Students deserve to embark on their educational journeys with assurance, navigating well-defined routes with minimal hurdles. Guided Pathways offer a framework designed to achieve exactly that.
Every college is actively implementing Guided Pathways, an equity-focused framework that creates clear paths for students and eliminates systemic obstacles to their success. Guided Pathways provide students with clear enrollment avenues, course-taking patterns, and support services. This framework prioritizes the student experience in system-wide decision making.
Core Goals of Guided Pathways
Advance Equity: Guided Pathways tackles the barriers that disproportionately affect today’s students, especially students of color, first-generation students, students from low-income backgrounds, and working adults, promoting a more equitable educational experience.
Transform Institutions: Guided Pathways implement comprehensive, systemic changes that enhance students’ skill development, credential attainment, and socioeconomic mobility. This approach acknowledges that all aspects of an institution can evolve to better serve students.
Redefine Readiness: The Guided Pathways framework fundamentally shifts the focus to how colleges can better support students, rather than solely emphasizing students’ readiness for college.
Redesign Supports: Colleges acknowledge that students require comprehensive support beyond financial aid and resources. Guided Pathways enables colleges to address and support students’ academic and non-academic needs.
Implementing Guided Pathways
To assist colleges in pinpointing challenges in student journeys and redesigning their systems with students at the forefront, resources, programs, and support are being provided. These resources complement legislative funding, thereby bolstering the implementation of Guided Pathways and reinforcing student equity initiatives.
System-Wide Support for Colleges
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Regional Coordinators: Regional coordinators are critical in providing local support for colleges and districts during their Guided Pathways implementation.
You can Locate a regional coordinator or get more information from the Success Center for California Community Colleges.
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Scaling Learning: Webinars highlight insights from colleges implementing Guided Pathways and showcase national best practices from various organizations, colleges, and leaders.
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Student-Centered Design and Integration: Colleges are supported in integrating programs and braiding funding to address students’ academic, digital, financial, and essential needs.
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Technology: Access to technology tools simplifies processes and reduces costs for colleges as they streamline student pathways.
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Innovation and Pilots: Colleges are encouraged to provide culturally relevant curriculum and deliver instruction in innovative ways that value students’ unique needs, experiences, and contributions.
Technical Assistance Partnerships
The Chancellor’s Office supports the full implementation of Guided Pathways at several institutions through demonstration projects. This accelerates successful implementation and provides learning and best practices for all colleges.
- Guided Pathways 1.0 supported 20 colleges in implementing Guided Pathways with structured support from the National Center for Inquiry and Improvement (NCII).
- Guided Pathways 2.0 built on the 1.0 cohort by adding 23 new colleges. Through 2024, NCII provides structured support to colleges through institutes, webinars, and virtual consultancies. Resources developed in this project are accessible through the Vision Resource Center. Within the Guided Pathways community of the Vision Resource Center, anyone at a California community college can view recordings and presentations from the institutes and webinars, and read summaries of the institutes that include resources offered by presenters and by session participants.
Guided Pathways represent a transformative approach to education, prioritizing student success through structured support, equitable practices, and continuous institutional improvement. By embracing Guided Pathways, colleges can empower students to achieve their academic and career goals.
