Redefining College: Adapting Higher Education for the 2020s

“However, if a single mother wants a faster track to employment and signs up for a six-month ‘micro-pathway’ at a local community college to become, for example, a junior data analyst or fiber optics specialist, she will likely have to pay out of pocket.”

My great grandfather (seven times over) was the son of an indentured servant, who managed to land a spot at Harvard in 1669. Aptly named John Wise, he parlayed his degree into a storied career as an influential minister and launched his family into generations of prominent standing.

This is my ancestral college success story. Many of us have one. Together, these stories launched the brand of the four-year college degree as the best ticket to the American Dream. Millions of immigrants have followed John’s father to the United States to escape class-constrained countries.

The degree model that transported my colonial forefather to the upper middle class has not changed much. Over the past 100 years, we have opened the gates of admission to women and, gradually, students of color, but we have never truly adapted the four-year degree to serve “new majority learners,” the 62% of American adults who do not have a degree, or the nearly 40% of college students who enter the gauntlet and give up before they earn the credential they are told is essential to getting what is commonly described as a good job.

Recently, aspiration has given way to resentment. Universities have come under attack, not only from the politicians labeling them as woke factories but also from unfulfilled or would-be graduates who are saddled with debt and working in fields or jobs that do not require a degree. The last decade has seen a substantial decline in college enrollment, down by almost 12%  between 2010 and 2022. While the latest numbers show a slight recovery, the growth areas signal that more learners are searching for workarounds and shortcuts in an age in which the average technical skill is said to last five years and artificial intelligence provides wide (if not deep) expertise in the palm of one’s hand.