Book Review: The New Learning Economy

The book is written by Martin Betts and Michael Rosemann. Martin is Emeritus Professor at Griffith University, having served as Deputy Vice Chancellor of Engagement until 2020. He leads the higher education sector with experience from seven universities in three continents. He is co-founder of HEDx, impacting higher education through a podcast, advisory services, and live events. Michael is Professor for Information Systems and Director of the Centre for Future Enterprise at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). His areas of research are the management of innovation, business process and trust.

The twenty main takeaways that I got out of this book are presented below:

• Inherent limitations in the design of colleges and universities or systems of higher education which never intended to achieve broad accessibility have increasingly shifted responsibility for educational attainment to potential learners and their families. In the case of the United States, admissions protocols enforced by leading colleges and universities, both public and private, increasingly favour students from the upper quintiles of family income, which precludes the participation of countless academically qualified applicants from the other quintiles.
• Within the next several years, moreover, what are now termed non-traditional learners will comprise the vast majority of individuals seeking education, skills-building, and training opportunities. To remedy dysfunctional exclusionary practices, alternative models are being explored.
• The advent of scalable online educational technologies that support personalized learning empowers learners of all ages. In a hyperkinetic knowledge economy in which technological innovation catalyses opportunities, only those who possess relevant knowledge and skills will be able to compete. As a consequence, higher education has turned into a significant growth sector. To meet this challenge, HolonIQ predicts that the global education market will increase to $10 trillion by 2030, making up 6% of gross world product. The economic momentum is attracting tech-savy EdTechs and BigTechs to a domain that until recently was heavily regulated and slow to innovate. Colleges and universities as traditional providers in this environment are being disrupted and must navigate through mutating strategic minefields.
• According to the authors, six strategic principles for the new learning economy are structured along the three dimensions of centricity, connectivity, and certainty. They illustrate the strategic principles by referring to contemporary examples of global corporate innovation like Netfix, Spotify, Tesla, YouTube, Google, and Amazon. These companies generate principles of scalability, personalization, continuity, community, innovation, and trust to inspire those who seek to thrive in the new learning economy. The authors argue that the future of higher education will be characterised by the speed with which these six principles are leveraged by respective stakeholders.
• One of the great contributions of this book is that, from a global perspective, Betts and Rosemann have pioneered the concept of a learning economy as the future for higher education. This extends the focus for the academy beyond conserving heavily regulated institutions mired in long-trodden patterns of semesters and degrees to encompass a fast-paced, dynamic sector that understands and follows current economic principles, and, by doing so, generates new models of engagement, delivery, services, and ultimately educational well-being.
• As a society, we have extended these areas of knowledge and understanding into professional knowledge bases. We built industrial revolutions and economies on the bad of them. We developed a sophisticated and evolved focus on learning, and developing documenting, and sharing knowledge. We specialised beyond a hunter gatherer economy to build homes, farm, manufacture, create, learn, and teach. These all led to an accelerating process of knowledge growth, resulting in improved quality of life and wealth, and indeed well-being.
• Many global educational models evolved along very similar lines. The timing and initial paths varied, with early Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Chinese systems making significant and distinctive advances. These helped their citizens become knowledgeable participants in growing societies and economies. While they emerged at different times and started on different paths, the resulting systems are remarkably similar. They have tended to converge with increasing globalisation and will continue to converge more rapidly.
• Access to education is seen as a fundamental human right, vigorously pursued ad defended. Article 26 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “Everyone has the right to education“.
• The history of the learning economy – Tertiary education systems emerged as the nature of work changed, as did the aspirations of more developed and wealthier nations and their populations. The first universities were founded nearly 1,000 years ago in Bologna (1088), Paris (1150), and Oxford (1167). Then came many new universities throughout Europe as scholarly expertise became widely recognised as important to society’s development. Depending on the course of study, different types of awards were offered, ranging from certificates, to diplomas, to bachelor degrees, to doctorates. They became distinguishing signs of credibility and capability… While the history of universities can be admired, in principle the construct “university’ is largely unchanged. Or, as Michael Crow states, “The organisational frameworks we call universities – this thousand-year-old-institutional form – have not evolved significantly beyond the configurations assumed in the late nineteenth century, nor have differentard new designs come to the fore.”
• Undoubtedly, university systems have progressed over more than 900 years. There are new academic specialisms, increasing research emphasis, closer ties between universities and employers, lifelong relationships with alumni and increased links between universities and their local communities. But underlying principles of instruction pervade: a universe of students of various disciplines learn and are taught together, without undue constraint or influence from funders or government.
• Educational well-being – as the above arguments show, the highest growth impact creating most opportunities in the new learning economy is increased scope for lifelong learning. This is already evident in increases in non-school leaver entrants to tertiary education globally… The nature of demand for education is changing as the model of upfront career preparation, followed by continuous working experience, declines as a simple and uninterrupted process. Demand for new channels of access to knowledge through online and blended delivery is gaining prevalence with current providers, amplifted by COVID-19… These changes show a move beyond required education and training to a new aspiration for lifelong educational well-being.
• Positioning educational well-being – as education providers and consumers, we have invested in giving and gaining qualifications. Paying for access to these credentials is how the learning economy has operated, and how suppliers to that economy have traded and organised themselves. Thinking about education in terms of well-being, as opposed to a system of gaining certification, has implications for the assumptions and the trading model of the current learning economy.
• The importance of educational well-being – Educational well-being is important on many different levels. For individuals, the need to maintain competence is becoming increasingly important for longer and more complex careers and lives. We do so in an environment where the future of work is uncertain, and Changing faster. Traditional once-off training for a career is now replaced by continuous preparation we must make for multiple career changes… As a result, an organisations’ learning literacy, measured by the time from emergence of new knowledge to its impactful deployment, is now a source of competitive advantage. Or. as the Dutch business theorist and planner Aries de Geus said, “The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage.”
• This book argues that employers, alongside professional institutions and educational and training institutions, are only starting to become familiar with the concept of educational well-being. Doing so allows them to understand the nature of the new learning economy… Most are far from fully comprehending it, let alone seeing the opportunity it provides. There will be significant roles, for multiple existing and new organisations, in assuring future educational well-being. There are three key components of educational well-being: Competence = Knowledge + Experience.
• We learn knowledge through many experiences. Indeed, some important innovations in learning environments and educational systems combine work experiences in learning programs. Many would argue that our most important knowledge from learning is through experiential learning, and through learning immersed in simulated or real work contexts and environments. Much learning of knowledge, and learning through experience, comes to reflection. Reflection and the ablity to be self-aware of our competence have been evident for some time in emerging approaches to learning and professional development.
• With an adequate level of learning literacy, individuals wil learn, and unlean, but will require les certification. They wil learn for their own development, recognizing the importance of their educational wellbeing, as opposed to needing to respond to employer requirements. This is comparable with people interested in exercising regularly, leading to a self-assessed form of physical well-being.
• User-Based Growth – the most tangible growth in the future learning economy will be growing numbers of learners. HolonIQ predicts that by 2030, there will be nearly 800 million more high school graduates, largely in Asia and Afica. In adition to demographic factors, as we have seen, there will be higher demand for lifelong educational well-being, catalyzed by increased awareness of current learning economy disorders.
• Location-Based Growth – finally, providers have potential to increase their scope of geographical delivery of services, and global each through students they enroll. Many learning providers have signifcant local footprints and physical hybrid campus bases. For some, this is their only source of students. For others, there is a combination of students served from both local sources and diverse domestic and international markets. Diversity and internationalization in source of students is part of the make-up, and a strategic goal, of many universities.
• The new learning economy will be approached with different appetites and funds for innovation, depending on the legacy and ambition of different types of participants. Organisations used to technology-driven, radical, global innovation (like EdTechs and Big Techs) will be more at ease when identifying financial and in-kind innovation resources, and appropriate forms of innovation governance (e.g. appointing a Chief Innovation Officer) than established learning providers that regard digitalisation, globalisation, and new business models more as threat than opportunity.
• At ASU, President Crow has created a prototype for a “new American university.” Not everyone thinks that’s a good thing. Critics complain Crow is too corporate and has created a “factory of credentialing”. That sounds like ill- considered criticism of a university leader who experiments and innovates rather than waits… We leave Michael Crow with the last word: “Innovation is infused in ASU’s DNA because we are designed to spark, support and manifest new ideas”, as he said after the institution’s sixth year of “most innovative university” ranking on the ASU website (note ASU has gotten this recognition for eight years in a row by the time that I wrote this book review)