Learning 3.0: Bringing the Next Education Paradigm Into Focus

Background: What Is Learning 3.0?

Taking the long view of education’s role in relation to labor markets transforms one’s perspective on today’s challenges. Learning 1.0 represents how teaching and learning took place up until the 19^th and 20^th centuries, when most of humanity was illiterate and only a tiny fraction of the population became educated. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, what many think of as “education” was primarily an elite pastime for those who were already economically or culturally dominant (Horowitz, 1988). For the majority of the human population, learning focused on developing the skills needed for specific jobs and trades, and these were learned experientially through apprenticeships, direct work experience, or in families.

Learning 2.0 ushered in the era of mass public education that went beyond working and living skills. Expectations of near-universal literacy and numeracy became the norm during industrialization, but beyond the basics provided in primary and secondary education, higher education was designed to be a filtering system to identify the “best and brightest” for higher-level employment and leadership (Selingo, 2020). College admissions criteria, standardized tests and stringent requirements for degrees became the sieves through which generations of students were expected to compete for higher status.

For policymakers and educators, the transition from Learning 1.0 to Learning 2.0—especially the ideal of universal literacy and numeracy—likely seemed an impossible dream. But it is a dream that came true, in part because industrialization and labor markets required the dream to be realized. Consider:

Today, literacy rates are over 90% in all but the poorest countries. Furthermore, global participation in higher education is at 40% and growing fast. But enrollment in higher education is declining in the United States (Schwartz, 2021), with a 5.1% drop in the first 2 years of the pandemic (Neitzel, 2022). This drop may be related to the global pandemic, but it may be part of a broader trend. The quality, relevance, and structure of Learning 2.0 are facing intense scrutiny, especially in relation to the increased costs of higher education in the United States. The well-intentioned goal of making all high school students “college ready,” promoted over the last decade in the United States, emphasizing the importance of high school graduation and four-year degrees, has hindered the development and legitimacy of alternative pathways (Reese, 2015). It has also increased debt loads, at times with a negative return on investment, increasing rather than decreasing inequality in America (The Economist, 2020).

Like earlier structural transitions, the seeds of Learning 3.0 began decades ago, triggered by the transformation of labor markets and society that coincide with the emergence of a technology and intellectual-property based economy (Seidman, 2014). As amply illustrated through the chapters of this book, Learning 3.0 is already underway, with innovative education systems, employers, policymakers, and technologies coming together to deliver more personalized solutions. As technology, connectivity, and communication have infused almost every aspect of modern work, employers will seek to hire more narrowly based on skills rather than degrees (Bersin, 2011). Employers also need to continuously upskill their employees to maintain competitiveness and increase retention. All of this informs what we are calling “Learning 3.0,” which we characterize as including the following core elements: