The Communication Community and the Scam of the Knowledge Society

Abstract

International conferences, symposia, workshops, seminars, and the like take place literally every day on higher education. The World Bank, UNESCO, the OECD, and many regional organizations, as well as universities have all recently organized meetings to discuss topics such as higher education in the twenty-first century. Such gatherings are usually carried out in a spirit of progress and optimism. For the past 30 years or so, higher education systems all over the world have grown rapidly and nowadays many view higher education as a source of national prosperity just as much in the East as in the West, North, and South. Unfortunately, what policy makers, consultants, academics, and other wishful thinkers ignore is the hard fact that the present in which the rich nations exist has only a tenuous connection with the future of the poor. It seems that higher education is only making the rich richer while the investment of poor nations in higher education brings meager returns. One could argue that they should try just a little harder, or that an increase in higher education funding of another 0.5 of a percentage point of the GDP would trigger a quantum leap toward prosperity. Unfortunately, there is no empirical evidence for such a causal connection. There is some bitter truth to arguments like Foster’s, to the effect that educational expansion is merely the cart not the horse of economic growth.²