Who Needs College Anymore?
Panel guests: The virtual chat featured author Kathleen deLaski; 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 conversation.
In her new book released by Harvard Education Press on Feb. 25, 2025, Education Design Lab founder Kathleen deLaski draws on a decade of design-thinking research from the Lab as well as 150 interviews of educational experts, college and career counselors, teachers, employers, and 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 – especially New Majority Learners — for success after high school.
If experience is a big part of the new degree, how do we provide experience for all, whether learners choose a short-term certificate or a long-term degree, not to mention paid experiences? Can simulated experiences help meet the demand if there are not enough internships and apprenticeships to serve all students?
If more and more people skip the liberal arts degree to save time and money, in favor of technical “job-ready” skills training, how might we salvage the “learning how to learn” part of the degree? How do we save what is affectionately known as “gen ed”?
The stepladder approach calls on us to assess all kinds of learning, wherever it occurs. How might our funding models incentivize us to build out the skills genome map and “credentialize” everything on it?
Kathleen deLaski spent 20 years as a journalist, including time as ABC News White House correspondent. In the second half of her career, she has focused on education reform, cofounding or founding several national nonprofits, notably the Education Design Lab, which led her toward this book. After stepping down as founder to become board chair, Kathleen also spends time as a senior advisor to the Project on Workforce at Harvard University and teaches human-centered design and higher ed reform as an adjunct professor at George Mason University. Kathleen has been named to Washingtonian Magazine’s list of top policy influencers in 2022, 2023 and 2024.
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Jan. 6, 2025
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Jan. 27, 2025
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