Learning and Earning: Vision of a Toolbox for the 21st Century

As I look across the emerging playing field for post-secondary and lifelong learning, the gap I see between traditional institutional structures and practices and the capacity to serve people differently and better has never been greater. When mobile devices, the internet, and big data intersect, our ability to coach, advise, support, and assess learners becomes an anytime, anyplace activity, limited only by self-imposed boundaries.

Old dichotomies cease to exist. For example, the claim that education was either “job-related” or “intellectual” (academic) no longer holds. We know that the intellectual and behavioral traits that have historically been associated with liberal arts degrees such as critical thinking, problem-solving, teamwork, and leadership also lie at the heart of what we now call “job holding” skills.  And we know that advanced applications of knowledge can be learned in an environment (like the workplace) that encourages reflection, critical thinking, and writing while acquiring the necessary “knowledge.” Moreover our ability to connect learning with earning, strongly and specifically has never been greater. Now when a person goes to work or gets promoted he/she is ready to succeed on Day One.

There has been a lot of writing and thinking about the unbundling of higher education in the last five years, including my own book Harnessing America’s Wasted Talent: A New Ecology of Learning. But the unbundling itself is really a symptom of something far more complex and profound. Learning and its validation have the potential to become free-form exercises, adaptable to whatever the needs of the learner or the employer are. Like a piece of clay or a set of Legos, resources can be molded to the needs of the learner and evidence of learning generated as the proof of what was learned.

This does NOT mean that all learning is going to be random and self-directed. Not in the least. In fact, there is plenty of evidence that most learners need and benefit from structure and clear expectations as well as personal support. What it DOES mean is that most forms of experience can be mined for their learning value. It also means that the construction of learning experiences and their assessment can be done far more precisely, linking directly with social, civic, personal, or employment requirements. This tells learners and employers alike what capacity they bring to work and to the community in terms of skills, behaviors, and intellectual equipment.

This is not meant to imply that certificates and degrees are outdated or irrelevant. It does mean, however, that their value has, in many cases, changed from a necessary cost of doing business to an elective option valued and chosen by the learner and/or requirements demanded by employers or consumers. It also means that all these forms of learning will be available and affordable throughout the learner’s lifecycle.

With all this in mind, what are some examples of the new practices and applications that can be developed in the environment created by the intersection of big data, mobile devices, and the internet? I’m curious to know what others think.

Life’s Only Constant is Change

Over the last four months, I have been in a gradual transition from my former position as the Founding President of Open College at Kaplan University (OC@KU) to a new set of responsibilities at Kaplan as the Senior Scholar and Advisor to the President. (That’s shorthand for a transition to part time contractual work amounting to about one week per month.)

During this time, along with my work responsibilities, I have been preoccupied with “retirement-related” issues and chores; the type of things that, quite candidly, other people used to do for me. It has been quite a learning experience to transfer 401(k) funds and see how the disbursements work, scrutinize the practicality of Social Security, look into Medicare and Medicare Supplement Insurance. And so on and so forth.

And then there is the time management issue. When you’re used to a 50-60 hour week (as I was), time management means “how do I organize these hours?” Time management was like a constant within which I operated. Now it means “how do I manage my professional time use as a variable within the larger block of time that is all my waking hours?” It’s been interesting to sort this out with my family, but we’re getting there! As my wife Letitia joked, “I signed up for better or for worse, but not for lunch every day!”

As I have had a chance to sort through these kinds of issues, I have looked away from some of my immediate past work at Kaplan and then returned to it with fresh and time-defined enthusiasm. I am astonished by the cutting-edge nature of several things we are doing to respond to the new potential for lifelong, post-secondary education. Most of these freshly-developed efforts are generated by the dynamic interaction among IT, data analytics, mobile devices, and social networks.

Therefore I have decided to write a series of blogs about several of these new services and their potential to better serve adults. I will do so not because they are the only solutions or ways to address the new potential, but because they seem like “good starts” to me. I want others to write to me about their solutions as well. My hope is that this dialogue will stimulate a marketplace of ideas and practices supporting new services for the emerging new world of learning and earning.

As always, let me know what you think.

Breakthrough Changes at Kaplan University

Sometimes there are special moments when you are very proud of where you work and the people you work with. This was such a week for me.

After more than six years of work, from conceptualization to development to implementation, Kaplan University has unveiled its three-way approach to competency assessment. This revised approach gives each learner evidence of their achievement in course outcomes, general education competencies (i.e. critical thinking, writing, etc.), and behavioral proficiencies that track the abilities that employers say make the difference between struggling on the job and being ready to work on Day 1. Combined with the modularization of its entire curriculum, the assessment of prior experiential learning, and the resources of the Open College at Kaplan University (OC@KU), this creates a better fit between the needs of the learner and our content.

This adds up to an overall redefinition of what “meeting the needs of the learner” actually means. From a curricular standpoint, Kaplan is now able to wrap its resources around the learner’s needs instead of asking the learner to adjust to the college’s programs. As Kevin Carey points out in his recent book, “The End of College,” we are entering a period of mass personalization where responding to the learner’s needs can lie at the heart of the educational endeavor. By giving learners the evidence that employers need and want to see, we are meeting their needs in a new dimension, linking explicit evidence of their knowledge and ability to standards that employers value.

This integrated approach to competency assessment also mines each learning experience far more thoroughly for value, extracting and measuring all three kinds of learning instead of just the traditional course outcomes. This has significant implications for reducing the time and cost of attaining a certificate or a degree. When Provost Dr. Betty Vandenbosch announced this new approach, she was heralding Kaplan’s emergence as one of only a few leaders on this new frontier of how we “do” higher education. And with the pride of the moment comes our responsibility to do it well and continually improve our understanding and capacity to do it better.

Read the Paul Fain article “Profit and Competency” for more information on this new approach.

The Team is Everything

Several years after I resigned the presidency of California State University, Monterey Bay to serve as ADG-Education at UNESCO, a former colleague said to me, “If it wasn’t for you, this place wouldn’t be here.” For a while, I bathed in the glory of that sentiment. But, at heart, I knew how inaccurate, though well-intentioned, it was.

To be sure, I had led and held together a fractious environment, refusing to let a small cabal of people define the university in their own image. And the result, after almost 11 years, was one to be proud of: an innovative, growing university well on its way to becoming a great place to learn. But could I have survived, let alone prospered, without Diane, Betty, Bertie, Bill, John, Chris, Dino, and Kevin? The answer is “No way.”

These people symbolize all those who contributed to the university’s success during its founding years.

Diane Cordero de Noriega was our provost for the last six years of my presidency. She and her husband Carlos stood back-to-back with me as we built the academic program. She knew the California State University system in a way that I did not, easing our growth at that level. On top of that, they were my friends, lending their support when times were tough.

Betty McEady was a professor in the Teacher Ed program who not only served students superbly, but also developed community ties in the Marina and Seaside areas. When the university needed to do some explaining or when community members were concerned, Betty opened doors that I never could have moved. We didn’t agree all the time, but we did share a larger vision for the university, and Betty stood by it.

Bertie Bialek was a community member who took an interest in the university from a philanthropic angle. When state senator Bruce McPherson asked me whether I could raise $5M to finish a new science center if he secured base funding of $12M from the legislature, I immediately said “Yes.” At the time, we had not raised more than $250K in any year, let alone $5M for a science center. As we closed in on the date of the ground-breaking, almost $1M short of our goal, my phone rang. It was Bertie and she had successfully put us over the top.

Bill Head saw the opportunity to establish a science program, using earth systems as the organizing principle. He has committed the last 20 years (and counting) of his life to seeing that vision through and bringing it to life. But in the early days, there were skeptics aplenty who seriously questioned the legitimacy and quality of his vision.

John Ittelson was a quiet but tireless worker on the IT faculty. We were committed to being a wireless, “tech savvy” university in 1995. Many people helped put us in that place, but John, teaching, coaching, and doing community outreach near and far, symbolized the effort it took to succeed.

Chris Hasegawa and Dino Latino lived beside each other on Eichelberger Court, just down the street from me. Chris, a rarity in academics, shared a faculty position between the science and education departments and was a gifted jazz sax player. When we needed someone to help with our fundraising efforts, Chris stepped up. And Dino was the “fix-it” man. Whenever something broke or went “bump in the night,” he was there with a smile, to make it right.

Kevin brought business sense and a commitment to the university’s vision from day one. As the Director of the University Foundation, he continually found ways to generate revenues and add value to the quality of campus life. When we had the rare opportunity of acquiring an NPR radio station, he took on that challenge and brought the station into the university’s arms.

There were many, many others who made this success happen. From that experience, I know it is one thing to say “There is no ‘I’ in team.” It is another to know it in your bones. That’s what I learned at Cal State Monterey Bay. And it is a lesson I try to live by every day.