Education for the 100-year life

Professor Lily Kong President, Singapore Management University

Advances in nutrition, hygiene and medicine have extended human lifespans. Living a 100-year life is an increasing reality. Yet our mental model of life as lived in three phases - education, work, then retirement - remains dominant. In their influential book, The 100-Year Life, Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott argue that longevity demands a shift from this model. A career spanning 60 years simply cannot be sustained by knowledge and skills acquired in one’s early twenties. Individuals must, therefore, continuously learn, adapt and pivot across their lives, supported by institutions that deliver lifelong learning. The implications for universities are profound, shifting from the focus on a traditional four-year programme for the 18s to 25s to one of providing lifelong learning opportunities. But the implications go beyond universities to schools that shape individuals earlier in life.

Universities to integrate earning and learning

First, universities. An essential dimension of lifelong education is the integration of work and learning. Cooperative education programmes in Canada, the US, and Germany’s apprenticeship system demonstrate the effectiveness of combining academic study with professional practice. Singapore universities, too, have adapted these models to offer work-study electives and degrees. However, work-integrated learning should not be limited to full-degree programmes.

The big opportunity is to adopt similar approaches in continuing education throughout life. When an individual already in the workforce undertakes to learn new skills or deepen existing ones, attending a course seems like taking time out of work, with an opportunity cost to bear, both for the individual and the employer. However, if the learning is paired with projects at work, it is an investment by the employer and a deliverable by the individual. This approach reframes continuing education from a career interruption to a professional investment shared by employer and employee.

Cultivating intangible assets

The implications for change are not confined to universities. While lifelong learning is an obvious response to human longevity, adopting a life course approach to successful ageing opens our minds to recognising that how we live, learn and play in our earlier lives impacts how well we navigate our later lives.

Gratton and Scott remind us that successful longevity requires both tangible and intangible assets. Tangible assets offer financial security. Intangible assets are about robust relationships, emotional resilience and mental and physical wellbeing. Supportive friendships lend emotional support and social networks can enhance career opportunities, whereas social isolation and poor health diminish productivity and creativity. Intangible assets need to be cultivated throughout life, starting from a young age.

Traditionally, educational institutions have focused on developing cognitive abilities that lead to good jobs, thus accumulating tangible assets. The cultivation of the non-cognitive, associated more closely with intangible assets, is often tangential. Schools do better than universities. Even so, it is unconventional for educational institutions to value the cultivation of intangible assets as much as the cultivation of knowledge and skills. Yet, educational institutions are spaces where individuals explore personal passions, forge enduring friendships, build resilience and nurture a sense of purpose. Activities often viewed as extra-curricular; sports, volunteering and cultural pursuits are, in fact, integral to personal and professional flourishing. Educational institutions need to embrace these experiences explicitly as core elements of their educational mission, central to a revised notion of ‘curriculum’, deserving better than the ‘extra-curricular’ or even ‘co-curricular’ standing they currently occupy. They warrant similar attention (resources, systems and structures of support) as curriculum. For example, while building classrooms is de rigueur in the current paradigm, the attitude is that student residences, sports facilities and spaces for student clubs, for example, can be downsized or even removed. In preparing better for a 100-year life, these are as central to preparation for life as classrooms are. Our current thinking, therefore, needs to shift very fundamentally.

Addressing an urgent paradox

A paradox presents itself. The centrality of educational institutions in better preparing individuals to live a longer and better life is clear, and they need to be supported in making the pivot. Yet in many parts of the world, they remain underfunded. Institutions are expected to do more with less, even as demands for reskilling and lifelong learning intensify, and as the need to cultivate intangible assets deepen. If societies are to adapt to the 100-year life, they must prioritise education and its institutions, both as training grounds for jobs, and as fonts of social resilience, economic adaptability and personal fulfilment.

Professor Lily Kong has been President of Singapore Management University (SMU) since 2019, previously SMU’s Provost. She has driven key initiatives in Digital Transformation, Sustainable Living and Growth in Asia, enhancing the university’s global standing. She serves on numerous academic, government and corporate boards and has received prestigious honours, including the Royal Geographical Society’s Victoria Medal and Singapore’s Public Service Star. She is consistently ranked in the top 1-2% of her field in studies by Stanford and has been recognised in Forbes Asia’s Power Businesswomen list.