Changing Higher Ed

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...

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 p...

  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...

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...

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...

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 Fran...

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 f...

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 Scho...

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 M...

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...

Higher education is under mounting pressure to prove its value. But the data institutions need to respond already exists — most are just not using it strategically. In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast , Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Melba Amissi, Chief Customer and Operations Officer at the National Student Clearinghouse , about how the Clearinghouse's cross-institutional data ca...

Agile change management in higher education is no longer optional. Institutions are navigating continuous disruption from AI, shifting student expectations, workforce pressures, and internal cultural resistance. The challenge leaders face is not how to implement change once, but how to build the institutional ability to adapt continuously. In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast , Dr. D...

In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast, Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Jeff Meade, Founding Director of the Every Quinnite is an Entrepreneur program at Paul Quinn College, about how the institution has embedded entrepreneurship into the operating model of the college itself. Rather than treating entrepreneurship as an elective or a business school track, Paul Quinn uses it as a stru...

Workforce readiness, hands-on learning, and flexible credentialing are no longer peripheral conversations in higher education. They are central to how institutions are being judged on value, relevance, and outcomes. In this episode of Changing Higher Ed podcast , Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Jarred McNeely , Provost and Chief Academic Officer at Sonoran Desert Institute , about how applied, sk...

Empathy is easy to talk about and harder to practice when the pressure is high. In higher education, leaders are often navigating conflict, fatigue, and urgency, which is exactly when empathy gets misread as weakness instead of treated as a leadership competency. In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast , Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Dr. Laura Parson, Associate Professor at North Dak...

In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed podcast , Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Dr. Dan Predoehl , assistant dean of Extended Learning and director of the Emeritus Institute at Saddleback College, one of the nation's highest-performing community colleges. The conversation focuses on why enrollment challenges persist even at strong institutions and how treating enrollment as a shared responsib...

Institutional transformation in higher education is often described in broad terms. At Stevens Institute of Technology, Dr. Nariman Farvardin describes transformation in operational terms: disciplined strategic planning, academic realignment, and year-after-year execution systems that produced what Dr. Drumm McNaughton calls the Stevens Miracle. In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed podcast, D...

Higher education enters 2026 under conditions that are no longer hypothetical. In this 8th annual end-of-year episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast, Dr. Drumm McNaughton is joined by Tom Netting of TEN Government Strategies to review how the predictions made at the end of 2024 played out during the 2025 operating year and what those outcomes mean for institutional planning in 2026. Rather tha...

In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast, Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Dr. Ashley Finley, Vice President of Research and Senior Advisor to the President at the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), about the findings of the 2025 AAC&U Employer Survey and what they reveal about employer expectations for higher education. Based on nearly 20 years of longitudinal re...

Higher education communication is no longer a marketing function. It is a strategic discipline shaped by political pressure, governance risk, and real-time public scrutiny. In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast , Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with David Maffei , Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Americas at Staffbase , about how university presidents and boards must rethi...

Higher education is facing a growing disconnect between public perception and the realities of campus life. In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast , Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Peter Murphy Lewis , CNN political analyst, filmmaker, and director of People Worth Caring About , about how institutions can reclaim their narrative and rebuild trust through authentic human stories. This...

Higher education leaders are being asked to innovate faster than their institutions are built to move. This episode of Changing Higher Ed explores how presidents and boards can change that. Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Erika Liodice, Executive Director of the Alliance for Innovation and Transformation (AFIT), about how institutions can strengthen their innovation capacity through futures think...

Accreditation trends and expectations are shifting under rising accountability pressures, financial constraints, and increased scrutiny of student outcomes. This episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast features Maria Toyoda , President and CEO of the WASC Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC), in a strategic conversation with Dr. Drumm McNaughton about how institutions can strengthen...

Improving how teaching happens in the classroom is one of the most effective ways to increase student retention, stabilize tuition revenue, and strengthen institutional reputation—yet most universities don't manage it strategically. In this episode of Changing Higher Ed , Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with David Gooblar , Associate Professor at the University of Iowa and author of The Missing Course...

Free speech on college campuses has become one of higher education's most volatile and defining challenges. In this episode, Dr. Drumm McNaughton talks with Dr. Sean Stevens , Chief Research Advisor at FIRE—the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression—about findings from FIRE's newly released College Free Speech Rankings and the state of academic freedom, the growing political pressures on...