FORUMS
We are building the learning society in conversation. Join us!
PATHWAYS NETWORK
Pathways Network is a distributed web of researchers and practitioners whose mission is to understand how aspirations, identities, and opportunities coevolve to shape lives and life chances. The network creates evidence-driven insights that help people navigate their futures and enable organizations to better nurture human talent.
Pathways Seminars assemble a transnational group of scholars twice monthly to share work in progress, review and critique recent literature, and build a scientific community.
Past Forums
Who Will Train the Already Educated? How Universities Can Sustain Careers across the Lifespan
John Skrentny and Mary Walshok, UC-San Diego
We argue that research universities must become the nation’s infrastructure for reskilling across the increasingly turbulent work lives of college graduates. Drawing on interviews and case studies, we show how “career-sustaining training units” can leverage universities’ trusted brands, localized research, and employer partnerships to help mid-career adults navigate skill obsolescence, not just launch grads to first jobs. We identify best practices and propose financing and regulatory fixes—mission-subsidized and cost-recovery pricing, portable learning accounts, and outcomes-based public support—and a practical playbook for provosts to scale online, hybrid, and weekend formats without sacrificing equity or rigor. The result is a blueprint for shared prosperity: improved ROI on college degrees, amplified economic growth, and civic vitality for longer lives.
High School was Built for a World that No Longer Exists – What’s Next?
Andrew Frishman, Big Picture Learning
Commentary from Doug Pietrzak
High school is the one stage of learning that many people still imagine as a fixed, one-size-fits-all experience. Yet the rest of life is increasingly nonlinear, episodic, and personalized. What if high school looked more like the future we’re all already living? This session explores how Big Picture Learning’s model of student-interest-driven learning, real-world internships, and relationship-based mentoring offers not just a reimagining of high school, but also a preview of how societies can better prepare people for lifelong transitions. In an era of AI disruption, demographic shifts, and shifting notions of success, the high school experience may be the most urgent place to start redesigning learning across and throughout the life course.
Transforming Colleges to Provide Skills-Based Education: Lessons from Community College Research and Practice
Kathy Booth, WestEd
Commentary from Rebecca Hanson
Although the focus on skill development across the curriculum is new, experts have been documenting opportunities to align curricula and work-ready skills for decades. This session will outline research on the economic returns to short-term coursetaking, noncredit, and stackable credentials, and share insights on state- and college-level efforts to change service delivery models to emphasize job skills. Group discussion will provide an opportunity to explore the incentives that would support community colleges to better serve mid-career workers and equip younger students to navigate shifts in the labor market.
Earning and Learning in the Service Sector: Lessons from Employer Comparisons
Kristen Harknett, UC San Francisco
commentary from Stefanie DeLuca
Most U.S. workers start their careers in the service sector, and nearly 1 in 5 of all U.S. workers are hourly workers employed in retail or food service. As AI disrupts many entry-level job opportunities, the service sector remains an important site for career entry and longer-term employment. While service sector jobs are often seen as low quality, the reality is more complex. The Shift Project research study has surveyed over 200,000 workers employed at 225 large retail and food service companies over the past 10 years. These data provide a portrait of the heterogeneous landscape of opportunity and constraint faced by 25 million U.S. workers and offers lessons for creating viable pathways to upward mobility.
Learning and the Life Course
Rick Settersten, Oregon State University
commentary from Gloria Mwase
Longevity societies face urgent demands related to building human capital, preparing individuals for the future of work, supporting labor force participation and economic mobility, and managing care work. Meeting these challenges requires accessible and sustained opportunities for learning and training across every period of life. Modern life paths are increasingly nonlinear and episodic, marked by repeated transitions among education, employment, caregiving, and personal development. While these pathways offer greater flexibility, they also introduce new risks and uncertainties for individuals and families. This opening session of the Forum series will illustrate these complexities and explore how longevity societies can evolve into “learning societies,” strengthen life transitions, and reimagine the organization and experience of life itself.