Penn Learning for Life

The Opportunity

The market for education is changing rapidly. Learners increasingly, and appropriately, prioritize flexibility, affordability, and clear return on investment. New entrants—from online platforms to AI-enabled programs—are reshaping expectations for how and when learning occurs, while enabling rigor and quality once possible only in traditional models. 

Penn already offers compelling opportunities for lifelong learning, spanning pre-college programs, professional education, executive learning, and post-career enrichment. These offerings have demonstrated both the broad demand for Penn across different learner segments, as well as our ability to deliver them with quality and impact. These programs reach thousands of learners globally and reflect Penn’s academic strengths. 

By making these offerings more visible, connected, and accessible, Penn can create a lifelong learning experience that enables learners to engage more deeply with the University over time. At the same time, shared capabilities and streamlined support for program design and delivery can empower faculty and schools to innovate more quickly, scale successful offerings, and extend Penn's impact to new audiences around the world.

Vision

Penn Learning for Life aims to establish a more connected, scalable model for lifelong learning, one that meets evolving learner needs while accelerating growth across the University.

We currently envision three complementary elements:

• A unified learner experience. Creating a single, accessible entry point to Penn’s lifelong learning opportunities, with clear pathways across programs, formats, and stages of life. 
• A connected learning ecosystem. Building out and linking Penn Online, Penn Summer, and the Penn Learner Network into an integrated system that supports discovery, engagement, and progression over time. 
• A coordinated growth platform. Providing shared infrastructure for marketing, enrollment, delivery, and data on the back end, reducing friction for schools, enabling cross-school collaboration and scale, and proactively identifying promising new opportunities for Penn to expand its reach and impact.

Together, these elements position Penn to serve learners across life stages in a way that is distinctive to Penn, rigorous, interdisciplinary, and grounded in real-world impact.

Emerging Design

Penn is exploring a set of specific initiatives aligned to the vision—some underway, others under consideration—to build and scale this model. These efforts focus on both learner experience and the underlying infrastructure required to support it.

Building a unified learner experience

• Launch a single “front door” for lifelong learning that enables learners to discover, enroll in, and navigate offerings across Penn through a unified platform and experience. 
• Develop a tiered learning pathway that connects short-form content, courses and certificates, and advanced credentials and degrees into a coherent progression with stackable credentials. 
• Establish the Penn Learner Network as a community providing ongoing access to content, events, faculty, and peers, enabling continuous engagement over time.

Expanding Penn’s learning portfolio

• Launch Penn Online as a scalable digital platform for Penn's online programs. The initial launch offering will be a cross-school, Penn Engineering-led initiative to advance AI in field-specific contexts. Over time, Penn Online may expand to include certificates, credentials, and full degree pathways. 
• Expand Penn Summer as a coordinated pre-college portfolio meeting the high-demand for pre-college programs by integrating immersive on-campus Academies and digital offerings from a broader set of schools. 
• Develop new program formats and audiences in priority areas with high demand where Penn can deliver distinctive content and experience, including professional upskilling and returnship, alumni learning, and B2B partnerships with organizations and employers.

Enabling sustainable growth

• Build shared infrastructure, especially for schools without existing infrastructure. This would bring marketing, enrollment, and delivery capacity where needed, and integrated CRM, LMS, and learner support systems to create a seamless end-to-end experience. The outcome should be stronger economics and financial sustainability. 
• Establish a unified learner data layer to track engagement, enable engagement across offerings and schools, and support personalized pathways across programs and time. 
• Define governance, economic, and faculty engagement models that preserve school ownership while enabling cross-school collaboration and sustainable growth.

Existing Foundation

• Established lifelong learning programs across schools: Examples include Wharton Executive Education, Wharton Global Youth, Penn LPS (the “home of lifelong learning at Penn,” spanning degree, non-degree, certificate, professional, summer high school programming and the Online BAAS for working adults and nontraditional students), Penn Engineering Online (flexible graduate degrees for working professionals shaping the future of technology), PSOM Master’s & Certificate Programs, Penn Dental Medicine Continuing Education, Penn Law’s Continuing Law Education, and Penn GSE Professional Development continuing education offerings. 
• Teaching, platform, and operational capabilities: Examples include faculty-facing teaching, instructional and digital strategy support through the Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning & Innovation (CETLI), online program delivery in Penn Engineering’s Office of Academic Innovation, Penn LPS instructional design and marketing, Wharton marketing, enrollment and executive education delivery infrastructure, and ISC’s support for many of these tools.  
• Existing tech, delivery, and data infrastructure: Platforms and tools exist across a range of functions supporting the full student lifecycle, from engagement through learning and completion. These include web and content management, marketing automation, customer relationship management, admissions and enrollment, identity, learning and content delivery, payment, and learner support systems.  A shared data layer also exists, but remains fragmented across schools, limiting interoperability and institutional scale. 

Leads

• Rebecca Hayward, Executive Director, Office of Academic Innovation, School of Engineering and Applied Science
• Megan Ryerson, UPS Chair of Transportation and Chair of City & Regional Planning at the Stuart Weitzman School of Design and School of Engineering and Applied Science