This is a recording of Education Design Lab’s Feb. 27, 2025, webinar inspired by the new book, Who Needs College Anymore? Imagining a Future Where Degrees Won’t Matter, by Education Design Lab founder Kathleen deLaski.
The virtual chat also featured Marni Baker Stein, chief content officer of Coursera, and Dr. Janet Spriggs, president of Forsyth Technical Community College in Winston-Salem, N.C. Dr. Lisa Larson, interim CEO at the Lab, moderated the discussion.
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As you may know, Education Design Lab founder Kathleen deLaski just published a book with a provocative title: Who Needs College Anymore? Imagining a Future Where Degrees Won’t Matter.
Kathleen is asked about the title in every media interview, before and since the Feb. 25 book release. “It has generated a lot of questions,” she said in our recent book chat. “I tell people to focus on the word, ‘who.’ Who needs college anymore? That’s in keeping with the design thinking frame, where you look at the needs of individuals and what needs are not being met.”
In the same conversation, Kathleen reminded us that only 38% of American adults have a four-year degree. “We never talk about the path to the American dream for the rest of folks,” she said. “We currently are not supporting the other really interesting pathways to financial sustainability — apprenticeships, short-term credentials. And that’s really why I wrote the book, to push the conversation around the 62% of who we call New Majority Learners at the Lab, the people for whom college was not designed.”
Kathleen distills the point into one sentence in this SmartBrief essay: “The new paradigm is a ‘yes, and …’ paradigm that embraces college and/or other pathways instead of college or bust.”
What can colleges do moving forward?
In this excellent Q&A with Inside Higher Ed, Kathleen shares her No. 1 suggestion: “College needs to be designed as a stepladder approach, where people can come in and out of it as they need, and at the very least, they can build earnings power along the way to help afford a degree program.”
In her Hechinger Report essay, Kathleen lists four more steps colleges can take to meet the demand for more choices, including “affordability must rule.”
Which colleges are embracing this stepladder approach?
The Lab is working with 100 community colleges across the county to design micro-pathways, which offer those stackable pieces of the stepladder. “What’s nice about the micro-pathways is that they get stacked like Legos into a degree path,” Kathleen told Washington Monthly. “One I profile [in the book] is a young woman doing an EMT program full time. She gets a job as an EMT, and then she can return and get other certifications, but she can do it part-time alongside her job.”
In the Lab’s virtual book chat, Dr. Janet Spriggs, president of Forsyth Technical Community College in Winston-Salem, N.C., shared how they have “doubled down” on using human-centered design, to create more flexible programs with local employers and New Majority Learners. “They are balancing family and work obligations, and they really need us to think about ways to stack their opportunities for lifelong learning,” she said. “Instead of coming to us and having to go into a two-year degree before you’re ever able to earn a worthwhile paycheck for your family, we’re able to offer these bite-sized, flexible learning options that really help our students gain those relevant skills more quickly.”
About the webinar speakers
Kathleen deLaski, Founder and Board Chair, Education Design Lab
Marni Baker Stein, Chief Content Officer, Coursera
Dr. Janet Spriggs, President, Forsyth Technical Community College, Winston-Salem, N.C.
Moderated by Dr. Lisa Larson, Interim CEO, Education Design Lab
About the book
How might postsecondary education evolve to meet the needs of New Majority Learners? In the wake of declining U.S. university enrollment and widespread crises of confidence in the value of a college degree, deLaski urges a mindset shift regarding the learning routes and credentials that best prepare students for success after high school.
Drawing on a decade of human-centered design research at the Lab, deLaski offers 10 top principles to help imagine a future where degrees won’t matter. Learn more.
