What Will New Leaders Look Like?

So let’s set some realistic expectations for new leaders.  They must be prepared for a world where education is not a viewed solely as a public good, but also as a commodity, driven by a market-based ideology.  The new leader must be prepared for a world of heavy regulation and competition.   This will be a world where students are customers, but the business is different.  It will be a world where, having democratized education, we now find that the current model may in fact be disenfranchising students as institutions struggle to compete and even to exist.

Here’s the job description:  Must be able to blend business and academia into a model that looks and performs like a viable, sustainable business organization while supporting institutional and personal missions; can organize institutions to achieve the necessary functions of higher education; can align academics with this new function; can rethink the liberal arts in light of this function; can ensure quality, lower costs, and flexibility; can lead the democratization of education through technology, including customer service adapted to higher education,  much more self service, and outsourcing and partnering as needed; can develop an integrated partnership with the workplace; can unbundle the campus;  and can understand through data analysis what drives and inhibits student success . 

Further, new leadership will have to be able to act upon what we know about learners:  that they are sophisticated consumers, just not of education yet; they thrive on constant distraction; they don’t expect to have to know everything—just to be able to find information when they need it; and they don’t care about physical vs. virtual modalities—it’s all the same for them.

Leaders will be those who are able to shift the student-faculty experience to create a data-driven, individualized instruction model; to develop new academic environments; to develop new content models; to think in platforms that are smart, adaptive and student-centered. These platforms must provide networks of like students, of relevant faculty, and social networks.


New leaders will understand the cognitive DNA of students.  They will understand that content must be powered by metrics linked to learning style, life goals, and academic interests.  They will recognize strengths and weaknesses and be able to respond.  For example, they must eliminate the outdated notion of remediation and replace it with just in time skills—the delivery of knowledge and skills where and when they are needed.  Just like the rest of society.

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