Long Life Learning

Michelle R. Weise (2021). Long life learning: Preparing for jobs that don’t even exist yet. Wiley.

xi Clayton Christensen … the theories of disruption are powerful because they provide a constructive and positive lens through which to analyze the unknown and the nascent

xii “good enough” … nonconsumers

xiii experiences reveal how ill-suited our current post-secondary education and workforce systems are at facilitating seamless, flexible, and cost-effective learning pathways for people to keep up with the emerging demands of the economy

xiii COVID-19 … Daniel Pink describes the virus as the “great unmasking of problems that were in plain sight … there were always these fundamental cracks in the system.”

xiii education … systems have neglected millions of people looking to access the relevant information, funding, advising, and skills training they need in order to advance

xiv A new learning ecosystem must be navigable, supportive, targeted, integrated, and transparent

4 The simple extension of our life span suddenly forces us to consider the dramatic lengthening of our work lives

4 In the United States … baby boomers … will have experienced at least 12 job changes by the time they retire … the number of job transitions will only increase with time, as people confront longer and more turbulent work lives

5 the future of work becomes inextricably tied to the future of learning … Ongoing skill development will become a way of life … we will all become working learners

6 For most adults, taking time off work to attend classes … will not be the answer … We will all have to harness the power of education over and over again throughout a longer work life

10 The effect of more hours spent on screens means that we are spending less time practicing our human skills in person with others … We are also relating less and less with people with whom we differ

11 We’re surrounded by things with which we agree as opposed to issues or viewpoints that might challenge our thinking or make us feel uncomfortable. It takes practice to see things from another person’s point of view, but it’s impossible to empathize if we’re never exposed to those ideas in the first place

11 The most valuable workers now and in the future will be those who can combine human + technical skills (human+ for short), and adapt to the changing needs of the workplace

14-15 As we try to make sense of a longer, more turbulent work life, we must anticipate that learning and continual skill development will become a way of life

15 There will need to be more on- and off-ramps for long life learning

16 Learning and work are becoming inseparable … Michael Barber, Katelyn Donnelly, and Saad Rizvi

18 Education and work are one and the same

18 Anthony P. Carnevale … the most powerful teacher is the job itself … The clear message from learners is that they enroll in higher education for job and work outcomes

20 underemployment is not a short-term problem … the first job determines the quality of the second job, and the third job, and the fourth job

21 Women were more likely to find themselves underemployed in their first job than men … With the exception of engineering

21 If colleges and universities fail to launch graduates successfully the first time around, how in the world will they be able to support the 20 to 30 more job transitions to come?

25  seven in ten students today display at least one of these nontraditional characteristics … They have a lot of “life” that gets in the way and are seeking affordable and flexible learning pathways … They are the new consumers of education

26 Most colleges and universities … are neither evolving their models nor tailoring their programs to attract and meet the needs of this growing population of new learners

27 just “good enough” … to gain traction with people whose alternative is nothing at all. [Clayton] Christensen called this population nonconsumers

30 A disruptive innovation transforms products and services that used to be complicated and expensive and makes them initially affordable and accessible to a whole new population of people, the nonconsumers

32 Disruption is a process, not an event

37 Disruptive innovations generally appear unattractive to a traditional institution, since innovations are fundamentally at odds with the college’s value proposition, resources, processes, and revenue formula

41 Competency-based education (CBE) aligned to work force needs

42 two other key markers of disruption: modularization and the creation of a new value network of employers

44 value in the first year – not just prerequisites … acquire a job skill first that “has value on the job market.” … also increase persistence in longer programs

45 Christensen’s concept of nonconsumers reminds us to return to the people whose alternative is nothing at all in order to identify the skills we need to build, the pathways we need to design, and the funding mechanisms that we need to foster

46 Millions of Americans never complete their degrees … they have also lost faith in higher education

47 employers are the ultimate consumer of the graduates in training – not accreditors

48 60 percent of … postsecondary education in the United States – devoted to industry training and certification

51 The coronavirus laid bare the prolonged lack of investment in talent development

51 Today, as many as 73 percent of employees already report having some type of current caregiving responsibility

55 age discrimination makes it harder for older individuals, especially women, to get hired into new jobs

58 An ecosystem grows and thrives by the health of its limiting factors … the most critical contingent we must pay attention to are the people who are being left behind

60 Mortality in the United States is moving in the exact opposite direction as in the rest of the world. The global population is living longer while life expectancy in the United States has consistently fallen since 2014 

61 Andy Van Kleunen … “Many countries we compete with see continual worker retraining as part of their economic strategy …”

63 In the early 1970s … Michael Pachovas and a few of his friends created sloping curb ramps … so that they could navigate the sidewalks in their wheelchairs … ripple effects … the new normal … strollers … heavy carts … wheeling luggage … skateboarders … universal design

64 Solve for the pain points of those who are most distressed, and everyone benefits

67 A longer work life, coupled with technological advancements, will require continuous learning

72-73 For all people to thrive in the work of the future, a new learning ecosystem must incorporate these five guiding principles and be:

1.          Navigable …

2.          Supportive …

3.          Targeted …

4.          Integrated …

5.          Transparent

82 In 1799, a French soldier fighting for Napoleon in Egypt discovered a massive piece of stone inscribed in three languages … The Rosetta Stone … has become synonymous with decoding new fields of knowledge

94 For many, it is as if the system doesn’t want them to succeed. They can’t get a break despite their willingness to grow and engage

95 only 13 percent of workers without college degrees advance to a better-paying job within ten years

96 “… racism … I spoke with [the HR rep] … hoping that it would get better, and [it] actually got worse …” 

98 Wraparound supports are crucial in promoting persistence and completion of education and training programs

98-99 Paul Quinn College … Every one of his 280 students has a job at the college

101-103 College Unbound … The average age of its students is 38. Most are female and minorities, and 80 percent work full time … It offers dinner and babysitting … meaningful relationships … The school has an 80 percent completion rate with … 20 percent going on to graduate school

103-104 people are nine times more likely to get a job through a referral

106 In the learning ecosystem of the future, there will need to be more ways for people to forge stronger social ties and build connected communities

107 There is growing evidence that post placement supports can play a major role in helping new hires from the most vulnerable learner populations acclimate to workplace culture

110 Pew research reveals that the vast majority (87 percent) of adults in the work force today recognize that they need to develop new skills

111 More job postings than ever list a degree as a requirement

115 Twenty years to complete a degree?

116 Mark Schneider … in certain cases, a certificate can pay off with middle-class earnings – and sometimes can even exceed the earnings of graduates with bachelor’s degrees in those same fields

117 For hundreds of years, institutions of higher education have artificially separated subjects from one another

119 Interdisciplinarity often turns into more of a buzzword rather than real practice in postsecondary education … Olin College of Engineering … anomaly

119 problems of the future will be broad and wicked

120 problem-based inquiry … fosters creativity, resilience, and innovation

121 students … in engineering … pick a global problem that moves them

122 Sarah Stein Greenberg … purpose learning. “What if students declared missions not majors?”

126 on-ramp … innovative organizations that are thinking critically about the pain points that have dogged underserved learners in the past

131 Bootcamps … Ryan Craig … “last-mile” training … faster and cheaper alternatives to college

144 Joseph Fuller … “[employers] are not capitalizing on the widespread, latent optimism among their workers,”

145 the idea of upholding employees as equal in importance to shareholders is powerful … The businesses that begin building talent – instead of always buying talent – will win the talent wars of the future and reap dividends on their intermediate- and long-term competitiveness

146 The OECD ranks the United States second to last among 29 developed nations in investing in taxpayer-funded training

154 other approaches connected to income-based repayment are emerging … pay it forward for the next student … while also serving as mentors for new cohorts

161 In 2019, seven out of ten employers reported that they were experiencing a talent shortage … The disconnect between job seekers and jobs has a lot to do with the overreliance on formal credentials

162 hiring tends to bring out some of our worst implicit and explicit biases. Research has revealed that we inadvertently disadvantage minorities and women without even realizing it. In fact, in scientific fields, both men and women view white male applicants as more competent and hirable than women

162 Vivek Ravisankar … “Hiring should be based on skills …”

163 Jamai Blivin … “critical thinking, communications, customer service, adaptability, and drive for results.”

163 IBM is one of the few major employers, including Google, Starbucks, Apple, and Hilton, that no longer require a degree for well-paying professions

164 Alfred North Whitehead … “inert knowledge,” the kind of knowledge and theory that disappears rapidly from our brains because it is not applied in real-world contexts … Sadly, the vast majority of our tests and certifications are centered on this kind of knowledge, which fails to stick … Reliable assessments of learning or applied knowledge are hard to find

165 Deep learning is slow learning. It also involves struggle, not ease of mastery, and that struggle doesn’t show up well on tests … David Epstein

165 blind auditions

166-167 Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) … synthesize information, evaluate a situation, exercise judgment, and convey clearly what should be done … critical thinking in a highly ambiguous circumstance

168 how to measure curiosity, problem solving, systems thinking, and risk taking

169 In a longer work life, we’ll need more assessments of deep learning

171 In today’s economy, badges, microcredentials, and certificates have aimed to bridge the gap, but they leave a lot to be desired

174 Apprenticeships are regarded as the gold standard of work-based learning

177 try-before-you-buy models are still very much seeds of innovation. Outsourced apprenticeships are anomalies

177 Increasing the diversity of the workplace has been shown to promote and improve performance

178 [Raj Chetty and Alex Bell] found that patents with mixed-gender teams were cited 30 to 40 percent more than similar patents with all-male teams

178 Wayne Kunow … hiring diverse talent “means reflecting the customer base, which equals better customer experience.”

181 In Richfield, Utah … there is a 13-million-pound giant called Pando … a mass of 47,000 identical aspen trees with a singular root system stretching over 106 acres. It is purportedly the largest living organism on earth

182 [Suzanne] Simard has been able to show how a paper birch can converse with a Douglas fir through their back-and-forth transfer of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, water, and even defense signals

187 [Matt Gee] We have so much data out there in education and so much data in HR information systems, and yet we have a fundamental disconnect between education and work … that’s driving social inequality

192 John Oliver revealed that Amazon workers can walk up to 15 miles or more per day in warehouses, and “the injury and illness rate in the warehouse industry is higher than industries like coal mining, construction and logging.”

194 Knowing the future that we don’t want, we can better articulate the future that we do want and then build toward that

195 The story about the future of learning and work is the story we tell ourselves … we must start behaving differently today … By centering on the future of workers, we … embrace our new imperative for long-life learning and earning