campusreview . com . au
VC ’ s corner world there is a rich technology infused opportunity . We have an ageing population that stays connected and also have severe disruptions . Covid , of course , being one of them that such a stage model does no longer work , and maybe look at economies . We try to work out how well do they work , and we identified and described in our book three , what we call the ‘ learning disorder ’. Meaning , what I learned depreciates so fast that I literally need top up to get me through my working and private life .
Second , we talked about the experience disorder .
The old take that the more experience I possess , the better I am , no longer applies . Our experienced lectures in the classroom were not the best lecturers on Zoom , for example . And third , what we call the consciousness disorder . Meaning , unlike financial or medical physical wellbeing , we don ’ t know what we know . We don ’ t know how to learn ; we don ’ t know how to unlearn . And these three disorders , the learning experience and consciousness disorder mean that the current stage model of learning and the current learning economy no longer works for the future .
In your book , you argue for this new learning economy which will satisfy people ’ s need for growth and thirst for knowledge . What would this look like ? MR : This new economy has a new goal , and this new goal needs to be a continuous goal . It can ’ t be a staged goal like a typical degree . And we call this continuous educational wellbeing , and it ’ s fundamental . That means we have continuous physical or financial wellbeing for everyone or we won ’ t have continuous educational wellbeing for everyone . Now , in a world that is rich on opportunities , we need to unpack and surface those potential innovations . So our book is less coming from how do we fix the next big problem within universities . It ’ s about what providers could and uni ’ s do . And what we ’ ve done in order looking at one economy , the learning economy , look at other economies for sources of inspiration .
We see organisations that continuously engage with their clients , and we see organisations that are hyper personalised in the way they engage , but we don ’ t see this in the learning economy . So in the second main part of our book , we outline six ideas about continuous learning , personalised learning , scalable learning , for example . And in each case , in each scenario , we picked one organisation .
Let me take Tesla or let me take the software industry as an example . These are industries that have switched from selling a product , a piece of software or a car to selling subscription model and ongoing updates .
Now , the high education sector is still in the world that serves product , and what we recommended is by literally replicating their models , continuous upgrades , version managed degrees , but literally , you would move from an MBA 3.1 to an MBA 3.2 .
And to the best of our knowledge , there ’ s not a single player in the world currently offering this . Moving to a second example that would be the idea around hyperpersonalization . Where you experience services and products , you can see that AI machine learning led to hyperpersonalization . Again , something we don ’ t witness right now in the classical domain of tertiary education .
Your book has been designed for readers to take actions , especially when it comes to university leaders . How can they make this transit ? MB : The action orientation of this book is specifically targeted at leaders of universities but also leaders of the four other types of participants that we foresee taking advantage of growth in the new learning economy . And the books final part introduces a new strategic planning
We have radical change on our agenda , and it calls for a radical methodology .
methodology . It ’ s a methodology that ’ s based upon the generic strategies that arise from the six principles that we ’ ve derived from multiple other sectors . And presents them with a series of questions that leaders can ask themselves of what their level of ambition is , what their focus of ambition is , what their urgency of ambition is , what their capabilities are , and what their capabilities could be to really choose for themselves and to specify for themselves a very radically different sort of strategy than the current sort of strategic planning methodologies embrace .
We ’ ve both worked as co-authors of this book in universities around the world for a number of years , and we ’ ve observed and indeed participated in the rather stereotypical way that strategic planning has been done up until now , which is incremental in its nature . It takes current five year plans and revisits them for what the next five years look like . This book introduces the concept that we have radical change on our agenda , and it calls for a radical methodology asking bigger questions in different ways to come up with very different strategies that will allow an organisation to thrive in a new learning economy . ■
23