The Lifelong Learning Entitlement is not just a funding reform. It is a pedagogical challenge

This blog was kindly authored by Professor Harriet Dunbar-Morris, Professor of Higher Education, Visiting Fellow at Oxford Lifelong Learning, University of Oxford.

As the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) moves closer to implementation, the higher education sector risks making a familiar mistake. We are talking about it primarily as a funding and loan reform, rather than as a fundamental challenge to how we design curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment. That would be a serious misstep.

I have previously written for HEPI and THE about the funding implications of the LLE, particularly for accelerated and less traditional providers, and about the structural inequities that risk being embedded if funding and regulation are not aligned. Those issues remain unresolved and important. But even if the funding model were perfect, the LLE would still fail if it is layered onto curricula and pedagogies designed for a very different era of higher education.

If the LLE is to succeed, it must be accompanied by a serious rethinking of how we design learning for today’s students.

Designing for the students we actually have

The idea of the ‘full-time student’ as someone who is largely available for study, socially embedded on campus, and able to prioritise university above all else has been eroding for some time. The LLE makes the erosion of that reality unavoidable.

Even students officially labelled as full-time are now balancing study with paid work, caring responsibilities, commuting, health needs, and rising living costs. Many others enter or return to higher education later in their education journeys to retrain or upskill, and much more often alongside employment.

Designing learning around an imagined, fully available student no longer reflects reality. Nor does it reflect the students we say we want to support.

This does not mean lowering expectations or diluting academic standards. It does mean being much more intentional about what we ask students to do, how they engage, and where the real value of the university experience lies.

Flexibility is not the same as everything online

One of the risks in current debates about flexibility is that it becomes shorthand for content delivery. Recorded lectures, online resources, and asynchronous access are valuable and, for many students, essential. But flexibility cannot simply mean putting everything online and hoping students will piece together a coherent learning experience around their busy lives.

As I have argued elsewhere, students value interactive, purposeful learning that makes time with peers and academic staff genuinely worthwhile. They want learning that connects to real-world contexts, challenges them intellectually, and helps them make sense of what they are studying, not just consume content.

The LLE sharpens this challenge. If students are engaging in higher education episodically, modularly, or alongside work, then the moments when they are with staff and peers must be clearly valuable. Otherwise, the logic of opting out becomes overwhelming.

Modularisation, credit accumulation, and the assessment issue

The LLE also challenges the sector to confront some uncomfortable truths about modularisation and assessment.

For many students, particularly those combining study with work, bite-sized, credit-bearing learning may be the only feasible route. Credit accumulation over time is one of the core guarantees of the LLE. But modularisation done badly leads to fragmentation, repetition, and assessment overload.

In many institutions, modular structures of 10, 15, or 20 credits have produced multiple assessments per module, often poorly connected to one another and/or disconnected from authentic application. This is exhausting for students and staff alike, and it is particularly damaging for students studying intermittently.

There is a strong pedagogical case for fewer, larger modules (for example 30 credits) which allow space for deeper learning, fewer but more meaningful assessments, and greater coherence. Larger modules also create opportunities to rethink assessment design in more radical ways.

Assessment as the engine of engagement

Assessment is where the LLE will succeed or fail.

If we continue to rely on assessment models that prioritise replication of content, high-frequency submission, and narrow demonstrations of knowledge, we should not be surprised when students disengage.

The LLE demands assessment that reflects how knowledge and skills are actually used beyond the university. That means more authentic, real-world tasks, more emphasis on synthesis and application, and less emphasis on volume for its own sake.

It also means rethinking for whom we assess. Co-creating assessment with students, or offering structured choice within assessment design, is not about reducing standards. It is about recognising that students come with different professional contexts, aspirations, and prior experiences, particularly in a lifelong learning system.

No single model, but a shared responsibility

There is no single institutional model for responding to the LLE, and there should not be. Different providers serve different student populations, subject mixes, and regional labour markets. Accelerated degrees, block teaching, personalised timetabling, hybrid delivery, and modular pathways all have a role to play.

What is shared, is the challenge.

The traditional higher education model was designed for a time when a small and relatively homogeneous group of students attended university full-time and residentially. That world has gone. The LLE does not create this reality, but it exposes it.

If the sector is serious about lifelong learning, it must be serious about the pedagogical work that underpins it.

A call to action

The LLE should be a moment of pedagogical reckoning, not just regulatory compliance.

In practical terms, this means institutions, regulators, and policymakers must engage seriously with at least three challenges:

1. Designing authentic, real-world assessment that reflects how knowledge and skills are used beyond the university, rather than relying on inherited assessment formats.

2. Co-creating learning and assessment with students, including offering structured choice, recognising prior experience, and valuing diverse learning trajectories.

3. Building genuinely flexible pathways that support engagement, progression, and belonging without diluting academic standards or fragmenting the curriculum.

The LLE may not be the sector’s salvation. But if we fail to engage with it thoughtfully and creatively, it risks becoming a missed opportunity that students simply step around.

The question is not whether the LLE will change higher education. It is whether higher education is willing to change with it.