Human Capital

Ideally, education is about the pursuit of truth, beauty and morality. But in the last few decades, a perilous fixation with human capital - skills, knowledge and aptitudes required for the labour market - has trampled over curricula, schools and universities. In 'Human Capital', Guy Standing shows us how education - intrinsically a common public good - has been enclosed, privatised, financialised and corrupted, turned into an instrument of societal control, not human emancipation, weakening democracy, not strengthening it.