The future is fast, flexible and fabulous
31 August 2026
Andrew Crisp introduces some of the key findings from the 2026 Future of Lifelong and Executive Education report.
The Las Vegas sign doesn’t hold back, it’s fabulous Las Vegas. And while some might question that idea, there are few who leave Vegas without it having made an impact on them. Here’s a question for business schools and universities offering executive education, do your programmes leave an impact on learners, do they end a course thinking about the next one, are they fabulous experiences?
CarringtonCrisp’s new report, The future of lifelong and executive education, concludes that learning needs to not just be fabulous, but fast and flexible. That doesn’t mean all glitz like Las Vegas, but it does mean excellent customer service and learning that leaves an impact.
Learners know they need to learn more; 68% expect to undertake more learning in the future to advance their career, with 70% more likely to stay at an organisation that supports their learning and development and 63% likely to join an organisation which offered lifelong learning as part of their package.
However, university and business school providers of lifelong and executive education are facing ever greater competition. Just under half (45%) of the more than 9,000 individuals who were surveyed for the study said they would consider a university or business school for their learning in the next five years. However, 55% look to the commercial online providers, LinkedIn Learning, Udemy, Coursera and many more, while 44% turn to a professional/industry/trade body and 41% a private training company. Among the more than 1,000 employers looking to commission courses who were surveyed, the market is tougher for universities and business schools, with only 34% considering them behind private training companies (45%), professional/industry/trade bodies (44%), private online learning providers (36%) and consulting firms (35%).
To compete effectively, any university or business school considering growing or starting a lifelong and executive education offer needs to decide what fabulous means for them. For some it may be investing in high-quality and engaging learning design, for others it may be courses that offer applied/work-integrated learning or it may just involve collecting the data that demonstrates strong impact of their learning on individuals and organisations.
However, it may simply be about good customer service, but that can be difficult in a university or business school, not because the desire isn’t there and not because of the people who work in institutions, but because of the systems. Good customer service in this situation means systems that allow quick responses to course enquiries, flexible solutions that meet the needs of individual customers and options that allow people to learn in a way that suits them rather than having to follow timetables that mean learning only starts and ends on specific days.
Rethinking systems, not tinkering with those that have delivered degrees for decades, may be a fundamental requirement to building successful lifelong and executive education in a university or business school. Think fast, flexible and fabulous and create systems that deliver all three.
This is the first in a series of articles that will be published on the CarringtonCrisp website over the coming months covering findings from The future of lifelong and executive education report 2026. To read more about the findings, download the free executive summary or purchase the full report at https://www.carringtoncrisp.com/intelligence/flee/