Education, once revered as the crucible of intellectual awakening and the cornerstone of philosophical inquiry, has been profoundly reoriented in the modern world. In classical traditions, from the Socratic dialogues of Athens to the scholarly meditations of Al-Farabi and Aquinas, education was conceived as a vehicle for self-knowledge, ethical discernment, and metaphysical insight. It was designed to cultivate not merely functional citizens but enlightened individuals—those capable of reasoning critically, engaging ethically, and contributing meaningfully to the moral and intellectual fabric of society.
However, in the shadow of neoliberal capitalism and global economic competitiveness, this venerable vision has gradually eroded. Education has been appropriated by market logic and reconstructed as a pragmatic tool for economic ascension and social mobility. Institutions that once celebrated abstract thought and intellectual experimentation now market themselves as pipelines to financial success. Degrees are no longer symbols of cultivated minds but certificates of employability. The purpose of education is increasingly tethered not to what one understands, questions, or creates—but to what one earns.
This instrumentalisation of education reflects a deeper societal shift: the reduction of human worth to economic productivity. The student becomes not an inquirer or a thinker but a future employee, trained to meet the fluctuating demands of labour markets. Curricula are shaped by corporate interests, disciplines are ranked by “market value,” and entire fields of humanistic study are dismissed as impractical or obsolete. The result is an educational system that privileges the acquisition of skills over the formation of intellect, utility over wisdom, outcomes over inquiry.
The rhetoric of “better living standards” is often used to justify this trend, suggesting that the primary aim of education is to secure a financially comfortable existence. Indeed, millions now pursue education not as a path to enlightenment but as a strategy for lifestyle enhancement. Parents invest in schools like they invest in stocks, expecting a return in the form of higher salaries and elite status. Students, pressured by debt and competition, choose subjects not for their philosophical resonance but for their job prospects. In this schema, education is no longer a moral or epistemological endeavor—it is a commercial transaction.
This dark reality poses significant philosophical questions: Can a society that abandons intellectual growth still call itself educated? If we reduce knowledge to profit, do we not impoverish the soul while enriching the bank? Education that neglects critical thinking, ethical reflection, and cultural literacy may produce workers—but not citizens, visionaries, or moral agents. It may raise living standards, yet leave minds sterile, incurious, and intellectually impoverished.
Thus, modern education often functions as a silent betrayal of its original ideals. It promises freedom but delivers conformity; it claims to liberate, yet it trains to serve. What is marketed as progress is, in many respects, an elegant descent—from Socratic dialogue to corporate orientation, from the life of the mind to the economics of survival.