What If
What if we believed that the shortcomings of education and learning in the West are crying out for revolutionary change?
What if we believed that there are hundreds of millions of people whose (lack of) skills and training leaves them painfully exposed to a weak and deteriorating economic and social future. What if we believed the number of people facing these threats is huge and growing? What if we believed that the threats such people face create in turn profound systemic threats that could undermine and destroy all our social and political systems?
What if we believed that the answer to these threats could be an educational system that served all our people to acquire - incrementally and continually over a lifetime - skills and capabilities that allowed them to thrive in a hugely dynamic economy and society, one inherently overflowing with opportunity?
What if enlightened educational institutions and learning providers decided to support, nurture and indeed lead this revolution?
What if these entities created educational establishments - "noniversities" we could call them - to foster the learning of their members. What if they partnered with a wide range of other institutions, learning providers, edtech firms and other companies and organisations as customers - existing and emerging - to make it happen.
What if those organisations saw that a three stranded vision - weaving intimately together over a lifetime
1) personal inspiration and development
2) learning and
3) career
(a colleague and i have called this Tri Cosain - Irish Gaelic for three paths) -
offered the promise of massive abundance for organisations of many kinds and for all their members and stakeholders?
What if these entities partnered to offer students and customers modular learning over their career and their lifetimes - focused on key skills needed for economic and social success - surely including highly technical ones specific to particular industries, but also including widely applicable skills like marketing, selling, communication, leadership. problem solving, critical thinking....?
What if this educational revolution also included liberal arts, so that students and customers could study humanities, social sciences, physical and biological sciences - and creative curricula woven among all of the above - as a way of developing their minds and hearts, enriching their lives and making them more productive, responsible and creative citizens, both of their productive, economic communities and of wider social, national and international ones?
What if the modules offered in noniversities were recognised through widely honoured certifications - and could be woven together to earn traditionally accredited degrees?
What if organisations who engaged in this journey found that it released incredible creativity, innovation, loyalty and engagement within their communities, leading to a massive increase in productivity, effectiveness, a growth mindset, innovation, customer acquisition, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty? In short, what if this investment in a Tri Cosain culture - weaving personal growth and inspiration with learning and career, turned out to be an overwhelmingly profitable financial investment?
What if the welcoming, human, humane, curious, inquiring, inventive, dialogic, continuously learning community such ventures called forward made companies and institutions the overwhelming employers and communities of choice in their spheres of endeavour, and more widely within the world economy?
What then?
