Chris Gray, Ph.D.
Founding President, Erie County Community College of Pennsylvania
Recently, I attended the American Association of Community Colleges conference and sat in on a session that has been rattling around in my head ever since. The topic was the future of student choice and how students select a major. The biggest takeaway was deceptively simple and reinforced something that I have been thinking for many years: we should stop pressuring students to name their major.
That idea lands hard if you work in higher education. It's jarring because, truly, it's among the first questions that students face when they come to college. It's the question that shapes what comes next.
The reasoning behind NOT asking, however, is solid. Jobs are changing rapidly — much faster than our curriculum cycles. We cannot reasonably keep up. At the same time, students change their minds constantly. National data shows that more than half of college students will change their major at some point, and many do so more than once. That's part of what college is all about: a journey of learning and discovery.
So, if students are unsure while the labor market is increasingly unstable, why do we organize our entire system around that one early question? It's a question that we need to consider.
And this brings me to a professional tension I cannot shake, one that lives at the intersection of two powerful ideas in higher education: the cafeteria model as a juxtaposition to the guided pathways model. From a 10,000-foot view, these can be understood as the two ways around which we guide students through our institutions.
Let's start with the cafeteria model.
The cafeteria model is what many of us experienced in college. It's the "little bit of this, little bit of that" model that has been the standard in higher ed. Students are told they need a course in social sciences, humanities, natural sciences, math, and so on. On paper, this seems reasonable. States like Pennsylvania require distribution across disciplines to ensure a well‑rounded education. The idea is that students do need to have exposure to a variety of disciplines and ideas to be broadly educated at the college level.
The problem begins when selections in those categories expand, causing so many options that students are often left with decision fatigue/paralysis.
Research has a name for this: the cafeteria model. And it consistently shows that too much choice overwhelms students, especially first‑generation and community college students. What to choose when literally everything is on the table?
The outcomes are predictable. Confusion. Delayed decisions. Excess credits. They can be detrimental to student success also.
There is strong evidence that students completing associate degrees often accumulate significantly more credits than required. One Community College Research Center study found that excess credits account for roughly 12% of all credits earned by graduates. Those credits cost students time, money, and momentum.
Major switching further amplifies the problem. For example, let's imagine that a student takes psychology because it fits in the initial program core. Then, that same student switches majors, and the new program prefers sociology. Only one applies. The other becomes ballast. Multiply this across thousands of students, and the inefficiency becomes structural. That's thousands of dollars and many semesters lost.
Enter guided pathways, a relatively new solution to this age-old problem.
Guided pathways emerged as a direct response to this chaos. For nearly a decade, colleges across the country have reorganized programs into clearer sequences, reducing unnecessary choices while mapping courses directly to completion and transfer goals.
At its core, the guided pathways approach makes a simple promise. It is structured around the fundamental belief that students deserve clarity. Tell them which courses to take, in what order, and why. Early evidence suggests this approach improves momentum and reduces excess credits, even if long‑term causal outcomes are still under study.
I tend to favor that direction. But at the same time, this is where the tension appears.
In theory, guided pathways also emphasize early exploration. Students should encounter other fields and ways of working before narrowing their focus. They should be exposed to healthcare as a sector, for example, not nursing on day one. They should be exposed to the broader field of manufacturing, not machining course requirements, in their first semester.
In practice, that is often not what happens.
What I see instead is curriculum control pulling pathways inward. Faculty, rightly, design programs around disciplinary integrity and accreditation standards. The result is that semester one often looks like this: if you want to be a theater major, take theater history, acting, and stagecraft.
These are not exploratory courses. They are insider courses. They presuppose a major that has not been declared yet.
When students change direction, which many will, those credits rarely transfer cleanly. At best they become electives. We end up back at excess credits, only now embedded inside a structure designed to prevent them. Sure, they learned something new, but that knowledge was expensive, and in the end, it doesn't count directly toward their final goal.
This is the bind.
At EC3, we have worked hard to limit unnecessary choice. Research consistently shows that students just want to be told which courses to take. They want certainty, not menus. We are also clear about what community colleges do for transfer students. You do not major in biology at a community college. You earn an associate of arts that fulfills general education and prepares you to transfer.
Here's where I struggle: How do we build genuinely broad, exploratory first‑year experiences without violating accreditation requirements or disciplinary expectations? How do we honor guided pathways without pretending that students arrive fully formed?
I do not have a neat answer.
What I do know is that asking eighteen‑year‑olds what they want to major in is the wrong starting point.
Instead, I want to ask different questions. How do you want to change the world? Do you like working with people? With data? With your hands? Do you enjoy solving problems or telling stories?
If we treated those answers as the real meta‑majors, we could design a first-year that builds durable skills and preserves flexibility. Then, when students are ready — truly ready — they can specialize.
Good luck to higher ed in figuring this all out. I am in my fifties, and I am still working on that part myself. I suppose the best we can do is keep trying to move the needle. Little by little, hopefully, we'll get there.
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