NANODEGREES

Technological change vastly outpaces universities’ ability to adapt, and future workers will need continued skills-refreshers to stay relevant. Enter nanodegrees: hyperspecific learning programs that offer certifications for tech-based skills and increasingly important alternatives to traditional four-year degrees. Nanodegree institution Udacity has schools of business, data science, artificial intelligence, and autonomous systems, in which 50,000 students spend an average of 10 to 15 hours a week in challenging courses built to rival the big schools’. Its competitor Coursera offers certificates in hundreds of subjects. These programs’ fees are generally far cheaper than even community colleges’. And next-generation nanodegree programs may soon include adaptive learning tools that apply machine learning to map individual students’ strengths and weaknesses and the pace at which they grasp key objectives—and then personalize curricula to them.

Future job applicants may have a constellation of nanodegrees rather than one diploma from a single institution–and the most-qualified students may take different paths from high school to the workforce, and still possess skills that can be put to immediate use. Currently, only certain licensable professions—like medicine—require continuing education to maintain professional standing. It’s possible that, for other degrees to stay current, we’ll be supplementing our educations with nanodegrees every few years.