We associate education with many different things: a safe and prosperous future for our children; competitiveness and foreign direct investment in the regions we care about; education as a means of preventing a relapse into “barbarism”, as the sociologist Theodor W. Adorno described it. And by barbarism he meant many aspects of the political developments we are observing today. But education is also a business, and countries like Austria and Germany, for example, are highly regarded in engineering disciplines and have growing student numbers. Europe is becoming the school of the world. Investments in student housing and education-related real estate are ranked 3rd and 9th, respectively, in Europe according to the ULI Report “Emerging Trends in Real Estate” 2025. However, education is also a political battleground. The “shift from teaching to learning” has not yet been implemented at many universities. Emancipatory education, even more than a century after the writings of the reform pedagogue Maria Montessori, is still largely absent in many schools! Education for obedience dominates, even though we urgently need disobedience for the competitiveness of businesses. And now, artificial intelligence offers opportunities and challenges on an unprecedented scale, including for regional development. It’s time to envision the future of education and to act.