What is industrialization? Does anyone care anymore about that simple magic word? Industrialization is defined in different terms, one as the creation of industries, this is the simplest form to guess as schools teach is anything added zation, is the making of it. Industrialization, being the making of industry. Another interesting definition comes in terms of time, the period when the economic output of a nation or a community transforms from agrarian to manufacturing based. Another definition that is not commonly considered is industrialization as the act of designing processes and steps to manufacture a product. So how does this relate to education?
Before we dive into the relationship between industrialization and education and how education has been industrialized, it is worth noting what education has been from the get go. Education is one the oldest craft; traditionally children learned from family and friends. The current education system is believed to have emanated from Prussia, when the government made it a policy to strurally educate all officers.
From the beginning, education was part of training of leaders, officers, professionals that states needed to deliver different fonctions. Most institutions were set up in the same format that military academies are shaped today, fine tuned for an intake of only officers that the army predicted to need. In that light, educational institutions, especially universities, always focused on a total development of the student, mindful of what was being developed as the future leaders of institutions and organizations upon which the future of generations lie.
As time went by, it became very clear that education can become a lucrative business. Indeed, in order to advance from one level to another, one needed to have that degree which at times had been prohibitive for some to access certain opportunities. On the other hand states realized that limiting the numbers of people who attend different schools is an opportunity cost primarily on the human capital front; an risky investment that states don’t have a choice to forgo while attracting companies to bring in capital investment.
While all of that was going on, more private schools opened to cater for the clientele that was not satisfied by state educational institutions. This is where things started to spiral. Typically educational institutions had missions beyond financial return on investments to shareholders. In fact for the most cases, universities operated as non for profit organizations.
The entry to many private players sparked what I call industrialization of education, where education is the product that undergoes different processes, while minimizing expenses and maximizing profits and output. One may argue that not education, but students have been industrialized, this would have indeed been an equally negative outcome. The student is always a product that ought to receive education; however maximizing the quantity without quality is something that would be well known as disastrous.
In all of these what suffered for the most part was education quality and the quality of students that educational institutions produce. It is a question whether that is why many countries continue to lag behind in research and development. Is it the dilution of quality in state educational institutions sparked by private profit driven ventures?
It is hard to know why many countries continue to only consume, despite spending billions in education, however one thing is clear, education quality needs attention now more than ever. One debatable path is having elite institutions that drive research, innovation and development. The question that remains is will that really drive the need to change to not only industrialize education, but the economy or is it too late?
