Time for Change? Often I have sat in rooms of PhD’s impressed with their own brilliance, pontificating, but having lost sight of people and fundamental truths that could change the world.
Maybe the academic “sport” of clever pedagogy and information-shuffling and plagiarism (as we have seen from recent presidents of countries and universities) to impress others as its end – is a dying sport? RIP.
What if Ph.D. could stand for something more important and useful someday? Research is great but it is often an end, rather than the means to an end. Instead of a launching ramp for change, it is far more often an endless Möbius or even Ouroboros loop.
Trust me, I have seen it. Nations and cultures and environments that could have been built or saved or helped became victims of paperwork, politics, and smug academia playing a sport they were trained to play, with egos as the fuel.
What if Ph.D. could instead stand for…
• Profitable, Hands-on Development: Emphasizing product creation, innovation, and tangible results.
• Practical, High-impact Decisions: Focused on strategy and choices that lead to measurable personal, societal and cultural, and technological change.
• Product, Hustle, Delivery: Focusing on the importance of making things, providing actual change, and ensuring successful execution.
• People-driven, High-value Disruptor: For those who challenge established norms and drive measurable success.
• Purposeful, Hardworking Doer: Celebrating action-oriented individuals who produce actual change for people and place.
Of the many, many PhD‘s I know personally, the majority would agree with this, above.
Academia, institutional religion, the military, and private sector all can devolve over time into pushing their ecosystem as an end in itself, rather than serving humanity at whatever personal cost.
Thanks for the attached post Pascal BORNET …
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Pascal BORNET
Every time I see a post like this, I can’t help but reflect on how much the value of knowledge itself has changed in my lifetime.
In 1924, knowledge was scarce. You spent years chasing it, and a PhD meant you were one of the few people on Earth with access to guarded, precious insights.
Today, knowledge is everywhere. A teenager on YouTube, with curiosity and free tools, can reach millions faster than a top researcher.
But does that mean a PhD is worthless? I don’t think so.
What’s changed is the game:
Knowledge is abundant.
The ability to apply, synthesize, and adapt it is what’s rare.
And the real edge comes from learning faster than the world changes.
I believe the education system hasn’t fully caught up with this shift. We still teach for an era of scarcity, not one of abundance and acceleration.
What if we reimagined education to prioritize adaptability, creativity, and human-AI collaboration over rote expertise?
Because in a world where AI can summarize any textbook in seconds, the human edge is not what we know — but what we can do with it.
👉 What do you think the education of the future should look like?
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The hotel situated on Harvard campus in Cambridge, on the beautiful Charles River, has this picture mounted on the wall of many of its guest hotel rooms. I wonder why? 🙂
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Structured correctly, academia and serving people and place are not mutually exclusive, but hand in hand.
