Talal Abu-Ghazaleh: Rebuilding Education at Lower Cost and with Greater Impact

22-Feb-2026

Education, as we have known it for an entire century, now stands at a rare historical moment—much like the sword when gunpowder appeared, the horse when the engine was invented, or the fax when the internet began. The sword was not flawed, the horse was not incapable, and the fax was not a useless technological leap; each represented the peak of its era until the moment a more productive, less costly, and far more effective alternative emerged.

At that point, the question was no longer whether we loved the old tools, but whether they could continue in a world that had moved beyond them. Thinkers who read major transformations before they became visible to all now repeat a phrase that has become almost a fulfilled prophecy: traditional education has ended.
Yes, it has ended—but not in the sense of the collapse of schools and universities. Rather, it is the end of the viability of an entire model built on rote learning as a method of knowledge, the exam as an ultimate goal, the classroom as the sole stage of learning, and infrastructure and facilities that no longer deliver value proportionate to their cost.
Technological advancement has placed the world before a simple reality: knowledge is no longer confined to a building; a skill no longer requires a worn wooden desk and a heavy schoolbag that burdens both mind and body; innovation is no longer tied to a class schedule. Millions of hours of science, technology, languages, and applied skills are now instantly available at a negligible cost compared to what is spent within traditional structures.
This means that the largest share of global educational spending now goes to maintaining a framework that is no longer essential, instead of funding innovation itself. Here lies the logic of the political economy of progress: spending must go where value multiplies for every unit of cost.
What digital progress does is open the door to redirecting resources toward what builds the economy of the future rather than preserving the form of the past—education for innovation, not for passing exams; for developing skills and competencies, not for collecting certificates; for productivity, not for compulsory attendance; for building capabilities, not for improving pass rates.
Perhaps what I say will not please many, but the traditional structure of education has become similar to old agricultural tools: once more productive machines arrived, clinging to the previous tools became a costly decision—often driven more by habit than by economics or productivity. The blackboard, the bus, fuel consumption, the building, the classroom, the timetable, even the very concept of the exam—these were once components that enabled education, but today they slow it down. They no longer match the speed of knowledge nor the nature of a labor market whose jobs change before textbooks are even written.

I have never called for the demolition of educational institutions, but for liberating them from a form that no longer performs its function. This is what I stated in some of my earlier propositions when I chaired the first international education conference at the United Nations in 1995. We seek an education based on design rather than accumulation, on discovery rather than memorization, on building a productive human being rather than an obedient student. Yes, we want a model that invests a small portion of what is currently spent on infrastructure to build a flexible, advanced, digital learning environment—low in cost and high in return.

Dr. Talal Abu-Ghazaleh