Q&A
P E R S P E C T I V E Gary W. Matkin Dean, Division of Continuing Education Vice Provost, Division of Career Pathways
Steve Zylius / UCI
Continuing Ed’s Evolution You won’t find a crystal ball or tarot cards in Gary W. Matkin’s office, but if you want to know what’s coming down the pike in higher education, it’s a good place to start. Over several decades of running continuing education programs – first at UC Berkeley, then at UCI – Matkin helped pioneer innovations that later spread to main campuses, including online classes, open textbooks and free chemistry lectures on YouTube. At UCI in 2001, the former Big Eight accountant helped establish the University of California system’s first online degree, a master’s in criminology, law & society. Modern university extension operations are a far cry from “the night school people” era of the 1970s, he says, gesturing toward a stuffed toy owl on his desk, the onetime universal symbol of the field. Today’s continuing ed mascot would be “a person sitting in front of a computer
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in their pajamas at 2 o’clock in the morning,” Matkin says. “The digitization of learning has revolutionized the way we think about education.” Another continuing education shift has been away from humanities courses – such as Contacting Your Inner Self and arts seminars taught at UCI by the likes of comedian Carol Burnett and film director Sydney Pollack – to training that is “much more workforce-relevant,” he says. The tilt toward professional skills is also influencing main campus instruction. Matkin, who serves as dean of UCI’s Division of Continuing Education and vice provost of its Division of Career Pathways, recently sat down with UCI Magazine writer Roy Rivenburg to discuss other changes on the horizon, including the possibility of a cyber UC campus and how universities might soon bear similarities to Scouting.