Workforce Aligned Hybrid College Model

ASU is proposing an educational model that leads to increased economic mobility, particularly for the working learner. Our unique value proposition is the ability to provide the curriculum, credentials, and wraparound services that haven’t been coordinated by universities in the past. The model will offer two educational services within a unique hybrid college model. 

One will be a workforce-aligned curriculum to enable individuals to secure credentials that stack into ASU degree programs, ensuring that learning won’t be lost if the individual wants to continue toward a bachelor’s degree someday (a key differentiator from traditional continuing and professional education). Another, for individuals interested in collegiate education, is a guaranteed entry-point to a university education regardless of high school GPA or past college performance.

Both of these services will be delivered in a hybrid college model (in-person support with digitally-delivered educational materials), something that ASU has been perfecting over two years.

The supply of highly educated individuals entering the workforce has not kept pace with demand: even before the pandemic, the U.S. under-delivered college graduates by the millions. This is not a supply problem, it is an access one: our leading universities only admit a fraction of academically qualified students; those enrolled do not reflect the socioeconomic diversity of our population. In fact, the greatest predictor of success is not a student’s grades or SAT scores, but family income and zip code. What’s more, most students enrolled in higher education are considered “non-traditional,” yet costly, inflexible and prolonged degree programs don’t accommodate their diverse circumstances.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Guided by a belief that everyone should have access to opportunity and data that ties economic growth to educational attainment, ASU develops pathways to high-quality, affordable training that meets learners where they are -- including for 30+ million U.S. adults with some college credit but no degree and 2.4 million individuals experiencing coronavirus-related long-term joblessness. Our newest model offers bite-sized opportunities developed by ASU faculty that can be “stacked” to provide short- and long-term educational gains for earners as their needs evolve.

ASU brings the resources of the nation’s most innovative university to offer two pathways. The first are online professional certificates designed to act as stand-alone credentials that will increase working-learners’ training and job-readiness in high-demand fields and that can be stacked into credit-bearing college degree programs. Certificates are in subjects created to align with business needs that can be further developed in partnership with workforce boards or industry partners. The program will also empower learners to succeed at the college level through stackable credentials.

The second of these pathways leverages ASU’s Earned Admissions program: no transcript or application is required to enroll in college-level courses, creating space for students who have previously struggled academically to prove their college readiness. Entry is low risk for students—they only pay if they achieve a grade of “C” or higher (total cost is affordable at $425/course).

Combined, the offerings of the hybrid college model act as an upskilling framework through which individuals and employers can access verified, portable skills training while receiving the in-person student support services that lead to increased levels of success for the working-learner—with the option to stack into or work toward college admission, if desired.

Our stackable professional certificate program offers practical knowledge for learners seeking mobility within the labor market while seamlessly laddering into existing degree programs for those hoping to progress towards a bachelor’s; that is, we offer a pathway for immediate job prep and opportunities to continue one’s education, often for students who may not otherwise be enabled or empowered to earn a degree.

Our Earned Admissions program, which has admitted nearly 2,000 students into ASU degree programs, targets students who are new or returning to college coursework, particularly those who are: considered “inadmissible” to a two- or four-year college; earning a high school diploma (including home-schoolers) and seek to use open courses as a dual enrollment function to get a head start on college; mid-career workers hoping to dive deeply on a particular subject for professional application. We also work with industry partners to provide upskilling educational opportunities for their employees.

Initial feedback for both programs collected from participants will be incorporated in the development of subsequent rounds of courses. In spring 2021, we will respond to employer and worker requests to add courses in business intelligence, data analytics, data engineering and data visualization.

We focus on working learners who have historically been excluded from high-quality educational experiences and those who need more immediate credentialing. Working learners struggle to access high-quality training because admittance into degree programs is tied to social capital and prior performance. Our solution proposes a hybrid college model where students select a depth of coursework that meets their educational training and skill-building needs. This model provides learners with increased access to educational or economic opportunity while providing the in-person support services that lead to success.

10+ Full Time Staff 

(The Learning Enterprise at ASU has ~40 employees right now and the proposed solution will utilize components from each of the operational areas. While day-to-day management will be a small subset of the team, resources from ASU and the Learning Enterprise will be made available to ensure the project is successful). 

ASU’s work is rooted in an aspiration to transform societal structures to advance equity and prosperity at a meaningful scale within higher education and beyond. 

We are a comprehensive public research university measured not by whom it excludes, but by whom it includes and how they succeed. We are guided by the value that everyone should have access to education and opportunity at every stage of life. We assume responsibility for the fundamental health of the communities we serve.

This is who we are: our charter is based in diversity, equity and inclusion. As a team, we are not defeated or guided by the status quo. We share ideas at all levels. We have strong opinions loosely held and intentionally engage in debate. We strive for clarity through direct communication -- and seek to raise a plurality of voices therein.

Arizona State University is ranked #1 in the nation for innovation. It is in our DNA to question how education works, and to develop responses and initiatives that are responsive to inequities and issues that are currently designed into the education system. That starts with a belief that high-quality education should not be the privilege of the few. Whereas many programs consider rigor and accessibility at odds, our programs offer both. In this case, our approach is workforce-aligned—not always the case in the for-credit space—stackable and blends immediacy with a pathway to a degree that will serve learners throughout their lives. We take a service mindset: if students prove themselves capable of earning admission to our degree programs, we welcome them. We do not hold high school grades (some of which may be decades old) or life circumstances against learners. 

Choosing excellence and access is part of our culture, and also enabled by delivery. Done right, online education can have better outcomes than in-person. We’ve developed leading adaptive learning tools that provide real-time feedback as students progress. These are complemented by best-in-kind student supports and checkpoints. At the same time, our online modular courses are taught by the same faculty and earn the same credit as those that occur in our physical classrooms. Taken together, these technological enhancements allow us to scale our programs, drive down costs and serve more learners.

We utilize core faculty members at ASU to design scalable, tech-enhanced educational courses and iterate on their design based on basic learning analytics. Based on their pedagogy, we shape some of the top-performing digitally-enhanced courses on the market. They are built and delivered in both Open EdX and Canvas, which enables us to track learner progress and identify points within courses where students drop off so we can intervene and problem-solve exactly where it’s needed.

For each of the ten courses we piloted in fall 2020, we submitted our curriculum, digital pedagogy and technology infrastructure to our analysts to evaluate and improve.

Our platform and technology led to the earned, competency-based admission of 2,000 students who elected to stack their initial courses toward a bachelor’s degree but were considered “inadmissible” based on their GPA heading into the program. 

These students’ GPA after their first term enrolled in an ASU’s bachelor’s degree program was nearly a B-average -- considerably higher average than ASU’s overall population of online students and nearly on-par with the GPA of our honors students.

The takeaway? Students who have been written off because of low high school GPAs or false starts on their college transcript can be capable of achieving a bachelor’s degree and the benefits that come with it. Our programs give them the pathway to prove and accomplish it.

Working learners don’t have time to go to college—for traditional degree programs or for reskilling and upskilling programs. If they do find and complete a short-term program, it rarely stacks into additional, credentialed opportunities in the future. In addition, people are still tied to their most recent educational experience. For someone who did poorly in high school or who dropped out of college with a low GPA, they no longer have a path into postsecondary education by historical admissions standards and pathways. 

We propose that if we give these individuals access to high quality educational materials that address those two challenges (stackable upskilling and reskilling certificates and Earned Admissions, respectively), while also providing in-person supports, then working learners will complete programs at much higher rates and be able to enter the workforce with high quality credentials. This will contribute to enhanced socioeconomic mobility for individuals and close the skills gap in key industries.

By 2030, we hope to serve 1 million learners per year across our stackable, workforce-aligned, integrated open, preparatory and upskilling courses. We are currently building on our foundational offerings and plan to add additional upskilling professional certifications (e.g. in business analytics and data visualization). Some of these courses are and will be developed with corporate partners.

In addition to expanding our program offerings, we hope to raise funding to provide local, in-person resources in select markets. This is a model Arizona State deployed via “ASU Local,” in which students experience a hybrid of online and in-person classes in select markets, like Los Angeles. In addition to faculty support, these students connect with fellow learners, foster a sense of community and are supported by local coaches. We believe this model can be applied to our modular credentialing program to further engage and engender course and degree completion for those enrolled at every level.

Culturally, there is a perception that online education is not as rigorous as more traditional formats, despite evidence to the contrary. 

In addition to this challenge and the barriers that prohibit students’ success during more typical times, learners and their families are facing economic shocks and uncertainty in their personal lives as a result of the pandemic that may prevent them from seeking or completing their education or feeling they have funds to prioritize for it. College enrollments are expected to drop, not only affecting students, but causing institutions of higher education to shutter and trim programs, further excluding populations on the margins of educational attainment.

ASU continues to study the efficacy of its online programs and to share, broadly, information that indicates their effectiveness and best practices for online learning. 

In addition, we look to form alliances with other universities, private industry and philanthropists to work collaboratively—not competitively—to reimagine how higher education can best serve all learners while driving down costs.

It is too early in our lifecycle to understand persistence rates for students who enroll in our open course/earn admission programs, and to understand their job placement rates after completion of the program. We are eager to work to ensure this data supports outcomes for learners and partners.

Our team represents a newly-formed unit, ASU Learning Enterprise, within Arizona State University.

ASU is a leading innovator and provider in the space of online learning and of democratizing education. Our prior experience in shaping open courses, upskilling content and local hybrid (in-person/online) instruction uniquely positions us to deliver this solution at scale.

Corporate partners like Starbucks, Uber, Adidas, and dozens of others. We also partner with over 150 high schools that are currently utilizing our assets and dozens of nonprofit organizations that utilize our courses for their members.

The Learning Enterprise has several significant business models. The most interesting includes our "Open Course" model through Earned Admissions where students pay $25 to verify their identify for a course then $400 after successful completion of the course (only if they pass and want the credits). 

The Learning Enterprise is currently financially sustainable through the products that we operate and revenue that they generate. 

Personnel and management of resources. Budgets will vary depending on scale.