The credit factory

The contemporary subject emerges from university transformed into a figure: so many accumulated credits, so much acquired market value, so much debt incurred. It's no coincidence that we use the same term -credit- for both passed courses and financial debt. The university no longer forms subjects: it produces credit carriers, calculable units of potential value in the labor market.

This transformation of the student into a walking credit reveals the true function of today's university: converting knowledge into a quantifiable commodity and the subject into its bearer. We don't study to know, but to accumulate credits. We don't learn to transform ourselves, but to become more "creditworthy," more financeable, more sellable in the competencies market.

The paradox is that these credits that supposedly qualify us, actually disqualify us as thinking subjects. We leave university marked, yes, but not by knowledge but by a mercantile logic that reduces all knowledge to its exchange value. True education should begin precisely by questioning this reduction of knowledge to credits.