Leadership & StratEDgy

An important trend is worth mentioning as part of the context to last week’s post. One of the factors contributing to the record high number of applications and record low acceptance rates is that more prospective students are applying to more schools.

Creativity and innovation are in increasing demand as an engine for economic growth and solving major problems, including (preventing and) winning wars, curing disease, feeding a growing population, and finding sources of clean water. With new technologies, rising costs, uneven access and outdated business models, higher education is in need of a big dose of creative thinking.

Institutions are announcing their admissions data, and it’s another year of record highs and lows. With these record highs and lows revealing themselves in the form of acceptance and rejection letters and emails, what does this say about the current state of higher education?

With all the talk about the unbundling of higher education, some recent developments have me wondering whether some of the newer developments we’re seeing are actually reinforcing the existing hierarchy in this market to the benefit of elite schools. . . and at the expense of everyone else.

It may be much harder to write a short paper than a long paper, but it’s much more interesting to tell a story – any story – in six words.

During the summer, I committed to running a short program on Strategy and Competition in Higher Education – essentially a two-day non-credit version of the full length Strategy and Competition in Higher Education course - and asked people what they thought were the most important topics for discussion during such a program. And there was definitely some consensus.

Entrepreneurial ideas related to education have flourished of late, and business plan competitions can surface some of these initial ideas. Here are eight education-related start-up ideas appearing on several lists of finalists.

When we asked people that have been working in higher ed for more than a year for advice to people entering in similar positions to them, we received a wide variety of suggestions. In this post we’ll share what administrators (who represented 36% of the 464 survey respondents, respectively) would advise those just entering a similar role.