Lifelong Learning for Sustainable Community Development: Implication for Graduate's Students in SPACE

Lifelong learning refers to activities that people from all walks of life engage in throughout their lives in order to improve their knowledge, skills, values, and competence in a certain sector, for personal, societal, or employment-related reasons, especially now that economies rely on knowledge. In the current pandemic situation, the world is undergoing rapid transformations, making sustainable community development of great importance. In ensuring sustainable community development, lifelong learning provides abundant opportunities [1,5,7-8,10]. In light of this importance of lifelong learning towards sustainable community development, SPACE (School for Professional and Further Education) under Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) was established in 1992, and later launched in 1993. This School acts as a specialised centre for the implementation of lifelong learning programmes at the university level. After almost three decades of its establishment, this study is deemed important as it aims to investigate lifelong learning for sustainable community development among fresh graduate students at SPACE. This study aims to investigate lifelong learning for sustainable community development among graduate students at SPACE. Hence, the study ascertained the following: economic contributions of lifelong learning, perception in utilization of lifelong learning approach in re-skilling and upskilling the graduates during this current pandemic situation and factors that inhibit lifelong learning in Malaysia. Keywords: Lifelong learning, upskilling, reskilling, economic development, community development