My relationship with learning

I am a 3 time college drop out and hail from a family of academics and overachievers. PhDs, Rhodes Scholars. I'm definitely the black sheep.

I didn't have a problem getting good grades - it was all down to motivation and drive and whether I was enjoying the learning journey. It could've been down to my disagreement with a system that imposed an archaic learning environment within a (my) reality that was changing rapidly.

A story of learning

I was sitting with a friend the other day, discussing a business idea that required having a certain skill set. He was skilled at the fundamentals but not that specialism. Within a couple of minutes, we found a 16 hour training video for that exact skill. For free, on YouTube. It was step by step - with all the tools, tips, tricks and commands - down to the nitty gritty.?

In another age, this (in demand skills training) would be normally sold as college credits, or a course - probably stretching out over a 2 or 3 year period and costing 1,000s of dollars. We found all this on our first search, for free, on YouTube. Hours and hours of coaching and content. We could've done a more targeted search and come up with more nuanced courses.

Accessible education?

Codified and structured knowledge / skill building has become so accessible that many of the top learning institutions on the planet have committed to providing (almost) free learning through MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) such as?edx?(see their intro video, I'll wait).

Learning models

Was learning meant to be a 12+4+2 (years) academic model? Come out with a certificate at the end and "Bobs your uncle"?

This applied in an Industrial Age, and for specific trades where a minimum skill set was required across a narrow spectrum of disciplines, with specialisation being the exclusive domain of those who could afford it.

We are quickly seeing a return to 2 major trends that had been suppressed over my lifetime:

1. The re-emergence of apprenticeship: learning under a coach, picking up skills through doing - NOT in a purely academic (lab / theory) environment but under the feet of a master of the trade as it is practiced (take note, career academics)?
2. The rise of hyper specialisation: that ties into the point above - where the learner has to sharpen their skills in a specific area to the point of mastery very quickly in an extremely competitive and risky world.

We are also seeing a trend towards a third major development which is a result of all the knowledge and learning available to us in this age of massive change:

The rise of the "generalist-specialist": someone who has acquired expertise in (sometimes wildly) differing fields of specialism and, by nature of their particular experience and skill set, is able to approach problem-solving through the lens of a generalist who (collects and then…) connects the dots.

This third model had traditionally only been the realm of the elite few; the captains of industry, big picture thinkers, the visionaries and people with access to privilege. Now, when knowledge (alone) isn't power anymore (yeah, thanks google and wikipedia) - we are effectively at the "open sourcing" of rare, in-demand skill sets.?

What now??

Traditional academia, industry and society as a whole are undergoing massive transformation. With the global lockdowns, we saw the forced application of remote work and learning at a massive scale - something that has been at our fingertips for over 20 years. I wrote a rant on this about 2 years ago at the outset of the lockdowns.

Academics (brick and mortar) was already broken, coupled with regulation, it is probably the slowest of most sectors to wake up and change with the times (“digital" being just one of those changes).?

Is it a matter of "change or be changed”??

Will academia wake up from their self imposed slumber in their ivory towers and decide to "get with the times" or fall by the wayside while the rest of us get on with our learning journeys

“I HAVE NEVER LET SCHOOLING INTERFERE WITH MY EDUCATION.” - MARK TWAIN

I'll tell you what I'll do while they wait and discuss the pros and cons of launching a new course on "digital marketing" or fintech (aren't we all doing that anyway?) - I'm gonna gain data analytics skills directly from MIT and learn me some video editing skills on the side.

Credit to @hossam and @sami and @zavae for our various conversations leading to this post.