The reaction from many progressive PSI’s has been positive as learning is available now through different means including from some of the leading PSI’s including MIT-Open courseware, many elite colleges and universities are on Coursera and you can even acquire master’s degrees from recognized colleges online. Udemy has also expanded as offering support for certifications and essential skills at a fraction of the cost of any college or university. Education is changing; the internet has already revolutionized how we learn as competition has increased but most PSI’s are too rigid and their management and organizational structures to bureaucratic to move with the market so the rise of entrants into training continues. If I want training right now on a topic I usually can go to Google and self-learn some and when I feel I need more and formally my options usually are an education provider online or a post-secondary that I need to get admitted to and then often wait until the course start date. In reality, this lack of agility often takes these education providers out of the market for time-sensitive customers. Still, many PSI’s and other organizations are now leveraging technology even for hands-on learning with the rise of augmented and virtual reality who knows where this will end up. Most of the money PSI’s see is also from governments so really tax dollars are used for diminishing returns now for students. With the changes of being a society of accessibility and convenience, it is shocking that many PSI’s have been so slow to adapt to the growing market. The question is now what can PSI’s do? In reality, many PSI’s can keep up with the market, they teach change management and are fully capable of analyzing the market and trends but often senior leadership are risk-averse and most often academics that are in charge have never had real-world experience in implementing enterprise change. I was lucky enough to report to an executive when at a PSI who understood change had come from the private world with a lot of experience in mergers and acquisitions (much like my background) but was not empowered often to make the necessary changes across the institution hence the speed of change was slow. You can read further on the need to empower staff for speed here. Budget cuts to PSI’s are seen negatively that education is being cut but often these cuts are needed to push changes and continuous improvement initiatives. The PSI I was at is evaluating and starting to implement blended learning but in reality, they are behind and tend to over-evaluate and over plan before they move on anything.

Saying all of this now when evaluating my learning I look at ROI and am starting to see the value of formal education at a University degrading. Not just from all of what is discussed above on how technology and the internet have changed learning and made it more accessible. I have paused my MBA studies to focus on other training after evaluation of ROI. Part of it is also the cost and the practicality of raising education cost now has to be evaluated more than ever as debt is getting even more common. Student loans are a crisis check out more here and another reason is now the opportunities for self-learning new skills and practical certifications have changed the value of my time. PSI’s are at a crossroads with hyper-competition as well as different mediums for training and they can choose to change their culture and move with greater speed and adapt to learner trends or have their admissions plummet.