Commentary: We Teach Them How To Pass. Do We Teach Them How To Live?

Universities are remarkably good at preparing students for assessments. They are much less consistent at preparing them for the rest of adult life. Beyond campus, graduates need to manage personal finances, healthcare, professional relationships, digital disinformation, and long-term life priorities. A first-class degree offers no guarantee of these in real life.

The ancient Greek idea of paideia offers a useful contrast. It is an educational model focused on the formation of the whole person rather than simply producing subject specialists. Its primary objective was forming discerning citizens capable of public contribution. It treats education as personal formation rather than vocational certification.

Modern institutions have lost some of this breadth as education has become increasingly modular, with tightly specified units and end-of-unit assessments. Much of academic life involves designing assessments, ensuring consistency in marking and meeting pastoral requirements. We teach students program-related topics, and it makes sense. Society needs engineers, surgeons, nurses and accountants.

SKILLS NO SYLLABUS TEACHES 

Financial management and knowing how to judge information are basic requirements of modern adult life.Also, all of us face difficult conversations and personal setbacks. We somehow assume that students will acquire skills somewhere and somehow. Just as a bodybuilder lacking mobility struggles with functional movement, a hyper-specialised graduate can struggle outside the boundaries of their syllabus. Technical expertise is valuable, but it does not necessarily teach someone how to manage a difficult relationship or cope when circumstances change.

Generative AI makes this imbalance more obvious. When universities cease to be the places where knowledge is primarily accessed and distributed, the traditional lecture-and-exam model becomes less distinctive. While rigorous domain expertise remains vital, the easy availability of information raises a more basic question. What should universities offer that information alone cannot? As algorithmic tools make information increasingly easy to access, curricula need to place greater emphasis on judgment, ethical reasoning, and applying knowledge to unfamiliar situations among others. These are capabilities that become more important when AI can produce answers on-demand.

Much of the discussion about higher education focuses on employability. This focus is understandable. People invest significant amounts of time and money in a degree and in return, they want to improve job prospects. Students are understandably concerned about employment, but higher education should also help them think about the kind of lives they want to lead.

PREPARING FOR LIFE, NOT JUST A JOB 

People often say that the mission of higher education is to prepare students for the workplace. It is sensible though to think of the greater responsibility as preparing individuals for the lives they will lead and not simply the jobs they will hold. That was the spirit of paideia centuries ago. It may be exactly what universities need to rediscover today.

The traditional university model was built around a relatively simple journey. The assumption has been that a degree leads to a job followed by a career. That model is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. If education is about preparing people for life, it cannot simply end at graduation. Universities need to make it easier for people to return, learn and rethink their careers as their circumstances change. Instead of seeing education as something delivered mainly at the beginning of adulthood, they need to see it as a relationship that can continue throughout a person’s career. This means developing more flexible forms of provision, making it easier for graduates and professionals to return for shorter periods of learning, and creating programs that respond to changing needs rather than assuming that learning happens in one concentrated period.

Executive cohorts and returning mature learners now constitute an increasingly important group in higher education. According to the World Economic Forum, 59% of the global workforce will require reskilling by 2030, with nearly 40% of core skills facing obsolescence over the next five years. The challenge for universities is unlearning and having the courage to question assumptions they have carried for years.

A SHARED RESPONSIBILITY 

There are, however, some obvious obstacles. Quality assurance processes, accreditation requirements, and standardised marking can make this difficult. An exam can readily test whether a student understands a theoretical framework. Assessing their understanding of life skills is much harder as these capabilities are more difficult to define. We should start thinking of a transition though and all stakeholders should play a role in this.

Universities cannot make this transition alone. University leaders need to give academics room to teach beyond disciplinary knowledge. Curriculum teams should also ask whether every reading is necessary, or whether some of that time could be used for practical learning and discussion. Quality assurance teams and professional and accreditation bodies should allow greater flexibility in how these capabilities are developed recognizing that not everything of educational value can be captured through a conventional exam or rubric. Students have a role too. A degree is more than a qualification to be purchased in exchange for better job prospects. Employers and professional organisations can also help universities understand what graduates need as workplaces change. Policymakers should also give universities enough freedom to try different approaches.

Universities will always need to teach technical knowledge and prepare people for employment. That is part of their purpose, but it cannot be the whole purpose. Our graduates will not spend their lives only as employees. They will also be parents, partners, friends, citizens, consumers and, at times, people dealing with failure, uncertainty and difficult choices. We cannot assume that someone else will teach them how to navigate these parts of life. If universities are among the few places where we bring together knowledge and personal development at scale, then we need to ask a simple question. If not universities, who else?

Soheil Davari is Director of Accreditations at the University of Bath’s School of Management in the United Kingdom. Oksana Gerwe is Director of MBA Health at the UK’s UCL Global Business School for Health.

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