Work can be part of education - and often its most valuable part

Today, young people choose a specialization at a very early age before they have had a chance to gain any real work experience. It’s a questionable bet that you make with the least amount of information you’ll ever have. But there’s a bigger problem than picking the wrong major: it’s the very structure of modern education.

It simply doesn't keep up with the speed at which the market changes. While the university develops, approves, and launches a new program, the market will have already managed to create new tools, professions, and requirements for specialists. AI is the most obvious example. Many of the professions and tools forming around AI today simply didn't exist in their current form just a few years ago.

iGaming, by the way, is a good example of the reverse sequence. For people to choose this field at 18 is practically impossible, there's most likely simply nowhere to systematically learn it. As a rule, a person first comes to work in the industry, encounters real tasks, tries different directions - and only then starts to understand what actually interests them and what knowledge they're missing. In my view, that kind of education is far more meaningful than spending five years on a major you picked at 18, only to graduate and find your profession has become automated away a couple of years back.

That's exactly why my advice to young people is to start working as early as possible. Every year spent exclusively on preparing for life is a year without real experience, mistakes, and feedback. Work is also a skill. And, like most skills, it grows not linearly but exponentially.