Who Needs College Anymore?

Sue Bethanis 00:03

Welcome everyone to WiseTalk, Mariposa's monthly podcast providing perspectives on leadership. Today we're excited to welcome Kathleen deLaski. Kathleen is an education and workforce designer as well as a futurist. She founded the Education Design Lab in 2013 to help colleges begin the journey to reimagine higher education toward the future of work. Her nonprofit has helped 1,200 colleges, organizations, and economic regions design shorter, more affordable pathways for learners to achieve their economic goals.

Stepping down after a decade as CEO of the Lab, Kathleen serves as board chair there and on the board of Credential Engine. She 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 in the Honors College at George Mason University, where she also served as an appointee to the Board of Visitors.

Kathleen has long played a dual role as a philanthropist, managing the deLaski Family Foundation, which has been a 25-year grant maker in education reform, sustainable agriculture, and the arts. In a previous career, Kathleen spent 20 years as a TV and digital journalist, including time as ABC News White House correspondent, followed by a political appointment as the first female Pentagon spokesperson. She's the author of the new book "Who Needs College Anymore? Imagining a Future Where Degrees Won't Matter." It's great to have you. I'm excited to have this conversation. Welcome.

Kathleen deLaski 01:39

Thank you very much. I'm excited to be talking to you and your audience.

Sue Bethanis 01:43

Your book is coming out Tuesday, right?

Kathleen deLaski 01:47

We have a launch at the National Press Club in DC.

Sue Bethanis 01:51

That's great! That's exciting. So you've been doing a bunch of press and book launch activities. Have you done any book signings yet?

Kathleen deLaski 02:01

I did one last night because the book is available for pre-order and bookstores could get it. I did one in Philadelphia last night.

Sue Bethanis 02:09

Nice. They sent me one. I want to talk about those 10 design principles, so I have it bookmarked.

Kathleen deLaski 02:16

Great!

Sue Bethanis 02:19

Before we get into that, let's talk about your background. You've reinvented yourself, obviously, going from TV to a design thinker to author, and in between, you've been managing your family's foundation. Tell us why you decided to write the book.

Kathleen deLaski 02:41

It's a good question, because at face value, I'm not the most authentic messenger to be writing a book called "Who Needs College Anymore" when most people in my family were beneficiaries of the centuries-old system in the US.

In fact, I start the book out with my great-grandfather (times seven), who was an early graduate of Harvard University, class of 1673. He was the son of an indentured servant, and believed to be the first person from that lower station to be able to go to Harvard. It sort of launched this idea of college access, and in one generation, was able to basically catapult his family into a position of prominence. The reason I know about him is because he became famous for a different reason. His family had been immigrants in the 1630s. After the first couple of generations where some of his sons followed him to Harvard, it appears that no one else really went to college again until my grandparents' time.

I was moved to write the book because through the different positions I've held, I have this insider-outsider status. If you're inside higher education, you only see the people who come through your doors and you're serving them. It's harder to argue, as I do, that we need to redefine college for the 62% of Americans who don't have a four-year degree and aren't coming through the doors, or they are coming through the doors and they're being either spit out because it's not meeting their needs. There are many reasons why people decide to leave, but something like 40% of people who start college don't finish. If you're in business, you would call this a problem with product-market fit.

Sue Bethanis 05:31

So to confirm those stats: 62% don't have a four-year degree, and once they go, 40% drop out in some way?

Kathleen deLaski 05:39

Yes, and for lower-income, first-gen students and people of color, the percentage is 50%. It doesn't work for them.

Sue Bethanis 05:51

And that's...

Kathleen deLaski 05:56

The organization that I started in 2013 was designed to work with colleges to think about shorter pathways. How do we meet the needs of those learners? We call them "new majority learners" because they are the majority. How do we design college to meet their needs?

That's what prompted me to write the book. I dedicate it to new majority learners. I've had experiences with them in many of the roles I've played in higher ed, but I'm also in the classroom, teaching design thinking and higher ed reform. I'm very pro-college, and I would tell any 18-year-old who's not financially constrained to give it a try. But it's not working for so much of the population that we need to elevate other pathways and fund them and evaluate them and tell people about them.

Sue Bethanis 07:14

I want to talk about what you just mentioned – the "new majority learners." Define that for us.

Kathleen deLaski 07:44

New majority learners are basically any people for whom college was not originally designed. My great-grandfather was actually a new majority learner in his day because he was first in his family and from a poor family, and he struggled.

Today, we define new majority learners as groups including first-generation college students, low-income students, and anyone who has to work more than just a couple of hours a week. That's actually something like 60% of college students who are working at least 10 or 20 hours a week.

Sue Bethanis 08:56

To help pay for it or to cover their expenses?

Kathleen deLaski 09:00

Exactly, and college isn't designed for them. It's not designed for veterans or anyone who's older. Those folks will go back to college, but they often feel othered and feel like it's not designed for them. All the classes they have to take sometimes feel pointless, but they've got to get the piece of paper. They've got to have English 101 and so on.

If you have a lot of life experience, can't that count instead, or job experience? A lot of these things are being worked on today. Single mothers are another category – there's a huge percentage of women enrolled in college, something like 25% are single mothers.

Sue Bethanis 09:54

I see why that might not work and why we want to design something differently. Let me say, I will echo what you said about your college background. I have three degrees and loved college. I was an athlete, a resident advisor, went to a liberal arts school, and got a master's and doctorate. I love learning, and that's the way we did it then.

I have a kid now who's 19 today, actually, and he decided not to go to college. He's a brilliant, creative kid. It just isn't for him, and that's okay. While I'm disappointed because I want him to have the college experience, I'm not concerned about his learning because he's a lifelong learner – always on the internet, always learning.

These kids don't have to go to college to sit in a room with 50 other students, or in my case, 12 other students, and listen to a lecture when they can go on Coursera or go to Harvard and get the lecture from the professor online. I've thought, if you are in college, just watch the lecture at your desk in your room and then go to a language lab or English lab with your friends.

Why are we stuck in this mode of going to college and taking classes in a classroom that we've been doing forever? We do it in high school too. The way we do education is the same as when we were kids. It doesn't make any sense to me. This is one of the reasons why I wanted your book. Why is it taking so long for us to iterate something new here?

Kathleen deLaski 11:54

I also have one child who didn't go to college and one who did. The one who didn't sounds like your son – an autodidact who learned everything on her own. She ended up going to college but now feels like she didn't really need it. That's happening a lot – people who did go are spreading reputational criticism that it wasn't worth the money.

To answer your question about why it's taking so long to change – I should celebrate the intrapreneurs, the people inside colleges who are asking the same question and trying to innovate from the inside. There are many, and if we had college educators on the podcast with us, they would point out various initiatives.

There are pockets of innovation incrementally happening, but those pockets are somewhat held in place because of what I call the "iron gates" of accreditation and tenure. These are the two regulatory characteristics of higher education that make it not so focused on the end user because there are so many limitations.

A great example is what they call "seat time." That gets to your point about why we're still sitting in classrooms. Seat time is the way a credit is measured, and that's how the university gets paid – it's how they get credit for the tuition.

Sue Bethanis 13:53

Is this state by state for public colleges, or any college?

Kathleen deLaski 13:57

Any college. If students are going to pay tuition dollars to a college, they typically can only pay to an accredited college, and to get accreditation, the college must enforce seat time. That's the rule.

Sue Bethanis 14:17

So now we know the answer to that.

Kathleen deLaski 14:21

And tenure is the other issue. Colleges are changing around the edges of these constraints, but they're not financially incentivized to break up the pieces of college and offer them separately. Because financially, it then becomes a part-time, low-cost model, and they don't really get paid for that.

We have to make changes at the policy level, both state and federal. That's part of my message and the message of others who are saying, let's define college more broadly. Let college be an umbrella. A degree would be one product, and other products might be short-term certificates or boot camps.

Let's say your son just wants the college experience part because he's learning on his own. Why can't the college experience part be in a boot camp too?

Sue Bethanis 15:28

I think that's the biggest appeal for me as a strong extrovert. There's a reason why kids go to school from 18 to 22 – there's a maturity that needs to happen, and there's still some supervision. It's not a lot, but there's some support. I was an RA, so there was supervision about whether students were okay, that they're not totally by themselves. There's a little bit of support from a variety of people. Even a teacher could notice something's up with a student who hasn't been there for a while.

Kathleen deLaski 16:06

You're right. These are the wonderful things you don't want to give up if you move to a model of just-in-time learning, where people are breaking up the college degree and offering it in parts. That's on one level where we're headed, but there'll always be a market for parents who have the view that their kid needs that launching pad, that coming-of-age experience.

Also, let's face it, we feel nostalgic about it. We had great experiences, so we want that for our children. But it's a different world now, particularly if students have to work. I have a lot of students in my classes who have to work. They're not engaging in the fun parts of college because they're working at Chick-fil-A or elsewhere.

Sue Bethanis 17:01

Let's talk about the cost of college. I want to compare that to what's happening in Europe – I don't know as much about Asia. I just can't believe how much it costs now. We're talking $80,000 for private colleges, all-in. That's a heck of a lot of money.

Somebody's paying for that – these middle-income families – and that's really $120,000 after taxes. That's potentially half or a third of their income. And if they're making around $300,000, which seems like a lot, they're not getting financial aid because they're in that in-between place. Maybe they'll get loans, the kids will get loans, maybe they'll work a little bit, but then they're in debt. I think it's completely messed up. If they're lower-income, they'll get some aid.

Kathleen deLaski 18:11

It's interesting. There's still a lot. If you blend in all colleges, including community colleges, which are very affordable still...

Sue Bethanis 18:22

Free here in California.

Kathleen deLaski 18:27

Well, that's great. That's only the case in maybe three or four states, and in some of those states, it's needs-tested, so it's not free for everyone.

What's interesting is that private colleges are seeing a kind of horseshoe effect in terms of who makes up their freshman class. It's exactly as you described. You have the kids who got in "needs-blind" because they couldn't afford to go, and they're using Pell Grants, which carry about $6,000, and then they're getting aid from the college. Then you have the wealthy kids that are paying full freight. You don't have a lot of people in between because they're looking for a value play. They're often going to a state school or a community college for two years and then transferring to a state school. They're looking for ways to make it work financially.

Sue Bethanis 19:28

The kids want it and the parents want it, so that's a concern. I wonder how much difference there is compared to when I went to school. It was $25,000 then, which seemed like a lot of money. Now it's $80,000 where I went to school at Occidental. I don't know how that fits into inflation or people's incomes, but I suspect your horseshoe analogy is more pronounced now.

Kathleen deLaski 20:07

I think that's right. The needs-blind policies are newish. Some of the more elite colleges with large endowments are saying they'll cover the rest of the cost that financial aid doesn't cover, so they can have 20-25% of their incoming classes being people from the lower income quintile.

Sue Bethanis 20:37

The reason I bring this up is that I'm curious – there's a huge difference in endowments between schools like Occidental and places like Pomona College. There will be five or six very elite private liberal arts schools with amazing endowments, but most don't have that. Oxy actually has a pretty good endowment compared to many liberal arts schools. How are these schools going to survive? I just don't see it.

Kathleen deLaski 21:10

In 2024, there was a college closing almost every week among private colleges, particularly small ones with less than 500 students. The math just isn't working out for them. In a few cases, alumni sweep in based on nostalgia to save them, but they have to keep paying to keep them alive because these schools can't cover their fixed costs with less than 500 students. They're running in the red.

I should mention that community colleges are turning the tide. They had lost a third of their enrollment in the last decade, which is one reason my organization wanted to work with them – they felt an existential crisis. They started looking at other models and offerings they could provide to students.

They've always had programs related to technical and vocational training, but recently they've stepped up and begun meeting the specific needs of their local employers around fast-growing skill needs. Companies can't wait five years for a program to be created at a college. That kind of agility is what we're helping colleges figure out – how to be more responsive and move at the speed of industry to help provide talent pipelines. And interestingly, the employers in those cases don't care about degrees.

Sue Bethanis 23:15

That was where I wanted to go next – this idea of product-market fit. Companies are not understanding the needs, especially with AI. There needs to be re-skilling and up-skilling. Why is it taking so long for companies and colleges to partner? I suspect it would be mostly public colleges. There's so much wasted space in these liberal arts colleges – you're only going to school in the afternoon and morning, but there could be things happening at night. They could be making money on that.

It's the same with our high schools – there's so much space being wasted. Why is it taking so long for partnerships between community colleges and corporations? A few are happening, but it should be happening a lot more. Otherwise, Amazon is going to have a university, which I'm surprised they don't have yet.

Kathleen deLaski 24:36

I actually interviewed Amazon and asked that question – "You've done the pharmacy, how soon before education?" I feature Amazon's program for their frontline employees in my book. They have about 200,000 employees taking short-form classes, and they've curated partnerships with community colleges and other course providers. They're getting very good at it with their own employees. I think it's just a matter of time before Amazon is offering us all packages of skill-building.

Sue Bethanis 25:14

I know that companies like Cisco are offering a lot of certifications, not just for Cisco employees but for their ecosystem. You can go to Coursera and get a Cisco certification, or go directly to Cisco. So it's happening, but it doesn't feel like there's a lot of traction. As a futurist, where do you think the traction will come from? We have to re-skill – I hear every day about AI taking over. I tell people it's not taking over; it's going to be our little friend next to us making us more efficient so we can do other things, like think. It might take some people's jobs, but how do we help people re-skill so they can do something else the company needs?

Kathleen deLaski 26:18

I think what will move the needle is demand and shortages of talent. That's what we've seen throughout the last decade. The innovation came when companies couldn't find enough coders, cybersecurity workers, and now perhaps AI specialists or quantum data experts.

At the middle-skills end of the pipeline, we're seeing innovation where employers are either desperate, or it's a new industry, or old-line industries are worried about their aging workforce. I interview an insurance company in the book that's using the apprenticeship model, bringing in high school students and trying to build loyalty. That's working pretty well.

Other tailwinds are moments when employers and the economy become very nervous. In 2021, 50 million people quit their jobs, and in 2022 another 50 million quit. That's 100 million job changes – though some might be the same people changing multiple times.

Sue Bethanis 28:03

But many of them went back to work somewhere else.

Kathleen deLaski 28:06

Yes, but it spooked employers. They realized they needed a much more agile way to re-skill and up-skill the people they had left. They needed to be more agile on the front end in their talent pipeline. I think it's those kinds of moments that drive change.

We also have trends that might affect this, like what's happening with immigration and H-1B visas. That could require innovation to grow talent domestically.

Sue Bethanis 29:03

Or help teach the people you already have to develop different skills, since you're not going to get thousands of Indian and Chinese immigrants to do the coding.

Kathleen deLaski 29:03

Right. Something like 30% of workers in the US that have mathematics and AI-type higher degrees are foreign-born.

Sue Bethanis 29:19

I talked to somebody yesterday whose entire AI team at a tech company is either Indian or Chinese Americans. If we're talking about how to get more diversity, it takes time. You have to find some women, then get them to find their colleagues, and it builds upon itself. It doesn't happen overnight.

Kathleen deLaski 29:57

When you put it all together, what needs to happen on the employer side is what I call in the book a "skills genome" – a map of all the job roles stacked into each other so employers and learners can see the pathway. If I'm in this role, I need these four skills, and then I need to skill up to the next role.

You see this happening in places where there's desperation, like cybersecurity, with 500,000 unfilled US job openings. Those employers got together with the US government and mapped out what are called the NICE standards – a map of different cybersecurity job roles. The view was that employers can't just compete with each other by poaching workers back and forth and offering more money. They needed to build more pipeline, and having these competency maps was seen as a way to do that.

That's probably the best example, but employers have to drive it. Colleges are trying to do it, and bootcamps have tried to do it, but it really needs to come from employers. Industry certifications are probably the best instantiation of how this works as a hiring signal to validate somebody's skills.

Sue Bethanis 31:56

I like it. Let's talk about the 10 design principles, which are your antidote to some of these issues. This is a way to forge ahead. Let me read them, and then I'd like you to pick some to elaborate on:

1. Quality learning programs must be affordable.
2. Learning must be visibly connected to career goals and offered in a flexible stepladder approach.
3. Learning institutions must be permeable with portable credits so learners can move between providers and institution types.
4. Relevant paid workplace experiences must be offered or simulated.
5. Learning must include durable skills alongside technical skills. Both should be taught and certified in the context of learners' industry of choice.
6. Education providers must build career exploration and industry-specific career advising into the learning path for younger adults.
7. Providers must offer in-person encounters and cohort opportunities to engage learners beyond their own bubbles, provide community, and help them imagine possibilities.

That's seven principles related to the learner. Which would you like to elaborate on?

Kathleen deLaski 33:29

I think the one that provides a nice mental model for the whole change management needed would be the stepladder approach – this idea that you can come in and out of college and build earnings power.

New majority learners, unlike those of us who might send our kids off for the four-year "adult vacation," don't have that luxury. What are we doing for them that has the same funding opportunity and quality control? Basically, there's nothing substantial – there are things like Job Corps, which gets pretty poor reviews.

The idea is that you could take a short stack of what we call a "micro-pathway" and learn skills for a particular job, then go off and do that job. You would have visibility of the other "Lego blocks" or next steps on the ladder that you could add to that either while working or by coming back. You do a job for two years, then come back for more education.

People have talked about lifelong learning for years, but they're not thinking about it this dramatically – the idea that you come in and out as you gain experience and skills. In today's environment, employers often say they don't like to hire new college graduates because they want people with two to three years of experience, and new graduates aren't necessarily trained for specific roles.

If we could have a stepladder approach, it solves a number of problems. It also creates a problem which is addressed by one of the other principles – if we're only going to college to learn a job role at the beginning of the stepladder, what happens to the "college experience" part? What about the opportunity to learn critical thinking, collaboration, empathy – the kinds of things that defenders of a four-year liberal arts degree would say you need? We need to learn about history and be thrown in with people from outside our bubble. That potentially goes away in a stepladder approach, so those things have to be balanced. I believe that civic education and critical thinking should be one of the parts of the stepladder that's funded.

Sue Bethanis 37:06

Absolutely. Which colleges do you think are best positioned to implement this approach, combining the stepladder with the college experience?

Kathleen deLaski 37:17

That's a great question.

Sue Bethanis 37:20

Community colleges don't have much of a college experience because about 90% of their students also work. They're only there to take the class and be in the seat – though I know at City College, you can take classes online now, so they don't have that seat issue.

Kathleen deLaski 37:42

What's interesting is that community colleges are best situated to do this, and they are doing it. We're working with colleges that are starting to offer these programs. The problem is they're hard to get funded unless you can integrate them into at least a half-time program, because that's the bottom limit for making it eligible for federal financial aid. There is legislation in front of Congress right now that could change that, but there are some issues with it.

Sue Bethanis 38:15

So what would be the right environment? Is it bigger universities or private institutions that could do this combo approach of the stepladder and the college experience?

Kathleen deLaski 38:25

This might sound Pollyannaish, but why can't you move among institution types to get these different things? If Occidental or the Claremont Colleges are really good at teaching great books, can they offer a certification around workforce skills and societal skills? I'm in favor of those too.

The problem is we need assessments that allow people to validate that a shorter-term version of a degree that was more general still carries skills with it. We don't have those assessments yet.

Sue Bethanis 39:32

That's not the way colleges are set up. I was just thinking about the Claremont Colleges – people go there because you've got five different colleges where you can take classes across institutions. There are advantages there because instead of being a campus of 1,500 people, it's probably 6,000 or 7,000.

Let's say Occidental partnered with Pasadena Community College or Glendale Community College, which are just a couple miles away. That would be against the brand for both colleges in terms of who they're serving and what they offer. Would that work? Of course, you also have UCLA and USC somewhat close by. But it would be problematic from their perspective because it's so off-brand. How would you overcome that?

Kathleen deLaski 40:51

And you don't want to cannibalize your exclusive offerings. We've worked with Catholic University of America in DC. They wanted to offer a degree program to Hispanic/Latinx families in the Southwest, because those students weren't coming all the way to Washington, DC to get a Catholic degree, and many couldn't afford it – the sticker price is around $70,000-$80,000 all-in, though they do offer discounting.

We worked with them to create a $10,000 degree program with an apprenticeship model, working with the local community college in Tucson, Arizona. The challenge is making it work financially – they're having to use grants in some cases.

Sue Bethanis 41:56

$10,000 is not that much. That's exactly what I'm talking about – figuring out how to get the best of both without diluting the brand. I think the small private colleges are in deep trouble in terms of their value proposition.

Kathleen deLaski 42:24

They're also facing an enrollment cliff because the baby boomer kids are now aging out. If they don't have a substantial endowment, which is what makes the finances work for a lot of these colleges, they're in trouble.

Sue Bethanis 42:28

They've got to rethink the college experience. The value has to be the college itself – how cool is it to walk across campus and have these experiences you wouldn't have at a big university? You get to participate in sports, use facilities like Oxy's new pool. Having "hubs" where people can gather and talk about their learning – I feel that way about cities as well. That's where we need design thinking – to figure out how to combine these elements to help the various colleges.

Kathleen deLaski 43:36

What you'll find, though, at colleges that serve adult learners is that they're not looking to go to the campus pub or pool because they've got jobs, kids, and transportation issues. That's where design thinking comes in – asking, "What do you want? What are your needs?"

We've done a lot of whiteboarding with learners of different personas and types. What comes back is interesting. They do like in-person learning, but it has to work in their world. They want confidence building, one-on-one tutoring, and support systems that aren't funded in a community college model but are funded in an expensive private college model. How do you break that down into smaller chunks and still have it work financially? That's the piece we need to solve, and we likely need a different federal financial aid model before we can start to take apart the pieces and put them together differently.

Sue Bethanis 45:04

I'd be interested to know more about the Catholic University Tucson program. That seems like the most interesting and promising approach you've mentioned.

Kathleen deLaski 45:09

It's called Catholic University Tucson.

Sue Bethanis 45:13

Let's talk about federal policy quickly. As many of us who've been in education and are now in corporations are concerned about what's happening federally – it seems like the Department of Education might be going away. What do you think will happen with grants like Pell Grants?

Kathleen deLaski 45:52

My prediction is that the Trump administration will not cut the amount of money that individual learners get to go to college or community college. That's kind of a third rail, like Social Security – I don't think he will cut those benefits.

You do see federal grants that had language suggesting they were helping particular groups, especially people of color, being reviewed. I heard about one organization that had to sign an addendum stating that the money was being redirected to more general purposes. But they still got the grant.

Some of the work we're doing is supported by federal grants around connecting employers and colleges to create short-term credentials and build flexible workforces in various states. This includes grants from the CHIPS Act for the semiconductor industry, helping build workforces where new factories are being built. The green industry workforce development, which was seen as a Biden initiative, is another area where people are concerned about whether that funding will continue.

Sue Bethanis 47:53

That makes sense. Let's end on a happy note. If there's one thing, one bit of advice or your most important theme from the book – what would be the one thing we should take away about these partnerships?

Kathleen deLaski 48:31

I'm very bullish about the future of higher education and how it meets the workforce. Regulated industries are slow to change unless necessity becomes the mother of invention, and I think those periods will continue to happen over the next 10-15 years with the rise and fall of demand, need, and economic cycles.

I think we'll emerge with a much more flexible higher education system that serves both new majority learners and the four-year degree crowd. We just need the idea of college to be an umbrella for several types of programs. I think we will see that by mid-century, though it might take that long.

In the meantime, it's going to be messy in terms of understanding whether you need to get a degree, if you can afford not to get a degree – we're in an intermediate period where people aren't sure what's going to work.

Sue Bethanis 49:46

Thank you so much. It's been lovely to talk with you and so interesting. Again, the book is "Who Needs College Anymore? Imagining a Future Where Degrees Won't Matter" by Kathleen deLaski. I appreciate our conversation, wish you luck, and want to keep in touch. I'd like to learn more about the Catholic University Tucson situation – that sounds really interesting.

Kathleen deLaski 50:12

Thank you very much, and I wish you the best as well.

Sue Bethanis 50:16

Bye everybody.