education in the future

I was talking with my dad today about the future of education, and it turned into one of those big, wandering, “what happens next” conversations.

He was frustrated about school vouchers, state lotteries, and how money that used to go into public schools gets quietly shifted into tax cuts for corporations instead. He pointed out something important: even when he went to elite private schools, his father still paid property taxes that funded public education. The idea was simple—an educated population benefits everyone.

Now that social contract is cracking.

And he asked me what I thought the future was going to look like.

My answer wasn’t optimistic, but it wasn’t doom-and-gloom either. I told him I don’t think education disappears. It never has. But when big systems weaken, we don’t invent something brand new—we default to older versions that sort of worked before.

He laughed and said, “So basically Windows booting to last known good configuration?”

Exactly.

For the last seventy years, we’ve lived in a very specific model:

public schools → standardized pathways → big universities → degrees → careers.

That model is relatively new in human history. And if it keeps getting hollowed out, we won’t suddenly become a futuristic learning society. We’ll slide backward into something more familiar.

More private academies.

More informal mentors.

More community learning.

More independent scholars.

More “public lectures under the portico” instead of formal classrooms.

Kind of like how Democritus or Galen would teach in public spaces—whoever showed up could listen and learn.

Universities will still exist, especially for medicine, engineering, law, research. But a lot of real learning is going to happen outside official structures again. Knowledge will leak back into everyday life instead of living only behind tuition gates.

I’m not saying this is the best future.

I’m saying it’s the one I see coming.

And I think Gen Z is already sensing it.

A lot of them don’t believe the old promise anymore—that if you “go to the right school and get the right degree,” you’re guaranteed security. They’ve watched older generations do everything “correctly” and still struggle.

So some of them are rediscovering something much older:

that real security doesn’t come from a piece of paper.

It comes from actual knowledge and understanding.

In the Stoic sense—like Zeno being shipwrecked and still okay because what he carried was competence, not credentials.

If you truly know how systems work, how to think, how to solve problems, you can lose everything and still land on your feet.

That’s what universities were originally supposed to be about: forming minds, not just handing out degrees.

I’ve met students who thought that’s what college would be—real conversations, real mentors, long debates, deep understanding. And instead they found online portals and rubrics and deadlines.

Some of them are starting to look for education the old way again—by finding people who actually know things and learning directly from them.

So when my dad worries about the collapse of public education, I share the worry. Inequality will get worse. Access will get harder.

But learning itself? That part never dies.

Humans always find a way to teach and learn—even if it means going back to something ancient and imperfect.

We’ve rebooted before.

We’ll reboot again.