Arizona State University

Work directly with President Michael Crow on the ideation and design of new products and initiatives in public policy, online education, lifelong learning, and partnerships with private companies, philanthropies, and universities. Advise senior leadership on global trends in higher ed, market opportunities, and storytelling. Lead the development of partnerships between ASU and Georgetown University, Salesforce, the John and Laura Arnold Foundation, the Gates Foundation, among others. Assist in raising capital, more than $5 million so far in support of various initiatives at the university.

Special Advisor to the President for Innovation | Professor of Practice

EdPlus at Arizona State University

EdPlus is a central enterprise unit for ASU focused on the design and scalable delivery of digital teaching and learning models to increase student success and reduce barriers to achievement in higher education. Serving 30,000+ students with more than 150 fully online degree programs.

Management Committee Member

Simon & Schuster

Author of three bestselling books in 2013, 2016, and 2020. "Who Gets In and Why" was named one of the 100 Most Notable of 2020 by The New York Times.

Book Author, Who Gets In and Why | There Is Life After College | College (Un)Bound

K Street Capital

Among the founders of a group of angel investors who have worked in the highest levels of government, media, technology, and finance. As member of inaugural executive committee, conducted diligence research about potential investments. Portfolio includes ID.me, SalesIntel, Arcadia Power, Wellthy, Dolcezza, Proof, and Frey. Exits: Ride Scout, Social Tables, Galley, among others.

Founding Member

Academic Intelligence

Academic Intelligence is a cooperative platform for thought leaders and futurists researching what's next for  higher ed and the workforce. Using a proven recipe for storytelling, Academic Intelligence works with higher-education institutions and those who do business with colleges and universities, to develop memorable content and events. Our goal is to help academic leaders and those who partner with institutions understand the important issues, trends, and opportunities facing higher education by shaping forward-thinking content that provides both key insights and actionable intelligence.

Founder | Editor In Chief

The Washington Post

Contibuting Op-Ed Writer

The Atlantic

Contibuting Writer

Whiteboard Advisors

Senior Advisor 

Georgia Institute of Technology

Visiting Scholar and Strategic Advisor | Center for 21st Century Universities

Entangled Group (now Guild Education)

Senior Partner 

Named one of LinkedIn’s must-know Influencers, Jeff is a New York Times bestselling author, higher education strategist on university innovation and leadership, and an award-winning columnist. 

For more than two decades, Jeff has written about and provided in-depth analysis of colleges and universities in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and on NPR, ABC, and CBS. His experience has given him a front-row seat to the $490-billion higher-education industry, making him a sought-after speaker and consultant on the future of higher education and university leadership. 

In addition to being a contributing writer to the Washington Post, he is a special advisor to the president at Arizona State University, where he leads the Academy for Innovative Higher Education Leadership in partnership with Georgetown University. He is also a visiting scholar at Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities, where he sits on the institution-wide Commission on Creating the Next in Higher Education. 

Jeff is the author of two New York Times best-selling books, College (Un)Bound: The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students (HMH, 2013) and There Is Life After College: What Parents and Students Should Know About Navigating School to Prepare for the Jobs of Tomorrow (HarperCollins, 2016).

He is the former top editor of the nation's leading higher-education publication, The Chronicle of Higher Education, with operational, business development, and strategic experience. Previously, he was a reporter and editor at The Chronicle, and a reporter at various daily newspapers, including the Arizona Republic. 

Specialties: Storytelling, general management, product development and higher-education program design, analysis, strategy, media, future studies and predictions, design thinking, and marketing.

EVERY graduate school, EVERY employer should do this on a regular basis: a list of colleges where students who enrolled or were hired went to college.

Looking at this list from Harvard Law School in the 1L class shows undergrad degrees from Arizona State University, Auburn University, Brooklyn College, Canisius University, Clark University, DePaul University, DePauw University, Drake University, Florida International University, Montclair State University (shoutout to president Jonathan Koppell), Santa Clara University, The College of New Jersey, University of Central Florida, The University of Memphis, University of Oklahoma and more. I only wish they'd list number of enrollees per university and do it on a three-year rolling average.

But it's a start for what I want to do in my next book, "Dream College," which will try to widen our aperture of perspectives in our college search beyond the T20. 

What will it take to make this the rule rather than the exception across higher ed and the workforce?

https://lnkd.in/eB9W-wgK

#LITrending

Jeff Selingo

hls.harvard.edu • 1 min read

Undergraduate Institutions - Harvard Law School

Last night in Philadelphia, I hosted my 35th salon dinner since 2016 with college and university leaders, in this case, from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New York. It was a great group for dinner, held in partnership with Academic Partnerships, where we had a wide-ranging discussion about the future of higher ed and heard from special guest Daniel Greenstein, the chancellor of the Pennsylvania's State System of Higher Education, who talked about the innovation journey he's been on. 

As usual the discussions at these dinners give me so much hope for the future of higher ed. The challenges are many, but leaders understand what they need to do. Now they need to figure out how to free up the resources (by stopping some of what they're doing) and find the talent to implement changes.

A new book, The Anxious Generation, by Jonathan Haidt out next week calls for four things:

📱No smartphones before high school.
💬 No social media before age 16.
🏫 Get rid of phones during the school day. 
🛝 More free play for kids. 

It's probably impossible to go back to the pre-smart phone era in education, but his suggestions are worth debating and discusing. The evidence is pretty clear that the emotional health of our teenagers and young adults has reached crisis proportions. 

So now what are we going to do about it? Add your thoughts below.

theatlantic.com • 35 min read

End the Phone-Based Childhood Now

"Gen Xers, largely defined as people in the 44-to-59 age group, are struggling to get jobs. First, the leadership roles they would normally ascend to aren't open, as many Boomers are delaying retirement and clinging to their jobs. But when roles have opened, ageism is a key factor: the accelerated pace of technological advancements has led managers to prioritise digital natives for open roles ..."

bbc.com • 1 min read

'Gen X has had to learn or die': Mid-career workers are facing ageism in the job market

More than one-third of the top 20 skills requested for the average job in the U.S. have changed since 2016. One in five skills is entirely new.

And certain sectors—including fields that are also popular college majors such as information technology, marketing, human resources, and sales—have changed faster than others, according to the The Burning Glass Instituteand Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

The need to upskill and reskill is imperative in a fast-changing economy, but many working adults around the world don’t know what they need to upgrade their skills and don’t know where to start or where to go to get what they need.

Coverage of a recent webinar I hosted on this topic in the newest edition of my newsletter, Next.

Jeff Selingo on LinkedIn • 7 min read

The Most Popular College Majors Likely to Be the Most Disrupted

What is the "right" length for a baccalaureate degree? Is the 4-year norm right (although it takes most students longer anyway)? What do 120 credits for the degree even mean?

At a time when the college degree is facing an identity crisis with its value under question by the public and employers, some colleges want to experiment with the length of the degree. A shorter, 3-year degree is common in Europe. Heck, even Harvard started with a shorter degree hundreds of years ago.

But given the economics of higher ed, as I saw the other night during a panel I moderated on this topic of college leaders, accreditors, and state policymakers, there is lots of disagreement. 

What is often couched as a discussion about "quality" and "outcomes," is really a discussion about competitive threat. If some colleges are allowed to offer a shorter baccalaureate degree to their students, what does that do to those who don't and have budgets and infrastructure built on 4 years of revenue and expenses.

More on this in the latest edition of my newsletter, Next. 

What do you think -- can a bachelor's degree be 90 credits instead of 120? What is lost? What is gained?

Jeff Selingo on LinkedIn • 8 min read

Do We Need a Shorter Degree?

Comment on my New York magazine piece. 

This is something I'm digging into for the new book: is it a myth or do employers really care where you went? And if they do, where is that line between where it matters and it doesn't? And is it every industry or just certain ones. 

I'd love to hear from people who actually hire new college grads.

What Harvard University today with requiring test-scores is more than just catching up with what MIT, Yale, and Dartmouth have already done. Harvard had already announced that students applying as far out as the class of 2030 (this year’s sophomores) could consider their test scores optional. 

Now they're telling that class and this year's juniors, wait a minute, we didn't mean it and now you have to take the test. 

This just adds to the confusion and anxiety of how our relationship with the tests have changed in the last four years.

#LITrending

nymag.com • 25 min read

What Does an SAT Score Mean Anymore?

Whenever I visit a friend who lives in Switzerland, I’m constantly amazed at the design of an education-to-career pipeline that includes apprenticeships as a key cog in that wheel.

Yet, in the U.S. we still have a system where college is the pathway to any job, including many that might be better suited to start as apprenticeships, everything from accounting to marketing.

So, on the most recent episode of the Future U Podcast, Michael Horn and and I were joined by Mitchell Harp MA, MT(ASCP), the dean of apprenticeship programs at Trident Technical College in Charleston, SC and Pierre Dubuc, the CEO of OpenClassrooms, which is partnering with several community colleges from California to Maryland to launch active apprenticeship programs.

Among my takeaways from the episode:

🛠️ We need to stop thinking of apprenticeships as just about the trades. Trident Technical College manages 102 apprenticeships for 80 employers in everything from healthcare to engineering to local governments. “It's definitely not just the trades,” Harp told us. For example, the college has a Pre-Nursing Youth Apprenticeship Program, where it’s taking 16-year-olds, employing them in an apprenticeship in hospitals over a two-year period. At that point, they have earned 20-25 credits towards a nursing degree. If they continue on after high school at Trident, they could become an RN at 19.

🛣️ The apprenticeship has to be seamless for both learners and employers. This is the point that Ryan Craig makes in his book, "Apprentice Nation." If we just rely on colleges knocking on the doors of employers, one-by-one, the U.S. will never reach the scale of apprenticeships even with countries that are fairly new to the game, like the U.K. and Australia. So Trident developed its own app “to help the apprentices understand their apprenticeship requirements, document their achievements, and provide information continuously to employers,” Harp told us. Also they redesigned so much of the student experience. Harp told us this great story about how employers wanted classes taught on Friday and the dean said “well, we really don’t teach on Fridays.” They did and now have a successful program.

🤝 The need for partnerships. As Michael Horn told me, we’re no longer in the world where colleges take care of learning and companies hire the graduates. The rate of change is such that colleges can’t keep their curriculum up to date. Employers want to see graduates can do the work. “It's all making this very interdependent,” Michael said. That’s where entities such as OpenClassrooms enters the picture to take care of the bureaucracy of registering apprenticeships and educating small and medium-sized businesses about the value of apprenticeships.

🎧 Listen to the episode and let us know what you think we can do to increase apprenticeships in non-trades in the U.S.?

And thanks to Ascendium's Education Philanthropy for their support of this episode.

Judging by the comments from college professors on this piece about the increase in school absences this is not just a phenomenon limited to K-12. It's in college, too, and soon in the workforce, if not already.
 
"The trends suggest that something fundamental has shifted in American childhood and the culture of school, in ways that may be long lasting. What was once a deeply ingrained habit — wake up, catch the bus, report to class — is now something far more tenuous."

The question is how do we improve engagement in school, college, and the workforce? Is this where AI might help given its ability to do routine tasks that we might find less engaging?

nytimes.com • 8 min read

Why School Absences Have ‘Exploded’ Almost Everywhere (Gift Article)

Gen Z students are challenging the status quo in higher ed in so many ways, including in how colleges and universities engage them and make them feel welcome. 

From post-pandemic learning loss to political unrest, the question is how might the student experience be redesigned around safety and well-being so that they're seen as investments rather than obligations. 

This is the topic of my "Next Office Hour" on April 23, when I'll be joined by

• Robert Hradsky, Vice President for Student Engagement at Syracuse University
• Luoluo Hong, PhD, MPH, Vice President for Student Engagement and Well-Being at the Georgia Institute of Technology 
• Fran'Cee Brown-McClure, Ph.D., Vice President for Student Affairs at Jackson State University 

👉 Register today to join live or get a free on-demand recording afterwards.

https://lnkd.in/dZeX9dSD

Another college acceptance season is wrapping up this week with the last round of decisions. And with it, another crazy year of admissions.
 
The system is broken. Families need to take more control and be less enamored with name-brands and approach the process as a consumer with affordability and outcomes in mind. Colleges need to rethink the process so that it's more applicant-friendly. And we should put more limits on the number of apps you can file through the Common App (or even on your own through the schools themselves).
 
How would you fix the system?

nymag.com • 11 min read

Inside the Craziest College-Admissions Season Ever

If you're at #asugsvsummit - join Stig Leschly, Jeff Selingo and I for a conversation on postsecondary value at 11AM today (4/16) in Cortez Hill. 

Jobs for the Future (JFF)
Postsecondary Commission

As the number of students enrolling and remaining in college continues to fall, there is an imperative at many institutions to grow enrollment. 

Who are the segments of learners most likely to enrollment? What is the student experience they want? The crendentials they need? How can institutions design for better learning outcomes?

Those will be among the questions will tackle on the May edition of the "Next Office Hour," my webinar series named after my newsletter. Joining me in the discussion, along with input from all of you in the live chat, will be: 

• Angel B. Pérez, CEO of the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC)

• Abbey Bain, Vice-Chancellor for Student Engagement, Louisiana State University-Alexandria, which has seen a 44% increase in enrollment in the last decade by awarding credit for prior learning.

• Carlos Sanchez of Davenport University, where he is Executive Director of Casa Latino, a new set of bilingual degree programs to attract Latino learners in Michigan. 

👉 Register for free here and to get an on-demand recording even if you can't make it live (Support from Cengage Group): https://lnkd.in/eCnW7Q8f

Digital transformation is a significant change in any organization, especially higher ed, where a culture of shared governance means that various stakeholders get a say in decision-making.

The problem with many technology projects is that most people on campuses don’t understand how it will benefit them. What will a move to “the cloud” mean? How will a “data lake” benefit my work? Why should I care if the "employee experience" is more streamlined?

College leaders need to recognize legitimate concerns and communicate the benefits of the change frequently. As Tej Patel, Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer at Stevens Institute of Technology told me, college leaders need to stop blaming others for their inability to community and cut through the jargon. 

In a continuation of my series of conversations with CFOs and chief technology officers who were at the annual Workday RISING conference, I talked with Tej about how to effectively communicate change on campuses.

🍿 🎥 🎓 This is about movie theaters but you can replace them with colleges and universities below and ask the same question.

As this piece in Puck about movie theaters points out they persist because malls need them. The same can be said about colleges. Towns and cities need them. 

Theaters get just enough business to pesuade landlords to lower rents. Colleges discount tuition even more to fill beds and get just enough revenue to be a going concern. 

The result for theaters, as this piece points out, could be a "sort of zombie business." The same with higher ed. Colleges that exist in name and place, but barely have enough cash to really serve students well.

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