issue no.13
While the programs highlighted here are not unique, they stand in relatively small company. Much of our higher education offerings, particularly in the United States, are professionally oriented, programmatic pipelines from classroom to jobs. And the problem is: those jobs are disappearing to technology disruption. If students are to thrive, they must learn that job loss is frequent and change is necessary. They will learn best if faculty, too, transform themselves
them intellectually, socially and emotionally to continuously adapt and re-invent themselves for the now much longer arc of their career—where job losses (and adaptations to new jobs) are the norm. This new normal is now one of Thomas Friedman’s key talking points. link You can read the extended version of this piece, written with Alan Ritacco, on Academic Impressions
story goes, Van Halen produced a seriously technical concert that required careful attention to details. To insure that the venues read the contract, the band added a provision requesting a bowl of M&M candies, from which the brown M&Ms had been removed. They had nothing against the brown candies; they just wanted to be sure the venue paid attention to the details. If the venue didn’t get the M&Ms right, the band would know other, more important, details may have been missed, too. Too often, our posts on work garnered comments based upon an opinion triggered by a headline or graphic and not the content of our article. So that we can focus our engagement on informed readers, we ask that you type “+” before your comment to signal that your comment is based upon consideration of all of our work rather than a knee jerk reaction to a headline. We look forward to learning from you. -----------------------------------
from the sage on the stage to an expedition leader and coach, helping students socially and emotionally build resilience, grit, and adaptability to navigate the unknown waters of the future of work. For sure, the blocks of life – learn, work, retire - have shifted 90 degrees and how we move through them has changed as well. For higher education to survive, we need to focus less on preparing students for their first job and focus instead on preparing
here. And learn more by registering for the upcoming webcast: The Future of Work and the Academy in which Heather McGowan speaks with University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth Chancellor Robert E Johnson about the future of work and learning. ----------------------------------We welcome and value your considered comments, and to insure that commenting is productive, we invoke what we call our “Van Halen Rule.” As the
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Heather McGowan and Chris Shipley formed Work to Learn in 2015 with the belief that we are leaving the paradigm in which we learned (in order) to work and we are now entering the paradigm in which we will need to work (in order) to learn (continuously). We work at the intersection of the future of work and the future of learning helping clients adapt to this new paradigm shift. More information about our work can be found at www.futureislearning.com