Human Capital
The Tragedy of the Education Commons
Published on 29. January 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
512 pages
978-0-241-68818-2 (ISBN)
Description
'One of the clearest and most important studies to be published on education, worldwide, in many decades' Danny Dorling
Does the education system make better people? Why are so many - teachers and students alike - stressed and dissatisfied? Do we need to revive real education?
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. Rather than learning how to think critically about the world, from cradle to grave students are trained to be more effective workers, to make more money, and to serve an hegemonic ideology. Teachers and researchers are pressed to serve those goals.
In this concluding book in his series on the commons, 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. Human Capital charts how the education industry largely serves commercial interests, not its teachers and students, and considers how to revive its lost values, to save society for the common good.
Does the education system make better people? Why are so many - teachers and students alike - stressed and dissatisfied? Do we need to revive real education?
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. Rather than learning how to think critically about the world, from cradle to grave students are trained to be more effective workers, to make more money, and to serve an hegemonic ideology. Teachers and researchers are pressed to serve those goals.
In this concluding book in his series on the commons, 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. Human Capital charts how the education industry largely serves commercial interests, not its teachers and students, and considers how to revive its lost values, to save society for the common good.
Reviews / Votes
One of the clearest and most important studies to be published on education, worldwide, in many decades. Human Capital provides both the diagnosis and cure to those trying to school us towards competitiveness, individualism, and greed -- Danny Dorling Urgent and compelling, Human Capital is a rallying cry for a radically different kind of education system - one that puts imagination and empathy at its heart, and genuinely equips young people for the challenges ahead, instead of the current narrow joyless focus on 'schooling', where success is measured in money and status alone. A searing attack on the 'education industry', Standing's latest book should be required reading for every education minister -- Caroline Lucas With dazzling depth and lively prose, Human Capital chronicles the juggernaut of forces privatizing and commodifying the experience of education, which in turn is corrupting truth, social ethics, and civic virtue. But Standing's book also suggests strategies by which we can revive education as a commons - through better systems of knowledge sharing, dialogical learning, collaborative creativity, vernacular practices, intergenerational memory-sharing, and more -- David Bollier Guy Standing is one of our great truth-tellers. We must listen as he argues for the creation of educated minds that can move us away from the competitive horror of what currently passes for schooling, and help create an intergenerational community where equity and democratic values are paramount -- Sally TomlinsonMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Penguin Books Ltd
Dimensions
Height: 179 mm
Width: 111 mm
Thickness: 27 mm
Weight
286 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-241-68818-2 (9780241688182)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
01/2026
Pelican
€10.99
Available for download
Person
Guy Standing has held professorships at Bath, London and Monash universities, was a programme director in the UN's International Labour Organization and has advised many international bodies and governments on social and economic policies. He co-founded the Basic Income Earth Network and is now its co-president. He is author of the bestselling The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (2011), Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen (2017) and Plunder of the Commons: A Manifesto for Sharing Public Wealth (2019).