Is knowing enough?

For a long time we imagined study as a linear road: school, university, degree, work. A path with recognisable, almost automatic stages. In 2026 that road has not disappeared, but it has lost its linearity. A degree still has value, and it would be superficial to argue otherwise. It can offer method, depth, language, access to regulated professions and the ability to place a problem within a larger story. But it can no longer be considered a guarantee nor, above all, a definitive proof of competence.

The problem is not the degree. The problem is what we have begun to ask of the degree: to certify a preparation that, ever more often, no one really verifies in the field.

In Italy this contradiction is particularly evident. According to the OECD, young people with tertiary education still have a lower risk of unemployment than those with lower qualifications. Yet the Italian advantage in terms of actual skills is less marked than the OECD average: Italian graduates outperform diploma-holders in literacy, but the gap is considerably smaller than the one observed on average in other countries. Moreover, the employment rate of Italian new graduates remains below the European average.

The qualification, therefore, helps. But it is not enough.

When a society attributes more importance to certification than to capability, it generates a paradox: it increases the number of formally prepared people without increasing, to the same degree, the number of people able to solve problems. This is how knowledge risks turning into procedure and procedure into power. Those who have learned to move within the system end up administering the system, reproducing its modules, competitions, authorisations, committees and hierarchical steps. Not necessarily out of bad faith, but because every ruling class tends to build the world using the tools with which it was selected.

If we select people rewarding them above all for their ability to follow procedures, we cannot be surprised when those same people build organisations dominated by procedures.

Bureaucracy, after all, does not always arise from incompetence. It often arises from the fear of responsibility. A concrete decision can fail and have someone responsible. A procedure, instead, distributes responsibility until it becomes almost invisible. No one really decided: everyone simply followed the process.

But the work that is emerging demands the opposite.

The Future of Jobs Report 2025 estimates that by 2030 around 39% of the skills considered fundamental by firms will change. Among the fastest-growing are artificial intelligence and big data, technological literacy, analytical and creative thinking, resilience, flexibility and the ability to adapt. Not only computer skills, then, but the combination of technical mastery and human qualities.

In 2026 it is not indispensable that everyone become a programmer. It is indispensable that everyone understand, at least in part, the logic of the systems they work with. One must know how to frame a question, distinguish information from a conclusion, verify a source, read a piece of data, use artificial intelligence without delegating judgement to it, communicate a decision and take responsibility for the result.

The real emerging skill is the ability to close the loop: understand, design, execute, check and correct.

Where, then, should studies be directed?

Not only towards the faculties that promise employment, because market promises quickly become obsolete. One must choose paths that build a vertical competence and a transversal capacity at the same time. A discipline must be truly known: energy, law, medicine, engineering, economics, design, logistics, education. But around that discipline must grow digital skills, writing ability, data analysis, knowledge of English, economic literacy and familiarity with automation tools.

Artificial intelligence makes knowing something in depth even more important. Those who lack a real competence are unable to understand when the machine is making a mistake. They may produce a great deal, but they can guarantee nothing.

The education of the future should therefore not set university against work, theory against practice, culture against technology. It should force them to meet. Every university path should contain real projects, laboratories, observable failures, individual responsibility and engagement with productive organisations. Every professional path should contain theory, method, history and critical capacity.

A degree must remain important, but it must once again become hard to obtain in the right sense: not because it multiplies exams, credits and formalities, but because it requires demonstrating what one can do.

The future will not belong to those who hold the most certificates. It will belong to those who can turn knowledge, tools and responsibility into verifiable results.

The question, then, is no longer only: "What did you study?"

The question is: what have you become able to do?