How can Americans regain economic mobility? That was one of the big questions SCL asked a group of experts last year, tasked with designing new ways of preparing people for a future with colliding realities: the need to work for more years as people live longer, with multiple job and career transitions versus the growing workforce disruptions brought about by artificial intelligence and other technologies. At the same time, there is deepening skepticism and controversy about the costs and benefits of formal higher education. 

Under the leadership of SCL Co-Director Mitchell L. Stevens, professor in the Stanford Graduate School of Education, the group last month unveiled design principles for building a learning society to guide human capital investments for the 21st century, comparable to the way the United States invested in universal public education and expanding access to higher education in the previous century. 

The key concept, says Stevens, is the need to transform the United States from the “schooled society” of the 20th century, with its emphasis on formal educational credentials granted by schools and universities to a “learning society,” where people can acquire the skills and knowledge they need in many different contexts and across the entire life course. The learning society vision proposes that people can move flexibly between learning, paid work and caregiving throughout life, recognizing and rewarding learning wherever it occurs — workplaces, communities, homes — rather than only in traditional schools. “A learning society would be organized so that people would not have to make choices between working for pay, investing in themselves and caring for loved ones,” according to the report’s executive summary.

The learning society team outlined nine design principles to spur collaboration, innovation and policy change. They include redesigning schools as civic hubs, elevating the importance of life experience and skills in hiring, rather than relying only on formal credentials, and creating structures for caregiving. 

Learn more about the Learning Society Initiative: https://learningsociety.io/