Consider a university student learning about economic inequality. They might learn that the Gini coefficient measures inequality on a scale from 0 to 1, develop the ability to calculate it from income data, and produce visualisations comparing the scores of different countries. A course might provide them with a definition: inequality refers to differential access to resources across a population. The student has acquired information, developed a technical skill and encountered a conceptual definition. 

But do they understand inequality as a concept? Can they articulate why we might care about the distribution of resources, rather than solely their aggregate quantity? Can they explain what inequality fundamentally is – a property of statistical distributions, an attribute of relationships between people or something that encompasses both and more? The difference between these two modes of engagement – absorbing information versus understanding concepts – is part of what distinguishes superficial from substantive education.

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Understanding concepts is different from learning facts or techniques. When students encounter the concept of inequality, they must grapple with questions that cannot be resolved through the application of information or calculation alone, such as: what makes a distribution of resources unjust? How does economic inequality relate to political inequality? When are inequalities justified? 

The Gini coefficient, as a prominent metric of inequality, itself embodies particular conceptual commitments – assumptions about how to weight differences in income, whether to consider wealth or income and what constitutes the relevant population. These are not merely technical choices, but reflect substantive positions about what inequality is and why it matters. 

Yet even deep conceptual understanding within a single domain proves insufficient when addressing complex, multifaceted problems. This points to a second challenge: integrating knowledge across different domains. There are many worthwhile attempts being made in education to foster what interdisciplinary scholars term “integrative learning”, but generally university curricula remain divided into discrete subject matters, with students left to identify links themselves. 

Break down silos

The problem is partly one of knowledge being sorted into – and taught within – disciplinary boundaries, but the issue extends beyond academic disciplines. Students struggle to connect theoretical knowledge with practical application, abstract principles with concrete cases, quantitative analysis with qualitative understanding. These divisions represent reasonable responses of the human mind to the challenge of understanding a world too complex to grasp in its totality. Yet division requires limits. Breaking down barriers to illuminate how different forms of knowledge complement one another remains one of higher education’s most persistent challenges.

There are no simple solutions to these intertwined issues of superficiality and fragmentation. However, there is merit in exploring pedagogical approaches, some long-established, which may offer productive avenues for addressing these challenges. 

As one example, consider a recent task from a seminar in a first-year interdisciplinary course on societal fairness at my institution. Students construct their own quantitative index of educational fairness across countries, choosing from indicators such as wealth gaps in achievement, gender representation in STEM fields, urban-rural disparities and tuition fee levels. The exercise appears initially technical – selecting indicators, assigning weights, producing rankings. 

But the pedagogical purpose lies elsewhere. Each indicator embodies particular commitments about what educational fairness entails. How should a conception of fairness balance equality of opportunity and equality of outcome? Does fairness require both access to education and inclusivity within it – and how do these relate? How does social mobility interact with these other aspects? As students discuss which indicators to include and how heavily to weight them, they discover that quantitative analysis cannot proceed without making substantive judgements about values and priorities. Technical analysis requires – rather than replaces – conceptual clarity about what we are trying to measure and why.

Importantly, this is not an exercise in relativism. The point is not that all conceptions of fairness are equally plausible, but that engaging seriously with fairness – even through supposedly objective metrics – requires grappling with substantive questions about what we owe one another and what constitutes genuine opportunity. Ability with technical methods matters, but it cannot substitute for conceptual understanding. In fact, it requires it. 

This is not to present any specific course or approach as a model or panacea. Every curriculum faces similar challenges: maintaining depth while covering breadth, assessing understanding rather than information retention, helping students integrate when structure reinforces fragmentation. But the task of orienting teaching around concepts and their integration across domains is an important one. 

Unfortunately, pedagogical approaches oriented around conceptual depth confront a structural obstacle: higher education is increasingly valued primarily as a signal to employers. This instrumentalisation disrupts students’ latent but genuine desire for knowledge, replacing intrinsic motivation with concern for credentials and grades. Deep conceptual understanding cannot be gamed, the way one might memorise facts or master exam techniques (or use GenAI tools to produce competent-seeming analysis). It requires comfort with ambiguity and tolerance for provisional understanding that deepens over time. These qualities sit uneasily alongside a student’s understandable anxiety about achieving specific grade thresholds.

Yet the stakes make the effort worthwhile. An education system that produces polished but superficial minds – capable of deploying techniques and remembering information but unable to grapple with fundamental concepts or integrate insights across domains – fails both students and society. Students deserve preparation for the complex, multifaceted challenges they will confront; society requires them to be capable of thinking deeply about concepts like justice, equality and progress. 

Maximillian Afnan is a fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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