What if Colleges Experimented at the Edges?

Higher education is facing mounting pressure to rethink a model that too often asks learners to choose between earning a living and earning a degree.

Against that backdrop, the article explores how ideas once considered outside the higher education mainstream, including three-year degrees and apprenticeship-based models, are gaining traction as institutions look for more affordable, accessible, and workforce-connected pathways. Drawing on Rebecca Solnit’s idea that meaningful transformation often begins at the margins, they argue that this moment calls for colleges to apply the same curiosity and willingness to experiment to themselves that they bring to teaching, research, and discovery.

Reach University is just one example of that shift already underway. Through the Apprenticeship Degree, Reach builds the college experience around the workplace, allowing candidates to remain employed while their daily work becomes an intentional part of their learning and renders academic credit toward a degree. As Reach President and CEO Joe Ross tells Inside Higher Ed, “I think the story of this century will be that the workplace is going to become the college campus, and that higher education is going to become work-embedded at scale.” Rather than asking working adults to step away from their jobs and lives to access higher education, Reach is demonstrating what becomes possible when the degree itself is designed around the work learners are already doing.