Content written by Theodore Yntema and republished by Chicago Booth Review. 

MBA News Digest Comment: None.

Extracted Content: The long-running Selected Papers series features notable work by University of Chicago faculty and other business leaders. This essay is an edited excerpt; the original was presented in 1964 at the Winter Convocation of the University of Chicago.

In a recent seminar Theodore Schultz  appraised the prospective obsolescence of various types of educational attainments. [Schultz was a member of the University of Chicago faculty who helped pioneer the study of human capital, and who would go on to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences—Ed.] In order of decreasing obsolescence and increasing durability he listed: (1) vocational and job skills, (2) knowledge of principles and theories, (3) ability to solve problems and develop analytical tools, and (4) ability to keep on learning.

Fleeting facts memorized for examination, debate, or other special occasion he did not even bother to list.

Let me emphasize these points. Specialized vocational skills are likely to be made obsolete by advances in science and technology. The subject matter of science will be more permanent, but it, too, will undergo correction and modification as well as enormous expansion. Problem-solving ability and the ability to continue one’s education will be least subject to obsolescence and most likely to be useful throughout life.

I would expand Schultz’s list of durable skills in a few respects. And then I would point out that those skills and abilities that are most durable are likewise most universally useful—needed in all walks of life and transferable from one field of endeavor to another.

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