Higher Education Can't Rebuild the Past

Higher education is in the process of reinvention, whether it likes it or not. I wrote that in the fall of 2020, when changes that had been fiercely debated for years, like moving more instruction online, happened almost overnight. I also said something I still believe: post-Covid would not look like pre-Covid.

With the benefit of hindsight, the prediction held, though not the way many expected. The pandemic did change higher education. But many institutions spent the years that followed trying to recover what they had before, rather than building on what they had learned. Now a new wave of disruption has arrived, and it is less forgiving.

The Pressure Hasn't Let Up

Many campuses are competing for fewer traditional-age students while costs continue to rise. The skills employers will pay for are changing faster than most curricula. And the public is asking harder questions about value. Gallup's 2026 survey with the Lumina Foundation found that only 38% of U.S. adults have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in higher education.

That is not a communications problem. It is a relevance problem, and it calls for the same kind of reinvention the pandemic forced, only this time by choice.

The difference between 2020 and now is that no one is forcing the timeline. There is no emergency order closing campuses. That makes reinvention harder, not easier, because it depends entirely on leaders deciding that the status quo is riskier than change. Many will wait. The ones who move first will define what the next decade of higher education looks like.

What the Pandemic Taught Us

In 2020, I had a series of conversations with business school deans across the United States. I asked them what kind of leadership was needed at a time when multiple crises were threatening both the fiscal and cultural survival of their institutions. Their answers hold up remarkably well, and they read like a playbook for today.

• Keep the nimbleness. Higher education showed an agility during the pandemic that few thought possible. That agility can't be a one-time emergency response. It has to become part of how institutions operate.
• Invest in faculty first. Moving content online was never the goal. The goal was a personalized learning experience, and that depends on faculty who are trained and supported to teach in new ways. That investment matters more now than it did then.
• Find your niche. Institutions with large endowments can weather storms. Smaller, tuition-dependent colleges can't compete by being a smaller version of everyone else. They have to know what they do better than anyone and govern themselves efficiently around it.
• Become a partner, not a provider. Colleges that simply deliver content are easy to replace. Colleges that engage with regional employers and community needs become essential.
• Teach leadership as an outcome. Leadership is about feeling responsible for how a whole system works for people. Students who graduate with that mindset are prepared for a world no curriculum can fully predict.
• Serve the learners you actually have. The traditional four-year path no longer describes most learners. Working adults, caregivers, career changers and first-time students all arrive with different circumstances, and each deserves a pathway designed for who they are.

Reinvention Is a Leadership Choice

For years, I've watched organizations in every industry deny or resist disruption until the choice was made for them. Higher education is no different. The institutions that struggle most are the ones that treat each disruption as a storm to wait out.

The institutions that thrive see disruption as information. Enrollment pressure tells you which students you have stopped reaching. AI tells you which parts of your teaching model were built for transferring content rather than developing people. Questions about value tell you where your promise and your experience have pulled apart.

That shift in mindset is at the core of the Leadership in the Age of Personalization methodology. Institutions, like individuals, are more resilient when they know their identity and design around the people they serve.

Audit What You Kept From 2020

1. Which changes from the pandemic did we keep, and which did we quietly abandon? Why?
2. What percentage of our faculty have been trained to teach with new technology rather than around it?
3. What do we do better than any other institution, and does our budget reflect it?
4. Which regional employers and community organizations would describe us as a partner?
5. Which learners are we still designing around, and which are we overlooking?

The Convergence Ahead

In 2020, I wrote that we were witnessing the beginnings of a massive convergence across industries. That convergence is now visible. Employers are building their own credentials. Technology platforms are teaching skills. Healthcare systems and corporations are partnering with colleges to build talent pipelines.

Higher education can lead that convergence or be absorbed by it. The difference will come down to leaders who are ready before the change arrives, and who are willing to reinvent while they still have the choice.

Want to explore these ideas further? Learn more about my work on leadership, identity and conviction at www.theglennllopis.com.