education demonstrate and increase its perceived value in this changing world?
Relative value is a concept that remains difficult for some people to grasp. Take the example of the gold coin in the desert: in a market society, it symbolizes wealth; in a desert, it becomes a mere scrap of metal, unable to meet the immediate need for survival. As another example, the value of a natural area can be perceived differently: for an ecologist, it lies in its biodiversity; for a farmer, in its capacity to produce crops.
What is valuable to one human being is not necessarily so to another, who has different habits and customs. Value is therefore subjective and contextual. It depends on needs, priorities and circumstances.
Let's apply this to education. If certain groups or individuals attribute little value to school, it may be because they feel it doesn't meet their immediate needs or aspirations. But is this really the case? And what if this perception is based on a misunderstanding of what education can really deliver?
Let's distinguish between value and price, two often confused but fundamentally different notions. Price is an objective measure, expressed in monetary terms. Price reflects what an object or service costs on a given market.
Value, on the other hand, is subjective and contextual, determined by the utility or benefit that an individual or society derives from it.
For example, a gold coin has a fixed price on the market, but its value becomes zero in the desert when faced with a vital need for water. Similarly, the price of an education may be high, but its value depends on what it actually brings: skills, intellectual emancipation or a better future.
This distinction helps us to understand why some people devalue school, perceiving its price as high in relation to the value they attribute to it in their personal context. It's also clear that not all diplomas are of equal value, as their usefulness differs.
Historically, school has been a vehicle for fundamental values:
It aims to equip individuals with the intellectual, social and ethical tools they need to flourish and contribute to society. But these values, while ideal, are not universal. They are influenced by the socio-cultural context in which schools operate. For example, in some countries, education may be oriented towards conservative values, privileging tradition or religion, while in others it emphasizes innovation and critical thinking.
The actors who finance schools also play a role. When the state or private companies invest in education, they often direct priorities towards specific objectives. Many education systems today emphasize STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) to meet the needs of the job market, sometimes to the detriment of an education that until recently was perceived as more humanistic, focusing on the arts, philosophy or civic education.
Take the example of Finland, often cited as a model: its education system emphasizes student well-being and collaborative learning, reflecting an egalitarian vision of society. Conversely, in countries like the United States, the pressure to produce immediately employable graduates can reduce education to mere professional preparation.
In a globalized world, this diversity raises a question: are school values universal or fragmented? And above all, how can they remain relevant in the face of such varied expectations?
If schools and teachers are losing their value in the eyes of some, it's often because they are perceived as disconnected from real needs. The criticisms are numerous: curricula deemed too rigid, a lack of preparation for professional life, an inability to adapt to technological upheaval.
Against this backdrop, the Internet and AI appear to be attractive alternatives. With virtually unlimited access to knowledge, free online courses and personalized learning tools, why bother with a classroom or a teacher?
Yet these alternatives have their limits. The Internet, while immensely rich, is an unstructured space where misinformation thrives. AI, for its part, can provide quick answers, but it lacks the ability to guide, inspire or create human connection, all of which are essential to learning.
We must also bear in mind that self-directed learning requires a discipline and maturity that few possess, especially among the young. This hasn't stopped concepts such as the Personal MBA from flourishing: the Personal MBA (PMBA) concept, as presented on https://personalmba.com/, is an alternative approach to traditional business education, in particular to the expensive MBA (Master of Business Administration) programs offered by business schools. Created by Josh Kaufman, the Personal MBA is based on the idea that it is possible to master the fundamentals of business without formal academic training, by focusing on self-education through reading key books, practice and concrete application of concepts.
At the same time, teachers are experiencing an erosion of their social status. Once respected authority figures, they are increasingly criticized, even devalued, in a world where technology seems capable of replacing them. But this devaluation is dangerous. For while education is also acquired outside school, through experience, travel and interaction, school remains a unique space for structuring knowledge, developing critical thinking and forging social links.
To restore value to education, schools, teachers and universities need to adapt to today's needs while preserving their fundamentals.
The value of education, like that of any object or idea, depends on what it brings to a given context.
Its devaluation is a wake-up call. It can also be seen as an opportunity. Faced with competition from the Internet and AI, schools, teachers and universities must demonstrate their relevance by adapting to contemporary needs, while recalling their unique role: structuring knowledge, forging citizens and creating human ties.
Education remains an essential pillar for building an enlightened future, but it must reinvent itself to demonstrate this. The question is: how can we contribute to restoring the value of education?
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