Learning for Life

Learning for Life, How Continuous Education Will Keep Us Competitive in the Global Knowledge Economy, by Jason Wingard and Michelle Lapointe, AMACOM 2016

Learning for Life contains good solid examples of corporations like Boeing and Aramark enabling employees to see a road ahead through various types of continuing education and development.

In the case of Boeing, we have one entire chapter devoted to their life-long employee development.  Rick Gross, a Boeing executive and  author of Chapter 9 says, "a Boeing executive told lawmakers that in some areas of the company more than half of the skilled workforce would be eligible to retire within 5 years," clearly a powerful incentive for the company to develop a comprehensive education and development strategy.  From early education STEM initiatives, to the company's strategic partnership with FIRST, a program dedicated to encouraging young people to become science and technology leaders, Boeing's size and reach enable the company to support big programs.  Further, the company maintains partnerships with technical, vocational and training institutions, community colleges, universities and research institutions.  As well as driving attendance and PR, these programs can stimulate development of new fresh curriculum, industry driven alignment with real industry needs in advanced manufacturing.  

Other solid educational initiatives include JP Morgan Chase Foundations's fellowship to improve educational outcomes for young men of color, and here in Massachusetts, Middlesex Community College located in the heart of the Commonwealth's tech corridor.  Originally set up forty years ago to serve health care industry needs, the college has grown into partnerships with leading universities - Boston University, Suffolk, Brandeis,  and companies such as TJX.    Currently the school offers 24 programs leading to professional certification in biotech, research, healthcare,  and medical administration.  The school offers a mix of developmental core remedial courses and even tutoring, as well as college-level courses in an effort to serve students and industry with the specific skills needed. 

Further, the transfer from a two year program to four-year colleges is facilitated by its relationships with four year schools like Amherst, Babson, Bentley Colleges and others.  It's interesting to note that these comprehensive education strategies are not just feel-good solutions.   In fact the ROI calculated on education delivers high return - "  The Commonwealth of Massachusetts estimates that completing a program at a Massachusetts community college more than doubles a worker's annual earnings, which , in turn, increases the Commonwealth's income tax revenue.  Estimating that a career spans three decades, the Commonwealth can expect $25.2 million in additional tax revenues from the community college cohort that graduates in 2001.  Given that 90% of community college graduates stay in the Commonwealth, this income tax revenue stays in Massachusetts,"  

But there are other approaches.  With so much attention going to the skills gap, and the difficulty of transitioning the workforce from retiring boomers to Millennials and below, Learning for Life offers us a great opportunity to rethink our scattered approaches to learning.

As for the web, for instance, there is Section II, which gives us a view to a unique thoracic surgery residency offered with on-line training. Chapter 6 is dedicated to another on-line program from the University of Liverpool - web learning abounds, the trick is to find the best fit and most cost effective offerings. Finally, Chapter 18 attempts to pull together the clear approach to develop a program of life-long learning, combining all the best and most accessible, relevant approaches covered in Learning for Life.  Because this is such a broad topic with many media and considerable applicant diversity, we might also want to see this chapter first in the book in order to set the expectations and context within which the many chapter authors can be contained

Note to the Editor:  In the spirit of continuing learning, the graphics need to be redone.  The print is hard to read, and the shadings on the pie charts are almost indistinguishable.