Ask any college or university what they’re doing to create the student experience of tomorrow, and they will rattle off the same experiential or highimpact practices: active learning, internships, undergraduate research, service learning, and the like. In the near term, higher ed leaders are focused on scaling these efforts to improve learning, persistence, and career outcomes.
But for longer-term sustainability and relevance, the question for the president and cabinet is what’s next: How does an institution truly differentiate, when everyone’s strategic plans and marketing materials tout the exact same practices? And, perhaps most important, our economies (regional, national, global) are undergoing rapid shifts—how does higher education catch up?