File this in the “wouldn’t it be nice” category for now.

A few months ago,  I read Marc Freedman’s terrific book  The Big Shift: Navigating the New Stage Beyond Midlife. Ever since, I’ve been trying to find the right time to share these proposals of his with Second Verse readers.

Following on the heels of yesterday’s post, Paying For Your “Working Retirement Education,”  there’s no time like the present. (Read here.)

Freedman, founder and CEO of Civic Ventures, a think tank on boomers, work and social purpose, is a consummate researcher and a forward thinker. And he’s determined to see deep-seated social and cultural change when it comes to aging issues. At fiftysomething, he is one with his audience.

“We’re not talking about a small segment of the population spending a few years off balance, muddling though. This group constitutes what may be the largest group in society, entering a period that could approximate half their adult lives,” he writes.

We need  to develop a new kind of education suited to this new stage of life, blending vocational preparation, personal transformation and intellectual stimulation, he says. Higher education  must become “far more adaptable to people at all stages of life,” he urges.

His call for action:

Financial aid policies for the second half of life. Pell Grants could be more useful to new-stage learners if there were available to those who want to go to school part-time or earn an occupational certificate. The Higher Education Act could be modified to create “Micro Pell Grants” to meet the needs of such working learners. Similarly, the Education for Public Service Act of 2007, which provides student-loan forgiveness for those who pursue public-service work, can be modified to better meet the needs of encore adults who have returned to school to help launch social-purpose careers.

Individual Purpose Accounts. Boomers have been tapping their kids’ 529 accounts to go back to school themselves, Freedman says. We need a savings vehicle to help fund post-midlife transitions. “You can’t just borrow money at the last minute or pay for it by cutting back your lifestyle for a few months. It’s better accumulated over a period of time,” he says. He suggests an IPA — an Individual Purpose Account. Financial-services companies could offer them, and there could be employer matches. With tax credits and other mechanisms, Congress could support IPAs designed to make switching to encore careers easier, just as 401(k)s make saving for retirement easier.

Freedman also pitches the idea of a gap year for grown-ups, which, of course, costs money, too. “Right now, there’s an absence of any formal rites or routes of passage for those moving from midlife to the new phase with no name,” he writes in a recent Harvard Business Review blog.

” To fill the void, why not create a gap year for grown-ups? Don’t we deserve a break, too — after juggling extreme jobs and family responsibilities in shaky economic times?

Most people are already taking time off, in one form or another. Some even call it retirement. A 2010 study from the RAND Corporation shows that a sizable portion of the U.S. population first retires and then “unretires,” an act researchers find is primarily by design and not the result of unexpected circumstances. In other words, many may be using the cover of retirement, followed by unretirement, as a kind of de facto gap period. In Britain, there are approximately 200,000 gray gappers each year. Why not bring that tradition to the United States?”

For more, check out his blog, here.