Nanodegrees and Wide Learning: A Blueprint for Future-Proof Education
The Future of Work Needs a New Kind of School
by
The current education system is not set up to prepare us for a future where most jobs require versatility and depth of talent. At the same time, governments aren’t great at re-education efforts and employers historically haven’t prioritized providing continuing education to workers. In order to address the many education shortcomings of the status quo, Jamie Merisotis, in his book Human Work, proposes implementing “nanodegrees” and a system of “wide learning.”
Nanodegrees (or MicroDegrees or MicroBachelors) are “short term, stackable credentials.” It’s easy to imagine how such credentials could benefit anyone, whether happy in their career or not. As Merisotis notes, “Careers today are seldom linear—they look less like a ladder than a climbing wall, where the way to move up may involve moving sideways or even down to get a better hold on a route forward.” Singapore serves as an example for how such credentials could be provided at scale: Through a program called SkillsFuture, Singapore grants everyone in the city 25 and older with a $500 credit to continually develop new skills.
Wide learning, a concept that originates from roboticist Ken Goldberg, is a broad, aspirational approach to learning. It calls for people to be lifelong learners, continually developing new knowledge and abilities. The focus is on teaching people soft skill, critical-thinking skills, and generic skills—all the skills required for tasks that humans do best, and which can’t easily be automated.
The world is already moving quickly in this direction. The online education market has exploded in recent years, driven by the success of companies such as Coursera, Udemy, Udacity, Skillshare, and LinkedIn Learning. Market analysts expect the online education industry to be worth $350 billion by 2025, and that estimate was made before the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the success of many of these companies. Recently, Google launched new career certificates, which could disrupt the college degree. Many individuals are taking online classes and pursing certifications to improve their career prospects. At the same time, many private companies already encourage their employees to be lifelong learners by providing them with stipends for online courses.
An open question is whether—or to what extent—governments will play a role in modernizing the education system. In the U.S., there essentially only two policy discussions happening: Should we cancel student loan debt? And should we make community colleges tuition free? Neither of these discussions have anything to do with rethinking the whole system.
This essay is a selection from “The Work Only Humans Can Do,” published in Merion West.