I have been studying this for quite a while now – education and the way we learn and how we skill ourselves.
The bad news is that it has become a major business. I have always maintained that education and healthcare should not be completely privatised as it creates conflicts in KPIs between getting the best teachers and maintaining cashflows or sustaining individual student attention and achieving real outcomes.
Does lifelong learning work? Can individuals achieve tangible outcomes by learning 2-3 days a month and acquiring mini–university degrees or certificates?
Malaysia is facing long term sustainability concerns in talent skills gap and development, due to the fact that we are lagging in indicators such as PISA, TIMS, RDCI, GERD and the number of unemployed graduates. This is despite the fact that we spend 18% of our GDP (RM60 billion) on education annually.
The last aspirational blueprint on education reform was developed and introduced in 2013 and the Education Performance and Delivery Unit (PADU) was established to drive it. However, not much has been said about the status or progress of the implementation of the recommendations contained within the blueprint since.
This brings me back to a key question; what is education?
I personally believe that it is the catalyst that will develop the nation’s ability to compete globally with intellectual strength for the betterment of humanity. The pen or keypad in current times is mightier than the sword.
We need to focus on developing new types of skills for employees that can create value for organisations. This will require changing the way everyone learn and relearn, from children to graduates, employees and employers.
The obvious solution is to change the way we educate, teach and learn. Our analysis shows that from age of 6 to 21, a child gets 200 days of actual classroom teaching out of the total of 5,600 days. This is extremely low, as there are breaks, travel times, scheduled classes, etc. On top of that, average classroom sizes are 20-30 people, so attention spans are not clear.
However, it is safe to assume that a child that is going to school is being educated. The 200 days of teaching could easily be achieved within 2-3 years in a strong focused set of sessions. This allows us to focus the rest of their teenage life on long term learning that can make them intellectually stronger.
Can we have children working earlier in part time roles i.e., 12-year-olds working for 3 hours a day, 3 times a week, or via remote work from home? This will give them exposure to work and productivity tools such as PowerPoint from an earlier age, before moving to more advanced software and platforms as they progress.
Given the early exposure, children will not just be tech user and adopters, but can grow into tech innovators. At the same time, they can also develop into socially cultured, receptive and productive being, striking a dynamic balance between emotional and intellectual development.
To do this however, we need to change educational business models and institutions. The elephant in the room is money! The global educational services market is expected to grow from US$3 trillion (RM13.18 trillion) in 2020 to US$8 trillion 2025 at a CAGR of 7% to 8%. We see Asia Pacific was the largest region, accounting for nearly 40% of this market. If you add training to the list, this is expected to reach US$10 trillion (RM43.93 trillion) in 2030 (Holon IQ source).
As an employer, the quality of the actual learning received from a university degree may unfortunately have little bearing on a person’s ability to earn and succeed at the workplace. In fact, the latest Forbes list of 1,150 Asian billionaires showed quite a few university drop outs. Did they realise something early that we are missing?
Before the pandemic, we also saw stress markers on university graduates without jobs. Today the stress levels have grown further due to unemployment and income reduction. This is compounded by the mental fatigue of staying indoors over prolonged period. Therefore, it is high time that we address the root cause of this problem; by rebuilding the ecosystem and business models for education.
The report above, which was published in 2020, shows the shift in job requirements in 2025 by the World Economic Forum. Take a closer look at these skills; were these covered in your high school curriculum and university degree lectures and seminars? The broad theme here is flexibility, agililty and continuous learning. Can traditional and online classrooms equip students with these skills?
For example, while you may have 25 years of experience, but if you are doing the same thing every day for 25 years, this would only be tantamount to 1 year of experience at best. In running several businesses, myself, I have to say the age old adage that “every day is a different day of learning” has provided me and the team with vast exposure into various skillset, sectors and areas of learning.
So assuming that we can restructure the education and skills training ecosystem, how would this look like? We could start work earlier, say maximum 15 days a month, spend 12 days to play, rest, travel and ponder, and finally a full 3 days a month learning, upskilling and getting up to date on what we need to know until we die. Yes, until we die.
My own daughter nags me all the time on why she needs to learn about something in Britain that happened in 1700s. My son on the other hand has picked up cooking recently and he simply loves it., while my wife has mastered digital and social media whilst online shopping! Think about it. We don’t all need to learn maths, biology and literature on all the time. What about learning to service your own car or how to germinate and plant a tree or become a tourist tour guide?
Lifelong learning should also centre content and syllabus that can help students keep up with the fast moving and fast-changing digital age. This empowers them with crucial digital skills from an early age.
These courses will take three days (or intensive 24 hour set sessions) a month for life. This allows users to pick up a varied set of subjects and skillsets. The users determine the courses they want to pursue based on AI algorithms, employers needs and their own personal development goals. The government and education providers can look at offering short courses or certifications or mini-degrees that can be stacked up into formal qualifications over time, as opposed to just providing the standard 3-4 year university degrees. This will make lifelong learning more accessible to Malaysians across all demographics.
Imagine a world where access to education and technology is so democratised and expansive that an 80-year-old could proactively take it upon themselves to spend 2-3 days a month learning to master the art of online selling through Facebook? With just a few tweaks to our education and human capital development policies, coupled with the will to invest into digital infrastructure and our own people, this idea may not be as imaginary as it seemed.
This is not to say that we do away with university degrees and conventional paper qualifications altogether. In fact, in-depth tertiary learning is still crucial for certain industries and universities are also hotbeds for research and innovation. Therefore, traditional academia and those who participate in them should be respected and valued for the long term.
However, we now have the opportunity to create multiple pathways to education and qualifications, which may require a significant and radical shift in how we view learning and the timeframes we attached to it. The fact that learning from anytime, anywhere and on any device has become ubiquitous means that it is possible for formal qualifications to be obtained earlier without sacrificing quality, integrity and the value of learning.
The Way Forward
1. Universities need to shift their business models to focus on user’s passions, employability and job creation. Having a degree doesn’t necessarily make you smarter, nor does it guarantee you money, happiness or a sense of purpose. Institutions should start looking into offering multiple education pathways and this should include dismantling the three-year bachelor’s degree into lifelong degrees with mini certificates.
2. Employers need to shift their mindsets and get away from enforcing strict paper qualification requirements on current and future hires. Instead, they should focus on empowering their workforce with upskilling and reskilling opportunities that meet the current and future demands of their roles and that of the organisation. At the same time, businesses and entrepreneurs should be incentivised to not just create but also fill the talent gap with digital and IR4.0 skills.
3. Governments need to have agile policies to allow for such hybrid models. This will include ensuring that such mini qualifications are recognised and valued far and wide. Governments need to make education a basic social right for all citizens, irrespective of social class.
4. The People need to think hard, and smart, and identify their passion to have a path for lifelong learning. As this is what it is really about – making our dreams come true.
Let us use this time to heal by looking inwards, so that we can rebuild humanity by rebuilding Malaysia first.
Girish Ramachandran is the Executive Director of 27 Advisory Sdn Bhd. At the time of submission of this article, he was a Research Fellow with the National Human Resource Centre (NHRC) of HRD Corp.
The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.
