Announcements & Commentary
What Are We Designing Education For?
By Maria Anguiano, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at College Futures Foundation
Throughout this series, I have been challenging assumptions baked into our postsecondary system. That learning is bounded by seat time and fixed semesters. That a four-year degree earned in early adulthood is the credential that counts, and that other forms of learning are somehow lesser. That excellence is measured by how few students an institution admits, rather than how many it helps grow.
Underneath every one of those assumptions sits a more fundamental question, one I keep coming back to: what are we actually designing education for?
Designing for Freedom
Every education system is the outcome of design. Every design reflects beliefs about what matters, who matters, what counts as success, and what kind of future we are trying to build. Right now, we are still living inside design choices shaped by the constraints and priorities of a different era.
Education has never had a single, agreed-upon purpose. I was reminded of this at a recent event where I heard scholars debate the historical purposes of education. Some answers were inspiring: transferring knowledge, cultivating wisdom, and nurturing democratic participation. Others were more sobering: sorting, ranking, and controlling.
As Paulo Freire reminds us, there is no such thing as neutral education. Purpose is never absent. It is either named and examined, or quietly inherited through the systems, incentives, and assumptions already in place. And what we inherited has never worked equally for everyone.
If I had to name a purpose worth designing for, I would borrow language from my dear friend, Nakeyshia Kendall Williams, CEO of MindCatcher, who “envisions a world where every young person is the designer of their own future.”
I love that framing because it speaks to agency, purpose, and self-determination. The question is, what stands between learners and that kind of freedom?
Economic mobility is a central part of that answer. As a first-generation college graduate, the first thing I needed when I finished school was a job that could help me get out of poverty and support my family. That stability mattered. It was the foundation I needed and only once it was in place did I have the space to imagine a larger life for myself.
So yes, education has to prepare students for good jobs and economic mobility. But perhaps more importantly, it has to equip them to author their own lives, no matter what stage of life they are in. That means seeing learners as whole people, not only as workers, but as thinkers, builders, parents, and neighbors who will help shape the world we all live in.
The Capacities That Make Freedom Possible
Shaping your own future draws on a set of deeply human capacities. Communication. Collaboration. Critical thinking. Creativity. Ethical judgment. Resilience. These are not just skills. They are the strengths that make freedom possible, the ones that let us think, choose, connect, and adapt.
Cultivating them requires design. They do not develop simply because someone sits in a classroom, completes a set of courses, or earns a credential. They grow under three conditions: through relationship, through practice, and through a lifetime of support.
1. Growth Through Relationship
Human capacities cannot be cultivated alone. This is one of the places where they differ from some forms of content knowledge. A motivated learner can study history, accounting, or coding independently for long stretches of time. But communication, collaboration, ethical judgment, and resilience require interaction with other people. They are formed through others, in and through community.
We learn to communicate by being in conversation with others. We learn to think critically by being challenged. We develop ethical judgment by being held accountable. We build resilience not only by enduring hardship, but by being supported through it.
None of these capacities grow in isolation. That is why they are not only personal, they are civic. The work of becoming ourselves and the work of building a world together are not separate projects.
2. Practice and Iteration
You cannot cultivate these capacities by sitting through a lecture. They grow through repetition, feedback, challenge, reflection, and time.
Daniel Pink tells the story of a ceramics teacher who split students into two groups. One group was graded on producing a single perfect pot. The other was graded on producing as many pots as possible. By the end of the term, the best work came from the second group. Their mastery came through repetition, experimentation, failure, and refinement.
It took me over a decade to become a confident public speaker. Growing up as an introvert, I was terrified of it. I honestly thought it was just not something I was capable of doing. What changed was a mindset shift: realizing the power of practice. Then came hundreds of presentations, including some real flops along the way. My ability was built by trying, struggling, reflecting, adjusting, and trying again, and it was built through coaching and honest feedback.
3. Support Across a Lifetime
Human development does not fit neatly inside a semester, a course sequence, or a single credential. It unfolds across years, through different roles, responsibilities, relationships, and seasons of life.
Looking back to when I was twenty-one years old, it would have been wrong to mistake my abilities for my potential. At that point in my life, I was a quiet auditor. Nothing in a transcript or résumé would have predicted the work I do now.
My story is not unique in that way. Human development is lifelong. We are always evolving. The capacity to change, grow, and reshape our lives doesn’t expire but it does require the conditions that make it possible.
What This Means for Design
Most people agree these capacities matter. Few realize how little our current systems actually measure for them. We measure credits and completion, and we treat those measures as evidence of growth.
AI is reshaping how we teach, assess, and support learners. What we choose to build with that technology will shape education for a generation. If we ground that design in how human capacities actually grow, we can use this moment to strengthen whole human development. If we don’t, we risk building systems that are simply faster at measuring what we’ve always measured.
Design for relationship. Human capacities grow when learners spend sustained time working alongside others on meaningful problems. They grow when learners are challenged by mentors, pushed by peers, given honest feedback, and trusted with consequential work. Work-based learning, applied projects, sustained mentorship, and peer learning communities make that possible. The key is that they are built into every learner’s pathway, not bolted on as optional supports. Right now, whether a learner gets that kind of experience depends too much on the program they enter, the network they bring, or who they happen to meet. A learner-centered system would make sustained, applied, and relational work part of every learner’s experience. Reach University is doing this, embedding apprenticeship-based learning directly into the degree pathway.
Design for practice. Human capacities deepen through repeated practice, with cycles of feedback, reflection, and coaching over time. Competency-based models, portfolios, modular pathways, and prior learning assessment make that possible. The key is that growth itself becomes the unit of learning, not a fixed semester or a single grade. Right now, most programs assess content mastery in compressed time windows. A learner-centered system would let learners demonstrate mastery when they are ready and have that growth recognized regardless of where it happened. Western Governors University is doing this, building competency-based pathways that provide learners with the flexibility to advance when they have demonstrated mastery.
Design for lifelong growth and recognition. Human capacities grow across workplaces, families, communities, and civic life. A learner may build resilience while caring for a parent, communication while managing a team, or leadership while organizing in their community. Right now, the layered support that allows people to keep growing is mostly informal, which means it is distributed unevenly. A learner-centered system would help learners name that growth, deepen it, and translate it into future learning and opportunity. Learning and Employment Records make this kind of recognition possible at scale, letting learners carry their skills and experience across employers, institutions, and time.
These human capacities are not only what we need to author our own lives. They are what makes us the collective designers of the world we share.
What we choose to design as the future of education will shape what kind of society we get. I cannot think of more important work to do, in community and in service to one another.
