The Mindset Shift Postsecondary Education Needs

We need a dramatic shift in how we think about postsecondary education.

Our systems are organized around structures that make sense to institutions but not to learners. Time-bound courses, rigid pacing, and credentials disconnected from clearly articulated skills may have worked for students in an earlier era. The scale of the postsecondary sector was different. The scope of curriculum was different. The labor market was different. Today, these gaps are wide and deep, and do not serve today’s learners.

Many learners are balancing work, family, transportation issues, tight finances, and a range of competing responsibilities. They are looking for programs that are flexible enough to fit real life and rigorous enough to lead to real opportunity. They want to build skills that matter in the labor market, earn credentials that employers understand, and move through education in ways that reflect what they already know and can do.

The field has responded by tailoring programs and policies to support adult learners in significant ways. The challenge is that, too often, these innovations remain disconnected and do not fundamentally shift mindsets and systems in ways that facilitate long-term, sustainable practices. That is why direct assessment competency-based education matters so much.

Direct assessment competency-based education, or DA-CBE, is a flexibly paced model where students progress and earn credentials by demonstrating mastery of defined competencies rather than through seat time or credit hours. Demonstrating mastery can look many different ways depending on the institution and program, but often it looks a lot like hands-on, project-based learning—assessments that mirror the conditions learners would face as workers on the job. This may mean a culinary student preparing a dish; an early childhood student leading a small group of children through an activity; or an automotive student pulling and reviewing diagnostic codes.

At Jobs for the Future (JFF), we have been working over the last five years with institutions in California as they pilot DA-CBE programs. What has been particularly compelling for us is that, at its core, DA-CBE is not just a technical model. It represents a deeper structural shift toward time independence, clear skill validation, and learner-centered pacing. It offers a compelling value proposition for people who have never fully connected with postsecondary education, who stopped out before earning a degree, or who have significant skills but not the verified credentials employers require.

We need to shift our mindset to examine how all postsecondary models can align with these principles to better recognize learning, increase flexibility, and connect education to meaningful opportunity. Key questions to ask are “What are the beliefs about our systems, about education, and about learners, that are limiting our potential impact? How could we perceive persistent challenges in access, retention, completion, workforce alignment, and economic mobility differently? And how would that shift in thinking alter the way we work?”

Institutions do not have to choose between traditional education and DA-CBE. Instead, they can take steps to ensure everything they do aligns with a future-forward mindset:

These bold ideas must be stacked and aligned to achieve meaningful impact. Learners do not just need flexibility; they need flexibility, workforce relevance, and credentials of value. They need supports that help them navigate options, and systems that make their learning portable and legible across institutions and employers.

The next challenge isn’t proving that these learner-centered innovations work. And the solution isn’t to launch or scale DA-CBE as a one-size-fits-all innovation. The work ahead requires institutions to rethink how they design learning, recognize existing knowledge, support learners, and connect education to opportunity. Individual colleges can redesign curriculum, recognize prior learning, build competency frameworks, and experiment with new student supports. But lasting transformation requires shared infrastructure, aligned policy, sustainable funding, and a common vision that extends beyond any single institution.

States have a unique role to play in creating those conditions. They can align policy, remove regulatory barriers, invest in implementation, and create opportunities for institutions to learn from one another. Rather than scaling one model, states can build the capacity for continuous innovation across many institutions. California’s Competency-Based Education Collaborative demonstrates what this can look like in practice. By supporting institutions as they test, refine, and learn from one another, the collaborative is helping build not just new programs, but the institutional capability to continuously redesign postsecondary education around learners. JFF has been proud to support this work through technical assistance, coaching, and peer learning.

That experience reinforced an important truth: transformation does not happen through mandates or policy change alone.

It happens because people in system offices, institutions, and employer partnerships believe in the change and are willing to do the hard, iterative, creative work required to make it real.

If higher education is to meet the needs of today’s learners and tomorrow’s workforce, redesigning around learning rather than time is a conversation we all need to be part of. Read the full Direct Assessment Competency-Based Education Development Blueprint to explore California’s approach and the lessons emerging from this work. If these ideas resonate with your institution or state, we’d welcome the opportunity to continue the conversation.