In January of 2020, the Chronicle of Higher Education published a cover story about College Unbound. “Colleges struggle to serve millions of dropouts. Have [they] cracked the code?” the paper’s front page asked. College Unbound, a Rhode Island-based school with national ambitions and already-impressive student successes, when that article came out, was new on the scene with just 100 students.
Since then, College Unbound earned accreditation from NECHE (the same accrediting body that recognizes Brown and Harvard) and approval to serve students online and in their cohort model nationwide. Philadelphia, and the larger Delaware Valley, became the first site of growth outside of Rhode Island, and that successful growth has continued. Today, College Unbound has grown to over 500 students. In 2024, CU graduated 125 students, and compared nationally to other open-admissions, private, not-for-profit institutions that have a 31% 8-year graduation rate, CU had a retention/ graduation rate over 80%. This is striking. College Unbound’s curriculum is centered around three different modes of learning, all of which intersect to create an authentic and impactful pathway to a BA degree in Organizational Leadership & Change.
- Learning in Lab – a central piece of CU’s student-initiated curriculum; a weekly seminar for holistic growth, project design, and learning integration.
- Learning Online – a series of flexible, virtual courses to fit into students’ full schedules; students help shape the classes and connect them to their own experiences using community questions, professional development, workplace learning, and civic engagement.
- Learning in Public – a credit documentation program that recognizes learning everywhere. Through the curriculum, students learn to frame and document their lived experiences to earn credit and satisfy the “Big 10 Leadership Transformation Competencies” at the heart of the degree.
Cohorts are embedded in sites of learning and employment across a city. When they meet in person, dinner and childcare are provided. In Philadelphia, for example, these cohorts include partnerships with the Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA), The Public Health Management Corporation (PHMC), and the School District of Philadelphia (SDP). College Unbound supports these partners by providing a degree that both connects them with fellow adult learners, coworkers, and partners, and allows them to grapple with questions affecting their industry, city, and their community. This helps nurture sector change. The students in College Unbound are affected by the systems in which they work and study. As they finish their degrees and step into leadership positions in their organizations, they do so with an understanding of what change is possible. College Unbound is also about impactful personal growth and development. For the 31 graduates in Summer 2024 from the School District of Philadelphia change is immediate. two-thirds were promoted to teaching or staff positions that require a Bachelor’s degree and over half enrolled in graduate programs that started in Fall 2024.
As College Unbound grows in these next years from its current 500 students to 1,000 students and beyond, it has a model that can scale and maintain its transformative and equitable outcomes. CU looks to grow both in cities in which it already has a footprint and across the country in sectors it has a track record of success in supporting. To achieve this growth, CU must invest in the infrastructure necessary to meet the needs of a national, thousand-student college, funding local growth in cities through local donors and foundations and expansion through national foundations and partners. CU looks to match its growth with a robust research agenda to document its continued success and funder engagement and to ensure its work is as sustainable and scalable as it is impactful. The name “unbound” points both to the ways that higher education is stuck as well as to possibilities to reimagine what and where college learning looks like for adults across the country. Every institution is an opportunity to expand the horizon of that institution, to perfect it to make it become a part of the world we need to create.