In the case of education being a lifelong process or not, I feel the question to be oversimplified. It is not only a requirement to continue ones education through out our lives, but impossible to avoid it. That is, at least, unless you want to live alone in a cave.
In my own instance, if I had not constantly renewed my knowledge in my field, I would have been outdated and out of business just a few years after I started my career.
My background is Advertising/Packaging Design. Some 3 years after I started, I left the US to live in a Caribbean Island. It was a backward step, and had to relearn how to produce in an area of a limited supplies environment. Then when I returned stateside three years later, it was the use of new technologies such as computer materials which pushed me into the far future.
About 10 years later it became important to learn personal computers and give the drafting table that I had become so accustomed to using, a place to gather dust once a design was created. For anything that was in final production it was necessary to use new technology again.
Within just a few years we were all using personal computers on elaborate systems. All designing was easily done through the use of stock materials that were accessible only on the web and through web related suppliers. If I had not relearned processes I would have stopped before I started and been out of a career in a few short years instead of having a 35 year history.
The way business is performed today is very different to how it was just 50 years ago, but the changes that have become quite evident. We use cell phones and PCs as if they were always there, in the place of inanimate objects that used to keep us limited in the places where our normal daily operations were performed. We used to be restricted to wired telephones and pens with paper. Not so any more. Wireless electronics are everywhere.
We used to travel by horse and carriage or by ship, but today the use of cars, trains and planes have taken over. The world is becoming smaller each day and we are reaching out to greater boundaries now with the use of Outer Space Shuttles and Rockets. Soon it will become nothing for a trip to another planet. These things also require new learning. Both for the operators and the passengers, it is necessary to learn more to do more.
Now, more then ever, it is necessary to relearn and reeducate individuals in their choice of business, social or personal lives. New technologies appear everyday, no every minute. And with the use of the web the word of new things spreads ever faster. 
The world is changing and we have to change and reeducate with it. Or you will find yourself being called a dinosaur of sorts. And quite possibly all alone.