The way people get their formal education is changing all the time. There is an international conversation about whether or not traditional higher education models are worth it, for just about anyone. They’re expensive, and recent years have proven that they often do not pay off, especially monetarily. Others critique traditional learning models for not being relevant to the tasks at hand, when people graduate and enter their real careers.  Add that fact to the burden of student debts, making higher education a further reach by most.

In response to the challenges, programs like online mba programs california and elite universities like Harvard Business School have been striving to stay on the cutting edge of useful education models for many generations. As the education world transforms constantly, staying on the forefront is becoming more important than ever. The changes that the world over has been undergoing for the past 20 years has motivated HBS to experiment with different educational models.

One of the most inspiring, practical, and relevant is the one they’re offering now. It’s an 8 week course to business professionals all over the world. For this two months, these adults of all ages and backgrounds will experience the education experience of a lifetime, all on HBS’s historic campus. It’s a collaborative environment, with some of the best minds in the world, focusing on professionals at all stages of their careers to become better prepared for the task ahead of them.

The old way of doing things no longer works, and the promise of “work for a company for 30 years and you’ll have your future well-covered in pensions” is already obsolete. Today, people are working longer, at careers that are demanding more of them than they did of previous generations. Add business competition in the mix, and you can be sure that not only people need to work longer hours, they also need to up the quality of their work – if they want survive, let alone thrive.

A single all-or-nothing education block at the beginning of a career won’t last for the duration of a lifetime of work. People are working 40 years or more, in industries that will be unrecognizable between the time they enter and leave the field. To stay relevant, they need to well-equip themselves with the ever-changing knowledge and tech adoptions.

To remain knowledgeable about the complexities of their industry, and of related fields, it makes more sense than ever for education to be focused and “modular”, something that adults can access for weeks at a time, at strategic points in a career. It’s a novel model, and it’s one that HBS could change the world of professional education with.