In the room were long-standing leaders of higher education — individuals who have devoted decades to strengthening our institutions — alongside newly minted college graduates. The student voices mattered deeply. They brought perspectives shaped not by policy debates or institutional legacy, but by lived experience. What I heard gave me pause.

In their words, trust in higher education is no longer assumed. As teenagers, they had known only polarization and sustained skepticism toward major institutions — including higher education. They questioned whether taking on heavy student debt is worth the risk.

Their reflections are a signal — and an invitation.

Design for the skeptical learner, not the ideal one

When trust erodes at this scale, the responsibility shifts to institutions to demonstrate value clearly, consistently, and transparently. Higher education must re-earn its place in people’s lives.

I found myself thinking about adults who have not yet reached higher education’s door — or who no longer believe college is meant for them. To reach the 75 percent aspiration, we must design for learners like those featured in a Strada Education video: working adults who are time-starved, balancing family and financial responsibilities, often cash-constrained, sometimes carrying eroded confidence in their ability to learn — yet keenly aware that they must keep pace in a rapidly changing world of work.

These learners remind me of Futuro Health Scholars. Their life circumstances are complex. Yet across our 41 education partners and 17 programs of study, they complete their allied health credentials at an 83 percent rate. The difference is not motivation. It is intentional design — structured supports, employer alignment, and clear pathways to good jobs.

When we design for the realities of learners’ lives, trust follows.

Accept partial trust — and build from there

Important policy reforms are underway — new accountability tools such as scorecards, and financing models that shift risk by requiring loan repayment only when graduates earn above a defined income threshold. At the same time, the higher education community continues to wrestle with longstanding debates — liberal arts versus career education, rather than “and” — while navigating institutional constraints.

Perhaps the more pragmatic path forward is not restoring blanket trust overnight, but building trust in specific, demonstrable ways. For working adults like those in the Strada video, trust may need to be earned for particular use cases, populations, or outcomes. For example:

“We may not yet be trusted for social mobility writ large, but we can be trusted for helping working adults become occupationally relevant within 12 months.”

This would require making the norms of effective career education more visible and portable across institutions — whether learning occurs in a community college or a liberal arts university. These norms include deep employer partnerships, employer-valued credentials, “soft”/essential skills development, competency-based technical training, work-integrated learning (clinicals, internships, co-ops, apprenticeships), credit for prior learning, stackable credentials, and sustained career navigation supports.

When these elements are transparent and consistently delivered, trust becomes earned rather than assumed.

Lower the cost of being wrong

One of the strongest signals of trustworthiness is lowering the cost of being wrong.

In both AI and higher education, the most credible systems are not those that promise perfection. They are the ones that make experimentation safe, mistakes visible, and course correction possible — without catastrophic downside for the learner.

This is why the challenge before us is larger than any single institution. It is about strengthening the category itself — redesigning learning so that people can enter, exit, and re-enter across their lives without incurring unmanageable debt or irreversible consequences.

What society needs is an intentional learning system that supports continuous transitions over a 30-plus-year work span — not only early-career education, but accelerated pathways into mid-career mastery as AI reshapes entry-level roles. A system people can rely on not once, but repeatedly.

Trust, in this sense, is not restored through persuasion. It is rebuilt through use.  When people come back a second time—and a third—that is legitimacy.