Learning for a Lifetime

Lifelong learning is our new reality. And it is here that new communications technologies offer opportunities that transcend physical borders and boundaries.

I've discussed how, between the ages of 17 and 22, a person's mind and spirit open wide, as she begins to explore her world, her place in it, and what she intends to contribute to her society. It is during this age that some of a person's most intense bonds and affiliations take shape. Because of this, the best undergraduate college or university education should be experienced in community, so that shared social, athletic and cultural experiences can be as mutually transforming as the intellectual experiences inside the classroom, library or laboratory.

This point has been lost on many educators, who are falling prey to the lure of commercialization. A major New York Times story recently detailed how some premier universities are attempting to franchise their undergraduate experience through hastily erected foreign campuses. Yet such semi-campuses, while costly to a student, can offer only a small portion of the experience that their mother campuses have achieved over decades or centuries. It is akin to running a five-star restaurant in New York while passing off a fast-food version of it (at full cost) in Chicago. Chicago did nothing to deserve such treatment.

There is a place and a season for the internationalization of the American university, but it does not involve the undergraduate phase.

Undergraduate education represented the final phase of most Americans' education not long ago, but now it is often just the first of several phases within the realm of higher education.

From 1960 to 2004, the number of bachelor's degrees conferred rose from about 400,000 to 1.4 million. But the number of master's degrees conferred rose from 75,000 to 560,000 -- more than double the rate of growth for undergraduate degrees.

High-achievers are especially likely to attend graduate school, as the quality of a student's undergraduate institution influences their probability of continued study. And among Fortune 100 CEOs, just 17 attended graduate school a half-century ago, a number that rose to 46 by 1980 and 61 by 2006.

This illustrates the growing importance of the second phase of higher education, which now encompasses far more than master's degrees. It now involves certificates and continuing education, as well as regular retraining for new careers. The Greek playwright Aeschylus in his Orestia trilogy reminds us: Learning is, in the freshness of its youth, even for the old. Especially in a world in which "old" persons will have to learn new skills as old industries die and new ones rise up to take their place.

Whether or not a person attends a traditional graduate program, she will find that top-quality online learning can help her advance across two or four or even eight careers over the course of her lifetime.

This lifelong process is increasingly a global process. My own university, USC, has continued to pioneer and perfect the craft of distance learning. Its renowned Distance Education Network (DEN) is an example of how educators saw change coming and planned for it.

DEN was once a top satellite-based program, but it quickly reinvented itself to capitalize on the Internet. This allowed more flexibility than satellite delivery could offer. Lectures could be pulled up on demand, rather than on rigid schedules -- a crucial feature for workers and groups in far-flung locations. DEN has dramatically increased its studio classroom space and expanded its academic offerings, offering immense potential to serve men and women around the planet.

This phase of higher education, whether involving specialized degrees or certificates or general retraining, is the least dependent on face-to-face or communal interaction. It is also the most dependent on a customized approach for how and when one obtains new knowledge and new skills. As such, it is here that American universities can best extend their educational reach, through new and emerging technologies.

Many universities speak of "globalizing" as the societies around them globalize, but the great American universities would do well to resist the urge to franchise their undergraduate experiences, and instead on the "lifelong phase" that follows them.

Comments

[cktirumalai]

This is a clever way of justifying the *real* franchising that goes on when schools go the way of the University of Phoenix.

[moderationsmuse]

One can also just read. University education is over-rated. It can be wonderful. It can also be a waste of time. Increasingly it becomes so expensive that it begins to fall into the "diminishing returns" category.
People have forgotten what education is. Perhaps they need to be reminded. Once every generation, reminders are necessary. What should one say, then? Well, let's look at it like this: what kind of education is it, that comes exclusively from the university's side? Presumably the student has a native intelligence. When the student has intellect, the university is there providing a large spectrum of ideas upon which intelligence plays. But if, as many seem to suppose, the student is just this passive thing upon which the university acts, then that is training -- as when one trains a dog to sit.
For someone to pay for an "on-line education" ... that is the tops. That is the ultimate rip-off. The thing one pays for, chiefly, is the credential which of itself is meaningless.
For anyone who really wants to learn, because understanding life is one's heart's delight, for that person, EVERYTHING is classroom.

[ImmanuelGoldstein]

The fact is that the central model for college education will inevitably become online education.
The traditional college 'lifestyle' model for education had become too expensive and too time consuming to be a model for mass lifetime education. It will devolve into a boutique experience for the very rich just like it was in the first half of the 20th century and earlier.