Who Needs College Anymore?: Imagining a Future Where Degrees Won’t Matter

An optimistic yet practical assessment of how postsecondary education can evolve to meet the needs of next-generation learners

​With keen insight, Kathleen deLaski reimagines what higher education might offer and whom it should serve in Who Needs College Anymore? In the wake of declining US 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.

The work draws on a decade of design-thinking research from the nonprofit Education Design Lab as well as 150 interviews of educational experts, college and career counselors, teachers, employers, and learners. DeLaski applies human-centered design to higher education reform, engaging the perspective of end users to search for better solutions. She highlights ten top principles based on user feedback and considers how well they are currently being enacted by colleges.

In particular, she urges institutions to better attend to the needs of new-majority learners, often described as nontraditional students, including people from low- or moderate-income backgrounds, people of color, first-generation students, veterans, single mothers, rural students, part-time attendees, and neurodivergent students. She finds ample opportunity for colleges to support learners via alternative pathways to marketable knowledge, including bootcamps, skills-based learning, and apprenticeships, career training, and other types of workplace learning. This work suggests innovation as a means of evolution.

Kathleen deLaski spent twenty 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.