Degrees take too long to complete and their relevance doesn’t last long enough.
F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said “the test of first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” This is what higher education must do in re-evaluating the degree-based model of education. The demands of today’s students and the fast-changing global economy have rather suddenly exposed degrees as being both too long to complete and too short in their lasting relevance. And many of the gale-force winds facing higher education can be navigated effectively if we are able to simultaneously embrace these seemingly opposed and disruptive ideas.
Prospective college students desire faster, less expensive and more effective pathways to jobs. This was true long before Covid-19 and it is increasingly critical now as the U.S. nears 20% unemployment. So, then, should we just focus on hyper-specific, non-degree skills training? At the same time these prospective students demand faster and cheaper educational pathways to jobs, they are heading into a world where they need to be more capable problem-solvers, critical thinkers, collaborative co-workers and agile life-long learners than ever before. Do these attributes suggest we need to double-down on the value of a universal education (i.e., the liberal arts) in the form of bachelor’s and master’s degrees? Is this simply the age-old and false debate of vocational training vs. the liberal arts? The future requires both and neither.
In their newly released book, “The Adaptation Advantage,” Heather McGowan and Chris Shipley make a convincing argument that humans will remain relevant in the workplace only by letting go of current mindsets about education and embracing the idea of learning fast and constantly – even through traditional retirement age. Fueling their argument is an eye-opening study released by IBM this past year which revealed that the average time employers spend up-skilling or re-skilling employees has jumped from 3 days to a whopping 36 days in just the past five years. How on earth do we cope with this speed of change? It means we must both break education into shorter pieces and stretch it out much longer.
The breaking of traditional degrees into shorter pieces is a trend that started years ago. The rise of massive open online courses (MOOCs), led by edX – a consortium of universities – has enabled learners all over the globe to take courses from universities without enrolling and without pursuing a degree. There’s also been a proliferation of badges and certificates, with a report from Credential Engine estimating some 475,000 non-degree credentials in the U.S. And fresh evidence supports the value of industry-recognized credentials in leading to good jobs for those without college degrees. Education has long been broken into shorter pieces but as the IBM report suggests the question now becomes: How do we thoughtfully curate the piecing together of pieces?
A degree, to most Americans, is viewed as one of the critical steps along the path to a good job. It is not a destination in and of itself. If it’s done well, a degree should serve as the lasting foundation of a critical-thinking, life-long learner. The problem with this lofty ideal is that higher education has failed to convincingly prove this as an outcome of a bachelor’s degree. Evidence of life-long learning exists among those who pursue or complete post-graduate education. Does this suggest that a longer dose is required to get the job done? How do we ensure more learners get the right and lasting dosage of education?
An associate’s degree takes two years to complete. A bachelor’s degree takes four. Those estimates assume a student stays on track. But with the U.S. Department of Education reporting institutions’ 6-year graduation rates for bachelor’s degrees, it’s a telling indicator that many take longer. Even with a full 6 years on the clock, roughly 4-out-of-10 bachelor’s degree seeking students never complete their degree. The pursuit of a bachelor’s degree is indeed a long haul with a high failure rate. It doesn’t have to be this way. And we shouldn’t have to send everyone through post-graduate education in order to ensure they become life-long learners. What’s the solution?
Welcome To The World Of Evergreen Degrees
Most badges and certificates simply don’t carry value in the marketplace just yet. Perhaps the most valued non-degree badge of all-time remains the Eagle Scout. Aside from that, few have ever reached great notoriety among consumers and employers. Industry-recognized credentials are a different story. Some are more valuable than others, but on average they do lead to better jobs. Degrees, despite their rising costs and various shortcomings, remain the most coveted and valuable credential of all. Now we have an opportunity to make them both shorter and longer in ways that will benefit learners, higher education and employers alike. Enter the ‘evergreen degree.’
The biggest problem with degrees is not that they’re being broken into pieces but rather that we have made them terminal. Once someone receives one, it’s assumed they are ‘anointed’ and ‘done’ with their learning. My wife, who has a bachelor’s and master’s degree, has never been asked to keep up with continuing education as part of either degree. She has, however, been required to do ongoing continuing education credits (CEUs) to maintain her status as a dietitian (RD) as well as re-sit for an exam as a specialist in sports dietetics (CSSD) every five years. It’s roughly the same process for her yoga and Pilates instructor qualifications too.
The model of continuing education for professional certification is not new. What’s new is the concept of extending it to the world of degrees. An evergreen degree is one designed to ride alongside a student for an extended (and potentially indefinite) period of time, ensuring they remain constantly relevant in their field or work. They can be taken over time, at a learner’s own pace, while they remain employed. By stretching the degree out, it becomes both more manageable and relevant for learners.
Let’s take a bachelor’s degree in business or a MBA, for example. Why did we ever believe that once someone has one they no longer require any further business education to remain relevant? Perhaps we have always trusted that – for the next 40+ years of a career – we will just learn what we need to know from on the job experience. But what happens when on the job experience no longer keeps up with the pace of change in the market? This is the reality of the world we all live in now. No matter what field or line of work we are in, the need for up-skilling and re-skilling has reached epic proportions – increasing more than 10x in less than 5 years (refer to previously cited IBM report).
Degrees must become evergreen, not terminal. In an evergreen degree program, students can obtain a traditional degree along the way and then continue in their studies in a manageable ongoing fashion by taking a couple courses each year that would be thoughtfully curated to keep them relevant. In an evergreen degree program, it will be incumbent on the three most critical parties in the education ecosystem to be tightly accountable to one another. Students, educational institutions and employers will need to be in constant collaboration – something that has been sorely needed for a long time.
Not only will evergreen degrees prove to be an innovation for learning but for educational financing too. They will open the door to higher education institutions offering creative new financing options, allowing students to spread their tuition costs across a longer period of time in smaller and much more manageable chunks. A student seeking an MBA typically takes 2 years and about $60,000. In an evergreen MBA, the student would still get their traditional MBA but then remain in the program indefinitely and could spread the initial $60,000 cost across say 10-15 years making the average annual tuition $4,000 to $6,000. And then they would pay a small additional amount each year as part of the annual evergreen portion – say $3,000. A degree becomes an always-on service and an annual subscription model.
Although employers have pulled back from funding full MBA degrees for employees, they have increasingly moved toward providing smaller amounts of annual tuition assistance. In 2018, the annual median tuition assistance provided by companies was $5,250 for undergraduate education and $10,500 for graduate education. These amounts are directly in line with what an evergreen degree model might require – making it a far more attractive and affordable option than students and employers trying to fund larger up-front sums of $60,000 that typically also require student loans to finance. In this sense, evergreen degrees also allow students to grow into them over time as their earning potential also increases.
Evergreen degrees provide a structure for making the goal of life-long learning a reality. They allow for learners to remain earners in a job throughout their duration. In one sense, they fit the familiar degree model that higher education has built itself upon. But they are also much more aligned to the reality of what’s required for humans to remain relevant in the workplace. As students and employers demand shorter forms of education, they will also start to demand longer and more lasting forms of it. Look for evergreen degrees to become the next big thing. We need to shift from graduating to gradually learning.
