In Search of a Definition of Failed Higher Education

Universities once helped humanity move beyond the rule of divine authority. Today, universities must help people learn not to become slaves to their own instincts.

When do we know that a system of higher education has succeeded?

We often answer this question through familiar measures: graduation rates, grades, employment rates, salaries, university rankings, research publications, or how well graduates meet the needs of the labor market. These indicators are useful. They tell us something about whether an institution is functioning effectively.

But they do not answer the deeper question.

What kind of human being does higher education produce?

A university may produce graduates with excellent academic records, impressive technical skills, and highly competitive salaries. Yet if those graduates cannot govern their own desires, cannot use power responsibly, cannot distinguish between having something and being someone, and cannot continue learning when the world changes, can we really say that education has succeeded?

This question becomes even more important when we consider the historical role of the university.

In medieval Europe, universities did not simply emerge as institutions created in opposition to the Church. Many early universities were deeply connected to religious institutions and authorities. Yet across the longer history of intellectual life, universities became part of a much broader transformation in which knowledge increasingly came to be pursued through observation, reasoning, inquiry, research, dialogue, verification, and evidence.

The important shift was not simply from religion to secularism. It was a deeper shift in how human beings approached knowledge.

Instead of asking only, “Who said this?”, people increasingly learned to ask, “Is this true?”

Instead of asking only, “What am I supposed to believe?”, they increasingly learned to ask, “How can I know?”

This transformation gave human beings greater responsibility for the production and evaluation of knowledge. It helped society move toward a world in which authority alone could no longer be the final answer to every question.

But there is an uncomfortable truth.

Escaping external authority does not automatically make a person free.

A person can move beyond religious authority and still become a slave to political power. A person can reject political oppression and become controlled by money. Another may escape money only to become addicted to status, fame, technology, ideology, social approval, or personal desire.

In other words, after taking off the chains of divine authority, human beings still need to check how many other chains they are carrying in their pockets.

Among the deepest of these are three: sexuality, tyranny, and possession.

Sexuality is a natural part of being human. Desire itself is not the problem. The problem begins when desire takes control of a person's judgment and turns another human being into an object.

A university therefore should not merely teach students biological knowledge or social rules. It should help young adults develop communication skills, emotional regulation, boundaries, consent, respect, responsibility, and the ability to observe their own desires.

A mature person is not someone who has no desire.

A mature person is someone who has desire but does not allow desire to determine who they are or how they treat another person.

The second chain is tyranny.

Tyranny is often associated with dictators, governments, or political regimes. But the desire to dominate can appear anywhere there is a relationship between people: in a family, a classroom, a university, a company, or a community.

Power itself is not necessarily bad. Leadership requires power. Organizations require authority. Parents have authority over children. Managers have authority over employees. Professors have authority in the classroom.

The question is what happens when someone possesses power and begins to believe that other people's dignity, autonomy, or voice no longer matters.

This is why higher education must teach more than subject knowledge. Students need the skills to collaborate, listen, negotiate, resolve conflict, make decisions, work with differences, and build trust.

They also need multidimensional and holistic thinking.

A decision should not be judged only by whether it produces a short term benefit. Students should learn to see multiple perspectives, long term consequences, individual and collective effects, and the interests of people who may not have the power to speak for themselves.

The third chain is possession.

Human beings naturally want to have things. We want financial security, a home, professional recognition, degrees, titles, reputation, influence, and success. None of these desires is inherently wrong.

The danger begins when having becomes the measure of being.

When money becomes the measure of human worth, people become numbers. When a degree becomes the measure of intelligence, learning becomes secondary to credentials. When a title becomes the measure of dignity, people begin to pursue positions rather than purpose.

And this is where education must help people recognize ethical boundaries.

A doctor earns money by using professional expertise to treat patients. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. But the ethical boundary is crossed when a doctor begins to see a patient's suffering primarily as a source of revenue.

A funeral business must make money to survive. Yet there is something deeply troubling if death itself becomes viewed primarily as a sales opportunity.

A real estate professional may understand that some buyers believe certain house orientations are unfavorable. Understanding cultural beliefs is part of understanding the market. But there is a moral difference between serving a customer's preferences and deliberately exploiting fear or ignorance, buying a house cheaply because of that belief and then reselling it at a much higher price to someone who does not share it.

The deeper question is always the same:

Where is the boundary between creating value and exploiting another person's vulnerability?

This is where we encounter an uncomfortable truth: knowing one's profession does not necessarily mean knowing the limits of one's profession.

Something can be legal and still raise ethical questions. Something can be profitable and still diminish human dignity.

This is precisely why higher education must teach people not only how to work, but also how to govern themselves while working.

The graduate of the future needs communication skills, collaboration, problem solving, technological competence, emotional management, decision making, adaptability, the ability to work with differences, self awareness, self regulation, and a sense of responsibility.

Most importantly, graduates need to develop a mindset of lifelong learning.

The world will continue to change. Technologies will change. Artificial intelligence will change the workplace. Professions will disappear, transform, and emerge. Knowledge that is valuable today may become outdated tomorrow.

Therefore, the goal of education cannot simply be to make students know enough.

It must prepare them to keep learning.

The most valuable mindset a graduate can carry into the world may be surprisingly simple:

I may not know.
I may be wrong.
I can learn from others.
I can change my mind when I understand more.
I can begin again.

In a world where technology can increasingly provide answers instantly, the human value of education lies even more in the ability to ask meaningful questions, understand context, see multiple dimensions of a problem, connect different areas of knowledge, and take responsibility for the consequences of one's decisions.

And this brings us to the ultimate purpose of freeing ourselves from these three chains.

Self mastery is not an invitation to live as an isolated individual.

It is the foundation for building society.

When a person is no longer controlled by sexual desire, relationships can be built on respect, responsibility, and love rather than possession.

When a person is no longer controlled by the desire to dominate, power can become leadership, cooperation, and service rather than coercion.

When a person is no longer controlled by possession, wealth can become a means of creating and sharing value rather than the ultimate measure of human worth.

At that point, an educated person does not merely work within society.

They become capable of actively building society.

A doctor sees a person in pain, not merely a case file.

An entrepreneur sees customers as human beings with needs and dignity, not merely revenue figures.

A manager sees employees as people with dreams, limitations, families, experiences, and aspirations, not simply resources to be optimized.

And this transformation ultimately appears not only in consciousness but also in language.

Instead of seeing people merely as “human resources,” we begin to see them as human beings.

Instead of seeing customers simply as “customers,” we recognize that they are people placing their trust in us.

Instead of asking only about “cost,” we begin to ask who is paying the real price.

Instead of thinking only about “market share,” we begin to think about the community affected by our decisions.

Language does not merely reflect how we think. It also reveals whether we see another person as a human being or merely as a means to an end.

Perhaps that is one of the deepest achievements education can produce:

a human being who knows how to see the human being in another.

A successful education system does not create people who have somehow eliminated their instincts. That would be almost impossible.

It creates people who recognize their instincts, understand them, learn to govern them, and transform them into capacities that benefit both themselves and society.

Sexuality can become love and responsibility.

Power can become leadership and service.

Possession can become creation and sharing.

Knowledge can become the capacity to live wisely.

Self mastery is not about separating oneself from society. It is what allows a person to participate in society freely and responsibly.

A person who has freed themselves from these three chains no longer needs others to satisfy their desires, submit to their power, or serve their need for possession.

They can enter a community with a different mindset:

I am not here only to take. I am here to build together.

I do not ask only what society can give me. I also ask what I can give to society.

And perhaps this is where education ultimately leads:

from self mastery to responsibility, from responsibility to community, and from community to a society built through an awareness and a language that knows how to love people.

At the end of the day, the purpose of education is not merely to create a person who can live well for themselves.

It is to create a person who is sufficiently free within themselves to help make the world around them better for others.

So perhaps the most important question we should ask about a university graduate is not simply:

How much have I learned?

The deeper question is:

After everything I have learned, am I still capable of governing myself, and am I free enough to use what I have become to build a better world for others?

If the answer is no, then perhaps we need to ask one final question:

Has this education truly educated a human being, or has it merely trained someone to earn a university degree?