My third piece for Forbes.com, entitled “The AI Education Leapfrog in the Global South,” has just been published. The work quotes Harvard scholars Seiji Isotani, who has developed the AIED Unplugged project in Brazil, reaching hundreds of thousands of students, and Rem Koning, who has studied the use of AI in Kenya to help small business owners. The piece considers the benefits and risks of AI deployment at scale and cautions that responsible use of AI requires development with local experts and context to ensure that AI provides widespread benefits for populations. Some recent research has shown that AI can harm learning and reduce social connections among AI users, and the piece describes this research and efforts to develop local capacity for responsible AI deployment in Africa. The piece is available at this link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanpenprase/2024/09/24/the-ai-education-leapfrog-in-the-global-south/

As my second article as a Forbes Contributor, I have published a review of some of the new universities being built in India, as a response to the huge demand for new types of higher education from its population of over 140 million college-age students. The result is a diverse batch of large universities, science-focused universities, and liberal arts universities that provide more personal and interdisciplinary types of education. These new universities are a clear departure from India’s vaunted IIT system, which provides 5 of India’s 6 universities in the world’s top 300 rankings. One university, KREA University in Chennai, is used as an example of this sort of interdisciplinary education, with its idea of an interwoven curriculum.

My first article as a contributor to Forbes.com has been published today! The article is entitled “New Middle East Universities Shape the Post-Oil Knowledge Economy.” A very exciting opportunity came from all the work on our new book, the New Global Universities. I am now a contributor to Forbes.com, with a remit to report on global higher education innovations and an eye toward the future of higher education and STEM teaching and learning. You can find my Forbes.com contributor page online. I am very grateful for this opportunity, and I thank Lela Randall and the team at RW Jones for helping me get into this new space.

I look forward to talking to many of my friends and colleagues in developing future articles. I will write 2 or more articles per month on topics related to higher education innovation. The new article opens with the following framing:

Traditionally, the relationship between the U.S. and the Middle East has been defined by oil and geopolitics. However, over the past few decades, another equally significant exchange has been taking place: the development of higher education in the Middle East. This educational revolution, driven by the establishment of new universities in the UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, is laying the foundation for a post-oil knowledge economy that could reshape the global landscape in unexpected ways.

I also thank Chris Gentilviso from Forbes for helping me with this first article. More to come soon!

During the last week, the meetings at our New Global Universities Summit in Washington, DC, attracted notice from the Chronicle of Higher Education. The Chronicle of Higher Education sent reporters Goldie Blumenstyk and Karin Fischer to attend our meeting, which included 60 founders of new universities at the Duke in DC center in Washington DC on June 26-28. Goldi Blumensyk wrote about the event in her newsletter at the Chronicle of Higher Education with the heading “New Institutions can Invigorate Higher Ed.” This article highlighted the work being done at Polymath University, represented by its founder Dan Futrell, along with African Leadership University, represented by Veda Sunasse (CEO) and Brian Rosenberg (Harvard GSE and ALU board member), and the University of Austin, whose founding president Pano Kanelos attended the meeting. The meeting had many great discussions, and perhaps most importantly, it helped forge a community of practice among the university founders to help their fledgling new universities share some of the innovations and excitement as they build new models for higher education. I also especially enjoyed connecting with Ivan Borafull from the Spanish business school ESADE, with Babs Omotowa, who is the founding president of the Nigerian University of Technology and Management, with Carl Gombrich, Dean of the London Interdisciplinary School, along with many of my old friends from Yale-NUS College in Singapore, DKU, and from Olin College of Engineering.

Dan Futrell, the founder of a bold new university in Chicago known as Polymath University, has provided a rousing endorsement of our book on his LinkedIn site. Dan will attend our New Global Universities Summit in Washington, DC, and I look forward to learning more about his new Polymath University from him at the meeting. The Polymath Univeristy is “a 3-year, interdisciplinary, apprenticeship-based and debt-free school built from the ground up to empower leaders with the breadth, depth, and integration needed for impact.” The concept promises to rewrite some of the rules about how universities can structure their business model and cost points to make their education much more affordable and more relevant to students in finding future careers.

One interesting aspect of Polymath University is that while it is based in Chicago, it plans to offer its programs across the US and, therefore, will be much less expensive to operate and have wider reach than a typical brick-and-mortar institution. Despite not having a full residential campus experience, Polymath University promises to build strong cohorts of students by grouping them into regions and offering hybrid courses with in-person components as a central part of their program. As described on their website:

Polymath University doesn’t have a physical campus but will launch in Chicago, Illinois. Once launched, we plan to expand to other urban and rural cities nationwide. As described on their website:

“While courses will be offered in a hybrid format with approximately two weeks in person per academic year, our cohort of students will all be from the same city. This allows for our in-person time to be low-cost for students, with in-person instruction being accessible by public transit. This also allows for students to build their social and professional networks with other students and to create study groups for increased collaboration.”

The Polymath University program sounds really fascinating, and as part of the cohort of New Global Universities – we wish Dan and Polymath University well!