A crisis of numbers

Rushan Ziatdinov

By Rushan Ziatdinov

• Published Jan 22, 2026 2:50 PM KST

Something is wrong with this planet. Peace, humanism, justice, education and our lives in general are all in crisis. Higher education is in crisis as well, not only in Korea but also in the U.K., the U.S. and other countries. This is often generalized as a crisis of capitalism, but I think it's more than that. I believe this is also a crisis of the numbers and methods we use to make decisions.

As I wrote earlier for The Korea Times, numbers stress people out.

The Times Higher Education recently reported that almost 30,000 people lost their jobs at U.K. universities in the last three years. These people have lost their income, and some may now face serious hardship, including housing insecurity, emotional distress, family separation and other severe personal consequences. However, I don't think U.K. university administrations care much about these people; numbers on balance sheets might be more important to them. Moreover, some vice chancellors predict an additional 10,000 job losses this year, according to The Times Higher Education article.

What should those 30,000 people do now? Reeducating them and creating new jobs will take time. Relying on unemployment insurance that covers much less than a long-term salary is not an option for a satisfactory quality of life, because even salaries are often not enough to pay for things other than basic necessities and rent. If some of these people are single-income household representatives with kids, or single moms or dads, their situation would become critical. It is critical because humanity has yet to invent a system that distributes numbers fairly among everyone. Numbers do not belong to anyone; they are the heritage of all of humanity. They do not only belong to company owners.

Capitalism is cruel, and numbers have become its humble servant, used to evaluate the productivity of employees, the knowledge of students and the success of test takers, among other things. Even professors are not exempt; in Korea, for example, their productivity is evaluated using numbers. Universities assign points for publications, performances, teaching, services and so on. However, it must be noted that there is no universally accepted mathematical proof demonstrating that any single evaluation method is inherently the fairest, most objective or most efficient, as different methodologies and weighting schemes can yield substantially different outcomes.

Physical money is disappearing from our lives, becoming mere numbers on monitor displays in banks. Those who have these numbers can afford to live a good life, while those who have fewer numbers can only survive. From a mathematical perspective, however, two numbers, for instance 78 and 62, differ only in magnitude: one is greater than the other, yet mathematics itself assigns no intrinsic value or superiority to either, as all numbers are equally valid within the numerical system. Furthermore, contemporary assessment and evaluation frameworks rely predominantly on whole numbers, despite the absence of any theoretical justification for restricting measurement to integers alone. Mathematics offers a wide range of numerical representations, including decimals, fractions and irrational numbers, each of which may capture nuance that whole-number scales necessarily obscure.

An abstract to an interesting book by David Boyle titled "The Tyranny of Numbers: Why Counting Can't Make Us Happy" contains the following explanations. "Never before have we attempted to measure as much as we do today. Why are we so obsessed with numbers? What can they really tell us? Too often we try to quantify what can’t actually be measured. We count people, but not individuals. We count exam results rather than intelligence, benefit claimants instead of poverty. The government has set itself 10,000 new targets. Politicians pack their speeches with skewed statistics: crime rates are either rising or falling depending on who is doing the counting. We are in a world in which everything is designed only to be measured. If it can’t be measured, it can be ignored. The problem is what numbers don’t tell you. They won’t interpret, they won’t inspire, and they won’t tell you precisely what causes what."

Returning to the problems of U.K. universities, I would say that modern universities rely heavily on numbers. Moreover, the functionality of organizations is exacerbated by various modern statistical methods used to measure rankings, employee performance and contract renewals. University rankings themselves are based on different factors with different weights. Changing the weights or the evaluation method can completely alter a university's ranking. It's a game of numbers.

Considering the difficulties faced by employees of U.K. universities, I believe that universities should be, first and foremost, human enterprises where employees are treated with honor, love and care. I would like to take this opportunity to personally ask Prime Minister Keir Starmer to create better jobs for the nearly 30,000 affected individuals and address the structural problems of universities in a systemic way. This can be achieved by transforming universities into human enterprises of the future, where specialists can be hired at any time, not just once or twice a year. It's time to invent a new kind of mathematics that works for humans, not against them.

The job market must change in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). In this new superintelligent era, humans cannot approach job hunting like a hungry wolf hunting for food, competing with other wolves. Now, with the support of collaborative intelligence powered by AI, universities and organizations can directly offer customized jobs to prospective employees, eliminating unnecessary competition that only complicate the system. These new approaches can be integrated into the Ministry of Education's various regulations and later extended to all other sectors of the economy, fostering care for every person and soul.

We should also remember that Article 23 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights states that "everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment," and use it to improve the system we have.

Rushan Ziatdinov (ziatdinov.rushan@gmail.com) is a professor in the department of industrial engineering at Keimyung University in Daegu.