Why universal education and universal connectivity are becoming inseparable challenges
Education has always been one of the foundations of human development.
It gives individuals the ability to read, understand, question, create, communicate and participate in society. It can expand economic opportunity, strengthen institutions and help people resolve disagreements without violence.
But in the twenty-first century, another infrastructure has become increasingly important to the way knowledge is created, distributed and accessed: the Internet.
This raises a fundamental question:
Can the world achieve truly universal access to education without also addressing the global digital divide?
The answer is not simple. Internet access cannot replace schools, teachers, books or human interaction. Technology is not automatically educational, and connectivity alone does not create knowledge.
Yet the relationship between education and connectivity is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
Together, they form two important dimensions of what could be described as a global infrastructure of knowledge.
Education is already a global commitment
Education is not simply a national policy objective. It is explicitly embedded in the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) calls for:
“Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.”
The goal contains several targets to be achieved by 2030, including universal access to quality primary and secondary education, equal access to technical, vocational and tertiary education, the development of relevant skills, literacy and numeracy, and education that promotes sustainable development, human rights, global citizenship and a culture of peace and non-violence.
This last point is particularly significant.
Education is not considered by the 2030 Agenda merely as a mechanism for producing workers. It is also connected to citizenship, human rights, sustainable development and peaceful societies.
In other words, education is simultaneously an economic, social and civic infrastructure.
Yet the world remains far from universal educational access.
According to UNESCO's 2026 Global Education Monitoring Report, 273 million children, adolescents and young people were out of school in 2024.
That represents approximately one in six children, adolescents and youth worldwide.
The figure includes 79 million of primary-school age, 64 million of lower-secondary age and 130 million of upper-secondary age.
The situation is particularly difficult in low-income countries. UNESCO reports that the out-of-school population in those countries increased by 29% between 2015 and 2024.
The challenge, therefore, is not simply to improve education.
It is to make education genuinely accessible at global scale.
The digital dimension of education
At the same time, humanity is undergoing the largest expansion of digital connectivity in its history.
The International Telecommunication Union estimates that 6 billion people — approximately 74% of the world's population — were using the Internet in 2025.
That is an extraordinary transformation.
But it also means that approximately 2.2 billion people remained offline.
The divide is not simply a question of whether a signal exists.
The ITU emphasizes differences in:
- availability;
- affordability;
- quality;
- devices;
- digital skills;
- and security.
Nearly three quarters of humanity may now be online, but the benefits of connectivity are not distributed equally.
The difference between having an Internet connection and having meaningful access to the digital world is therefore increasingly important.
A student with a reliable broadband connection, a computer, educational resources and digital skills does not inhabit the same educational environment as a student with an intermittent mobile connection and no suitable device.
Connectivity is becoming an educational variable.
Internet access is also part of the Sustainable Development Goals
The relationship between education and connectivity is not merely conceptual.
It is also reflected within the Sustainable Development Goals themselves.
SDG 9 — Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure — includes Target 9.c, which calls for significantly increased access to information and communications technology and for efforts toward universal and affordable Internet access in the least developed countries.
This creates an important connection between two parts of the 2030 Agenda.
SDG 4 focuses on education.
SDG 9 includes digital connectivity and infrastructure.
They are separate goals, but in an increasingly digital society they interact.
A child cannot benefit from a digital educational resource that cannot be accessed.
A teacher cannot effectively use digital learning tools without adequate connectivity.
A university student cannot participate fully in an online course without an affordable connection.
A researcher cannot access global knowledge if the infrastructure required to reach that knowledge is unavailable.
Connectivity does not create education.
But without connectivity, an increasingly large part of the world's educational and informational resources remains inaccessible.
The global classroom is expanding
The Internet has fundamentally changed the potential scale of education.
A physical classroom has geographical limits.
A digital learning environment can potentially connect learners across cities, countries and continents.
A student in a remote community can theoretically access a university lecture thousands of kilometres away.
A teacher can share educational resources with learners beyond the boundaries of a local institution.
An open educational resource can be translated and reused in multiple countries.
A scientific publication can become accessible to researchers on another continent within seconds.
An online course can potentially reach thousands of learners without requiring each learner to relocate.
This does not mean that digital education should replace traditional education.
It means that the definition of educational infrastructure is expanding.
Schools, universities, libraries and teachers remain essential.
But increasingly, servers, broadband networks, digital platforms, devices, online libraries and digital skills are becoming part of the same ecosystem.
Yet the world is not fully connected — even its schools are not
One of the clearest demonstrations of this problem is found inside educational institutions themselves.
UNESCO reports that only 40% of primary schools and 50% of lower-secondary schools are connected to the Internet.
This statistic reveals an important paradox.
Humanity is simultaneously discussing artificial intelligence, advanced digital learning systems and increasingly sophisticated educational technologies while a substantial proportion of schools still lack basic Internet connectivity.
The technological future therefore cannot be discussed independently from infrastructure.
Artificial intelligence cannot compensate for the absence of electricity.
A digital textbook cannot compensate for the absence of connectivity.
An online university cannot solve the educational needs of someone who cannot afford a device or data connection.
Technological innovation matters.
But infrastructure determines who can participate in that innovation.
Education, critical thinking and the information environment
There is another reason why education and connectivity must be considered together.
The Internet does not distribute knowledge automatically.
It distributes information.
Those are not necessarily the same thing.
The digital environment contains scientific research, educational material and reliable journalism.
It also contains misinformation, manipulation, scams, propaganda and deliberately misleading content.
As artificial intelligence makes the production of text, images, audio and video increasingly accessible, the ability to evaluate information becomes even more important.
This places greater pressure on education systems to develop:
- critical thinking;
- media literacy;
- information literacy;
- digital literacy;
- scientific reasoning;
- source evaluation;
- and responsible use of technology.
SDG 4 itself includes a target concerning the development of relevant skills, including information and communications technology skills, while Target 4.7 addresses knowledge and skills related to sustainable development, human rights, global citizenship and a culture of peace and non-violence.
The educational challenge of the digital age is therefore not simply:
“How do we connect everyone?”
It is also:
“How do we prepare everyone to use connectivity intelligently?”
Education and peace
The connection between education and peace deserves particular attention.
Education does not automatically create peaceful societies.
The content of education matters.
The quality of education matters.
The inclusiveness of educational institutions matters.
The social environment in which learning occurs matters.
Recent UNESCO research reports that education is associated with lower prevalence of conflict and a higher probability of peace, while emphasizing that education alone does not automatically produce peace.
Education can contribute to trust, conflict resolution, social reconciliation and the development of knowledge about rights and responsibilities.
It can also provide people with tools for participating constructively in society.
But education can have different effects depending on what is taught and how it is taught.
An education system that encourages dialogue, critical thinking and respect for human dignity is fundamentally different from one that promotes exclusion or hostility.
The objective is therefore not simply more education.
It is quality, inclusive and constructive education.
The opportunity cost of remaining disconnected
The digital divide is sometimes described as a technological problem.
It may be more useful to understand it as a development problem.
Every person who remains disconnected potentially has reduced access to:
- educational resources;
- employment opportunities;
- digital financial services;
- scientific information;
- public services;
- professional networks;
- cultural resources;
- and global communication.
The consequences accumulate.
A child without access to educational resources may have fewer opportunities to develop skills.
A student without reliable connectivity may have difficulty accessing higher education.
A worker without digital skills may have fewer opportunities in an increasingly digital labour market.
A community without adequate infrastructure may find it harder to participate in the digital economy.
Connectivity therefore has effects beyond the telecommunications sector.
It interacts with education, employment, health, finance, innovation and civic participation.
Universal connectivity must also be meaningful connectivity
Universal access should not be interpreted as simply placing a signal over every inhabited area.
The ITU's work on universal and meaningful connectivity emphasizes multiple dimensions of digital inclusion, including quality, availability, affordability, devices, skills and security.
This distinction is crucial.
Imagine two students.
Both technically have Internet access.
The first has a laptop, high-speed broadband, unlimited data, a quiet place to study and strong digital skills.
The second has an inexpensive smartphone, an unstable connection, limited data and no dedicated study environment.
Statistically, both may be classified as Internet users.
Educationally, their opportunities are radically different.
The next stage of digital development must therefore move beyond the question:
“Are people connected?”
toward:
“Can people actually use connectivity to improve their lives?”
The role of technology must remain human
The expansion of digital education also creates legitimate concerns.
Technology can expand access, but it can also deepen inequalities.
Artificial intelligence can support teachers and learners, but it can also introduce new risks.
Online platforms can democratize information, but they can also amplify unreliable information.
Digital learning can provide flexibility, but excessive reliance on technology can create new social and educational problems.
The objective should therefore not be technological adoption for its own sake.
Technology should serve human development.
The infrastructure should remain subordinate to the educational purpose.
And the educational purpose should remain connected to human dignity, knowledge, opportunity and social cohesion.
A global infrastructure of knowledge
Taken together, SDG 4 and the digital dimension of SDG 9 point toward a broader question.
What would it mean to build a genuine global infrastructure of knowledge?
Such an infrastructure would require much more than Internet cables and data centres.
It would require:
Schools to provide foundational learning.
Teachers to provide guidance, expertise and human connection.
Libraries to preserve and distribute knowledge.
Universities to produce research and advanced learning.
Digital networks to connect people to information.
Devices to make that information accessible.
Affordable services to prevent exclusion.
Digital skills to enable meaningful participation.
Critical thinking to distinguish knowledge from misinformation.
Open educational resources to expand access.
International cooperation to reduce disparities.
And perhaps most importantly:
A shared recognition that knowledge is one of humanity's most important forms of infrastructure.
From physical infrastructure to knowledge infrastructure
For much of human history, development was measured through physical infrastructure:
roads, bridges, ports, electricity networks, hospitals and schools.
These remain essential.
But the twenty-first century is adding another layer.
Knowledge itself is becoming infrastructural.
A society's capacity to educate its population, connect its citizens, share information and develop skills increasingly influences its ability to adapt to technological, economic and environmental change.
This is particularly important for younger generations.
Today's children will enter a world in which artificial intelligence, biotechnology, automation, climate adaptation and digital communication are likely to reshape many aspects of economic and social life.
Their ability to navigate that world will depend not only on what they know today, but on their ability to continue learning.
This is why lifelong learning is not simply an educational slogan.
It is increasingly a condition of participation in modern society.
The remaining 2.2 billion
The number is enormous:
2.2 billion people remain offline.
At the same time:
273 million children and young people remain out of school.
These are not two unrelated statistics.
They represent two dimensions of the same larger challenge: ensuring that every generation has meaningful access to knowledge and opportunity.
Connecting the world will not automatically educate the world.
Educating the world will not automatically create peace.
But without broad access to education, and without increasingly broad access to the technologies through which knowledge is now shared, the ambition of inclusive human development becomes considerably more difficult.
The 2030 deadline
The world has less than four years remaining before the 2030 deadline of the Sustainable Development Goals.
The objectives are ambitious.
SDG 4 calls for inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all.
SDG 9 includes universal and affordable Internet access as part of its infrastructure and technology agenda.
The distance between these ambitions and current reality remains substantial.
Yet progress is possible.
UNESCO reports that 1.4 billion students were enrolled in primary and secondary education in 2024, representing an increase of 327 million, or 30%, since 2000.
The ITU reports that 6 billion people were online in 2025, compared with approximately 60% of the world's population in 2020.
Humanity has therefore demonstrated that enormous expansion is possible.
The question is whether that expansion can become sufficiently inclusive, affordable and equitable.
A choice about the future
The central challenge may not be whether technology will transform education.
It already is.
The deeper question is:
Who will have access to that transformation?
If connectivity becomes universal but remains unaffordable, the digital divide will persist.
If education becomes more digital but millions of children remain outside school, the educational divide will persist.
If information becomes abundant but critical thinking does not improve, misinformation may grow alongside knowledge.
If artificial intelligence becomes extraordinarily powerful but access to its benefits remains concentrated, technological progress may deepen existing inequalities.
The objective, therefore, should not simply be a more technological world.
It should be a world in which technology expands human capabilities rather than restricting them to those who already possess them.
Building the conditions for a more peaceful future
Peace is rarely created by a single institution, technology or policy.
It emerges from systems.
Education is one of those systems.
Connectivity is increasingly another.
Together, they can help create societies in which more people have access to knowledge, skills, communication and opportunity.
That does not guarantee peace.
But it can strengthen some of the conditions under which peaceful societies become possible.
The 2030 Agenda provides an internationally agreed framework for pursuing these objectives.
SDG 4 recognizes education as a fundamental component of sustainable development.
SDG 9 recognizes digital infrastructure and connectivity as part of the technological foundations of modern societies.
The challenge now is to understand how these objectives interact.
Because the future of education may no longer be defined only by what happens inside a classroom.
It may also depend on whether every learner can reach the wider world of knowledge.
And the future of peace may depend, in part, on whether that world of knowledge is accessible not to a privileged minority, but to humanity as a whole.
The question is no longer whether knowledge can travel across borders.
It can.
The question is whether everyone will have the opportunity to travel with it.
Sources: United Nations Sustainable Development Goals; UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report; UNESCO Digital Education; International Telecommunication Union, Facts and Figures 2025.