The university is with you at every turn of your lifelong study path

Openings

HUMANS LEARN continuously—and thank goodness for that. Learning enables readjusting to changed circumstances or performing better when circumstances stay the same. Reform of national legislation and the rapid evolution of working life have now brought continuous learning into the spotlight.

The strict division between working life and studying is history. Life contains phases during which the balance between accruing new competencies and exploiting your established abilities varies, although both aspects are constantly present.

From the university’s perspective, both degree-oriented training and continuous learning are necessary. They complement one another. Our degrees are well-designed competence and education packages, which are strong assets when communicating your own potential to the employment market. On the other hand, refining or upkeeping your potential necessitates an attitude that sees graduating only as graduating to go further.

Continuous learning is a partially untapped opportunity for universities. A report on trends in European higher education (EUA 2018) indicates what kinds of services are provided to support continuous learning. Recognition of prior studies as contributing to a new degree is the most common measure and is provided by 59% of European higher education institutions. Flexible study programmes and learning paths (58%) as well as courses provided in collaboration (53%) were the next most common measures.

Less than half of the higher education institutions offer guidance and counselling services for adult learners, and only about a quarter offer online degree programmes that are independent of time and location. Aalto University is at the vanguard of progress when measured against these figures, as we already provide all of the abovementioned measures.

Yet there remains room for improvement. We could open contents to new target groups, i.e. offer courses and degree components also to non-degree students. We can improve opportunities to complete entire degrees flexibly in different life situations. We can provide contents and modes of learning of an entirely new

kind. Alongside teaching, we could focus more generally on supporting and highlighting learning as well as quality control.

But the wealth of choices on offer is not the crux of the matter. Most important is to recognise demand and identify the right target groups. Some learners are working full-time jobs and wish to update their knowhow. Others are looking for a fresh direction for their work. Some are entirely side-lined from working life and in need of a greater transition to rebuild their competence entirely in order to find success in the labour market.

We want to offer solutions to these needs. We are developing ways with which to turn the lifelong development of personal ability into a systematic pursuit. High-quality supply, approachability and flexible studies are coming together because the university has a desire to serve learners.

We also collaborate actively with other universities and institutions of higher education. The cooperative technology university FITech and its openings, most recently in the ICT sector, are excellent examples of this.

What can we look forward to if all this is successful? A view of a personal, lifelong learning path that is easy to update when changes occur will emerge for individuals.

New types of high-quality learning will be created when learners from different backgrounds encounter each other. In addition, we will be able to respond rapidly to changes in the needs of society and business life.

There are plenty of challenges, too. For example, in matching supply and demand. Hard work and pedagogicallywise utilisation of new technology is required to scale teaching and support for learning. Funding and incentives must likewise be considered.

These issues are solvable. The joy of learning is a force we deserve to benefit throughout our lives.

The writer Petri Suomala is Vice President for Education

Photo: Jaakko Kahilaniemi