Modern Campus is an exceptional source of perspective and data. This post on lifelong learning could be prep reading for every private university leader who thinks they understand what continuing education is.
Modern Campus refers to the "Modern Learner" as someone who discovers, plans, engages and evolves across a 40-year relationship with an institution. I like the moniker because it harkens back to the "60 year curriculum" model and students PCE/O units have worked with for decades. Professional & continuing education has never had the luxury of a captive 18-year-old showing up every fall. It's always had operate outside the agrarian calendar, 16-week semesters and two 90 minutes in-person classes every week.
The Modern Campus post identifies an uncomfortable reality for many mid-tier private universities that are considering or are actively deconstructing their PCE/O units under a naive (maybe ignorant) assumption that the unit's programs, services and operating culture can be subsumed and run out of a traditional school/college or some administrative back office. The traditional 18-to-22 pipeline isn't coming back. But increasing numbers of non-traditional learners ("modern learners") need accessible, stackable and immediately applicable training and credentials. The mid-tier privates that survive the next decade will be the universities that invest in and release for scale the PCE/O unit on their campus that's been doing this work, unglamorously and underfunded, for decades.
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