Publications & Research
From Old Doors to Open Pathways: Reimagining Education for Today
By Maria Anguiano, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at College Futures Foundation
At College Futures, we believe that postsecondary education is not the destination, but a step on the path—a vehicle for opportunity, dignity, and economic mobility. When designed well, it is a powerful lever for equity and social change. But too often, the structures meant to support learners do the opposite. They hold onto outdated ideas about time, pace, and presence—expecting learners to adapt to systems, rather than the other way around.
That’s why one of our core focus areas is Transforming Education for a Changing Economy. As economic shifts reshape industries, jobs, and the skills required to thrive, learners need postsecondary systems that can keep up. To meet this challenge, we’re working to advance equitable upskilling and reskilling by reimagining policy, reshaping how postsecondary education is financed, and supporting the development of new educational models that are flexible, responsive, and better aligned with the realities of today’s learners and the demands of a dynamic economy.
In the first of a series of blogs, our Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Maria Anguiano, offers a clear-eyed view of what must change. She calls on us to let go of legacy assumptions and to design learning environments that foster belonging, value lived experience and meet learners where they are. In a state where economic transformation is constantly driven by innovation, automation, and rising inequality, our postsecondary systems must be just as dynamic. When we build education around learners, we don’t just improve individual outcomes—we help rebuild the California Dream so that it’s within reach for everyone.
The majority of today’s students no longer match the “recent high-school graduate with no outside obligations” archetype, in fact 75% fall outside of that parameter. However, most degree programs today are still defined by fixed semesters, seat-time credit hours, in-person instruction, and full-time enrollment expectations. This rigidity makes success difficult and hence, inequitable for the majority of learners. For learners already balancing work, family, and financial pressure, the traditional structure of higher education demands too much flexibility from the student and not nearly enough from the institution. Learners’ lives—work shifts, caregiving schedules, housing costs—simply don’t line up with a Monday-Wednesday-Friday lecture at 10 a.m. Insisting that this is the only manner in which someone can get a high-quality degree is outdated.
Across California and beyond, learners are sending a clear and urgent message:
They need flexibility and affordability, as highlighted in College Futures’ State of Higher Education in California report.
Today’s students are parents and caregivers. They are working full time or juggling multiple part-time jobs. They are navigating transportation barriers, housing instability, or the weight of being the first in their family to attend college. They are brilliant, resourceful, and determined—but they are being asked to squeeze their lives into a postsecondary system that was not built for them.
Most college degree programs remain wed to some rigid assumptions:
- Seat time – mastery is measured by how many weeks you sit in class, not by what you can do.
- Fixed Semesters – learning starts twice a year (maybe 3) and stops on the registrar’s clock, not the learner’s.
- On-Campus Presence – success requires commuting to a physical place at set hours.
We have to push for innovation, not for innovation’s sake, but to be more responsive to our learners’ needs. We need to deconstruct and modernize degree programs so that every step in the journey offers flexibility and delivers recognizable value.
Seat Time Over Mastery
In most traditional degree programs, progress is measured by how long a student spends in class—not by whether the material has been mastered. This model, built around the credit hour and the 15-week semester, assumes that all students learn in the same way and at the same pace. It privileges time spent over skills gained, and penalizes anyone who learns differently, faster, or outside of traditional classrooms. For learners juggling jobs or caregiving, this structure creates a no-win scenario: either show up exactly when and where the system dictates, or risk falling behind—even if you already understand the material.
This rigidity is particularly harmful to learners who come to college with valuable life and work experience—those who’ve managed teams, run households, or taught themselves technical skills through YouTube tutorials and gig work. Rather than honoring that knowledge, seat-time models often require them to start from scratch, delaying mobility and inflating cost. So, when we rethink “time” as the basis of educational credit, we open up new possibilities. For example, competency-based education (CBE) offers a powerful alternative. By allowing learners to move forward once they’ve demonstrated mastery, CBE not only respects different starting points—it accelerates time to completion and centers the student’s actual ability.
Fixed Semesters, Inflexible Pathways
Higher education still runs on a slow, inflexible calendar, where most students can only begin their studies once or twice a year, typically in August or January. If life happens between those windows, there’s no easy way in. A missed enrollment deadline, a personal setback, or a change in work schedule can mean waiting months to re-enroll. And once in, students often encounter strict course sequences with prerequisites that can only be taken in specific terms. If a required class is full or unavailable, a student might lose an entire semester—or be forced to take unrelated courses just to maintain financial aid eligibility.
This calendar-first approach is a barrier, not a benefit. Today’s students need educational structures that match the fluidity of their lives, not calendar templates from the 1950s. Models with rolling admissions, flexible start-dates and pacing, and modular curriculum allow learners to start when they’re ready and build momentum without losing progress during life’s inevitable disruptions. These are not fringe fixes—they are essential innovative new design features if we want an equitable system that serves working adults, parents, first-generation students, and others whose journeys rarely follow a straight line.
On-Campus Presence as a Prerequisite for Quality
Traditional postsecondary programs still consider in-person, on-campus instruction as the gold standard for a “real” college experience. But when success is tied to physically being on campus—several days a week, during work hours, often with long commutes or costly parking—college becomes inaccessible to millions of learners for whom time, location, and transportation are not neutral factors but structural barriers. This “commuter penalty” disproportionately affects low-income learners, students of color, rural students, and working adults—many of whom are already navigating fragile support systems and cannot afford to miss work or rearrange their entire lives around a Tuesday/Thursday lecture. When access to a quality education is tied to the ability to physically show up on a specific campus, at a specific time, week after week, we’re not measuring commitment—we’re limiting accessibility.
And yet, the bias toward in-person learning persists, even as evidence continues to show that well-designed online and hybrid programs can produce equal or better learning outcomes, particularly when paired with proactive support structures. High-quality online education doesn’t just “scale”—it creates space for flexibility, accessibility, and inclusion. It allows a single mom in Fresno to log in after her kids are asleep, or a caregiver in Oakland to pursue a credential without quitting their job. The question is no longer whether online education can be good. It’s whether we’re willing to invest in making it high quality, engaging, and accessibly designed around real learners’ lives.
The Future Must Be Built Around Learners
The legacy structures of time, pace and place make education harder to access precisely for the students who are most in need of what education can provide. I believe in a different future—one where the system flexes to meet the learner, not the other way around.
That future is already being built:
- Competency-based, asynchronous learning that fits into the real rhythms of learners’ lives.
- Modular, stackable credentials that provide meaningful milestones on the way to a degree.
- Virtual support ecosystems that offer advising, peer connection, and mental health care online.
- Work-integrated learning models that help students build income and skills simultaneously
These innovations don’t lower standards—they raise the bar for what true learner-centered education should look like.
Because the goal is not to preserve tradition. It’s to deliver opportunity. That, in turn, requires time, place, and pace to function as tools for equity—not obstacles to it.
I look forward to diving deeper in future blogs and highlighting institutions that are putting theory into practice for our California learners!
