Changing Higher Ed

Changing Higher Ed is dedicated to helping higher education leaders improve their institutions. We offer the latest in higher ed news and insights from top experts in higher education who share their perspectives on how you can grow your institution. Host Dr. Drumm McNaughton is a top higher education consultant, renowned leader, and pioneer in strategic management systems and leadership boards. He's one of a select group with executive leadership experience in academe, nonprofits, government, and business.

Changing Higher Ed is a business podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 326 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Unknown Host hosts Changing Higher Ed, a business show with 326 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #329

  How Gies Gives Every Junior a Live Client Project

  Sep 15, 202636 min

  Most institutions measure access at admission and affordability, then ration the experiences that actually change student outcomes to whoever finds them. The experiential learning that employers say they want gets delivered to honors cohorts and groups of thirty while everyone else gets the catalog. In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast , Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Dr. W. Brooke Elliott , Dean of the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois. The conversation covers how Gies scaled experiential learning from a selective offering into a curricular requirement across every program, and what it cost on the staffing, funding, and governance side to make it hold. Elliott is starting her third year as dean in her twenty-fourth year at Gies, where the land-grant mission is expressed through a purpose statement committing the college to expanding access to business education. Her operational focus is on what accessibility means after enrollment: whether the live client projects, consulting engagements, and immersions inside a degree are reachable by a large share of learners rather than a selected few. This conversation is especially relevant for presidents, boards, provosts, and deans evaluating whether to scale experiential learning beyond pilot programs and selective cohorts. Topics Covered Redefining accessibility to include the experiences inside the degree, not just admission and price How Gies sources 300 to 400 live client projects a year to place every junior on a team Why undergraduate employer projects are free, and how project sourcing functions as the recruiting pipeline The staffing model: a dedicated experiential learning office paired with internal learning designers Embedding experiential capstones inside online graduate programs serving roughly 7,000 students Investing in faculty AI capability for 18 months before changing the curriculum The iMBA governance precedent that made current innovation move quickly Real-World Examples Discussed Business 301, Business in Action, a junior-year course placing every student on a live client project, and Business 401, Crafting Your Purpose, sending seniors into their local and home communities Illinois Business Consulting, in its thirtieth year, and the Disruption Lab, which pairs Gies and Grainger College of Engineering students on technology problems sourced from inside the college International immersions redesigned into domestic and then virtual formats, including a virtual immersion with a partner institution in Japan Replacing programming-language modules in the undergraduate core with modules on using AI to program, and launching the MSBAi with a first cohort of 30 Students correcting their assumptions about John Deere and Caterpillar by working the companies' actual problems Three Key Takeaways for Higher Education Leadership Mission and purpose alignment only matters when it functions as a decision rule for resource allocation and program design. Learner-centric requires faculty first, because faculty deliver the experience. Invest in capability before expecting delivery. Leading authentically is what mobilizes people past what an org chart can compel, and disruption is where access expands if someone goes after it. Read the transcript: Read the transcript: https://changinghighered.com/scale-experiential-learning-to-every-student/ #ExperientialLearning #HigherEducation #HigherEducationPodcast

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  Episode #328

  Workforce Readiness: Why Higher Ed Struggles to Use Employer Support

  Sep 8, 202641 min

  Workforce readiness is usually framed as a funding and program-design problem. In some states and at some institutions, the funding and the employer willingness already exist, and what is missing is a structure on the institution's side that can take the offer and act on it. In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast , Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Brad Griffith , president of Buckeye Innovation , a central Ohio technology firm building custom software for nonprofits, local governments, and growing organizations. The conversation covers where the public-private partnership between employers and institutions breaks down, and what leaders can change on their own side of it. Griffith serves on a curriculum advisory committee at Central Ohio Technical College, hires apprentices through Columbus State Community College's IT Flexible Apprenticeship program, and ran six state-reimbursed interns this past summer. He guest lectures in a justice tech program at Ohio State and has helped commercialize university-developed technology, including a job-matching tool that came out of the OSU Wexner Medical Center. This conversation is especially relevant for presidents, boards, provosts, deans, and career services leaders evaluating whether their institution can absorb employer, donor, and state investment in experiential learning at the speed those partners operate. Topics Covered State wage reimbursement programs for employers who host interns, and how the Ohio application and reimbursement process works in practice Donor-funded and institution-funded internship placements at outside employers Internal curriculum approval sequencing versus accreditor review as the source of curricular delay Writing course descriptions broadly enough that faculty can change technologies without reopening formal approval How curriculum advisory committees give two-year and technical colleges a structured way to bring in employer input Career fair pricing and participation structures that can screen out smaller local employers The start-to-finish work cycle, from conceptualizing a problem through launch and post-launch support Why commercializing university research calls for a different capability than developing it Real-World Examples Discussed VocFit, a job-matching tool for individuals with developmental disabilities developed at the OSU Wexner Medical Center, moved from mailed paper surveys and manual spreadsheet matching to deployed software now demonstrated in Italy and partnered with Cincinnati Children's Hospital and Colorado State University A University of Richmond student whose internship at an Ohio company was funded by his own institution An Ohio State justice tech program pairing engineering with the Moritz College of Law, where four student project teams on four technology stacks raised a real long-term support constraint Central Ohio Technical College's community advisory committee, which reviews courses and syllabi and names the skills employers see missing in graduates Apprenticeships through Columbus State Community College serving working adults changing careers, some with employer-funded certificates and stipends Three Key Takeaways for Higher Education Leadership Invite businesses in and build structures where outside perspectives are represented, including advisory boards and standing invitations for employers to participate. Make sure students graduate with real project work they can show, on a publicly visible portfolio rather than a transcript reference to coursework. Embrace AI while teaching its limits alongside its capabilities, so graduates can judge where it belongs, where it does not, and how to use it as a thought partner. Read the transcript: https://changinghighered.com/employer-engagement-in-higher-education/ #WorkforceReadiness #HigherEducation #PublicPrivatePartnership #ChangingHigherEdPodcast

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  Episode #327

  Diversifying Revenue Without Diluting Mission: Inside Rollins College's Innovation Triangle

  Sep 1, 202632 min

  Private colleges under enrollment pressure get told to diversify revenue. The venture that follows usually either fails to earn or drags the institution away from the academic identity families were paying for. In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast , Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Dr. Brooke Barnett, President of Rollins College . The conversation covers how a tuition-dependent private structures a diversified budget model without compromising the curriculum that gives its degree value. Barnett walks through the Innovation Triangle, a three-part portfolio Rollins spent more than a decade and $200 million building. The parts run on deliberately different economics: a boutique inn whose net proceeds fund student scholarships, an art museum relocating into the Winter Park community that charges no admission and is designed to draw no institutional funds, and the Rick Goings Institute, a cross-sector executive education venture built around AI readiness informed by the liberal arts. She separates declining willingness to pay among full-pay families from rising ability-to-pay pressure driven by demographic shift, and explains why the instruments that address them are not interchangeable. She also details how Rollins applies its own pedagogical method to institutional AI decisions, refusing technophilia and technophobia as the same kind of failure. This conversation is especially relevant for presidents, boards, provosts, and enrollment executives evaluating whether to launch non-tuition revenue ventures and how to structure them so they reinforce rather than dilute institutional identity. Topics Covered Separating willingness to pay from ability to pay, and why each requires a different instrument The Innovation Triangle and why only two of its three assets are expected to generate revenue How the Alfond Inn functions as a hotel, a rotating contemporary art collection, and a scholarship engine at once Positioning executive education as an extension of the curriculum rather than an unrelated business line Why 80 years of adult learning and graduate business capacity cannot be replicated inside a single budget cycle The Gateway and the pragmatic liberal arts tradition traced to John Dewey's 1931 conference at Rollins Applying liberal arts inquiry to institutional AI decisions, and protecting the cognitive struggle that produces learning Real-World Examples Discussed The Alfond Inn, a boutique hotel and living art museum with quarterly collection rotations, which had directed $10.8 million to the Alfond Scholars program as of early 2026 The Rollins Museum of Art, relocating off campus with donor and tourist tax support, free to the public and explicitly not a revenue generator The Rick Goings Institute, launching cross-sector executive programming this fall on a $10 million seed commitment Accelerated master's pathways including the Rollins MBA, serving a market seeking two degrees in a compressed timeline Incoming undergraduates serving with roughly 40 central Florida organizations before attending their first class A College of Liberal Arts AI certificate and a graduate business faculty summer spent rebuilding curriculum around AI Three Key Takeaways for Higher Education Leadership Concentrate capacity, attention, and financial resources on the students being served and the colleagues serving them. Identify the institutional assets that are genuinely distinctive, then protect and cultivate them rather than diluting them in pursuit of enrollment. Make the financial math work to support the aspirations. Doing more with less does not work; doing less with less requires the discipline to choose. Read the transcript: https://changinghighered.com/tuition-dependent-college-non-tuition-revenue-academic-mission/ #HigherEducation #HigherEdLeadership #ChangingHigherEdPodcast

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  Episode #326

  Adult Learners: Redesign, Don't Just Recruit

  Aug 25, 202636 min

  Institutions recruiting adult learners are inserting them into schedules, deadline policies, and course structures designed for 19-year-olds, then treating the resulting attrition as a student problem. The barriers doing the damage are recent design decisions, not fixed features of higher education, and several of them cost almost nothing to remove. In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast , Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Dr. Evan Kropp , executive director of distance education at the University of Florida's College of Journalism and Communications. The conversation covers what has to change structurally when adult learners stop being an enrollment contingency and become a population the institution designs for. Kropp oversees UF CJC Online and its Master of Arts in Mass Communication, a 36-credit online degree enrolling roughly 650 students. His operational focus areas include course design standardization, cost transparency, transfer and prior learning credit, and the translation of academic learning outcomes into professional language students can use. This conversation is especially relevant for presidents, boards, provosts, and enrollment executives evaluating whether to build degree completion and adult learner pathways at their institutions. Topics Covered Why the "I'm too old for a classroom" objection comes from 25-year-olds as often as from 65-year-olds, and what that means for online positioning How course learning outcomes can be reissued to students as resume language at the end of every course What lifelong learning costs an institution that treats it as an operating commitment rather than a slogan Why transfer and prior learning credit decisions are traditionally financial decisions, and what a competitive response time looks like The recurring time cost created when faculty design online courses independently Why deadline policies written to teach 19-year-olds accountability misfire on working adults How to build an AI curriculum by asking employers where they are deliberately not using AI Real-World Examples Discussed UF CJC Online converts course learning outcomes into resume bullet points, producing 100 to 120 curated items across the 12-course Master of Arts in Mass Communication sequence Master Access, which lets graduates of that degree audit unlimited courses from an 80-course catalog for $500 per year Standardized navigation across every online course in the program, eliminating the semester-start relearning cost created by 40 faculty designing independently Franklin University's transfer database of roughly 1,800 institutions, returning a transfer decision in five minutes instead of a week A rebuilt program financial page showing cost per class and cost by credit load for students paying as they go Three Key Takeaways for Higher Education Leadership Adult learners cannot serve as an enrollment patch for demographic decline. An institution that wants them has to redesign schedules, advising, onboarding, and technology support rather than recruiting into the existing structure. The value proposition has to be explicit at the course level, connecting the program to the credential, the specific skills, and the student's professional aspirations, rather than leaving that chain implied across a degree. Insufficient support is a primary reason adults quit the first time. Advising, financial aid, career services, technology support, and faculty training all need to be reconsidered for this population rather than inherited from the traditional model. Read the transcript: https://changinghighered.com/redesign-an-institution-for-adult-learners/ #HigherEducation #AdultLearners #DegreeCompletion

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  Episode #325

  Reputation, Revenue, and the Cost of Silence in Higher Ed Communication

  Aug 18, 202639 min

  Most institutions in a crisis don't believe they're in one. The word calls up a scandal with a camera crew outside, and nothing on this week's agenda looks like that, so the answer is often no. In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast , Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Evan Nierman , founder and CEO of Red Banyan, a strategic communications firm built around high-stakes rapid response. The conversation covers why a crisis is any circumstance with the potential to negatively impact reputation and/or revenue , and what that definition changes for colleges and universities. Nierman explains why the old instinct to stay quiet and avoid giving oxygen to a fire now cedes the battleground to whoever is willing to characterize your institution, how most colleges can pinpoint their likeliest crises well before one arrives, and why the day-to-day spokesperson should usually be a trained communications professional rather than the president. This conversation is especially relevant for presidents, boards, provosts, and communications leaders deciding whether to respond publicly, and when. Topics Covered The broader definition of a crisis and why institutions may not recognize one before it escalates How hyper-connectedness, self-selected news, and hyper-partisanship changed the response calculus When to respond publicly instead of leaving well enough alone Why the bulk of crisis work happens before the crisis Who belongs on the core crisis response team, and when to bring in outside expertise Why the day-to-day spokesperson should usually be a trained communications professional Why Nierman says PR is dead, and what powering reputation means in its place Guilt by association, due process, and how colleges can center their institutional values Why institutions should teach students and faculty to use AI effectively instead of treating it primarily as a cheating problem Examples and Emerging Risks Discussed College presidents dragged before Congress over antisemitism on campus A George Washington University commencement speech, and the dean's response to it Colleges taking fire because donors' names surfaced in the Epstein files Deepfake cases where recordings exist of conduct that never happened Public opposition to AI data center construction Three Key Takeaways for Higher Education Leadership Reputation is the institution's single most valuable asset; protect it, preserve it, and invest in powering it The time to deal with a crisis is before you have one, with a detailed plan, media-trained people, and set procedures When it comes, be strategic and be speedy, even though that runs against the pace academia normally moves Read the full episode summary and transcript: https://changinghighered.com/higher-ed-crisis-communications/ #CrisisCommunications #HigherEducation #HigherEducationPodcast

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