I started my ‘formal’ tertiary education at the Dunedin School of Art, completing a four-year degree followed by a two-year masters. It sounds like a long time now, but at the time it was standard, and like all periods filled with activity, it flew by. I finished my degree and chose to continue straight into my masters because I felt I had more to learn, I was in the ‘zone’ in terms of navigating that learning environment, and I could already see how hard it was for those with greater financial commitments to step back into study.
What I also learned in art school is that learning never ends. The more you learn the less you know. That really did ring true for me. And although I have spent much of my life in learning institutions, learning itself is not confined to them. It can happen anywhere and at any time, and we are now in a moment when learning has never been more accessible. We can choose learning that fits with the contexts we are navigating.
Many institutions still treat learning as a destination, where you acquire a qualification which signals that you have arrived and will now naturally progress to your aspired place in the world. This does both learners and institutions a disservice, because generally a qualification is not a ticket or a pass to anything. Educational institutions often boast that qualifications result in better employment outcomes such as earning more in the long term. However, rather than the acquisition of a qualification, what really matters is the active pursuit of learning in whatever form that takes.
There are ongoing debates about the relevance of tertiary qualifications, especially in relation to how quickly graduates transition into work. This is an ongoing challenge for institutions whose funding models and historical ways of operating struggle to support the kind of agility the working world now demands. That does not mean there is no value in undertaking a qualification. When I later completed a PhD, I knew the credential mattered less than being supported to pursue research in the real world, and to keep learning as part of how I work.
Those who treat education as a destination, and who prioritise maintaining the status quo over learning, are inevitably steering themselves into irrelevance. You have never arrived. A qualification is not a ticket or a right to the working life you imagine. Lifelong learning is not something an institution gives you — it is something you choose, again and again, as the world, and your place within it, keeps changing.
