Beyond the Ivory Tower
Beyond the Ivory Tower explores what higher education can learn from the wider world. Each episode examines how other industries solve complex challenges and what those ideas might mean for the future of colleges and universities.
Episodes
8 episodes
The Strategic Plan Problem
Your strategic plan might be polished, inspiring, and endorsed by everyone, and still be doing almost nothing. We start with a simple challenge: if most colleges list the same priorities, can any of them honestly call that strategy? From studen...
What The NFL And Women’s Sports Can Teach Higher Education About Growth
The most dangerous assumption in higher education right now is that demand is gone. A better question is whether demand is hidden, suppressed by friction, and made invisible by how we package, explain, and deliver learning.We pull leade...
The Talent War Universities Don’t Realize They’re In
A 19-year-old with a camera and a comment section can shape how students think about money, careers, and even identity faster than a world-class faculty. That idea sounds outrageous until you look at where Gen Z actually goes for guidance: TikT...
Does Higher Ed Have to Build New Things to Grow?
Higher ed growth shouldn’t feel like digging a brand-new well every time we want to expand, yet that’s exactly how many colleges and universities operate: launch another program, rebuild another process, stand up another mini-system, and hope t...
What If Higher Ed Learned Before It Committed?
Universities aren’t slow because people inside them don’t care. They’re slow because they’re built to protect expertise, quality, and legitimate process, and that operating design makes fast change unusually hard. I walk through Henry Mintzberg...
What Higher Ed Leaders Can Learn From the Trust Collapse
Trust in institutions hasn’t just declined.It has collapsed.In this episode of Beyond the Ivory Tower, I explore what that collapse actually means for higher education and why most institutions are responding to it in the...