Lifetime Learning Takes Center Stage at Georgia Tech

Today’s academics and research roundup is a focused one, and it points squarely at a question Georgia Tech has been asking louder than most: what does a university owe its people after graduation day?

2026 Lifetime Learning Symposium

The 2026 Lifetime Learning Symposium runs from Monday afternoon through midday Wednesday at the Global Learning Center, and its headline session is a keynote fireside chat titled Leading Through Change: Learning for a Lifetime in the Age of AI, featuring Georgia Tech Provost Raheem Beyah and College of Lifetime Learning Dean Bill Gaudell. The conversation takes up how universities must evolve to meet this moment — from reimagining access and credentials to preparing leaders who can responsibly navigate emerging technologies — and argues that higher education should move beyond knowledge delivery to become a lifelong partner in human development, workforce resilience, and societal progress.

Beyond the keynote, the program is organized around designing systems, models, and experiences that support learning across an entire life. Three themes anchor the sessions:

• Activating the Learning Lifecycle — how institutions design systems that support learning at every stage of life.
• Actualizing Access Through Scale — how to expand access to high-quality learning without sacrificing impact.
• Authoring the New Credentialing Landscape — how credentialing evolves to support trust, mobility, and learner agency.

The symposium is open to alumni, faculty and staff, postdocs, graduate and undergraduate students, and the public, with registration and full details available on the event page. It is a fitting home for the conversation: Tech’s work in scaled online degrees has already shown what happens when access and rigor are treated as compatible goals rather than trade-offs.

Why It Matters

Credentialing, access, and continuous learning are not abstractions for the Georgia Tech community. They describe the path many alumni are already walking as they retool mid-career, and they describe what the Institute is building for the next generation of learners who will never be fully “done” with school.

Planning to attend, or have thoughts on what lifelong learning should look like at Tech? Share them in the comments — we would love to hear from alumni who have gone back for another credential, and from students thinking about what comes after the diploma.