March 20, 2018
Brent Parton was quoted in The Atlantic about a new model of continuous, lifelong learning:
...Instead the third wave is likely to be marked by continual training throughout a person’s lifetime—to keep current in a career, to learn how to complement rising levels of automation, and to gain skills for new work. Workers will likely consume this lifelong learning in short spurts when they need it, rather than in lengthy blocks of time as they do now when it often takes months or years to complete certificates and degrees.
With this third wave will come a shift in how workers perceive retraining, said Brent Parton, deputy director of the Center on Education and Skills at the think tank New America. “We tend to think of retraining now as something that follows a traumatic event—a job loss, for instance,” said Parton, who served as a policy advisor in the U.S. Department of Labor during the Obama administration. “We’re entering a stage where retraining will be the day-to-day world that people live in. It will be part of their daily life and a much quieter set of traditions compared with now.”