What has the impact of digital been on the Higher Education sector? Is it almost kind of easier to get ‘into’ Harvard or MIT at postgraduate level now instead of for your Bachelor’s - and does that really matter? How is the sector coping with the challenge of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and how is it faring in terms of partnering with the world of work to help us all cope? How do we square the alleged decline of value in a first degree with the fact that the majority of US job openings ask for a BA? There’s probably no sector in the economy as important to the future of Workplace Learning than the world of the modern University, but we need to know what are the major trends emerging that can help us plan ahead. This week we talk to someone in the catbird seat in terms of helping us understand; Dr Sean Gallagher, Founder and Executive Director of Northeastern University's Center for the Future of Higher Education and Talent Strategy, and who also works at the college as Executive Professor of Educational Policy. With an impressive mix of tech, business and educational research forming his own career choices, Sean’s full-time focus now is on getting the answers to all the questions we posed, plus ones you and I haven’t even thought about yet - making him the ideal guest for our next episode in our ‘The Learning Leaders’ mini-series. In nearly an hour of great conversation we hear about his own journey, then dive into the context, a buoyant - maybe surprisingly buoyant? - $650bn HE market; is re-training actually a Corporate Social Responsibility action? The emergence of the ‘middle’ skill level; the changing demographic of US education versus other geographies; online degrees - the first 20 years; what ‘sustaining’ disruption may look like; why the MBA is the lab for Learning change; where we are with Credentialing (and likely go next) and Experiential Learning; and much more.