In 1877, the first college "major" was coined at Johns Hopkins. The catalog for that year is a dense read, though short; courses toward the baccalaureate only required two years of study and then—presumably—a job. That catalog has hardened into something else today: a system that prizes credentials over curiosity, standardization over discovery, and completion over connection.

In this episode, we sit down with Ned Laff and Scott Carlson, co-authors of Hacking College, and our own higher education strategist Howard Teibel, to ask a simple but urgent question: what are we really preparing students for? Drawing on decades of experience in academic affairs, journalism, and institutional change, our guests lay out an alternative framework—the “Field of Study”—that puts students back at the center of their education.

We talk about advising as design instead of compliance, about pilot programs that quietly rewire entire universities, and about the faculty and leadership required to shift the system without burning it down. And we hear stories—personal, institutional, and philosophical—of what happens when students reclaim the blank spaces of their education and begin to connect the dots on their own terms.

This is a conversation about possibility. And about how, even in the face of inertia, the path forward is already being built—one desire path at a time.

We explore... 

• Why the traditional college major no longer matches real-world work
• The Field of Study framework: structure, stories, and student agency
• How advising can shift from checklist to compass
• Institutional inertia and the myth of undecided students
• Why reform doesn’t have to mean top-down revolution
• The hidden job market and student-designed experiences
• What happens when we reintroduce joy, risk, and meaning into higher ed

Links & Resources

• Hacking College by Ned Laff & Scott Carlson
• Scott Carlson at The Chronicle of Higher Education
• Ned Laff at The Chronicle of Higher Education