Watching the future of learning unfold at Centennial College, Canada
What does the future look like for North American higher education and what does it deliver to its learners?
At Toronto-based Centennial College, you can see what the future looks like today.
As part of providing students with workforce-ready skills, Centennial offers competency-based short courses – or micro-credentials – alongside traditional degree and diploma programs. Among these, the college offers a range of PeopleCert courses, including ITIL and DEVOPS INSTITUTE, to upskill and reskill both undergraduates and professionals already in the workforce.
With Canada’s aging population and emergent Industry 4.0, “the traditional contract between higher education and industry is changing,” said Dr Glen Lowry – Associate Vice President Applied Research, Hyflex Learning & Academic Partnerships.
“The training-employment cycle in which industry works with government and higher education to identify skills gaps or training needs – leading to program development and qualified graduates – is under strain,” Dr Lowry said.
“In the new, increasing global industrial contexts, we find that some businesses can’t wait that long – the change is too rapid. New tech-based industries and advanced manufacturing – for example in light rail, aerospace, or electric vehicles – need trained workers immediately. The same is true for other industries — healthcare, construction and aviation. To address these needs, we’re working with government and industry partners to look at how micro-credentials can train workers ‘just in time’ and how we work with business in Ontario to provide new skills training for employees in the next six months.”
Dr Lowry explained how, with pressing labour market needs, micro-credentials and tailored short courses help to reduce the lengthy process of higher education: “Done well and in tandem with continued degree and diploma program development, collaborations like the one between Centennial and PeopleCert help us serve the economy by working with industry to tweak the curriculum and so respond to identified skills gaps and emergent needs."
“Otherwise, without skilled workers, the risk is companies will not be able to meet the demands of their customers.” It also allows us to work closely with industry partners to better understand longer-term needs and trends, which in turn inform the college’s core business of higher education.
But supporting the needs of industries such as aerospace in Ontario doesn’t stop there. The goal is for Centennial to deliver courses to a globally mobile workforce. Potentially, skills learned through Centennial will allow businesses and individuals to engage elsewhere in the world, recognising that many of the businesses Centennial work with locally are multi-national companies.
“This is where globally-recognised certifications such as PeopleCert’s become readily transferable. The flow works both ways: internationally-recognised credentials help validate training for needs both in Canada and abroad. Industry 4.0 flows across borders and constituencies, but it also connects higher education globally,” Dr Lowry said.
Meaningful education and graduate readiness
Centennial College's stated mission is for students to "get ready for a meaningful education" and "graduate readiness for career success".
For the college, this means creating workforce readiness and setting up students for success post-study while enabling them to apply learning and practical skills. And this is almost equally relevant to people in the workforce today, as nearly 40% of Centennial’s students come with a previous degree or diploma to improve their skills in a particular field.
Studying and certifying in a best practice micro-credential such as ITIL has currency in the Canadian job market. At the time of writing, jobs advertised by LinkedIn in Ontario alone list more than 1,700 referencing ITIL. More broadly in Canada, there are more than 4,500 such job listings, and in the USA, this number exceeds 69,000.
This workforce-focused approach at Centennial is fed by industry groups in the college which look at what’s happening in the workforce and how jobs are changing.
Glen Lowry added: “We teach people how to learn because we want students to get jobs but be able to return to higher education at any point in their lives when they need it."
“How to educate globally-mobile students is an increasingly important question but, also, Gen Y and Z learners and their parents are more practical about the jobs they’ll get out of their higher education studies.”
PeopleCert courses and the curriculum
How and where do PeopleCert courses fit into the curriculum at Centennial College?
“In many ways it’s a match made in heaven: providing recognised competencies and just in time training for the workforce,” Glen Lowry said, adding that the push behind offering PeopleCert courses alongside other micro-credentials and existing curriculum came from the experience of the college’s IT team.
Adopting a suite of PeopleCert credentials – including ITIL 4 Foundation, ITIL 4 Business Relationship Management, ITIL 4 Acquiring and Managing Cloud Services, ITIL 4 Digital & IT Strategy, DevOps Foundation and DevSecOps Foundation – is “a value-add and a way for individuals to move up in their organisations,” Glen Lowry added.
“With a series of courses bundled together, it makes an awful lot of sense to include a PeopleCert certification as a course component.”
Starting the future of learning today
The future for Centennial College, according to Glen Lowry, involves “knowing what the world needs, building competencies and trying to solve problems with industry partners. Understanding the tempo at which people need to educate themselves will be complemented by micro-credentials and online learning – essentially more flexible ways of educating people.
Lowry added: “The college’s ‘raison d’etre’ is to educate people and support them in their pursuit of meaningful careers. One of our ‘superpowers’ at Centennial is the ability to work with industry partners. Given our global reach and ability to deliver innovative programs and micro-credentials, online and in person across a broad range of geographies and countries, we are in the process of growing from a community college to a global community college.”
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