“The education of young people should not be carried out by coercion, but in such a way that learning is natural and allows one to recognize the dispositions of each one”. (Plato, Republic, VII, 536e-537a).
We live in difficult times, times of accelerated change, with a complex transition between adolescence and adulthood. I feel that the pressure increases every day, that my life has been forced into a pace I never asked for, that the vertigo of change appears to me in every possible form, like a specter.
This wouldn't matter if it only happened to me, but it's a feeling that has also taken root in the hearts of those who are still finding their way, our young people. It worries me to think that behind trends like the recent "aura farming" in parks, there's more than just teenagers with too much free time: it's the awareness of having no future.
Young people are dominated by the feeling that our generation has stolen their hopes. I was born when university was still perceived as a prestigious environment. I was assured that if I followed the rules and did what was expected of me, I would have a good job and a modestly comfortable life, what was called being “middle class”. Were you promised the same? For a long time, the logic was simple: you study, you get a stable job, and you reach retirement with your own house, a beach apartment and a car.
The key to the system was that, if you stayed within the herd, you'd live better than your parents. Not in the sense of having more material possessions, but in the sense of buying security. To put it simply, you were investing in a certain distance from poverty. Lovecraft said that fear is the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind. Leaving behind death in the trenches, not going hungry… with these arguments, the generation that had survived the hardships of World War II offered us a guide to life with the best of intentions, but without knowing what changes were coming.
Why do we need a person here?
Today things are different. The steel boot of technology is crushing humanity in many fields, and it's becoming increasingly clear that there's no turning back. We were told that artificial intelligence would make us more productive, just as calculating machines multiplied the operational capacity of accountants. It was a nice theoretical framework. However, prominent figures (like Bill Gates in 2025) warn of the danger that a large part of the population will become obsolete for most things. What once belonged to science fiction is now part of the philosophical debate. I, frankly, take this unsettling idea even further.
Recent history has given us examples of professions that have become obsolete. In my lectures, I often refer to the elevator operators of New York, who at the beginning of the 20th century were a natural part of the urban landscape. Everything was fine for them until technological transformation turned manual levers into automated processes. The question that society then asked itself (“Why do we need a person here?”) now threatens to spread to a large part of the labor ecosystem. This already affects intellectual jobs, and with the advances in automation, I believe that in the medium term the same will happen with manual labor. Therefore, what is the point of studying if there is no direct link to the job market? The loss of correlation between effort and expected reward has eroded the credibility of the system.
Our young people are beginning to feel expendable. They assume that, no matter how hard they try, they will never be able to compete with an artificial intelligence agent. How can we live with the unsettling idea that, today, a six-year-old using artificial intelligence can obtain mathematical results that they wouldn't even know how to begin calculating on their own? For today's youth, the competition is no longer another highly educated young person; the competition can be a child with a smartphone. The child obtains the solution without understanding it, and that is precisely the red line we have crossed: performing an intellectual operation no longer requires understanding it.
In the case at hand, our young people enter university knowing that a significant portion of what they will learn may become obsolete even before they graduate and that, if all goes well, they will be thrown into an increasingly competitive job market. Moreover, what they can contribute may have been automated years before they even finish their studies. And then, these young people will be left out in the parks, "farming aura" while you and I, already retired, shrug our shoulders because we won't have any answers for them. They will have done everything they should, striving for it, and yet they will have lost. They will be, indeed, graduate losers.
To recover paideia
This imperfect future seems to offer no solution other than a profound reform of the education system. The education of young Europeans cannot continue along the traditional path. Europe, in my view, remains clinging to a medieval university model, trusting that things will eventually sort themselves out. The disciplinary structure deserves a thorough overhaul, with the aim of prune subjects; specialization loses its relevance, because AI will make accessible to anyone what previously required years of technical training; the relationship between a degree and a profession will no longer be one-to-one, as AI will facilitate multidisciplinarity; and the transmission of knowledge will cease to be hierarchical, because any technological device will be able to act as a teacher with all of humanity's knowledge at its fingertips.
But all is not lost. We Europeans have one move, a single but sufficient one, in this game of chess: to recover paideia, the educational ideal of ancient Athens, aimed at making young people good citizens. Its fundamental principle was to reconcile the transmission of knowledge with character formation; mere specialization was not enough: knowledge of what is inherently human occupied a superior place because education should form people capable of thinking for themselves and for the common good. It was not just about acquiring useful skills; it was about studying to improve ourselves as citizens.
In my opinion, this process of data loss of value is only going to intensify. And, if machines are going to be able to perform executive tasks autonomously, we must focus the education of young people on what automated execution cannot guarantee: critical thinking with human value. Therefore, I see no other solution than to fundamentally transform universities and orient them toward a more humanistic education, without disregarding technology, but without becoming obsessed with delving deeper into it. Our young people need to know how to think, to interpret what they read coherently, to keep an open mind to change, to cultivate resilience in the face of adversity, and, above all, to be receptive to moral values.
Let's be honest, no one can guarantee them a professional future they'll enjoy, especially when the job market itself (if it even exists) can transform beyond recognition. But we can give them the tools to shape who they will become in life. Perhaps university can no longer promise them a profession, but it can still teach them how to be good people.
Jorge I. Aguadero Casado