Lifelong Learning: Its Affect On Society
Learning
has never been restricted to the classroom; life experience educates as
well, and higher education institutions are beginning to catch on.
“Education is not preparation for life, education is life itself”
-John Dewey
-John Dewey
In the mid 1970′s, the Council on Adult and Experiential Learning
established the principles of attaining credit for life experiences.
Since then the processes and practices of life experience credit has
mushroomed into an extreme paradigm change in both the educational arena
as well as the labor market. Colleges and Universities around the world
have inculcated life experience credits into their application
processes.
There is even an international organization under the auspices of the
United Nations that administers practices and rules concerned with life
experience credits. It is called the International Bureau of Education.
Registrars in colleges and universities must take courses on how to
assess life experience applications.
The biggest one of these schools is Thomas Edison State College in
Trenton, New Jersey. Universities like Oxford and Cambridge in England:
Yale, Harvard and Columbia In the U.S. are now allowing life experience
credits. The National Association of Online Academic Assessors has been
created to certify individuals to assess life experience essays. Books
have been published to aid the college applicant to prepare life
experience essays and applications. One of these is by Barron’s, a
leading publisher of school reference books. There have even been
journals that specialize in life experience credit. Some of these are
Lifelong Learning, Lifelong Learning in Europe, Lifelong Learning: The
Adult Years and, of course, the EvoLLLution.
In the labor market more and more companies, including some in the
Fortune 500 list, have been hiring employees who have either gotten
degrees the old-fashioned way or through the new, but not so novel, way.
The Academic Council on Education has published a directory of
companies that give courses in various subjects that can be used to
attain life experience credit. The military has also been used to obtain
life experience credit for essays for college applications. You can
also take standardized tests to get life experience credit. Life
experience credit can be attained by practically any method mode or
manner possible. Adult education classes can also get you credit for
literally anything from photography to xylophone playing.
The future of life experience credit practices is just beginning. And it looks very promising.
