Higher education is at a critical inflection point. The traditional financial and operational models that have sustained us for decades and that are designed to largely perpetuate the status quo are broken. The depth and breadth of current challenges requires a major rethinking and reinvention of the higher education system. And yet, most colleges and universities and their leaders have little or no core competency in what can be a really difficult and complex change process.

Higher education is at an existential crossroads in which a combination of external factors have conspired to render the traditional financial and operational models obsolete for a majority of institutions. For most institutions, addressing existential threats and creating a compelling student value proposition are simply not possible without some level of transformation.

In short, a majority of colleges and universities must re-evaluate even the most basic and long-standing elements of what they do and how they do it, such as delivering content over academic terms, credit-bearing courses, grades, degrees, faculty control of curriculum, tuition as the primary revenue source, credit transfer and prior learning policies, accreditation as an imprimatur of “quality,” the “one and done” relationship with graduates, and a host of other example