Earlier this year, I started developing an idea about the future of higher education which I knew might be provocative: what if universities stopped thinking primarily about selling degrees and started thinking about building lifelong learning relationships?
I used Netflix as an analogy. Not because I believe higher education should become entertainment, or because students should simply be regarded as consumers, but because the subscription economy has fundamentally changed the relationship between organisations and those they serve. Instead of relying on a single transaction, organisations can build relationships that last for years, sometimes decades.
When I first developed the idea, it felt some distance from the way higher education currently operates. A few months later, perhaps rather less so.
At the Universities UK (UUK) annual conference in September, the government confirmed that the Lifelong Learning Entitlement will support courses and modules starting from January 2027. The government is also preparing to consult on flexible degree reform.
At the same conference, UUK launched its Future Jobs Roadmap. Among its commitments are expanding employer co-designed and modular learning, increasing work-based learning, ensuring students develop the capability to use AI effectively and, particularly interesting, providing graduates with a universal lifetime entitlement to university careers support throughout their careers.
None of this amounts to a subscription university. But some of the pieces are beginning to appear.
We ask a lot of three years
The dominant model of higher education remains remarkably familiar.
Students typically arrive in early adulthood, study intensively for three or four years, graduate with a qualification and then take what they have learned into their working lives.
But today’s graduates may spend 50 or even 60 years in the workforce. During that time, they are likely to experience technological change, career transitions, and perhaps entirely new professions that do not yet exist.
Yet we continue to concentrate much of higher education into a relatively short period near the beginning of adult life.
Universities have largely operated according to a transaction model. Students enrol on a degree, universities deliver it, students graduate and the educational transaction is effectively complete.
Universities maintain relationships with alumni, of course, but for many institutions the teaching business model remains heavily dependent upon recruiting successive cohorts into full qualifications.
What if, instead of thinking primarily in terms of students and alumni, universities thought about members of lifelong learning communities?
Instead of recruiting somebody for three years, an institution might cultivate a learning relationship lasting 50. Instead of measuring educational success primarily at graduation, it might increasingly consider an individual’s ability to adapt, develop and reinvent themselves throughout life.
The most successful graduates of the future may not be those who know the most at 21. They may be those who remain capable of learning, adapting and reinventing themselves at 61.
A graduate might then return at 25 for specialist technical learning. At 35, perhaps for leadership development. At 45, for learning associated with a significant career transition. At 60, perhaps for entrepreneurship, civic leadership, or simply intellectual enrichment.
Education becomes continuous, modular and responsive to changing circumstances. The degree becomes the beginning of the learning journey rather than its culmination.
The first phase may already have begun
When I originally considered how such a transition might occur, the obvious first step seemed to be modularisation. That is no longer hypothetical.
For the first time, important elements of the financial and regulatory architecture are beginning to support the idea that higher education does not necessarily have to be consumed as one continuous block early in adult life.
The government is creating mechanisms that enable people to access modular learning during their working lives. UUK is proposing lifetime careers support. Universities already provide professional qualifications, executive education, short courses and online learning. Employers require continuing development as technologies and business models change.
President of UUK, Malcolm Press captured part of the challenge at the September conference when he observed that careers are becoming “longer, less linear and more frequently reshaped by technology”, and argued that universities have a role not only at the start of that journey, but throughout it.
We are gradually assembling components of a lifelong higher education system while retaining a university business model designed predominantly around a relatively short educational transaction.
Lifelong learning membership
Imagine that graduation no longer means leaving the educational relationship and simply becoming an alumnus. Instead, graduates might transition into some form of lifetime learning membership.
For an annual or monthly fee – perhaps supplemented at different points by employers, government funding or learning credits – members could retain access to a changing portfolio of educational services.
At some points in their career, an individual might consume very little formal education. At others — following technological disruption, promotion, redundancy, or a career change – they might return intensively.
Universities would develop recurring relationships rather than relying solely on repeated recruitment transactions. Learners would have a trusted educational partner available throughout their lives. Employers would have access to a workforce better able to adapt.
None of this would be easy. Universities currently depend heavily upon income generated during relatively short periods of intensive study. Regulation and quality assurance would also have to evolve.
There is also an important question of inequality. Lifelong learning has enormous potential to widen access to education, but a future system must not become one in which those who already have the greatest educational and economic advantages gain disproportionately from lifelong access to learning.
And perhaps the greatest barrier is cultural. For generations, we have viewed graduation as the conclusion of formal education. Instead of asking, “what degree should I complete”, learners may increasingly need to ask, “how will I continue developing throughout my life?”
The challenge of doing nothing
Universities are extraordinarily enduring institutions.
Their capacity for continuity is one of their great strengths. But continuity should not become inertia.
Financial pressures across higher education are substantial. Employers are asking for different capabilities. Artificial intelligence is changing professional practice. Careers are becoming longer and less linear. The government is creating mechanisms for modular education and more flexible student finance. The sector itself is now talking about supporting graduates throughout their working lives.
The question is whether universities simply bolt these new activities on to a business model designed for another era or recognise that together they may require something more fundamental.
The great expansion of higher education in the twentieth century made university accessible to millions. The challenge of the century may be even more ambitious: making university not a phase of life, but a lifelong companion.
The future of higher education may not be the degree. It may be the relationship.