Higher education's track record with technology change is uneven for a reason, and the reason is rarely the technology. It is whether leadership treats change management as a discipline that runs from planning through sustainment, or as a rollout activity bolted on at the end.

In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast, Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Mike Toguchi, Chief Strategy Officer at Tectonic, about why technology projects in higher education succeed or fail on the strength of leadership behavior rather than tooling.

Drawing on 23 years working with universities, nonprofits, and foundations, including Stanford and UC Davis, Toguchi explains how the institutions producing durable digital transformation engineer trust, governance, and adoption into the project from day one. He shares why faculty resistance is empirically calibrated rather than culturally driven, why pilots should be sized for honest failure rather than confirmation of decisions already made, and why boards need to fund and govern transformation as an operating model rather than a discrete project. Throughout the conversation, McNaughton draws on his own consulting experience to surface common failure patterns, including the double-process trap that destroys trust by leaving legacy systems running alongside new ones.

This conversation is especially relevant for presidents, board members, CIOs, and senior leaders responsible for digital initiatives that span multiple departments and require sustained adoption across faculty, staff, and student-facing operations.

Topics Covered:

• Why change management belongs in the planning phase, not at rollout

• The "trust as infrastructure" framework and how to design for it

• Scalability versus departmental fiefdoms in institutional technology systems

• Pilot design that allows departments to surface real problems and report honestly

• The double-process trap and the discipline of hard end-of-life dates for legacy systems

• How board governance choices shape every downstream failure pattern

• Reframing technology ROI as reclaimed staff capacity in a non-expansionary funding environment

Real-World Examples Discussed:

• UC Davis disability center work that clarified workflow, saved staff time, increased compliance confidence, and produced documentation that gave leadership actionable data

• A multi-campus STEM admissions program that preserved each campus's unique workflow while keeping the underlying data consistent for funders and program leadership

• Two connected Stanford departments with shared faculty and joint ventures that consolidated systems and reduced the tool burden faculty were carrying

• Faculty teaching across multiple sections who routinely navigate 10 to 15 different tools as a baseline workload

Three Key Takeaways for Leadership:

1. Move change management to the front of the project lifecycle. The decisions that determine adoption are made during planning, not during launch communications.

2. Treat digital transformation as an operating model, not a project. Fund phase two before phase one ships and build governance reviews into the board's normal cadence.

3. Make trust the explicit design input. Faculty resistance is calibrated to past experience, and the way to change it is to give faculty a structural role in shaping the project, deliver visible reductions in their daily burden, and retire the legacy systems on a date everyone knows.

This episode offers a practical framework for institutional leaders who want their next digital initiative to deliver durable adoption rather than another fragmented rollout that quietly settles into legacy mode.

Read the transcript: https://changinghighered.com/higher-ed-change-management-tech-projects-digital-transformation/

#ChangeManagement #DigitalTransformation #HigherEducation #HigherEducationPodcast #ChangingHigherEdPodcast

Most institutions offer experiential learning. Few deliver it. The gap between the claim and the outcome is structural, and closing it requires more than a better course design.

In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast, Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Chris Crittenden, founder of Sandbox, a for-credit startup incubator operating at eight universities, about what it actually takes to produce the depth of learning that institutions advertise but rarely achieve.

Drawing on his experience founding and selling a technology company to Walmart, leading the entrepreneur center at Brigham Young University, and building Sandbox across multiple institutions, Crittenden explains how credit consolidation, real stakes, and interdisciplinary structure create the conditions for genuine learning. He also addresses how an AI-powered oral examination system solves the assessment problem that has long undermined open-ended experiential programs, and how institutions can build a program like Sandbox without triggering a substantive accreditation review.

This conversation is especially relevant for presidents, provosts, and academic leaders looking to close the gap between what their experiential learning programs claim to deliver and what they actually produce.

Topics Covered:

• Why most experiential learning is too shallow to produce genuine workforce capability

• How credit consolidation creates the structural conditions for deep learning

• The role of real stakes in developing professional skills that assignment deadlines cannot

• How to build an interdisciplinary program from existing approved coursework without a curriculum overhaul

• Why conventional milestone-based assessment undermines open-ended experiential learning, and what Sandbox does instead

• How to design a program that stays below the threshold for a substantive accreditation review

Real-World Examples Discussed:

• 18 Sandbox companies have received venture backing with a combined valuation exceeding $205 million

• Sandbox graduates who do not start companies consistently rank among the most competitive entry-level technology hires in their regional ecosystems

• The program has been replicated at eight universities by mapping to existing approved coursework, without triggering a substantive accreditation review at any institution

Key Takeaway for Leadership:

Universities already have the resources to build deep experiential learning programs. What is consistently absent is the leadership willing to pull them together: identifying faculty who want to work at the cutting edge, building the cross-departmental coalitions those faculty cannot form on their own, and absorbing the coordination costs personally. No new budget line required. What it takes is a leader willing to make the case, department by department, and follow through.

This episode gives institutional leaders a practical model for building deep experiential learning programs within the structural and accreditation constraints most institutions already face.

Read the transcript: https://changinghighered.com/build-workforce-readiness-through-startup-experience/

#HigherEducation #HigherEducationPodcast #WorkforceDevelopment #StudentSuccess

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The One Big Beautiful Bill Act is changing higher education in ways many institutions still have not fully accounted for. Title IV loan limits change on July 1, 2026. Accreditation reform is next. Together, those developments are forcing institutions to confront graduate funding pressure, cost structure, program design, student demand, and the pace of institutional change.

In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast, Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Dr. Andy Vaughn, President and CEO of Alliant International University and one of three higher education representatives on the 2025 Negotiated Rulemaking RISE Committee, about how OB3 is changing higher education and what institutions need to do now to keep up. In part 2, the focus shifts from federal policy itself to the larger institutional consequences of those changes and the kind of leadership response they now require.

Drawing on his experience in higher education operations, institutional leadership, marketing, and negotiated rulemaking, Vaughn explains why graduate education faces the greatest immediate disruption under the new law, why private lending will not solve every student access problem, and why accreditation reform must be part of any serious affordability discussion. He also outlines Alliant's Project Evolve, a multi-part strategy designed to address funding access, innovation, differentiation, growth, and long-term sustainability.

This episode is especially relevant for presidents, boards, cabinet leaders, enrollment leaders, and anyone responsible for strategic planning in a period when higher education can no longer afford to move slowly while the environment changes around it.

Some of the Topics Covered:

• How the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is reshaping higher education beyond a typical policy cycle
• Why graduate and professional programs face the greatest immediate pressure
• What tighter loan limits mean for student access and private lending
• Why accreditation reform matters to cost, innovation, and program design
• How student expectations and employer demand are shifting at the same time as federal policy
• Why higher education's resistance to change has become a strategic liability
• How Project Evolve is positioning Alliant to respond to permanent structural change

Real-World Examples Discussed

• Alliant's modeling of how many graduate students may not qualify for private loan replacement options
• The institution's effort to expand private loan access while exploring additional funding approaches
• The need for institutions, accreditors, and the Department to work together if graduate education costs are going to come down
• New campus investments, including Alliant's Sacramento campus and Phoenix nursing campus
• The long-term wind-down of three small branch campuses that no longer fit the future model
• Alliant's decision to enter this period of uncertainty with zero debt and greater room to invest strategically

Three Key Takeaways for Higher Education Leadership

1. These changes are permanent. If institutions think a last-minute Hail Mary is coming, it is not. The structural federal changes Congress enacted and the Department responded to are here to stay. Do not underestimate your planning process.
2. It is late, but it is not too late. Institutions that have not started changing to prepare for federal shifts, changing demand, and what the next generation of students wants can still begin now and make meaningful change.
3. Plans matter, but execution matters more. Higher education has a habit of creating attractive strategic plans that sit on a shelf. Goals need to be measurable, and one person needs to own each goal so there is clear accountability and regular follow-up.

This episode provides a practical look at how one university leader is preparing for permanent federal change while also addressing the deeper market and operational pressures reshaping higher education. For institutions that need to move from policy awareness to institutional action, this is a useful framework for what that work can look like.

Read the article: https://changinghighered.com/2026-title-iv-changes-how-higher-education-can-adapt-obbba/

#HigherEducation #HigherEducationPodcast #GraduateEducation #StrategicPlanning #EnrollmentStrategy

Higher education has spent years hearing that affordability, student debt, and public skepticism are putting pressure on colleges and universities. What is different now is that those pressures are shaping federal action in ways that will directly affect Title IV funding, graduate program financing, accreditation reform, and institutional decision-making before July 1, 2026.

In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast, Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Dr. Andy Vaughn, President and CEO of Alliant University and one of three higher education representatives on the 2025 Negotiated Rulemaking RISE Committee, about what the latest Neg Reg signals for colleges and universities and why institutions that have not started preparing are already behind.

Drawing on Vaughn's firsthand experience in federal rulemaking and Dr. McNaughton's strategic perspective on higher education leadership, this conversation examines why this round of Neg Reg is different from prior cycles, why the One Big Beautiful Bill changed the operating landscape, and why the next major pressure point is likely to be accreditation reform tied to cost and value. The discussion also explores what these changes mean for graduate programs, why institutions need to involve faculty early in redesign decisions, and how leaders should be thinking now about financing, delivery costs, and institutional relevance in a rapidly changing environment.

This conversation is especially relevant for presidents, provosts, CFOs, trustees, graduate enrollment leaders, and others responsible for institutional planning, financial sustainability, and academic strategy in a time of federal change.

Topics Covered:

• Why this Neg Reg is different from prior negotiated rulemaking cycles
• How the One Big Beautiful Bill changed the Title IV and regulatory landscape
• Why student debt is the political driver, but cost of delivery is the deeper issue
• Why the accreditation Neg Reg is likely to focus on cost, value, and specialty accreditors
• How graduate and professional programs may be affected by financing gaps
• Why institutions should be modeling risk and redesigning programs before July 2026
• Why faculty and program leaders need to be involved early in institutional response
• How AI is shifting from a compliance concern to a program quality and workforce issue

Real-World Examples Discussed

• How Alliant began tracking Title IV changes before the bill passed and started preparing early
• Why some graduate programs may face private lending gaps with no strong historical baseline
• Examples of specialty accreditor requirements that can lock in delivery costs, including supervision expectations, program length, and student-to-faculty ratios
• The institutional challenge of lowering tuition when accreditation structures still drive high-cost delivery
• Why some institutions are still treating AI primarily as a containment issue instead of a graduate-readiness issue

Three Key Takeaways for Higher Education Leadership

1. Institutions should treat these federal changes as structural, not temporary, and plan accordingly.
2. The real issue is not just tuition pricing. It is the cost of delivering programs under current academic and accreditation structures.
3. Colleges and universities that start redesigning early, especially with faculty involved, will have more options than those that wait for the pressure to become financial damage.

Read the transcript: https://changinghighered.com/2026-neg-reg-and-title-iv-changes-in-higher-education/

#HigherEducation #HigherEducationPodcast #NegReg

New data from Lumina Foundation and Gallup's Aligning Education and Work: What Employers Say Higher Education Must Deliver shows that employers still value college degrees — but have serious concerns about whether graduates are ready to use them.

In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast, Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Dr. Courtney Brown, Vice President of Impact and Planning and Chief Data and Research Officer at Lumina Foundation, about what 2,000 employers told Gallup about higher education, why public confidence in colleges has collapsed from 60% to one-third of Americans in a decade, and what institutional leaders must do about it.

Brown also discusses Lumina's new national goal: 75% of Americans in the labor force holding a credential of economic value by 2040, up from a current baseline of 43%.

Topics Covered:

• What the new employer data shows about degree value, skills readiness, and preparation gaps
• Why public confidence collapsed and which concern ranks first, second, and third among those losing faith
• Why current students report dramatically different experiences than the general public perceives
• The 43 million stopped-out Americans and why the system failed them
• Why today's students are not a nontraditional population to accommodate around the margins
• What Lumina's new credentials-of-value framework measures and why attainment without economic value is no longer sufficient

Three Key Takeaways for Leadership:

1. Stop playing defense and lead with evidence. Transparency about outcomes builds credibility. Defensive posturing does not.
2. Treat the skills gap as a question, not a verdict. Investigate what specific skills are missing before restructuring curriculum.
3. Redesign for the students who are enrolling, not the ones who were. Flexibility, mental health support, and advising connected to career outcomes are completion infrastructure, not amenities.

Read the transcript: https://changinghighered.com/2026-lumina-gallup-report-aligning-education-and-work/

#HigherEducation #WorkforceReadiness #LuminaFoundation #HigherEdStrategy #ChangingHigherEdPodcast

AI in higher education is no longer just a technology issue. The larger question is whether colleges and universities will redesign learning so students develop judgment, critical thinking, and decision-making skills in a world where AI can already generate summaries, essays, and plausible answers on demand.

In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast, Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with France Hoang, Founder and CEO of BoodleBox, about how higher education leaders can think more clearly and more strategically about AI. Hoang explains why AI should be used to augment human capability rather than replace it, and why educators matter even more in a world where AI can get students only part of the way.

Drawing on examples from the classroom and across campus operations, Hoang outlines how colleges can move from AI independent to AI enabled and eventually toward AI native models of learning and work. He also explains why colleges need to redesign assignments, rethink pedagogy, and focus more intentionally on the development of domain expertise, reflection, and higher-order thinking.

This episode is especially relevant for presidents, provosts, boards, CIOs, and academic leaders who need to make decisions about teaching, student support, workforce preparation, and institutional implementation in an AI-enabled environment.

Topics Covered

• Why AI is forcing higher education to rethink what students should learn when AI can already do much of the visible academic work
• Why AI often produces a B-minus answer and why domain expertise still matters
• How the loss of routine entry-level work may weaken the apprenticeship path for graduates
• Why colleges need to redesign assignments around judgment, application, and reflection
• How faculty can use simulations, case studies, and human-AI collaboration in the classroom
• What AI independent, AI enabled, and AI native mean for institutional strategy
• How AI can support advising, counseling, and career services without replacing human connection
• Why AI adoption is as much a training, culture, and change-management issue as it is a technology issue

Real-World Examples Discussed

• A marketing course at Point Loma where students build an AI assistant from their own class notes and use it in case studies and simulations
• A writing program at Pikes Peak State College where students compare their own writing with AI-generated writing and reflect on the differences
• A reimagined history assignment that uses role-based simulation instead of a traditional reading-and-essay model
• Institutional examples that show how colleges can move toward more applied, AI-enabled, and AI-native learning environments

Three Key Takeaways for Higher Education Leaders

1. Leaders need to know where their institution currently sits on the AI continuum, from AI independent to AI enabled to AI native.
2. AI adoption is as much a training and human resource issue as it is a technology issue, so institutions need to invest in people as much as platforms.
3. A culture of innovation, experimentation, and collaborative implementation will outperform a purely top-down rollout.

This episode offers a practical framework for higher education leaders who want to move beyond AI policy and think more seriously about how learning, assessment, student support, and institutional strategy need to change when AI can already do much of the lower-level work.

Read the transcript: https://changinghighered.com/ai-in-higher-education-teaching-human-judgement/

#HigherEducation #ArtificialIntelligence #HigherEducationPodcast

Jeff Dinski helped start Cold Pizza at ESPN, the morning show that eventually became First Take. On a daily show, ratings are everything. You either produce something people want to watch, or you do not last. He carried that discipline into edtech, and it is the lens through which he looks at higher education: are you really giving students what they need, or are you producing what is convenient for you?

In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast, Dr. Drumm McNaughton and Jeff Dinski, Chief Strategy and Corporate Development Officer at Ellucian, the largest edtech company in the world serving roughly half of all U.S. colleges and universities, dig into the structural forces behind higher education's confidence crisis, what Workforce Pell Grants will actually change, and what institutional strategy has to look like from here.

This conversation is especially relevant for presidents and boards who want a clear-eyed, outside-in read on what students are demanding, where the federal policy environment is heading, and which institutions are best positioned to adapt.

Topics Covered:

• Why the confidence crisis has bipartisan roots and why neither political party has done higher education any favors

• Why student pathways are becoming individualized and what that means for program design and delivery

• Real examples of institutions where undergraduates do actual corporate work, not fetch-coffee internships, as part of their degree programs

• What Workforce Pell Grants will fund for the first time and which institutions are best positioned to benefit

• Why the DBA vs. research PhD distinction matters for building workforce-aligned faculty pipelines

• The Silicon Valley master's program model: tenured faculty for foundational content, industry adjuncts for advanced applied coursework

• Why smaller private institutions face the steepest challenges and what community colleges are doing right

• Two strategic tenets every president and board should act on now

Real-World Examples Discussed:

• Programs where freshmen through seniors do real corporate job functions as part of their degree requirements

• A Silicon Valley master's program that deliberately splits teaching between tenured faculty and cutting-edge industry practitioners

• Business schools' long-standing use of practitioners alongside academics as a model the broader curriculum can adopt

• Ellucian's Journey platform, built to help institutions launch and scale non-degree and continuing education programs

Three Key Takeaways for Leadership:

1. Experiment with non-degree courses now. Workforce Pell Grants will fund new program types at scale and institutions with existing capacity will be first to benefit.

2. Find workforce partners you trust. Aligning curriculum with employer needs requires real relationships with real hiring managers, not assumptions about market demand.

3. Create conditions for faculty innovation. The early adopters already exist at most institutions. Find them, support them, and let their demonstrated impact bring others along.

This episode offers a practical, outside-in perspective on the structural choices facing higher education and a concrete framework for how institutions can respond before circumstances force their hand.

Read the transcript: https://changinghighered.com/higher-education-disruption-workforce-pell-student-as-consumer/

#StudentSuccess #HigherEducation #HigherEducationPodcast #WorkforceDevelopment #EdTech

Accreditation is often treated as a compliance cycle, but SACSCOC is signaling a faster-moving, more transparent operating posture that will affect how institutions plan change, document quality, and explain outcomes to the public.

In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast, Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Dr. Stephen L. Pruitt, President of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC), about substantive change reforms, standards revision planning, outcomes transparency, and what institutional leaders should be watching right now.

Topics Covered

• Substantive change reforms approved in December, including eliminating more than half of existing categories, shifting others to presidential review, and reducing approval times to as little as one week

• Why SACSCOC is emphasizing student benefit as a decision lens for institutional change

• The vice president liaison model and how it supports institutional navigation of SACSCOC processes

• The planned three-member rapid response team concept and when it may be used

• Law or Lore and why written requirements versus institutional assumptions can create unnecessary friction

• Standards revision planning, including public drafts and how feedback is incorporated

• The dynamic public-facing dashboard planned for spring and what it may make more visible

• Torch Awards and how outcomes signals relate to public trust and accountability

• Workforce alignment, affordability pressure, and the pathways from high school through postsecondary to careers

• Credit transfer as a public trust issue and why it is often perceived as a money grab

• Serving working adults as a design requirement, not an add-on

Real-World Examples Discussed

• Georgia film-industry growth and the need to stand up new majors and degrees quickly

• Gwinnett Tech's advising approach that helps students sequence coursework to earn certificates along the way

• Workforce shifts such as autonomous trucking pilots and how programs could expand beyond a single credential to broader skills

Three Key Takeaways for Higher Ed Leadership

1. Faster change pathways increase the value of disciplined internal governance and clean documentation of readiness.

2. Student benefit and measurable outcomes are becoming a more visible way institutions will need to justify change and demonstrate quality.

3. Transparency tools and outcomes signaling will influence how stakeholders judge institutional credibility, affordability, and workforce relevance.

Read the transcript https://changinghighered.com/sacscoc-accreditation-substantive-change-standards-2026/

#Accreditation #SACSCOC #HigherEducation #HigherEducationPodcast

Higher education's public trust problem is not something presidents can fix with better messaging. In this conversation, AAC&U President Dr. Lynn Pasquerella describes a structural squeeze on institutional independence that shows up as academic freedom fights, curriculum mandates, and growing skepticism about higher education's value.

In episode 300 of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast, Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Dr. Pasquerella about why liberal education is often misunderstood, why academic freedom is inseparable from institutional autonomy, and why presidents and boards need to treat this moment as a governance and mission issue, not a temporary political cycle.

Pasquerella explains how these pressures tend to escalate incrementally, why institutions lost control of the public narrative, and what it takes to rebuild credibility through community anchoring, transparency, and a renewed public-good case for higher education.

This conversation is especially relevant for institutional leaders navigating legislative interference, polarized stakeholder environments, and the operational consequences of eroding trust.

Topics Discussed

• Why academic freedom and institutional autonomy erode incrementally
• What Supreme Court precedent signals about academic freedom and university self-governance
• Why liberal education is about intellectual freedom, not partisan ideology
• How higher education lost the public narrative and why marketing is not the solution
• Moral distress and moral injury in the presidency under coercive mandates
• Belonging uncertainty, cognitive bandwidth, and the institutional impact of student wellbeing
• Community anchoring as the practical path to rebuilding trust
• How institutions can reimagine learning without abandoning rigor

Real-World Examples Discussed

• Legislative interference that dictates curriculum and constrains shared governance.
• The closure of a college as a community-level loss, not only an institutional event.
• How belonging signals show up later as persistence, completion, and learning outcomes.
• Why transparency about tradeoffs affects institutional credibility
• How community advisory input can keep programs aligned with civic and workforce needs.

Three Key Takeaways for University Presidents and Boards

1. Treat academic freedom and institutional independence as a board-level governance priority, because erosion is gradual and easy to normalize.
2. Rebuild trust through consistent community presence and usefulness, not positioning statements.
3. Address belonging and wellbeing as institutional effectiveness variables, because belonging uncertainty reduces cognitive bandwidth and performance.

Read the transcript and the accompanying post: https://changinghighered.com/moral-distress-belonging-presidential-leadership-in-higher-ed/

#HigherEducation #HigherEducationPodcast #AcademicFreedom #PublicTrust #LiberalEducation

Free speech on campus is not an abstract constitutional issue—it's a governance challenge for presidents and boards.

In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast, Dr. Drumm McNaughton is joined by Dr. Sean Stevens, Chief Research Advisor at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), to examine the current state of campus free speech and what institutional leaders must do to protect open inquiry under increasing political and social pressure.

Drawing on FIRE's national research and campus speech databases, Stevens outlines the sharp rise in government-involved attempts to sanction speech, the growing prevalence of self-censorship among faculty and students, and the structural pressures reshaping intellectual life on U.S. campuses.

The conversation moves beyond partisan framing and focuses on leadership responsibility: preserving disciplined pluralism, reinforcing institutional neutrality, and ensuring that students graduate prepared to engage competing ideas with rigor and intellectual humility.

Some of the key topics covered in this episode include:

• The increase in campus speech sanction attempts involving government actors
• Faculty and student self-censorship trends and what the data reveals
• Why exposure to competing perspectives is an educational obligation
• Institutional neutrality as protection for viewpoint diversity
• The distinction between protected speech and prudent speech in the social media era
• Practical steps presidents and boards can take to strengthen expressive rights policies

Three Takeaways for University Presidents and Boards:

1. Defend expressive rights consistently—even when doing so is politically uncomfortable. Leadership credibility depends on principled application.
2. Recognize that sustained political and social pressure can narrow intellectual culture—and counter that contraction intentionally.
3. Preserve disciplined pluralism as a core academic value. Students must be able to hear, analyze, and argue competing perspectives without fear.

This episode provides a strategic lens for higher education leaders navigating campus speech controversies while protecting the fundamental mission of scholarship and inquiry.

Listen now or read the transcript: https://changinghighered.com/free-speech-in-higher-education-fire-on-institutional-integrity-and-mission/

#HigherEducation #FreeSpeech #CampusLeadership #AcademicFreedom #BoardGovernance #ChangingHigherEdPodcast