Georgia Tech to Study How to Make Lifetime Learning Better

From online learning to artificial intelligence, colleges worldwide have grappled with how best to deploy technology to help their students succeed—especially nontraditional students, who might opt to study fully remotely to accommodate family or work obligations.

Now, the Georgia Institute of Technology is hoping to position itself at the forefront of those conversations with its new College of Lifetime Learning, announced earlier this month, which will soon be home to a slate of new programs and research focused on the intersection of learning and technology.

The idea for the college comes in part from the increasingly common notion that nowadays workers must routinely update their skills, especially with regard to technological advancements, to move forward in their careers. Research published in 2022 that analyzed millions of job listings showed that an average of 37 percent of the skills for a given job change in just five years.

This ever-changing work landscape has led many colleges to create new offerings directed at nontraditional students, from nondegree certificate programs to help learners acquire new skills relevant to their careers to fully online degree programs for those seeking new careers. All in all, more than 3 million students over the age of 25 were enrolled at nonprofit colleges and universities across the U.S. this past spring, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center; the numbers of adult learners are rising at community colleges and private four-year institutions (though not at public four-years).

Georgia Tech itself is aiming to enroll 114,000 non-degree seekers in the College of Lifetime Learning by 2030—an increase of about 61 percent from the 71,000 participants currently enrolled in non-degree-seeking programs—as part of a broader effort to double the university’s total enrollment from 2020 to 2030.

While many economic and education think tanks are focused on illuminating which new skills and technologies are most relevant to modern-day workers, researchers and students at the College of Lifetime Learning will zero in on the hows of gaining new career skills and technologies.

“How do we make sure the average person can stay current in their current or future roles, if they pivot? And how can we help young minds prepare for the world ahead?” asked Nelson Baker, who is the college’s interim dean. He is currently Georgia Tech’s dean of professional education, the department that houses the university’s nondegree professional programs, which is now part the College of Lifetime Learning. The college will also house Georgia Tech’s research and higher education think tank, the Center for 21st Century Universities.

Nicole Smith, chief economist at Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, said the future of America’s workforce depends on developing an understanding of how people acquire new skills.

“We have to think of all jobs and all individuals as requiring lifetime learning. It’s no longer [the case] where [you] complete … your training and you’re done with it,” she said. “Having a full understanding of how we learn … is important for our own survival, for our own ability to change with the times and become much more responsive to the needs of new responsibilities.”

Demand for Learning Research

The idea for the College of Lifetime Learning and its new programs began with Georgia Tech’s own online and professional education programs, which are incredibly successful. The institution’s remote computer science program, for example, enrolls about 15,000 students each semester.

“We’ve seen individuals whose lives have changed due to our programming … and when that happens, it changes their entire family,” said Baker. “This is allowing for economic mobility; this is allowing for belief in oneself … So many benefits when you get new learning in the hands of people.”

Georgia Tech president Ángel Cabrera included the new college in his 2020–2030 strategic plan, kicking off a multiyear planning process. Since then, the institution has completed research into the demand for the college both within Georgia and the larger higher education ecosystem.

The results were strong, according to a report on the viability of the college released about a year ago. On top of data suggesting that employees have to update their skills more often, the institution also cited data showing that the U.S. workforce is growing older. That means most Americans will have to continue working—and, therefore, updating their skill sets—longer than previous generations of workers.

The university also found a lack of existing learning technology degrees nationwide that emphasized lifelong education. Instead, most focused specifically on the K-12 space.

“The unique aspect of the Lifetime Learning College is a focus on lifetime learning and engagement of learners from ‘K-Gray,’ providing a longitudinal perspective on teaching, learning, and workforce development,” the report says.

The college is in the nascent stage of developing its own programs. Baker said that it will likely start with one or two graduate programs, which will be developed based on the strengths and interests of Georgia Tech faculty and could include degrees in fields like learning analytics, learning technology and learning engineering. He hopes the college will attract collaborators in fields from business administration to computer science and neurology.

In addition to research on how individuals learn, faculty will also investigate how to make lifelong learning accessible to all.

“A lot of policies are outdated," Baker said. “If you’re a part-time student as an adult, it’s very difficult to get financial assistance. Policy needs to really be part of that strategy.”

Smith, of Georgetown, said she would like to see lifelong learning researchers investigate not only how humans learn in general, but also what might be distinct about each individual’s unique needs and experiences with learning.

“If I were talking to someone there, I would care about not only how we learn but, how do different types of individuals learn? … And how [do] we learn in different environments?” she said.

Baker hopes that research from the College of Lifetime Learning will help the sector at large make informed changes to how it offers education to students of all ages—as well as have an impact right at home at Georgia Tech.

“We want all faculty and staff to have the new knowledge from the new college so it benefits all students at Georgia Tech: the programs we do for K-12, the programs we do for our residential students and the programs we do for the adult learners,” he said.