RESEARCH
Learning Society produces and curates rigorous, accessible research and makes it freely available as a public service. Please refer your colleagues, distribute widely, and be in touch with any comments.
LIFE COURSE UNIVERSITY
Why Longer Lives Are Higher Education’s Untapped Strategic Advantage
BRIEF
The structure of life has changed faster than the structure of higher education. Simon Chan (Stanford Center on Longevity and CoGenerate) and Lindsey Beagley (Arizona State University) offer a framework for redesigning universities to develop, renew, and redeploy human capacity across longer lives and across generations — helping people not only launch careers, but sustain them and keep contributing well into the fourth quarter of life.
BUILDING A LEARNING SOCIETY
Stanford Social Innovation Review, Fall 2026
FEATURE
School-based models for developing talent won’t, on their own, produce the skillful, resilient people every society needs. Starting in Wichita, Kansas, Mitchell L. Stevens and João M. Souto-Maior make the case for a civic architecture that recognizes learning whenever and wherever it occurs: at home, at play, in community, and especially at work.
Earning and Learning in the U.S. Service Sector
Back-to-school season is here — and many of the workers ringing up those supplies are studying too.
New research from the Shift Project, drawing on survey data from ~5,300 hourly workers at 144 large service sector employers, looks at how education and training actually work in retail and food service jobs.
By Henri Jackson (Harvard Kennedy School) and Kristen Harknett (UC Berkeley).
Bending the Heckman Curve:
Competing Declines in Learning Capacity and Skill Relevance Over the Life Course
João Souto-Maior and Mitchell Stevens revisit the famous Heckman Curve describing returns human-capital investments across the life course, to show that optimal timing depends on changes in skill relevance due to technological change. They derive trajectories for returns tied to specific skills and suggest how lengthening lifespans will also influence returns on human-capital investments.
WHO WILL TRAIN THE ALREADY EDUCATED?
How Dual-Speed Universities Can Sustain the College-Educated Workforce
REPORT
As working lives extend and skills are shifting, UC San Diego’s John Skrentny and Mary Walshok argue the solution to upskilling already lives inside research universities—as extension and continuing education programs they are calling “career sustainers.”
THE FUTURE IS NOW
America’s Human Resources and Talent Leads on AI and Learning at Work
REPORT
For the last 50 years, employers have increasingly relied on hiring external talent rather than developing workers internally. The explosion of AI and its impact on work is upending this approach — along with traditional assumptions about learning and talent development.
BUILDING A LEARNING SOCIETY
REPORT
How do Americans flourish as technology advances?
Learning Society’s vision calls for lifelong learning opportunities accessible to all.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
People have always been the backbone of the American economy. Yet as technology and machines — unencumbered by pesky mortal frailty and human agency — become more advanced, many are beginning to wonder: what will happen to us? How will people flourish in the next decade and beyond?
EDUCATION AND LEARNING FOR LONGER LIVES: BUILDING A NATIONAL VISION FOR HUMAN CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT AND SHARED PROSPERITY
the document that launched the Futures Project on Education and Learning for Longer Lives in Fall 2024 — and seeded the core ideas of Learning Society
Contributors
Antje Gardyan, Gloria Mwase, Matt Sigelman, Anne Trumbore, & Mitchell Stevens
