Balancing Structure and Exploration in Academic Planning

The “guided pathways” model as not just a student success initiative, but a way to redesign how a college operates.

This week’s episode of The Key podcast explores the “guided pathways” model, which hundreds of community colleges have embraced to give students a clearer path to reaching their educational goals.

Davis Jenkins, a senior research scholar at the Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College, and Hana Lahr, a senior research associate and director of applied learning there, join The Key to discuss their recent papers evaluating how guided pathways has spread, what iterations of the model work best, and what it takes to bring about this kind of sweeping, “whole college” change at institutions that can be both tradition-bound and financially strapped.

The Key is hosted by Inside Higher Ed Co-founder and Editor Doug Lederman. This episode is sponsored by Coursedog.