The future of education: Lifelong, flexible, skill-based learning after COVID-19

In today’s fast-moving, tech-heavy landscape, take a moment to ask yourself an important question: How does your degree and formal education impact what you’re doing in your work life?

Each year, the ground under that answer shifts dramatically, as academia and industry realign what’s expected of the traditional education model. Indeed, the in-person classrooms of today and 50 years ago are giving way to models centered around remote learning—virtual and expansive in their reach. In this world powered by ubiquitous information, the future of education can be built around collaboration and innovation, not standardized tests and rigid curricula.

For better or worse, the COVID-19 pandemic hastened many of these changes, but its effect on education today and tomorrow are only just being felt. The systemic shifts borne of necessity in the pandemic’s earliest days are yielding transformed and flexible education systems beyond the K–12 classroom and into postsecondary and advanced education.

Despite technological and philosophical advances in education during the past 50 years, the classroom of today looks remarkably like the classroom of decades ago. Instead of card catalogs and thick encyclopedias, students can turn to the Internet and search engines. Their curiosity and demand for information can reach far beyond textbooks or physical resource materials. But the physical and instructive environment has remained largely unchanged—as have most schools’ capacities to develop skill-based student cohorts, responsive lesson plans, and emotional or mental support.

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the established standard for how K–12 education works in the US was flipped on its proverbial head. Seemingly overnight, classrooms became virtual spaces, and educators were forced to adapt their skills to unfamiliar online learning platforms.

Despite the heroic efforts by many school systems to make remote learning successful, COVID-19 has disrupted education—and not always equally. McKinsey & Company reveals that students were, on average, five months behind in mathematics and four months behind in reading by the end of their first full academic year of learning with the practices adapted for COVID-19. That disparity is not constant across the board, as students in predominately Black schools were on average six months behind in unfinished math learning; students in low-income schools were seven months behind.

Older children and young adults did not escape COVID-19’s disruptive impact on their education either. High-schoolers during COVID-19 were more likely to drop out, especially those in low-income families. They were also less likely to enter postsecondary education.

This compounds a problem laid out by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, which reports that the percentage of high school graduates enrolling in colleges and universities is already falling. In 2020, only 62.7% of high school graduates went on to a college or university, which is down from 66.2% in 2019.

McKinsey & Company revealed what these education losses and months of unfinished learning can actually mean: loss of income. Indeed, by 2040, when the majority of today’s K–12 students are in the workforce, the potential annual GDP loss as a result of pandemic-related unfinished learning could total $128 billion–$188 billion.

Business leaders, makers, and innovators are called to address this moment—to codify the shift in educational practices and align them with the needs of today’s businesses. While it’s true that much of education still focuses on set disciplines and skills, the future of education could better encourage lifelong learning and reskilling, instilling the importance of finding new ways to adapt to changing professional norms of knowledge and qualification demands.

This need has become increasingly acute as the pandemic has fundamentally disrupted how businesses operate. But the importance of digital platforms, cloud collaboration, and automated systems is critical to operational success—as well as the ability to navigate the shifting architecture of traditional work. Fortunately, the same digital platforms also present opportunities for self-paced, flexible skill building that mutually benefits employees and organizations.

The need for immediate skills training creates a huge opportunity for community colleges and vocational schools—as well as workforce training centers, such as Autodesk Certification partner Humanmade. The Obama administration made significant investments in this underutilized sector of the educational system, spreading the important message that four-year degrees aren’t the only path to success. As Georgetown University points out, most of today’s jobs require some education beyond high school; during the Great Recession, employment of people with more than a high school education increased by 11.5 million jobs while employment for workers with a high school education grew by 80,000 jobs.

Community colleges already provide strong vocational education. They can use this as a starting point to teach the next generation of technologies. The changing economy underscores this point, and these schools may finally be recognized for what they can become in the US: true centers for lifetime learning.

The long-term impacts on a student’s income potential are very real, too. According to the US Census, people who have a high-school diploma or GED equivalent make between $2,400 and $4,900 per month while people with bachelor’s degrees or higher education make approximately $6,300. McKinsey & Company already expect today’s K–12 students to fall behind in earning potential as a result of unfinished learning in the pandemic years, so this gap may be filled by helping students complete credentialing programs that match their interests and skills to the business world’s needs.

The students at Humanmade are a case study in what certifications can mean for earning potential. Students with Autodesk certifications find job placements that make on average $5 an hour more than people without the certification. And they’re getting hired faster—30% of CNC trainees, for example, were hired before they graduated the program.

Despite the focus on technical skills and technology, a shift toward skill-based learning doesn’t mean abandoning liberal arts. Rather, as many point out, it highlights the value of problem solving and critical thinking—skills traditionally fostered in a humanities-centered education. The rise of complex and interrelated systems will require more systems thinking. Moving from big, heavy, physical products to a world of subscriptions, cloud-based services, and continual evolution requires constant engagement and a higher degree of problem-solving savvy.

This also highlights the growing need for systems that better address mental health. As with realignments in work and education priorities, the pandemic has brought to the fore the need for better mental-health solutions—in micro-settings like offices and workplaces and macro-settings like virtual and physical communities.

There’s no easy answer for such a big shift. But industry and academia can begin to establish new frameworks and partnerships and start directing workers toward lifetime learning, beginning in elementary school. Organizations such as the Lumina Foundation have already put forward potential models for lifetime-learning systems, and the conversation needs to continue. Colleges and universities will always be places for learning higher-order skills and meeting new communities of colleagues. Going forward, with the right systems in place, those skills become a bridge to continuous learning.

Today, choosing a field of study or a degree is much less important than committing to finding ways to expand your thinking and continually improve your skills to respond to the current market. Tomorrow’s professionals must be nimble enough to solve an unceasingly new set of problems, which, as the COVID-19 pandemic’s rapid demands for flexibility and technological transitions have shown, can’t always be anticipated.

This article has been updated. It was originally published in August 2017.