What K–12 Schools Can Learn From a College Being Built From Scratch

Summary for Educators

Based on Jon Marcus
“A Makeover for College: No Gym, No Meal Plan and Two Years of Work”
NPR / The Hechinger Report, September 1, 2026

THE BIG IDEA

What would education look like if we stopped asking how to improve the existing system and instead asked what we would build if we were starting over?

That is the question behind the Greenway Institute, a new engineering college taking shape in Montpelier, Vermont. Scheduled to open in fall 2027, Greenway is attempting to redesign both the educational experience and the economics of college. Its students will spend two years on campus engaged largely in project-based learning, followed by two years in paid, credit-bearing workplace experiences. The college intends to eliminate many costly amenities and services associated with traditional higher education, including extensive athletic and recreational facilities, meal plans, and layers of administration. (WMUK⁠)

For K–12 leaders, the Greenway experiment raises a larger question: If we designed schools around what students will actually need in adulthood, how different would they look?

LEARNING BY DOING

Greenway has already tested its instructional model.

During a prototype semester, engineering students did not simply sit through lectures about electrical and mechanical engineering. They designed wind turbines and solar-powered traffic signals while faculty members served as mentors and guides. The content was learned in the process of solving real problems. (kccu.org⁠)

That idea should sound familiar to K–12 educators. Project-based learning, internships, career and technical education, inquiry learning, and authentic assessment all rest on a similar principle: students understand knowledge differently when they must use it for a meaningful purpose.

Yet much of schooling still follows the opposite sequence. Teachers present information, students practice it, and eventually they are tested to determine whether they remember it.

Greenway asks: Why not begin with the problem?

That is a question worth asking in every school.

PREPARING STUDENTS FOR LIFE, NOT JUST SCHOOL

Perhaps Greenway’s most interesting feature has little to do with engineering.

Students will shop for groceries and cook their own meals in communal kitchens. They will organize much of their own extracurricular life. Students who want a gym membership can use facilities in the surrounding community instead of having an elaborate recreation center built into tuition.

Greenway faculty member Annick Dewald argues that these responsibilities themselves have educational value. Employers, she says, sometimes struggle with recent graduates who have difficulty managing basic responsibilities such as showing up on time, maintaining healthy routines, or taking care of themselves independently. (WMUK⁠)

K–12 schools should pay attention.

We routinely say we want graduates who are independent, responsible, adaptable, organized, and capable of making good decisions. But schools often create environments in which adults make most decisions for students.

We determine when they arrive.

We determine where they sit.

We determine what they will work on.

We determine when they will work on it.

We remind them repeatedly when something is due.

Then we sometimes wonder why young adults struggle when those supports suddenly disappear.

Independence cannot simply be expected at age 18. It has to be developed gradually.

REDESIGNING AROUND WHAT MATTERS

Greenway is also challenging the cost structure of education. Its founders argue that colleges have added expensive facilities, services, and administrative layers that may contribute little to actual learning. Research cited in Marcus’s article found that before the pandemic, spending on noninstructional services grew far faster than spending on teaching. (WMUK⁠)

There is a K–12 parallel here as well.

Every school accumulates routines, programs, meetings, schedules, forms, traditions, and practices. Some remain because they are effective. Others remain simply because they have always existed.

Imagine asking:

If we were opening this school tomorrow, would we deliberately create this practice?

If the answer is no, perhaps it deserves reconsideration.

THE AI CONNECTION

One Greenway board member makes another argument that should resonate strongly with educators in 2026: schools continue to emphasize memorizing information in a world where information is instantly available—and where artificial intelligence can increasingly retrieve, organize, and explain it. (kccu.org⁠)

That does not make knowledge unimportant. In fact, students need substantial background knowledge to think critically.

But it does change what we should emphasize.

The ability to apply knowledge, evaluate information, solve unfamiliar problems, communicate ideas, collaborate, create, and exercise judgment may become even more important as AI becomes more capable.

Schools cannot prepare students merely to answer questions machines can answer faster.

They must prepare students to decide which questions are worth asking and what to do with the answers.

LEADERSHIP ACTIONS

School leaders might begin by examining three things.

First, conduct an authentic learning audit. How often are students solving real problems, creating useful products, conducting investigations, presenting to audiences beyond their teachers, or applying knowledge outside the classroom?

Second, conduct an independence audit. How frequently are students expected to plan, organize, make decisions, manage deadlines, collaborate without constant adult supervision, and recover from mistakes?

Third, conduct a tradition audit. Identify practices that exist primarily because “we have always done it that way.”

Greenway Institute may ultimately succeed or fail. New educational models always carry risk, and Greenway has not yet enrolled its first full class.

But its most important contribution may already be evident.

It is forcing educators to reconsider assumptions that have become so familiar that we rarely question them.

LEADER REFLECTION

Imagine that your district suddenly had no schools, no schedules, no courses, no grading system, and no traditions—and you had to build everything again from scratch.

Knowing what we now understand about learning, motivation, technology, work, adolescence, and adulthood:

Would you rebuild the school system exactly as it exists today?

Probably not.

The more important question is:

What would you change first?

The Greenway Institute is a useful case precisely because it is still an experiment rather than a proven model. That makes it a strong discussion piece for school leaders: not “Should we copy Greenway?” but “Which assumptions about school have we stopped questioning?” 

Original Article

• A Makeover for College: No Gym, No Meal Plan and Two Years of Work (NPR) 

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Prepared with the assistance of AI software OpenAI. (2026). ChatGPT (5.2) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com