Today Danish applicants for higher education get a letter saying whether they got into the education and institution of their dreams. Or not.
I don’t envy them.
Back when I studied at the Danish School of Journalism it was good times. No need for a grade point average; a grueling Saturday test decided who got in, and who did not. On average 15 percent got the nod. The rest didn’t. Once in it was good fun and super interesting – and an enormous opportunity to meet and engage will all kinds of fellow students from all walks of life.
Today, what is there to look forward to?
Endless Zoom classes? Lack of a social life with fellow students? Inability to feel the environment and get the most out of the network, the other students and the opportunities that present themselves once you get engulfed by it?
It sucks, right?
And it sounds an awful lot like the ‘Working From Home’ (WHF) concept, doesn’t it?
It does.
And it is so ironic, it’s beyond words.
What the students are already complaining about now – having to be all remote, suspect quality of the classes being taught via video, a lack of the university experience and fellow students – are essentially the same things we’re so busy hyping as the next big thing about WFH.
Studying is work.
Work is also studying.
If we say that we understand and are sympathetic to the complaints of the students about the quality of the education they are about to embark on due to these new circumstances, we should also – as a MINIMUM – put serious question marks on the impacts on quality, innovation and such on a WFH future, before we just jump right in as headless chicken.
I have little doubt, we will fail to make that calculation. And that companies and the ability to innovate will suffer because of it.
(Photo: Pixabay.com)