高等教育如何应对工作的悖论

How Higher Education Copes with the Paradox of Work

工作伦理是维持现代社会秩序的意识形态基础之一。经由教育成为“工作人”的信念驱动了现代化进程的展开,然而,对于工作的过度重视也导致了工作的悖论。近年来,伴随着无意义工作的增多以及专业性工作的去技能化,高等教育与工作世界的连接逐渐陷入了一种两难。很多高校毕业生面临要么接受无意义的工作要么没有适合的专业性工作可做的威胁。在新机器智能的驱动下,一旦工作世界不再需要经由高等教育系统培养的大批量的“大众化”的专业人才,一旦高等教育系统无法培养出工作世界需要的更多的“精英化”的新专业人才,现代社会将因科技性失业而出现“有人没有工作,有工作没有人做”的悖论。未来在工作日益稀缺的世界里,高等教育虽不能中断与工作世界的有机联系,但延续为工作世界输送人力资本的旧模式也注定走不远,为避免工作的悖论影响经济社会的可持续发展,高等教育需要从生产人力资本转向赋予人生意义。

Work ethics is one of the ideological bases for maintaining the order of modern society.The belief of becoming a"worker"through education has driven the development of the modernization process.However,the over-emphasis on work also leads to the paradox of work.In recent years,with the increase of meaningless work and the de-skilled of professional work,the connection between higher education and the working world has gradually fallen into a dilemma.Many college graduates face the threat of either accepting meaningless jobs or having no suitable professional jobs to do.Driven by the new machine intelligence,once the work world no longer needs a large number of"popular"professionals trained by the higher education system,and once the higher education system cannot cultivate more"elite"new professionals needed by the work world,the modern society will appear the paradox of"someone has no job,someone has no job"because of technological unemployment.In the future,in a world where jobs are increasingly scarce,higher education cannot break the organic connection with the working world,but the old model of delivering human capital for the working world is also doomed to go far.In order to avoid the paradox of work affecting the sustainable development of economy and society,higher education needs to shift from producing human capital to giving meaning to life.