Student pathways through higher education are increasingly nonlinear. Many students transfer institutions, stop out and return, attend multiple colleges simultaneously, or accumulate credits across different educational settings. Yet much of the discussion surrounding student success continues to focus on how students navigate these complex systems rather than how institutions design them.

My recently published article, "Academic Pathway Coherence in Public Higher Education: Reframing Institutional Design in an Era of Nonlinear Student Trajectories," introduces Academic Pathway Coherence (APC) as a framework for examining how institutional policies, structures, and practices collectively shape educational continuity across a student's academic journey.

Rather than viewing challenges such as credit loss, excess credit accumulation, or delayed completion solely as student-level problems, APC considers how institutional design influences the ability of learning to accumulate coherently over time and across organizational boundaries.

The article synthesizes literature on transfer, persistence, curriculum design, and institutional organization to propose a broader perspective on student pathways. The framework encourages researchers and practitioners to examine how policies intended to support students may interact in ways that either strengthen or fragment educational progression.

I hope APC contributes to ongoing conversations about student success, transfer reform, and institutional effectiveness. I would welcome discussion from scholars and practitioners working in higher education policy, student success, transfer systems, adult learning, and organizational design.

Read the full article here: Higher Education (Journal) 

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-026-01714-1

What institutional practices do you believe most strongly support—or hinder—coherent student pathways?