Who Should Pay for Skills? Rethinking the Value Chain Between Education, Work and the State

June 2nd 2026, at a conference on education, career guidance, Europass and Euroguidance, organized by the Bosnia and Herzegovina Ministry of Civil Affairs, the Labour and Employment Agency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Euroguidance Network and Europass Europe, one question kept coming back:

Should education follow the needs of the labor market?

At first, the answer seems obvious.

Of course it should.

Education that is completely disconnected from the world of work quickly becomes abstract, slow and difficult to translate into real opportunities for people. Employers need people who can contribute. Public institutions need a workforce that can support development. Individuals need knowledge and skills that help them build a stable and meaningful life.

But if we stop there, we miss the point.

Education is not only a service for today’s job openings. If it were, we could easily dismiss philosophy, art, culture, music, social sciences and many other fields that do not always produce a direct financial return in the next 12 months.

At the same time, education cannot remain closed within its own system and expect employers, institutions and society to accept everything it produces without asking how relevant, useful and connected to real life it actually is.

So maybe the real question is not:

Who should dictate education?

The real question is:

Who benefits from educated, qualified and skilled people?

The answer is: almost everyone.

The individual benefits

For the individual, education and skills create freedom.

They create more choices, more confidence, more mobility and more security. A person with relevant knowledge, practical experience and recognized skills has a better chance to find work, change work, create work or continue learning.

But the individual also pays a cost.

They invest time, energy, money and often years of uncertainty. They accept internships, training, volunteering, student jobs and entry-level roles, hoping that the system will one day recognize what they have learned and what they can actually do.

Too often, that evidence remains invisible.

A person may gain experience through work, volunteering, projects, online learning, community engagement or informal practice, but if the system does not recognize it, it becomes just another line in a CV. Sometimes not even that.

Employers benefit

Employers benefit directly from skilled people.

Better people create better products, better services, better processes, better customer experiences and more innovation. A company with strong people does not only increase its own revenue. It also creates value for suppliers, customers, communities and the broader economy.

But many employers still expect the system to deliver “ready-made” people.

They want graduates who are already prepared, already practical, already adaptable and already productive. Yet practice, mentoring and training require time. Someone has to invest in that transition from education to work.

If companies do not participate in developing people, they cannot only complain that the education system is not producing the exact skills they need.

Educational institutions benefit

Educational institutions also benefit from educated and skilled people.

Their true result is not only the number of enrolled students, graduated students or published papers. Their real value is visible in the quality, confidence, relevance and contribution of the people they help develop.

This does not mean that universities and schools should become training centers for short-term market demand.

But it does mean they need stronger links with reality.

They need better data, more interaction with employers, more space for practice, more connection with innovation and clearer evidence of outcomes.

Research matters. Academic freedom matters. Critical thinking matters.

But research that starts from the wrong assumptions, uses outdated data or remains disconnected from real problems will have limited impact, no matter how technically correct it may appear.

The state benefits

The state also benefits from skilled people.

Every person who learns, works, creates and contributes generates value far beyond the tax collected from their first internship, student job or employment contract.

The state benefits when people are employable, productive, innovative, mobile and resilient. It benefits when companies grow. It benefits when young people see a future in their own country. It benefits when public money invested in education becomes visible through stronger people, stronger companies and stronger communities.

But here we often make a mistake.

We reduce the value of people to short-term taxes, contributions and administrative categories.

Instead of asking how to create more long-term value, we often ask how to tax small, early, transitional forms of work and learning.

That may make sense inside an existing fiscal logic, but it can also damage the bigger objective: building a system in which people can learn, work, practice and grow more easily.

Society benefits

Finally, society benefits.

Education is not only preparation for employment.

It shapes people who make decisions, build institutions, create culture, raise children, lead teams, challenge assumptions, solve problems and move communities forward.

A society with more capable people is not only richer in financial terms. It is more resilient, more creative and more able to adapt.

That is why this discussion cannot be reduced only to the labor market.

The labor market matters, but it is not the whole picture.

The real issue: cost or value?

Too often, the conversation about education, internships, training and work becomes a conversation about cost.

Who will pay for the internship?

Who will pay for the mentor’s time?

Who will pay for practical training?

Who will pay for the student job?

Who will pay for upskilling and reskilling?

Who will pay for the reform?

These are real questions. Someone always pays.

But they are incomplete questions.

The more important question is:

Who receives the value, and how do we share that value fairly?

Learning is not only a cost.

Mentoring is not only a cost.

Internships are not only an administrative category.

Student work is not only a tax question.

Volunteering is not only unpaid time.

Skills are not only a line in a CV.

They are all part of a value chain.

Where the chain breaks

When the state invests in education, but employers say graduates are not ready, the chain breaks.

When employers want skilled people, but do not invest enough in practice, mentoring and training, the chain breaks.

When educational institutions ask for more resources, but do not show stronger evidence of relevance, innovation and outcomes, the chain breaks.

When individuals learn, work, volunteer and gain experience, but the system does not recognize it as evidence of competence, the chain breaks.

When public policy treats every form of early work, practice and learning mainly as a taxable transaction, instead of as part of long-term human capital development, the chain breaks.

And when each link tries to become stronger by pushing the cost to another link, the whole chain becomes weaker.

What would a better system measure?

A better system would not only ask whether someone has a diploma.

It would ask what the person can actually do.

It would not only ask whether someone completed a course.

It would ask what evidence exists that the person applied the knowledge.

It would not only ask whether an internship happened.

It would ask what was learned, what was practiced, who verified it and how that evidence can follow the person into future opportunities.

It would not only ask employers what skills they need today.

It would also ask what skills are emerging, what is changing in work, and how education, public institutions and companies can respond before the gap becomes too large.

This requires better data.

But not only more data.

It requires better evidence.

Evidence of learning.
Evidence of work.
Evidence of practice.
Evidence of contribution.
Evidence of skills.

From reform to shared responsibility

The next big question is not only how to reform education.

It is how to measure, recognize and share the value of knowledge, experience and skills across the whole system.

This means that individuals should not carry the entire burden of proving their value alone.

Employers should not only demand skills, but help create and verify them.

Educational institutions should not only deliver programs, but show clearer evidence of relevance and outcomes.

The state should not only regulate and tax, but design conditions in which learning, practice and transition into work become easier, safer and more valuable.

And society should recognize that skills are not created in one place.

They are created across classrooms, workplaces, projects, communities, digital environments, volunteering, entrepreneurship and everyday problem-solving.

The future of work starts with the evidence of skills

If we want a stronger connection between education and career, we need to stop treating learning, work and experience as separate worlds.

They are connected.

The person who studies, practices, works, volunteers, builds, mentors, leads or solves problems is constantly creating evidence of ability.

The problem is that our systems often do not capture that evidence, do not verify it properly and do not make it useful for better decisions.

That is where the future of education and work should go.

Not toward one side dictating everything to the other.

Not toward education serving only the labor market.

Not toward employers avoiding the responsibility to develop people.

Not toward the state seeing only taxes and regulations.

But toward a shared value chain in which every link becomes stronger.

The individual.
The employer.
The educational institution.
The state.
Society.

Because the real goal is not to decide who will pay for a person while they learn.

The real goal is to build a system in which learning, work, practice and experience become recognized evidence of value, for the person, for employers, for education, for public policy and for society.

That is where the real connection between education and career begins.

And that is where the serious conversation about the future of work should start.