Redesigning Higher Education for Today’s Students

Higher education is at a crossroads. Many of today’s students—including working adults, first-generation students, and parents—are struggling to balance college, career, and life. And despite the clear benefit of earning a bachelor’s degree, many people are opting out of college entirely because of the costs and the complexity of navigating large and often impersonal institutions and systems.

The upshot: it’s time for new models to support today’s students to earn a bachelor’s degree.

A new report commissioned by the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund calls on California’s higher education systems and campuses to embrace hybrid learning as a pathway to enabling more students to reach their goals for college and career. By combining flexible online learning with structured human connection and student support, the best hybrid learning models redesign higher education with a focus on student success.

“Opening the door to college without building systems that help students persist and complete their degrees is not equity,” the report’s author, Kimberly Merritt Ed.D., writes. “When done right, hybrid learning treats the student experience, and student supports as core design elements—not add-ons.”

How California Can Lead the Way

The report, From Online to Hybrid Learning: A Roadmap to Transforming Higher Education for Today’s Students, draws on a national landscape scan of research, institutional practices, and emerging hybrid learning models, alongside interviews with leaders across public, nonprofit, and mission-driven colleges and organizations. It includes insights from a convening of more than 20 institutions and partners working to design hybrid learning for stronger persistence and equity outcomes.

While examples from across the country inform the analysis, the primary focus of the recommendations is California—given the scale and complexity of its higher education system, the incredible diversity of the students it serves, and the state’s urgent focus on improving completion and mobility outcomes for historically underserved students.

In addition to identifying four signature practices of effective hybrid learning, the report lifts up system-level barriers that inhibit broader adoption of these practices in California. It also itemizes changes that systems, institutions, and programs can make to enable hybrid learning to take root and scale.

“California has an opportunity to show the nation what works to support more students to earn a bachelor’s degree and the lifelong benefits that come with it,” said Monica Martinez, program director for College Success with the Haas, Jr. Fund. “It’s time to redesign higher education for today’s students. This report offers a roadmap for making it happen.”