Lifelong learning for sustainable community development: SPACE graduates' perceptions of its economic contributions and challenges

Abstract

Objective - The study explores the effects of lifelong learning on the human capital base as well as sustainable community development with a particular focus on graduate students at SPACE, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, a group that is still understudied in Malaysia. Methodology/Technique - The study used a descriptive research approach with a sample size of 232. The sample was made up of 168, 38, and 26 students who graduated in 2020, 2018, and 2016, respectively. Stratified random sampling was used to select the samples from the three categories. Finding - One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was also carried out to compare the various mean scores of the first two hypotheses. In order to promote sustainable community development, this study attempts to investigate how graduate students in SPACE prioritize lifelong learning. Accordingly, items with a mean greater than 2.50 were considered to contribute significantly. Novelty - The study's findings include the financial advantages of lifetime learning, perspectives on using lifelong learning approaches to re-skill and upskill graduates in the current pandemic crisis, and barriers to lifelong learning in Malaysia. A rigid educational system, a lack of political will, and a rigid educational system were all barriers to graduate students' lifelong learning, in addition to their values and attitudes. A lack of institutional support, media coverage, and resources was also present. In terms of the financial advantages of lifelong learning and how the three groups of graduate students perceived using this strategy to re-skill and up-skill, ANOVA results showed that there was no statistically significant difference between the groups (p-value > 0.05).