A Broken Education System – This is why the economy is expected to grow at 0.1% rate.
What does it take to grow an economy?
Real Businesses. Real Industries. Real Leadership.
To increase an economy, a country has to increase its income base, and that does not mean, increasing taxes, because that defeats the purpose. Taxes demands that you take more from the very same people who are struggling to live and maintain. Increasing an income base, I think economists call it GDP (I’m no economist) means having more income from other countries. A classic example is when DSTV services are available in 30 other countries, it means then – well technically, every R 799.00 or R399 from over a thousands of subscribers comes into SA; which is good. So in essence, we actually need more businesses, or even better entrepreneurs to pioneer new industries, markets and businesses such as these.
But how’s that going to happen with we have a broken education system you ask?
Not only our education system produces unskilled graduates but the number of entrepreneurs produced – or the lack of such numbers are even scary.
This is also how China became a global leader. The government invested billions and still does today, into local companies and state entities that enabled scaling on a global landscape. With their education system supporting innovation, technology and infrastructure developments. They knew that increasing their production output will enable global economic growth, and today when you buy a laptop made in china. 30 – 50% of that money lands up in China.
Ladies and gentlemen welcome to the broken education institute, where an average graduate will struggle to get his foot in the door and might have to work at Shoptrite or Stand at the traffic lights for the time being until he/she lands that interview.
That’s not all, the way the education is so broken, it’s almost as if no one is aware yet the reality is right in our faces. We South Africans have a way of digesting bull-crap and later justifying it with parables and tales and then try to convince everyone. I hate it!
Can you justify a 30% pass mark?
The reality is, even the universities are producing graduates who have no skills but knowledge and thus struggle a little bit to strike in. The high schools are producing matriculants who with matric, can’t code a line or write compelling essays to save their God damm lives.
Why is this still happening today though?
This is because of what I call the industrial revolution loop. Sure we need workers but…
The Industrial Revolution loop:
During the industrial revolution, the rise of new factories demanded more labour force. During then, it meant that the education system had to cater for that ‘climate’. This was good and for that, the industrial revolution itself pioneered new industries in the manufacturing business ranging from mining to railway systems to clothing. Generations later those industries now are starting to crumble due to high demanding economic factors and other unforeseen circumstances. This making job loses high to date, and still – the education system is still placed and ‘looped’ in such an old systematic way of thinking.
The reason for them to do so I guess is simple. To maintain their financial wellbeing. Institutions of higher learning and their curriculum are still holding on to a broken dream, the industrial revolution dream because these institutions need to make “some money” to survive. Forget education. It seems as though these professors and lectures care more about their salaries, their research and work benefits than they do with producing world class graduates.
Today:
The world today demands high technical skills, values individuality over group effort, talent over a generic knowledge. Something that our education system can’t seem to get a grip on, and nourish. And this will go on, until decades later, until someone asks; why did we not educate our children at home???
Benjamin Hardy in his Slipstream Time Hacking (2015) book summarises this profoundly:
“Many of our schools and systems still focus on the development of followers rather than leaders, a nearly 1900’s response to large growth in factories and assembly lines. Interestingly, our entire public education system was organized around this industrial model. The goal of the public school system was to train its students to be submissive and obedient to leadership. It’s little wonder that children, who are innately curious and questioning, quickly grow to care only for acquiring information that will please a teacher or make a grade. Even now, when leaders, not followers, are so desperately needed in the global economy, few schools are breaking away from the traditional model.”
The Mathematics:
It takes 12 years to complete primary and high school, i.e. to have your matric. It then takes another 3 years; let’s say 4 to complete a bachelor’s degree. After this, your recruiter tells you that you are still useless and know nothing about work. You and your sorry degree now have to be in an internship or a graduate programme. That’s another year or two. That’s 17 years of you studying and now you are ready at say an age of 21.
Out of those 12 years, only a few come out as true entrepreneurs, others are wanna be’s, a few fail and majority stick to the 9 – 5 jobs.
So, in an average class of 30 students, 24 matriculate after 12 years. Let’s not forget those who dropped out and failed. Out of the 24 from your class, 20 make it to varsity and 18 finishes their degrees and 15 go for job hunting, the other 3 decide they will start their own businesses, 2 fail and one gets a chance and starts employing people (some of whom are friends who decided to take the 9 – 5 route) and starts to contribute to the industry and economy in some way or another.
In a nutshell this means 10% of all matriculants that go into business, i.e. contribute to the economy. Yet the economy is big, competitive, and never forgiving so it’s going to take each one’s enterprise a good 5 – 7 or even 10 years at worse, to be recognised as a fully-fledged business.
So to grow the economy means that now, the 10% of all matriculants who go into business needs to go over 50%, and be at 60% at least, but since all the schools produce many followers, non-leaders, workers and not leaders and job creators it means now that the economy will not grow at a maximum impact required to sustain itself in the next future.
Just in case you have been wondering why the economy is expected to grow at a 0.1% rate.
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