New Report Shows Roadmap to Transforming 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.”