Collusion or conspiracy

Employability is actually just the tip of an unintended iceberg. When we start worrying too much about whether our graduates can get jobs, we miss the point of education. Instead, by looking almost exclusively at the needs of industry (however you may define that) we naturally start asking what it is that this industry really wants as far as qualified workers. It's a reasonable, but dangerous question.

Quality has long been defined as the fulfilling of requirements; high quality the fulfilling of expectations as well. By stressing the need to know industry's needs, companies start getting involved -- deeply involved -- in schools. They start exercising influence on the schooling process and consequently -- and perhaps inadvertently (I wouldn't want to accuse anyone unjustly) -- they drive education out of the schools. There is simply no room left for it. Two questions immediately arise: do they know what they want? And, what are they willing to do to get it?

To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure they know what they want. I've been in enough meetings and at enough conferences on the subject to know that their requirements are anything but clearly defined and articulated: students should be "skilled", be capable of "teamwork", they should have sound math knowledge (in engineering related disciplines), they should be able to communicate. That all sounds very nice, but what does it mean? It sounds a lot like the three R's (reading writing, 'rithmetic) to me. Isn't that what we have been doing all along? Apparently not, so what's the consequence?

As sports is the first and easiest ways into education institutions of all varieties, we've seen it already. They come bearing gifts: stadiums, sponsorships, specific equipment or facilities. And what they bring along with these are commercial interests, consumerism, advertising, and, of course, guilt: what often looks like a donation is really a down payment.

I'm not saying that legitimate business doesn't have its own interests, nor that these interests are bad. What I am saying, however, is that these interests are private interests, not public interests. We have long passed the time when we erroneously believed that what is good for GM is good for the country. We should have learned that private interests in public education is really a conflict of interests.