Forward
As higher education faces accelerating demographic shifts, declining traditional applicant pools, and growing demands for equity and affordability, the role of admissions is being fundamentally reexamined. For too long, access to a four-year degree has been governed by narrow, static indicators of readiness that do not reflect the complexity of today’s learners or the varied ways in which academic potential is demonstrated. At this moment, broadening access through alternative admissions pathways is not only timely—it is essential to the future relevance, sustainability, and public mission of higher education.
This report represents the culmination of a year-long collaboration made possible through the Gates Foundation and led by Arizona State University’s Learning Enterprise in partnership with the University Design Institute. Together with institutional leaders from across the country, this work set out to better understand how four-year institutions are experimenting with, adapting to, and preparing for nontraditional routes into degree programs. The result is not a single prescriptive solution, but a shared framework—grounded in lived institutional experience—that identifies emerging archetypes of alternative admissions and the conditions required to make them effective.
For Arizona State University and the Learning Enterprise, this engagement is deeply aligned with our charter and mission. ASU measures itself not by whom it excludes, but by whom it includes and how they succeed. The Learning Enterprise exists to extend that mission beyond traditional boundaries by creating flexible, performance-based pathways that meet learners where they are—whether they are recent high school graduates, working adults, or students seeking to return and complete a degree. Collaborating with institutional learning partners through this initiative reinforces a core belief: that innovation in admissions is most powerful when it is co-designed, evidence-informed, and rooted in institutional reality. Earned Admission serves as a central proof point in this work. What began as an experiment at ASU has demonstrated that open-access, credit-bearing coursework can function as a credible, performance-based pathway to admission. Learners admitted through Earned Admission persist and succeed at rates comparable to, and in some cases exceeding, their traditionally admitted peers. More importantly, Earned Admission has created space for critical engagement across the sector—challenging long-held assumptions about readiness and offering a tangible model for reimagining the front door to higher education.
This report should be read as a practical blueprint rather than an academic think piece. It reflects the voices of admissions leaders, faculty partners, and decision-makers navigating real constraints—policy, technology, governance, and trust—while remaining committed to expanding opportunity. Together, these perspectives offer a testimony to what is possible when institutions unite around a shared purpose: transforming admissions from a gatekeeping function into a system of multiple, equitable on-ramps that support learners not only in getting in, but in getting through.