Read an Excerpt
Leading the LEARNING Revolution
The Expert's Guide to Capitalizing on the Exploding Lifelong Education Market
By Jeff Cobb
AMACOM
Copyright © 2013 Jeff Cobb
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8144-3226-6
Chapter One
THE NEW LEARNING LANDSCAPE
I'VE CHOSEN TO FOCUS this book on lifelong learning partly because that is my background—it is a market in which I have worked for well over a decade—but also because I think it has received surprisingly little attention in all of the excited and often heated discussion about education in the past several years. I take the term "lifelong learning" literally—it means learning that occurs throughout the life of an individual—but for the purposes of this book, I will focus on what I think of as "the other fifty years." So much of the broader public discussion about education focuses on the K–12 sector and higher education. But the reality for most people is that they will exit these systems with at least another fifty years ahead of them. To say there is a significant—and growing—need for learning during these years would be a vast understatement, and yet you rarely hear politicians, trade and professional association CEOs, college and university presidents, or other potential learning leaders articulate a compelling vision for how we should serve this huge market.
It is clear, however, that this market is changing—indeed, already has changed significantly—and part of what inspired me to write this book is the efforts I have seen by entrepreneurial thinkers over the past several years to fill in the gaps left by traditional approaches to continuing education and professional development. In this chapter, I examine five forces that I think are driving these gaps and discuss their impact on the business of lifelong learning. By their nature, the five forces are:
1. Economic
2. Educational
3. Technological
4. Neuropsychological
5. Generational
I believe these forces ensure that the market for lifelong learning will continue to grow dramatically and dynamically in the coming years.
THE LEARNING ECONOMY
The study of economics has offered many important lessons over the past two hundred years, but the one I find most important to education providers as we make our way into the twenty-first century is this: The nature of work changes with increasing speed as economies mature. To not recognize and actively address this fact is to wind up in a situation in which there is a significant gap between what businesses need and what the labor pool can provide. Indeed, that is where we find ourselves, both in the United States and many other developed economies, as I write this book.
A September 2011 article in the Economist argued that even as unemployment surges, businesses are having a difficult time finding people with the types and levels of talent they need for open positions. "[A] minority," the article suggests, "is benefitting from an intensifying war for talent. That minority is well placed to demand interesting and fulfilling work and set its own terms and conditions." This minority, of course, is very well educated and highly capable of adapting to changing circumstances.
In retrospect, we have been evolving toward this point at an accelerating rate for centuries. In the early 1800s—a mere two hundred years ago—the vast majority of the U.S. population lived and worked on small farms or ran businesses that served the needs of farmers. The nature of work, even given a range of technical innovations, was not terribly different from what it had been for thousands of years before. Plant, harvest, process, sell, or do things to support these activities. Only a hundred years later the majority of the population lived in cities, and manufacturing had become the engine of our economy. The demands of this economy—both to do the work of manufacturing and to provide a food supply to support large numbers of people who no longer worked on farms—meant that a wide range of entirely new jobs were created and that the nature of the old jobs had to change significantly. As manufacturing grew and farming evolved, both became increasingly less labor intensive and more specialized in the types of labor involved. Just as important, with the spread of public and higher education and continuing advances in technology, there was a dramatic increase in the pace at which new types of jobs emerged, became increasingly specialized, and then either disappeared or adapted to yet more change.
Skip forward another hundred years, and both rural and industrial life are distant memories for most of us. For decades we have lived in what the prescient Peter Drucker dubbed a "knowledge economy," one driven by service- and information-based businesses. But just decades later, even Drucker's term no longer seems quite on the mark. "Knowledge" sounds too finite: Master a body of knowledge and you are on your way. There are professions where that still works, at least as a point of entry, but as any recent college graduate can attest, those professions and those points of entry are becoming harder and harder to find. We now live in what is not so much a "knowledge" economy but rather a "figure it out on a daily basis" economy. Or, more formally, a learning economy.
Many of us, even those who remain in the same jobs, see the nature of our work change from year to year, and sometimes much faster. Technology is one key driver of this continuous change; globalization is another. Most of us are now all too familiar with the idea that a software program or a lower-paid worker in another country may be able to do our work as well or better than we can. This knowledge, in and of itself, creates a perpetual uncertainty in the labor market. And most of us recognize that we are unlikely to remain in any one job for our entire careers or even for long stretches of time, as was the norm for previous generations.
Indeed, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor indicates that the "average person born in the later years of the baby boom held 10.8 jobs from age 18 to age 42." There is little, if any, reason to believe that this number will decline—unless, of course, the drop is driven by the grim fact that so many in the younger generations will be starting work later given the current lack of entry-level job openings. In addition to shifting jobs, many of us may also shift careers at least once during our working years. Either situation creates significant new learning demands.
Increasingly, for individuals, there are two options. One is to stick to the path of traditional employment, but to be as fully prepared as possible for the less secure environment that this path now offers. This is a particular challenge in professions in which the work lends itself to being codified and systematized, as is the case in a growing number of midlevel, white-collar positions. The process of off-shoring or computerizing any job that requires straightforward information processing—from insurance claims to bookkeeping to routine legal tasks—is already well under way. Assuming that robotics finally makes the leap that seems inevitable, the situation will become only more challenging. As technology futurist Kevin Kelly puts it, "Productivity is for machines. If you can measure it, robots should do it."
While creativity, critical thinking, and leadership are often cited as aptitudes needed for combating this trend and securing coveted "high-talent" jobs, I'd argue that these are not enough. These aptitudes, valuable as they are, require continual replenishment through learning. Individuals who hope to survive, much less thrive, in traditional employment in the learning economy must actively pursue educational opportunities that maintain their value to their employers. In many cases, if not most, this will mean seeking opportunities that fall outside of whatever education and training the employer offers.
The other option is to throw off the reins of traditional employment and set out on your own. This is no silver bullet, of course: Individuals who choose this path need all of the same aptitudes and the drive to learn that their more traditional peers need, but they must also have the courage and the discipline to be self-reliant. Whether by choice or force of circumstance, an increasing number of individuals are, in fact, choosing this path. A 2011 series in the Atlantic points to a surge in freelance workers and goes so far as to call it "the industrial revolution of our time." Sara Horowitz, the series' author and founder of the nonprofit Freelancers Union, describes what she calls the "freelance economy," in which "over 42 million Americans are working independently—as freelancers, part-timers, consultants, contractors, and the self-employed." Horowitz goes on to argue:
We haven't seen a shift in the workforce this significant in almost 100 years when we transitioned from an agricultural to an industrial economy. Now, employees are leaving the traditional workplace and opting to piece together a professional life on their own. As of 2005, one-third of our workforce participated in this "freelance economy." Data show that number has only increased over the past six years. Entrepreneurial activity in 2009 was at its highest level in 14 years, online freelance job postings skyrocketed in 2010, and companies are increasingly outsourcing work. While the economy has unwillingly pushed some people into independent work, many have chosen it because of greater flexibility that lets them skip the dreary office environment and focus on more personally fulfilling projects.
Because workers in this freelance sector of the economy are not employed by typical companies, Horowitz argues, they fall outside of many of the protections that were put in place by the New Deal, a legislative agenda that was driven through by Franklin Roosevelt as an implicit acknowledgment of the dramatic shift in work from the farm to the factory. These workers, whether solo practitioners or operating within small business, also do not have corporate human resources and training departments.
Given economic realities at the time I am writing this book, there is little indication that the situation will change for traditional employees, and there is every indication that the ranks of freelancers will grow. In their promotional efforts as well as in the types of content and learning experiences they offer, smart educational providers have a tremendous opportunity to find innovative ways to target and support one or both of these audiences.
FROM REMEDIAL EDUCATION TO LEARNING
The data concerning how well prepared young adults in the United States are as they exit our higher education systems and become prospects for the continuing education and professional development market are disturbing:
* A 2010 study by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce suggests that by 2018 the United States will need 22 million new college degrees—but will fall short of that number by at least 3 million postsecondary degrees, associate's or better. The shortage amounts to a deficit of 300,000 college graduates every year between 2008 and 2018.
* In a recent survey of more than 400 employers, only 23.9 percent—that is, less than a quarter—reported that new job entrants with four-year college degrees have "excellent" basic knowledge and applied skills.
* In the same study, 43.4 percent of employers reported that the preparation of high school graduates was "deficient."
* Finally, another survey of 217 employers found that half the companies provide readiness or remedial training, but most are not satisfied with the results.
The message from these examples and a range of other research is clear: There is and will continue to be a lack of sufficiently educated people entering the U.S. economy in the foreseeable future. And this is happening at a time when the job market, as already noted in this chapter, is shifting toward "high-talent" positions. If this fact alone does not suggest a major need and corresponding market for continuing education and professional development, I don't know what does. Add to this the data about the frequency with which people switch jobs—and potentially careers—and it is clear that we face both a significant challenge and a significant opportunity.
Perhaps more worrisome than the issues we face with postsecondary education, however, are the gaping cracks visible in our foundational K–12 systems. At least since the passage of No Child Left Behind, the relentless focus on standardized testing in our schools has diminished the opportunity for teachers to expose students to a diverse, rich array of content and contexts representative of the type of world into which they will eventually emerge. As numerous critics of the U.S school system have noted (I among them), this obsession with a misguided version of "accountability" is resulting in students who have neither a sufficient command of basic content nor the skill set required to be effective lifelong learners.
Testing aside, the traditional nature of school as an institution is unlikely to produce individuals well equipped to function in the learning economy. While there are notable exceptions, school as it currently exists is based almost entirely upon a dependency paradigm. The vast majority of work is structured for the student and delivered to the learner with a much smaller amount being self-directed or at least collaborative. The proportions need to be flipped, or at least balanced. Self-directedness is a key aptitude that the successful lifelong learner must possess, but we are not cultivating this aptitude at a sufficient level.
Even to the extent that our traditional elementary and higher education institutions can, through their own efforts, align themselves more to the times, they will still only be a partial solution because such a large percentage of our learning needs arise in the forty-plus years that follow formal schooling. This is where self-directedness assumes a vital role, but also where there needs to be a rich network of learning and knowledge support that reflects the complex world in which we now live and work. Trade and professional associations are one existing part of this network; college and university continuing education departments are another. Organizations in each of these groups are struggling, to varying degrees, to keep up with rapidly changing needs and expectations. Associations, in particular, face the question of whether they remain relevant in a world where communities of interest can connect readily without them. Organizations need to rise to the new challenges of the lifelong learning marketplace—and there is plenty in this book to help them—but even assuming they do, demand is such that there still will be gaps to fill.
FIVE TECH TRANSFORMATIONS
Technology is a theme that runs throughout this book. As important as the other factors I discuss here may be, it is technology that has so far had the most visible, obvious impact on how we perceive learning and education. The fundamental shifts that have occurred in the global economy or that need to occur in our educational systems can be difficult to grasp, but smartphones, iPads, webinars, TED Talks (discussed in the next section), and degrees earned entirely online are relatively concrete, even if still amazing to many of us. We can point to ample evidence all around us, every day, that technology has made a difference in how we go about learning. And there is no reason to think it will stop.
From the perspective of the market for lifelong learning, I see five key areas in which technology has had, and will continue to have, a dramatic impact.
Access
There is no doubt that technology has dramatically expanded the range of tools and platforms available for delivering educational experiences, and by extension has blown open access to learning opportunities for the average person. The web, in particular, has all but eliminated time and distance—and, in many cases, cost—as barriers to learning, and made it possible for prospective learners to gain access to content and expertise that in the past would have required enrolling at a college or university, attending a conference, or spending a great deal of time in a library. Smartphones and other mobile devices continue to make access easier on a daily basis.
Education providers who continue to shrug off this phenomenon in the belief that educational experiences available over digital distribution channels are of inferior value do so at their own peril. The caliber and range of content, for starters, is truly astounding. With MIT in the lead, a global consortium of universities and colleges have long since (in Internet time) released major—and in many cases, all—parts of their curricula online for free and open access. This includes not just syllabi, but recorded lectures, readings, and all of the other supporting materials that go with classes at some of the world's top universities. The content is available through the universities' websites, but also through other popular, usually free distribution channels like YouTube and Apple's iTunes (which features an entire category called iTunes University).
Universities and other traditional education providers are not the only ones with access to digital distribution channels, and they are also not the only ones providing access to top experts. Less than a decade ago, for example, the annual Technology, Entertainment, and Design (TED) conference was an exclusive, high-priced membership event limited to an elite few with money to spare. Since the first release of recorded videos from the event in June 2006, it has become known to millions of users across the web and spawned additional business models, including the licensing of rights for local events under the brand TEDx. More recently, TED has launched TED-Ed, a site that enables users to add collaborative tools, questions, and other resources to videos created by a select group of educators and animators (http://education.ted.com).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Leading the LEARNING Revolution by Jeff Cobb Copyright © 2013 by Jeff Cobb. Excerpted by permission of AMACOM. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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