Across the sector, there is renewed attention on how higher education can support learning across working lives rather than at a single point in time. Careers have become less linear, and knowledge and skills evolve more rapidly, placing pressure on traditional programme-based models. If universities are to support lifelong learning, they need structures that allow learners to enter, exit and return to study over time. This means moving away from one-time enrolment and fixed programmes towards provision that enables people to engage, step away, and re-engage as their professional and personal circumstances change.
A new model for flexible, stackable study
We are soon to launch a suite of online postgraduate microcredentials – credit-bearing short courses that can be stacked over time into academic awards.
They are designed to be hyper-accessible, with the needs of busy working professionals guiding the design.
Key features include:
- Flexible access and pacing: start anytime, self-paced study, assessment when ready
- Low friction entry: browse-pay-register enrolment, no formal application, self-certification of entry requirements
- Structured independent study: self-directed learning supported by an AI study assistant
- Supportive assessment: competency-based assessment, multiple attempts and no additional assessment charges
- Career-relevant outcomes: employability skills embedded and developed throughout
- Stackable credit: credit can be banked, accumulated towards awards, or transferred into one of our full degrees.
These features reflect a deliberate response to wider structural changes in higher education (HE) as lifelong learning, modular study and credit accumulation move from the periphery of policy debate to the centre of institutional strategy.
Wider context: lifelong learning
Lifelong learning is once again on the policy agenda, both in UK higher education and across international HE systems. The forthcoming UK Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) is intended to support lifelong learning delivery, and the recent white paper confirmed the Government’s commitment to the shift towards a modular, career-long, multi-provider, credit accumulation delivery model.
The LLE is being introduced gradually. While there is a prevailing scepticism about the particulars of LLE in its early form, there is gathering recognition that higher education needs to span working lives, adapt to changing labour markets and society, and develop new business models.
The University of London is well placed to lead
Because of its history, the University of London and its federation are particularly well placed to play a leading role in defining and demonstrating new lifelong learning models. Our advantages include:
- Our deep experience of delivering, in partnership with the federation, flexible, modular, step-on/step-off provision at scale, to a diverse student body spanning all ages and backgrounds.
- The availability of a common credit currency in UoL academic credit – meaning that students can take modules from different providers within the federation and build up to a University of London award.
- The university can act as the single holder of the student record for lifelong learning students, overcoming issues around portability, reporting, duty of care, regulatory ownership.
- The university’s systems, processes and operations are familiar with ‘non-traditional’ delivery, and are not embedded in campus-based structures and academic cultures in the way that regular campus universities can be.
By contrast, many traditional universities are not yet ready to tackle the implications for modularity, credit accumulation, admissions, systems development, portable and on/off lifelong student records, credit transfer, reporting, and the evident incompatibility between modular lifelong provision and the regulatory B3 benchmarks.
Cognisant of the opportunity, over a series of Lifelong Learning Roundtable sessions across 2024-25, senior representatives from federation members and the university together agreed not to cleave to the letter of the embryonic LLE, but rather to develop a comprehensive future-state UoL cross-federation lifelong learning framework.
Microcredentials as a first step
The microcredentials are a first step towards realising that framework.
Our microcredentials initiative is not simply about launching a new set of short courses. It is about testing and learning through practice what a federal lifelong learning model looks like when it is designed deliberately, rather than retrofitted onto existing degree structures. Microcredentials are the visible tip of a broader transformation that touches curriculum design, credit frameworks, technology platforms, student journeys, and partnerships across our federation.
This shift – from programmes as fixed destinations to learning as an accumulating pathway – has significant implications for curriculum design, student journeys and institutional infrastructure.
In the next post, we explore how these implications are being addressed in practice across the University of London federation.
To learn more about our work in this area, read our other posts in the microcredentials series.
Photo by Zulian Firmansyah on Unsplash