For much of the 20th century, the U.S. depended on what I call the Thanksgiving turkey model of education. We placed kids in the oven of formal education for 12 years, and then served them up to employers. (A select minority got a final, four-year basting at a place called college.) But this model doesn't work in a world of accelerated cycle times, shrinking company half-lives, and the rapid obsolescence of knowledge and skills. In a free agent economy, our education system must allow people to learn throughout their lives.

      Home schooling and alternatives to high school will create a nation of self-educators, free agent learners, if you will. Adults who were home-schooled youths will know how to learn and expect to continue the habit throughout their lives.

      For example, how did anybody learn the Web? In 1993, it barely existed. By 1995, it was the foundation of dozens of new industries and an explosion of wealth. There weren't any college classes in Web programming, HTML coding, or Web page design in those early years. Yet somehow hundreds of thousands of people managed to learn. How? They taught themselves — working with colleagues, trying new things, and making mistakes. That was the secret to the Web's success. The Web flourished almost entirely through the practice of self-teaching. This is not a radical concept. Until the first part of this century, most Americans learned on their own — by reading. Literacy and access to books were an individual's ticket to knowledge. Even today, according to my own online survey of 1,143 independent workers, "reading" was the most prevalent way free agents said they stay up-to-date in their field.

      In the 21st century, access to the Internet and to a network of smart colleagues will be the ticket to adult learning. Look for these early signs:

      * The devaluation of degrees. As the shelf life of a degree shortens, more students will go to college to acquire particular skills than to bring home a sheepskin. They'll want higher education just in time — and if that means leaving the classroom before earning a degree, so be it. Remember: Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, and Steven Spielberg never finished college.

      * Older students. Forty percent of college students are now older than 25. According to The Wall Street Journal, "By some projections, the number of students age 35 and older will exceed those 18 and 19 within a few years." Young adults who do forgo a diploma in their early 20s may find a need and desire for college courses in their 40s.

      * Free agent teaching. Distance learning will help along this self-teaching trend. Today, some 5,000 companies are in the online education business. And nontraditional teaching arrangements will abound. More free agent teachers and more free agent students will create tremendous liquidity in the learning market — with the Internet serving as the matchmaker for this new marketplace of learning.

      * Big trouble for elite colleges. Attending a fancy college serves three purposes in contemporary life: to prolong adolescence, to award a credential that's modestly useful early in one's working life, and to give people a network of friends. Elite colleges have moved slowly to keep up with the emerging free agent economy. In 1998, 78 percent of public four-year colleges offered distance-learning programs, compared with only 19 percent of private schools. Private college costs have soared, faster even than health care costs, for the past 20 years. But have these colleges improved at the same rate? What's more, the students who make it to elite colleges are generally those who've proved most adroit at conventional schooling. In his bestseller, The Millionaire Mind, Thomas J. Stanley found a disproportionately large number of millionaires were free agents — but that the higher somebody's SAT scores, the less likely he or she was to be a financial risk-taker and therefore to become a free agent.

      * Learning groupies. The conference industry, already hot, will continue to catch fire as more people seek gatherings of like-minded souls to make new connections and learn new things. Conferences allow attendees to become part of a sort of Socratic institution. They can choose the mentor they will pay attention to for an hour, or two hours, or a day — whatever. In addition, many independent workers have formed small groups that meet regularly and allow members to exchange business advice and offer personal support. These Free Agent Nation Clubs, as I call them, also provide an important staging ground for self-education. At F.A.N. Club meetings, members discuss books and articles and share their particular expertise with the others. This type of learning — similarly alive in book clubs and Bible study groups — represents a rich American tradition. One of the earliest self-organized clusters of free agents was Benjamin Franklin's Junto, formed in 1727, which created a subscription library for its members, which in turn became the first public library in America.

      The next few decades will be a fascinating, and perhaps revolutionary, time for learning in America. The specifics will surprise us and may defy even my soundest predictions. But the bottom line of the future of education in Free Agent Nation is glaringly clear: School's out.

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