Learning Throughout Life Is the Heartbeat of Society

The title of this week’s Wednesday Workforce Edge newsletter essay comes from UNESCO’s 1996 report Learning: The Treasure Within, which described learning throughout life as “the heartbeat of society.” The phrase points to something larger than continued enrollment. A society’s ability to adapt and renew depends partly on whether people can continue learning as their lives and the world around them change. Universities contribute to that vitality when education remains accessible beyond the years immediately following high school.

At CSU, the Division of Lifelong Learning and Workforce Development gives practical form to that commitment by creating additional ways to enter or return to university study.

The commitment has deep roots in higher education. The nineteenth-century extension movement took university teaching beyond the campus to people who could not enroll in traditional ways. Adult and continuing education later gave this work an institutional home, though often at the university’s edge. UNESCO’s 1972 report Learning to Be gave the philosophy broader reach by presenting education as a continuing part of human development and the foundation of a learning society.

As careers became less predictable, lifelong learning became more closely associated with professional education and career upskilling. Workforce development remains essential because people often return when a changing field or disrupted career demands new knowledge. Employability is a powerful reason to return, but it does not define the whole of lifelong learning.

Within higher education, lifelong learning often takes the form of a noncredit course or certificate. These offerings may sit outside a degree, but not outside the university’s academic responsibility. Some meet a focused professional need and stand alone. Others support or can become part of a degree curriculum through credit pathways including credit for prior learng. The Division works with academic units to sustain rigor and clarify where the learning may lead. That partnership is central to noncredit quality.

The same philosophy applies before conventional college age. Noncredit programs can complement school learning, while university partnerships with K–12 educators can help classrooms respond to changing technology and stronger expectations around career readiness. Career and technical education makes the relationship between learning and work explicit. Educators across disciplines and institutions can help students understand why what they learn matters in the world they will enter.

Later in life, mature learners may return because work has changed or because a long-held intellectual interest can finally be pursued. They should not feel like visitors in an institution designed around younger lives. Access includes finding a cohort where experience is recognized and participation is full. Community-based programs can deepen that belonging by allowing adults and young people to learn together in programs developed with local partners.

Lifelong learning does not ask people to remain permanently enrolled or continually retraining. It holds open the possibility of education when circumstances change or a new purpose emerges.

If you see an educational need that does not fit neatly within an existing university pathway, bring it to us. We want to partner with industry, educational institutions, community organizations, and workforce boards throughout the region to create meaningful ways into or back to the university, with pathways that begin before work, lead into it, continue throughout a career, and remain open beyond working life.

To discuss lifelong learning or workforce development partnerships, email Dr. Nancy Pratt at n.pratt@csuohio.edu.

Have an idea for a lifelong learning program, workforce pathway, workshop, or certificate course? We would be glad to explore it with you.

Learn more about the Division of Lifelong Learning and Workforce Development.

Sources Consulted

• UNESCO, Learning to Be, 1972.
• UNESCO, Learning: The Treasure Within, 1996.
• University of Oxford, “The History of Lifelong Learning at Oxford”.

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