For decades, a four-year college degree in young adulthood was the main pathway to a prosperous American life. But as college costs rise, U.S. student debt mounts, and the labor market defies prediction, many are questioning the value of higher education. A new Gallup poll finds that a record-low 31 percent of Americans say that a college education is very important, down from 70 percent as recently as 2013. 

In a cover story for the fall issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Mitchell Stevens, a SCL co-director and Stanford education professor, and João Souto-Maior, a former SCL fellow and economist at the Burning Glass Institute, explore and critique the American approach to higher education, with its emphasis on formal credentials granted by institutions, proposing an alternative they call the “learning society” to open opportunities for economic and social progress throughout life.

“A learning society,” Stevens and Souto-Maior write, “is not a single program or institution but a concentration of institutional and cultural changes.”  Those include:

• Learning should be recognized and rewarded wherever it happens, including the workplace, and not be limited to formal academic institutions.
• Investment in learning should be shared among all its beneficiaries.
• People should be supported through career transitions across their increasingly long lives.
• Paid work and education should be organized so that people are able to work, learn and care for their loved ones all at the same time.

Read the full article here.