Every industry is struggling to keep up with rapid knowledge creation and the impact of digitization. Both trends are happening at a rate that limits the long-term relevancy of the initial knowledge workers obtain in the foundational years of K-12 and higher education. Further, people are working longer in life for many reasons. Life’s journey from K to Grey is no longer limited to school, work, and retirement. Instead, co-mingling, working, living, and learning throughout a lifetime will be required.

There are additional issues confronting higher education, the most pressing of which is assuring the public and business community about higher education’s value and role. Higher education must demonstrate relevancy, affordability, and access and provide the ability to upskill, retool, and re-educate all parts of the workforce. These issues point to an expansive mission for public higher education, especially for research universities. How can public research universities get new knowledge to people and organizations more quickly and affordably and make higher education relevant for everyone at all stages of life? How can we help people retool, unlearn, relearn, and build their skills and knowledge in ways that differ from today’s structures for delivery, admission, financing, and credentialing? Answering these questions will facilitate individuals’ economic mobility and local regions’ talent base.

Georgia Tech is uniquely positioned to lead in this area. The Institute has 100+ years of non-degree education, 40+ years of distance learning, 30+ years of collaborating with teachers and students in the K-12 arena, and 10+ years of at-scale online Master of Science experiences. How might Georgia Tech, using its current and future knowledge from a century of innovative educational and research programs, initiate such reform to accelerate the mission of ‘creating leaders who improve the human condition’?

Vision for Lifetime Learning

We need to envision and create a new learning environment for the digital world, in which technology plays a key role when developing instruction for all delivery formats and learning modalities, not one that tries to extend the physical into the digital. Teaching, research, and service components must work together to leverage innovative ideas. Thus, a bold solution is the formation of a new college – at the intersection of technology, learning sciences, and business/policy models – to offer learning at all credential levels, credit-based programs, and professional development (non-credit) programs across the K-to-grey lifetime of an individual via formal, informal, and semi-structured fashions. 

A college focused on lifetime learning will, as expected at a research university, be a catalyst for fundamental and applied research on how technology can expand the essence, quality, and utilization of knowledge and skills. This is a ‘yes/and’ approach. It does not give up our roots of traditional high school age individuals going to college to launch their careers.  It only expands to engage other stakeholders who need education in new ways over a lifetime and further elevates the learning enterprise for traditional students. As we know, Georgia Tech possesses most of these components already, but they are distributed across the Institute, and aligning them can bring new synergies to accelerate the work and its impact. 

The College

The College of Lifetime Learning will have two principal missions: helping people prepare and pivot along their lifetime and, equally as important, creating future leaders in lifetime learning to impact education, communities, and business positively.

The College will be an undergraduate and graduate degree-granting entity. It will accomplish the highest quality teaching, research, and service, leading national and international conversations. Besides being responsible for the academic programs and curriculum, faculty is essential to achieving these objectives.

The academic programs will incorporate research findings from those engaged in the college’s work. These programs will be at the intersection of:

• technology and its application to enhanced, improved, and transferable learning; 
• learning sciences as we incorporate how people relate to and utilize technology; and 
• business/policy models that question formal education structures. 

Degrees and credit-bearing credentials will be part of the college offerings, and the college will also offer existing non-credit credentials and potential future credentials. A robust institute-wide conversation will shape these programs at the outset and into the future. 

Personnel. A bold endeavor needs faculty and staff dedicated and focused on this vision rather than as a second objective to their primary responsibilities or alliances. This is not an education college – it is the future of what can be for higher education and is about enabling successful learning by individuals. We have faculty who teach in various modalities to many stakeholders and staff who work alongside supporting learners. We have a crucial resource in learning design.

Financial. The OMS and professional development programs have proven there is an appetite for new kinds of educational programming and delivery formats that generate new revenue for Georgia Tech. We hear even more desire for such unique programs, but more importantly, we hear that its participants seek to feel like members of our learning community. 

Organizational.  We will require personnel, financing, and an appropriate structure for this vision. The activities and strategies under consideration typically fall within a college. We currently have in-house expertise for business and contractual services, marketing and enrollment management, student engagement, and other services, among other capabilities. 

Summary

Now is the time for Georgia Tech to embrace bold and innovative action. Georgia Tech is well known and respected for its leadership in innovative education. The world needs creative solutions to complex problems. Georgia Tech has created an institute strategic plan that calls for access, impact, innovation, and leading by example. While there are many questions to be answered and more work to be done, making decisions that enable this first-of-its-kind direction for the future of Georgia Tech will allow us to lead the world of public higher education for today’s and tomorrow’s learners across their lifetime. 

The opportunity presents itself as a time to act on our learnings and lead into the future as only Georgia Tech can, maintaining Georgia’s best place to do business and creating the world’s best talent base. Creating this new college will send a strong and needed message to our state, its citizens, the business community, and other higher education institutions worldwide that universities can be part of tomorrow’s solution.