In the future, college never really ends

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: June 28, 2018 at 01:29:02 GMT+9
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] In the future, college never really ends
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> In the future, college never really ends
> By Danielle Paquette
> Jun 6 2018
> <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/06/in-the-future-college-never-really-ends/>
>
> In the Future of Work, robots are supposed to wipe out tons of jobs, create a bunch of new ones or deliver some 
> combination of both. Economists predict any of these scenarios will force the average worker to do practically the 
> same thing throughout their careers: keep learning and learning and learning.
>
> Some colleges in the United States are already preparing for this age of perpetual education, including the 
> University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. The Ann Arbor school launched a scholarship program that pays for 
> graduates to take classes there forever, and the number of students is slowly growing.
>
> The 42 courses, which normally cost $10,000 each for a week in the classroom, explore leadership, marketing, human 
> resources and finance. (Students cover food, lodging and a $1,250 administrative fee.)
>
> “What is now true for a Michigan Ross student is your tuition is an upfront subscription, and that subscription 
> happens to be for life,” said Scott DeRue, the school’s dean.
>
> DeRue declined to say how much the effort has cost, but so far, only a handful of Ross’s roughly 580,000 alumni have 
> taken up the offer. About 40 students returned to learn new skills in 2015, the program’s first year, and 200 did so 
> in 2017.
>
> “It’s an investment on our side, but we think it’s the right investment to make,” DeRue said. “We see our 
> relationship with students not as a transaction but as a lifetime partnership.”
>
> Most colleges provide some form of continuing education (and usually with a hefty price tag), but the concept of 
> regular reskilling in a campus environment is relatively new. Ross’s curriculum is meant to be nimble, DeRue said, 
> and to transform along with the economy.
>
> The idea of an “open loop” education — a more flexible relationship between school and graduate, rather than the 
> traditional four-year path to a degree — originated at Stanford University in 2014, when members of the design school 
> were asked to imagine how the college should function by 2025. Researchers proposed allowing students to sign up for 
> six years of classes in any major and take them whenever they want — a chunk after high school, perhaps, followed by 
> a refresh a couple of decades into their professional lives. But the model has not become a reality.
>
> Lisa Lapin, vice president of communications at Stanford, said the school is still in the process of reinventing its 
> lifetime offerings, “but the details are to be developed by working groups and design groups over the course of the 
> next year.”
>
> In a speech at Columbia University in New York last week, Thomas Malone, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of 
> Management and founding director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, said that no one can forecast 
> precisely how automation will warp employment — though he expects more opportunities than losses. Humans in 
> practically every industry, he said, will have to learn how to work with technology, which will continue to rapidly 
> evolve.
>
> “We need to assume people will need to keep learning throughout their lives to continue to be productive,” he said.
>
> Less of a given, he said, is how we will pay for that.
>
> Ross is the first university to foot the postgraduate tuition bill. Unions might have to step in, he said, and 
> crowdfund bouts of reskilling. The government could invest in micro-apprenticeships.
>
> Purdue University in Indiana, meanwhile, has another model that Malone could see spreading to graduates wishing to 
> reskill. The university allows students to fund their schooling with future paychecks. (An economics graduate, for 
> example, might send back 3.38 percent of their salary for 100 months.)
>
> While technology is sparking this need for regular transformation, however, workers also must hone more than digital 
> talents. A May study from the global consultancy McKinsey said the demand for technological skills will surge by 55 
> percent over the next 12 years, while desire for leadership and management skills will jump by 24 percent.
>
> “Employers will want to see social and emotional skills,” said economist Susan Lund, who co-authored the report. 
> “Creativity, decision-making, real-time problem-solving skills.”
>
> Machines, she explained, aren’t even close to being able to operate in unpredictable environments. They’re more 
> likely to take over jobs that involve heavy repetition. (A 5-year-old kid still displays more creativity than the 
> most advanced artificial intelligence, MIT’s Malone has pointed out.)
>
> Feeling rusty at the office, of course, isn’t only a feature of technological advancement.
>
> [snip]
>
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