The concept of Higher Education implies that education that goes beyond the norm. This entire phrase is at best a misnomer, if not a complete myth for at least two reasons:
Education is not synonymous with learning or knowledge, both of which are implied by the phrase ‘Higher Education”. The term ‘education’ encompasses the processes, institutions, programming, and intent of learning. According to some Pulitzer-winning historian and educator with whom neither of us is likely to be acquainted, Lawrence Cremin, “Education is the deliberate, systematic, and sustained effort to transmit, provoke or acquire knowledge, values, attitudes, skills or sensibilities as well as any learning that results from the effort.” Without getting too far into semantics and definitions, we can all acknowledge the subtle distinction between “education” and “learning” — it’s the greater emphasis on systemic, intentional acquisition and transmission part, which inherently must prioritize organization over the acquisition of knowledge and the obedience of sustained transmission over continued, pure learning.
Most of us don’t agree on the distinction between ‘higher’ education and… lower. In fact, no one even uses the phrase ‘Lower Education’ because it immediately places less value on earlier education. I don’t think many of us would agree that college is more important than elementary school.
I'll admit this is going to be a semantic argument, but if we want to change the culture we have to change the way that we talk about it. For this reason, I’ll do something I rarely do and prescribe something: I advocate that we stop talking about higher education I think we need to rename it based on the values we aspire to.
Higher learning ain’t Higher Education
The rationale for education is suspiciously multipronged. Our educational institutions are asked to do a great many things: deal with meritocracy, and social mobility/stability, instill civic virtues, manage freedoms, and create economic efficiencies. That’s a fucking lot of things for one set of institutions to do, and none of these things are centered on learning for the sake of learning. I’d hesitate to call modern universities institutions of learning. Sure, you’re gonna learn things, but that’s not the purpose. The purpose is to learn specific and useful things to be programmed into a specific and useful member of society.
Programming is nothing new, though. Education has never really been about higher learning, inquiry, or acquisition of knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Plato’s Academy was specified to train Philosopher Kings to exert explicit control over a dynamic system. Martin Luther was interested in educational reform to allow freedom from religion and potential dictatorship. The founding fathers of the US wanted to create citizens to make a natural aristocracy or meritocracy for democratic leadership and civic virtue. Then later, we needed to create people who would crank out the industrial revolution. Now, with the birth of AI and large-scale digital social networks, what do we need? Education is inherently about order and control, and if we understand that it is a Leviathan, regardless of who’s writing the curriculum, we can at least discuss what we want, and for whom, for when, why, and how we should deliver it.
Education isn’t going anywhere, but maybe we should stop pretending that it’s about learning - unless we want to create people who want to learn. You know, the kind of shit Socrates was supposedly about? Every time we revisit education, we have an opportunity to find our ideal and work towards it. Wouldn’t creating learners for the sake of learning be the penultimate progressive ideal?
Higher vs. Lower
Like it or not, we’re progressing into complex territory. You can’t put some of these genies back in the bottle. This muddies the water and makes formerly sequential things seem side-by-side. Time itself might not be linear, for fucks sake. So, we need to talk about dichotomous terms like “Higher” which implies that there is a lower, and along with, a value emphasis. In our society, many of us are re-evaluating what we thought we cared about, and what is important. Most people wouldn’t find the top of the pyramid to be of greater value than the bottom, or a final domino in a series to be higher or more advanced than the first. Now, before you go thinking I’m a total relativist, let me say that in learning, there are requisite steps. You’re going to have a hard time learning differential equations if you never understood algebra, so learning can be sequential.
While this is true, learning can also be lateral, cumulative, staccato, sparse, ubiquitous, localized, or broad, depending on the domain and aim (or lack thereof). We’re digging deep on a lot of things, but it appears to me that we might all be reaching a similar ore in our respective fields - one that won’t yield to the boring tools we’ve been using so far. There are places for sequential/advanced/higher, but I’d argue we might think about what other kinds of descriptors we need for a future society.
Do we want to think about things in terms of higher or lower and if we want to be educated what do we want to educate people about? And if so, do we need everything to be divided into higher and lower? Is the emphasis on education or learning? Is it goal-directed or freeflow? Whether we start naming things diversified learning, targeted study, curious exploration, or creative pursuit, it might be time to start stepping away from “Higher Education” to better define what we want to gain from education.
I mean, Higher Ed is so 20th century. We’re already 23 years into a new one, isn’t it time we start talking like it?
I have never learnt something new from institutes, rather than through self experimentation. Lately i have also been feeling that Higher education complexifies things and tries to decorate shit, when things can be explained in much simpler terms.
And it sorta becomes an ego boost for people involved in the system to climb this ladder.
Eventually you learn to carve your own path.
Our education benefits not us but those big corporations who hire us as slaves. The 'higher' the education the worse the slavery.