Lifelong Learning and Change

One of the things we want to teach our students is to become lifelong learners. Advances in technology have now put us to the test: Can we do what we have preached to our students? Can we show that we, too, are lifelong learners? I’m repeatedly surprised that so many professors simply don’t want to change what they have always done. There’s a “don’t fix what is not broken” attitude among many professors. As long as student evaluations are excellent and the students are passing my tests, then everything is perfect just as it is. There is a fatal flaw in that thinking, and it’s one that we frequently talk about in business courses.

When I was young, we had one telephone in the house, firmly attached to the wall. It worked. It wasn’t broken. To many people who couldn’t imagine the smart phone world that now exists, there was no need to change. (I imagine that the parents of some teenagers wish that phones were still firmly attached to the house.) Many successful companies have become UNsuccessful companies precisely because they stalled in their success while the world passed them by. As educators, we need to be careful not to become too satisfied with our “success.” Drops in enrollments (drop in demand for our product) DEMANDS that we keep learning, changing, and challenging ourselves to move forward.