How the rise of the edupreneur is quietly displacing the teacher and why it matters

There was a time when education was spoken about in almost sacred terms. Not as an “industry.” Not as a “market.” Not as a scalable “product.” But as a responsibility. A calling.

Classrooms were not transaction points where knowledge was exchanged for fees; they were quiet crucibles where human beings were shaped. Education was once animated by an idea so simple and yet so powerful: that a teacher could change the trajectory of a life. And often, they did.

Those who grew up under the care of genuine educators remember this vividly. We remember the teachers who saw us before we knew how to see ourselves. The ones who stayed back after class to explain an idea again, not because it improved metrics, but because they cared whether we understood. They believed that education was not merely about syllabi, assessments, or grades. It was about enlarging a mind, strengthening a character, and nurturing curiosity in a world that too often tries to suppress it.

The enduring power of connection

Twelve years ago, when I first stepped into the education space, that belief still lingered in the air. Perhaps faintly, perhaps imperfectly, but it was there.

What remains striking to me today is that I still receive messages from some of the very first students I taught. Twelve years have passed, and yet they write back occasionally to share a milestone, to recall a lesson, sometimes simply to say thank you. Those messages are not reminders of content delivered; they are reminders of connection. They are quiet evidence that education, at its best, is relational before it is institutional.

And I find myself asking a difficult question. Are we still building institutions where such connections can exist? Or have we slowly replaced them with something else entirely?

How the language of business colonised the classroom

Across the educational landscape, a transformation has taken place, one that is often discussed in celebratory language but rarely examined with honesty. Educators are increasingly being replaced by what the modern lexicon calls “edupreneurs”. Institutions once led by academic vision are now frequently directed by business strategy. Classrooms are designed around revenue models, growth projections, and investor expectations.

The language itself reveals the shift. Students have become “customers”. Learning has become “delivery”. Institutions speak of “conversion funnels”, “acquisition costs”, and “scaling operations”. Somewhere in this vocabulary, the soul of education has begun to fade.

This is not to suggest that efficiency, sustainability, or innovation are unwelcome in education. Institutions must survive, and good management matters. But when the governing philosophy of education begins to mirror that of any other commercial enterprise, something deeply human risks being lost.

Education is not a commodity that can be standardised without consequence. A teacher is not a replaceable unit in a delivery chain. And a student is not merely a data point in a growth report.

What no spreadsheet can measure

True educators have always understood that the work they do unfolds in subtle, immeasurable ways. The impact of a teacher rarely appears immediately. It surfaces years later in the confidence of a former student, in a decision made with integrity, in a moment when someone chooses curiosity over complacency.

No spreadsheet captures that.

Yet increasingly, the structures of modern education appear designed to value what can be counted rather than what truly counts. The quiet mentorship between teacher and student is harder to scale than a digital platform. The slow cultivation of intellectual depth is less attractive than rapid course completion. The patient art of teaching does not fit neatly into quarterly targets.

And so the centre of gravity shifts. Not all at once. Not loudly. But steadily.

When institutions forget their purpose

The tragedy is not merely institutional; it is cultural. A generation ago, many educators entered the profession with an almost stubborn belief that teaching mattered. They believed that education could expand opportunity, cultivate empathy, and elevate societies. For them, the classroom was not simply a workplace; it was a place where futures could be rewritten.

Today, one must ask: do our institutions still nurture that belief? Or do they quietly erode it?

When educators are treated primarily as operational resources rather than intellectual stewards, their capacity to inspire inevitably diminishes. When leadership in education is dominated by those whose primary expertise lies in markets rather than minds, priorities begin to change. Decisions become guided less by pedagogical wisdom and more by financial calculus.

The result is not always immediately visible. Buildings still stand. Courses still run. Certificates are still issued. But something subtler begins to thin. The moral imagination of education.

The measure that matters most

And yet, despite these shifts, the enduring power of genuine teaching refuses to disappear entirely. The proof exists in the relationships that outlive institutions. It exists in those messages from former students. It exists in the teachers many of us still remember from decades ago, teachers whose influence remains vivid long after the details of their lessons have faded.

Think for a moment about the educators who shaped your own life. Not simply the ones who completed the syllabus. But the ones who believed in you before you believed in yourself. Many of us remain connected to such teachers even today. Their presence did not merely inform our academic development; it quietly moulded the people we became.

That is the true measure of education. Not enrolment numbers. Not valuation metrics. Not marketing reach. Impact.

If the purpose of education is ultimately to illuminate minds and enlarge human possibility, then we must confront an uncomfortable truth: institutions that forget this purpose, no matter how efficient or profitable they become, risk betraying the very idea they were built to serve.

Education does not need fewer entrepreneurs. But it desperately needs more educators. People who understand that teaching is not simply about transmitting information; it is about shaping lives. People who recognise that the most profound outcomes of education often unfold years later, quietly, in the lives of those who were once students.