Viewing Education Policy as a Lifelong Process

Viewing Education Policy as a Lifelong Process

            This essay is meant as a general thought experiment in policy.  Its purpose is not arrive at a concrete and actionable conclusion, but rather to explore a more general notion about a certain policy that informs the way we view that policy.  The policy discussed in this essay is education.  I think we need to take a lifelong view of education instead of our current view that effectively ends with university graduation.  We as a society discuss much about the importance of pre-kindergarten education, increasing funding in our school systems, and providing better, more affordable university education, but we spent virtual no time discussing education once a student has graduated from university, be it undergraduate or graduate school.  To not consider educating people in any way after university, during which people will live the vast majority of their lives, is puzzling for a variety of reasons; … 

Currently we essentially declare that a person is done with education after they have finished university.  This seems odd considering that this person will have 40 to 50 or even more years of working life after they leave university.  Technology, business methods, and many other aspect of working life will change over the course of a person’s working life.  Continuing to learn and educate oneself so one can adapt to changing technology and circumstances is a must for any person who wishes to achieve and sustain success.  With continually increasing international competition from around the word, the workforce needs to be more educated to become competitive.  Workers who have more skills and more current skills as well as more current knowledge, create greater labor market flexibility and alleviate the individual anxiety of changing jobs.  More skilled and educated workers can more easily transition to new jobs and may be more willing to leave jobs they do not enjoy, creating greater labor market flexibility.   

The idea that workers need to continue learning and to continue their educations in order to be more productive and sustain their level of competency has already been recognized by the United States’ blue chip companies such as General Electric and Goldman Sachs.  By requiring employees to take a certain number of courses online each year at inner-company ‘Goldman Sachs University,’ Goldman Sachs has recognized and is addressing the need for continuing education with workers.  For Goldman Sachs it is more profitable to create and operate an inner-company education portal to continue the education of their workers than to continually hire and train new workers with more current university degrees, which brings up an advantage of continuing education during prime working years.

The primary bulk of education for a person occurs during the youngest years of a person’s life, before that person has meaningful working experience.  One advantage of continuing to educate people during their working years is that workers can utilize their working experience during their education.  Most university students do not have any meaningful working experiences to utilize when thinking about the topics of study in their classes.  Being able to leverage working experiences can enable a student to see their topics of study in new lights and beyond the merely theoretical.  Many MBA program already recognize the enhanced value that experience adds to an education.  They require applicants to have obtained certain amounts of working experience as a requirement for application.  Continuing to educate people in the workforce will allow individuals to leverage their working experience with their education in a way that was not possible in their traditional university educations.

Given that continuing to educate people beyond the traditional university level, undergraduate and graduate school, can increase labor market flexibility, create a more productive workforce, and allow workers to utilize their experiences with their educations, it is imperative that have a framework for the mass education of people who have left university reside in the working world.  I will propose a few ideas that can be implemented that will allow us to educate individuals throughout their lives. 

Micro-degrees provide an excellent way for adults to continue their education in way that is standardized and comparable for employers.  Currently micro-degrees, a degree around a year in duration, are primarily being considered as a more affordable option for young students, who know specifically what job they would like to do, to choose over a traditional four year university program.  While micro-degrees may indeed make sense for a portion of students, I believe their potential lies in being used by adults seeking to continue their education and acquire new skills.  Micro-degrees are perfectly suited for those in the workforce.  The durations of micro-degrees are small enough for most working adults to pursue after working hours or on the weekends and expect to finish within a year or two, or if adults wish to take off a year from the working world or take a one year sabbatical, they can complete a micro-degree.  

In order for micro-degrees to become successful and widely available, universities, community colleges, and technical schools need to incorporate micro-degrees degrees and programs designed for online pupils into their offerings.  Perhaps a hybrid online and classroom degree program could be constructed, with the majority of classes taking place online with two or three sit-down sessions with a teacher throughout the program, very similar to postgraduate diploma programs popular in the United Kingdom.

By utilizing micro-degrees and online courses, we can make the idea of life-long learning tangible to millions of Americans.  The United States would have a more competitive workforce and a more dynamic economy if we would approach education as a lifelong process.