1That the half-life of a technical skill should now be measured in years rather than decades is a proposition few employers care to articulate plainly.
2The injunction to reskill, so glibly issued by policymakers, conveniently elides the question of who is to bear the considerable cost.
3Notwithstanding the rhetoric of opportunity, the burden of perpetual self-improvement falls disproportionately upon those least equipped to shoulder it.
4A qualification, however hard-won, depreciates like any other asset, and its holder must reinvest continually merely to stand still.
5So pronounced has credential inflation become that employers demand master's degrees for roles their own founders filled without one.
6The worker who toils by day and studies by night embodies a quiet heroism that the labour statistics are structurally incapable of recording.
7Nor should we overlook the opportunity cost, for every hour devoted to retraining is an hour withheld from family, rest, or unprofitable curiosity.
8Were learning genuinely valued as a public good, its funding would not hinge so precariously upon the caprice of individual employers.
9It is a curious inversion of the old apprenticeship ideal: mastery is still expected, but its cultivation has been privatised.
10What the discourse lacks is candour about diminishing returns; not every reinvention is rewarded, and some are quietly punished.
11In the final reckoning, lifelong learning may prove less a ladder than a treadmill, albeit one we have little choice but to keep walking.