“American universities expensive dating apps”
If education can be outdated by graduation, the next generation must be life-long learners
Photo: Innomag.no
Karl Mehta, who was on stage at Innovation Day, believes the education system of the day is broken.
Torill Henriksen
Innomag.no
“Before the students have finished four years at school, everything they have learned is already outdated,” said Karl Mehta, education expert and entrepreneur of the EdCAST learning platform.
On Sept. 6, he was on stage at Innovation Day, as part of Future Insight 2030 conference about how the rapid changes in technology will affect business, held in Oslo and presented by Inspirator. Mehta talked about the learning platform EdCAST, where the education system is headed, and where people should be headed.
Outdated system
“The education system is broken, as it is today,” explains Mehta. “It’s structured so you’ll be going to university until you’re 22 to 25 years old, and then you’ll work the rest of your life. But when you get into the workplace, what you’ve learned at school is outdated.”
He believes the education system needs a restart, because it is no longer useful.
“Right now, American universities are more like a very expensive dating app,” Mehta said from the stage.
Netflix school
Mehta believes education should be more like Netflix, something that could be streamed from a platform.
“That way you can choose whether to learn a little of something, or if you want to “binge” the lesson,” he explains. “In addition, on such a platform, collecting content from several places, under the same umbrella, is much cheaper, especially in the United States, where student debt has now reached $1.4 trillion dollars.
And here comes Mehta’s EdCAST, an app where you can learn something new, in small portions, when you want it.
“There must be training for the brain,” he says. “You go to the fitness center every month or every week. It must also be done for the head; train it regularly to acquire new knowledge.”
He has also previously told Innomag that millennials must expect to change occupations 12 to 14 times during their lifetime, and he believes it is up to us to adapt to the market.
“To make this change, we must become “lifelong learners,” and be willing to always learn something new.
Knowledge over education
In Silicon Valley, where Mehta is working, they have already realized how far behind education is.
“We can search for computer programmers, get someone with a master’s degree, and they cannot write code,” he explains. “Then we can see teenagers who write code in their sleep. Several major companies in Silicon Valley now look at people’s knowledge and ability to acquire new knowledge, rather than education.”
He believes the Norwegian model of free schooling makes the situation worse for Norwegians, who occasionally have masters sicknesses.
“If you are going to spend several years of your life taking a master’s, and maybe a doctorate, you should be quite careful in your choice, because suddenly the profession is gone when you graduate.”
Karl Mehta is a serial entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley. He is behind Code For India, working with NGOs to give people in India access to knowledge, technology, and change agents. He was selected as the first “White House Presidential Innovation Fellow” under the Obama administration. He’s also the founder of EdCAST, which endeavors to be a Netflix for education.
This article was originally published in Norwegian in the Sept. 7 Innomag (www.innomag.no/ekspert-amerikanske-universiteter-er-blitt-en-veldig-dyr-dating-app).
This article originally appeared in the October 5, 2018, issue of The Norwegian American. To subscribe, visit SUBSCRIBE or call us at (206) 784-4617.
