How Universities Stay True and Still Evolve

Cura personalis, care for the whole person, was centuries ahead of the personalization movement. It also answers a question every institution eventually faces: how do you stay true to your past and still evolve to meet the future? Higher education faces it more acutely than most, because its traditions are part of its value.

For years I've studied the tension between two eras: the age of standardization, where we are told what to do and how to do it, and the age of personalization, where each of us can influence the success of our organizations in our own ways. Higher education is a highly standardized environment, largely by design. Accreditation, degree requirements, academic calendars and tenure structures exist to protect quality and continuity.

But students no longer arrive expecting a standardized experience. They expect to be known. They expect pathways that fit their lives. And with online credentials, digital courses and employer-led programs competing for their time, they have more alternatives than ever. That leaves universities with a difficult question: how do they balance the standardization needed to steward important institutions with the personalization needed to prepare people to contribute at their highest individual capacity?

The Source of the Identity Crisis

I believe we are in the midst of an identity crisis, and it isn't limited to higher education. It has two causes.

The first is the pace of change itself. Standards keep shifting as the world evolves, and institutions struggle to know which of their own standards still serve a purpose.

The second runs deeper. Throughout our careers, most of us have been forced to assimilate to the identity and standards of our organizations. We learned to fit in rather than stand out. Over time, many people lose track of who they are in pursuit of advancement. Universities have done the same thing on an institutional scale, trying to look like their peers instead of leaning into what makes them distinct.

Personalization Raises the Bar

Many academic leaders worry that personalization means lowering standards. My conversations with university leaders taught me the opposite. Personalization actually puts a greater premium on quality. When students can take different paths, the institution has to be far clearer about what excellence looks like on every one of them.

One idea I heard has stayed with me: curation and calibration. Rather than prescribing a single curriculum, faculty walk with students as they build their own pathways. Quality is protected through ongoing dialogue among faculty about what every graduate must be able to do. The framework is fixed. The route is personal.

That approach asks more of faculty, not less. Advising becomes part of teaching, and faculty have to understand each student as an individual. It also asks more of students, who must take ownership of the choices that shape their education.

Your Tradition May Already Be Personal

Some institutions don't have to invent personalization. They have to rediscover it. One Jesuit university I spoke with pointed to cura personalis as a founding principle, a reminder that the idea of educating the whole person is not new at all.

Look closely at your own mission. Many institutions were founded to serve a specific community or to develop a particular kind of person. That founding identity is often the best guide to what personalization should look like today. Staying true to the past doesn't mean preserving every practice. It means honoring the purpose behind them.

What the Pandemic Revealed

The pandemic compressed years of change into weeks and forced every institution to examine its relevance. Looking back, three lessons stand out.

• Online can be personal. Online instruction offers as much opportunity for quality and personalization as the classroom, when it is designed well.
• Hybrid works best. Face-to-face mentoring combined with effective digital learning gives students the best of both.
• The calendar is negotiable. A fixed fall and spring schedule may no longer serve working adults and learners who need to start when their lives allow.

Find the Personalization in Your Founding

• What percentage of our faculty participate in training on new ways of teaching?
• Which of our standards protect quality, and which simply protect habit?
• Where in our founding mission is personalization already written?
• Are we trying to look like our peers, or like the best version of ourselves?

Students and families can ask the first question too. How an institution invests in its faculty says a great deal about whether it is truly committed to the individual learner.

No Sector Solves This Alone

It has never been clearer to me that higher education, healthcare and the entire corporate world need each other to survive and thrive. Each is wrestling with the same crisis: how to stop forcing people to assimilate and start helping them contribute as themselves. It is the same challenge I see behind the employee identity crisis in so many organizations.

The institutions that resolve it will be the ones that know exactly who they are, and use that clarity to help every student discover who they are. That is the promise of Leadership in the Age of Personalization.

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