Learning shouldn’t end when you reach a certain point in your career; it should be something you continuously pursue across your lifetime. As you mature, your areas of interest may change. Perhaps your personal and career goals may morph into something altogether different than what you originally intended. In some cases, life happens and you might find it necessary to take a break from your career or your education. But for people with a strong desire for lifelong learning, this pause is only ...

Learning shouldn’t end when you reach a certain point in your career; it should be something you continuously pursue across your lifetime. As you mature, your areas of interest may change. Perhaps your personal and career goals may morph into something altogether different than what you originally intended. In some cases, life happens and you might find it necessary to take a break from your career or your education. But for people with a strong desire for lifelong learning, this pause is only temporary. Even though you may have begun an educational program and needed to take a pause later, it’s never too late to go back and finish what you started.

People in modern age have more options to gain the knowledge they want and need. From a higher education standpoint, universities and colleges are working hard to transform themselves in different ways.

For example, there has been a transition from traditional Ph.D.-style doctorates to applied doctorates like the Doctorate in Strategic Intelligence or Doctorate in Global Security. These academic programs have their students work to address real-world problems of practice. In this manner, they take the education they receive in their classes and work to apply it within the fields in which they are currently employed or hope to work in. In addition, some universities now offer dual degree programs, such as the dual master’s degree in emergency and disaster management and homeland security. Some institutions are also starting to provide accelerated degrees to allow their students to rapidly advance from a B.A. to an M.A., saving those students time and money on their educational pursuits.

However, lifelong learning doesn’t just encompass full degree programs. With employers focusing on skillset development, there is an increasing desire for short program offerings as well. “Short programming” includes sets of courses that lead to a specific credential or badge. For instance, ASIS International offers a series of certifications, related to security and global studies, which can be used to add value to your professional portfolio. Another relevant certification is the Certified Threat Manager (CTM) certification offered by the Association of Threat Assessment Professionals. Short programming involves learning tracks, competency-based micro-credentials or stackable credentials. In some cases, certificates are perceived to be more valuable as they signal that their owner has current knowledge of a particular area; however, this perception differs from field to field.

Which best serves as the title for the passage?