With the cost of attendance at some private universities now topping $250,000, families and students are searching for ways to access a transformative college experience without taking on unsustainable debt. One of the most promising innovations in U.S. higher education is the rapid rise of the University Honors College — an approach that merges the intellectual vitality of a liberal arts college with the scale and resources of a major research university.

Honors Colleges are structured as selective living-learning communities, typically housing 1,000–2,000 students who pursue a more personalized and rigorous academic track. These students often enjoy small Socratic-style seminars, direct access to top professors early in their college years, and additional opportunities for study abroad, research internships, and alumni mentorship. Many also live in dedicated residential facilities that foster community and intellectual engagement. For families paying in-state tuition, these programs can deliver an experience comparable to elite private colleges for a fraction of the cost — for instance, tuition at Arizona State University’s Barrett Honors College is about $15,400 per year.

The growth has been striking. According to the National Council of Honors Colleges (NCHC), there are now 248 honors colleges nationwide, up from just 24 in 1994. Many have evolved into fully developed academic units with their own deans, budgets, admissions standards, and governing boards. They frequently require an honors thesis or capstone project and offer unique general education curricula designed for deeper and more interdisciplinary learning.

Several of these programs are earning national recognition. Penn State University’s Schreyer Honors College, University of Georgia’s Moorhead Honors College, CUNY’s Macaulay Honors College, University of Virginia’s Echols Scholars Program, and Ohio University’s Honors Tutorial College each provide variations on the model — from Oxford-style tutorials to flexible curriculum pathways and fully funded cultural and international experiences. Some even offer financial incentives; for example, the University of Georgia’s Foundation Fellowship funds summer study at Oxford, while CUNY Macaulay provides full four-year tuition scholarships for in-state students.

This movement suggests a powerful reimagining of undergraduate education — bringing “high-touch” excellence and transformative opportunities into public institutions that can serve far more students affordably. By combining the personal attention of liberal arts colleges with the breadth and dynamism of research universities, Honors Colleges are helping higher education evolve to meet today’s financial and educational challenges.

For a deeper dive and a look at the top-ranked honors programs, read my full analysis on Forbes:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanpenprase/2025/09/30/university-honors-colleges–providing-excellence-within-scale/

For US higher education to survive as a system, there needs to be balance between older universities and colleges, and new “startup” institutions. More of these “green shoots” are needed within the higher education ecosystem. Only handfuls of new 4-year institutions are being founded as a multitude of older institutions compete for dwindling numbers of students. A recent report by the Postsecondary Commission (PSC), an organization founded by Harvard professor Stig Leschly in 2020, provides a detailed portrait of new colleges in the US. The report identified 1,039 new colleges founded since 2000, with a wide range of institutional missions and degree offerings. Most of these new colleges are specialized, with 78% offering 1-year specialized vocational certificates instead of bachelor’s degrees. Overall, 74% of new colleges are for-profit institutions, and only 14% offer 4-year degree programs.

Small but Innovative “Startup” Universities

The PSC report notes that 98% of college students attend a college that is more than 20 years old. Within the sample are 153 new 4-year accredited bachelor’s degree institutions, 112 private non-profit institutions, 30 private for-profit institutions and only 11 public institutions. Some of the innovative non-profit private 4-year “startup” institutions, include the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, which has reimagined engineering education through emphasis on interdisciplinary design studies, and also has eliminated departments,  Soka University of America, which offers a distinctive liberal arts education based on Buddhist principles of peace and human rights, College Unbound, which is reinventing higher education for underserved adult learners, and the Harrisburg University of Science and Technology, the first independent science and technology focused nonprofit university established in Pennsylvania in over 100 years, and Minerva University (enrollment 656), founded by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Ben Nelson to compete with the best universities using a proprietary online platform. 

You can read more about this in my new piece at Forbes.com at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanpenprase/2025/09/26/startup-universities-provide-innovation-to-revive-higher-education/

Higher education faces mounting pressures of cost and access, and BYU-Pathway Worldwide is leading a bold solution: fully accredited three-year bachelor’s degrees available globally for as little as $6,300. My new article on Forbes.com discusses both the BYU Pathway program and the growing momentum for new 3-year degree programs. Building on decades of experimentation with accelerated programs, BYU-Pathway now serves nearly 75,000 students from over 180 countries with flexible online courses, stackable certificates, and a model that combines affordability, employability, and community support. Graduates gain job-ready skills, cross-cultural teamwork experience, and entry into global companies like Amazon and Microsoft. With support from accreditors, state governments, and the College-in-3 movement, BYU-Pathway’s approach signals a reimagined future of higher education—accessible, accelerated, and designed for the realities of today’s learners.

My new Forbes.com piece discusses how The Greenway Institute – a new university in Vermont – is making transformative engineering education more affordable. Greenway will develop a new business model for engineering education and pioneer a new form of coop education in which students are able to spend more time working in real-world environments while earning their degree. My new piece includes details of the new university based on an in-depth interview with its inaugural president and co-founder Mark Somerville, who was also a founder of Olin College of Engineering.

Several other new STEM-focused institutions have recently been founded, but without the same focus on developing a more efficient financial model. Olin College of Engineering, founded in 1997 with gifts of $460 million from the F. W. Olin Foundation, developed a new curriculum centered on project-based learning and user-centered design. The Roux Institute at Northeastern University, backed by tech entrepreneur David Roux and by the Harold Alfond Foundation, with two $100-million gifts is another example. A new STEM-focused higher education institution is planned for Bentonville, Arkansas, to offer STEM and business education for its planned 500 students. Greenway, by contrast, will use a lower-cost form of coop education in which students spend two years working on actual engineering projects while learning their subjects, and will also create a new and more efficient engineering curriculum, inspired by Olin College and other new institutions. The full article is available at this link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanpenprase/2025/07/24/the-greenway-institute–making-engineering–education-affordable/

In my new piece in Forbes.com on global citizenship education, I emphasize the need to not only celebrate our nation’s independence on July 4, but to consider the interdependence that underlies our prosperity and the ideas of global citizenship necessary for us as a human family to solve the problems of the world.

My Global Citizenship education piece explores the meaning of global citizenship and cosmopolitanism, based on ideas from Greece and Rome, the African concept of ubuntu, and in the Buddhist ideas of compassion and interconnectedness. Global Citizenship education is urgently needed to solve global problems, and the piece provides examples of global citizenship efforts at Soka University of America, Haverford College, Duke University, Webster University, Stanford University, and other leading US institutions. Let’s use our Independence Day to not only celebrate our nation’s independence, but also its interdependence on the other nations and cultures of the world.

My new piece on Forbes.com, entitled “Graduation and the ROI of Universities – Transforming Lives and Communities,” dives into the deeper meaning of the ROI for higher education. Across the country, many students have recently graduated. Researchers often cite the “ROI,” or return on investment, which states the benefit purely in economic terms. College education across all majors returns multiples of the costs for tuition and fees from increased earnings throughout a career. The ROI for college degrees at a public institution in 2021 was $174,000 after 10 years and $714,000 after 20 years. Over longer horizons, the return on investment exceeded $1,000,000 in all degree categories. Graduation speeches across the country feature celebrities, politicians, and intellectuals to give hope and inspiration to new graduates. But perhaps the most inspirational part of graduation comes in the stories of the graduates. In my new piece in Forbes.com, I review the economic return from a college degree, and also share stories from the commencement ceremonies of Soka University of America (SUA), featuring 127 students, and at Arizona State University, which includes over 20,000 students and families, as well as the Starbucks SCAP ceremony. For both the largest and smallest universities, the return on investment comes in the form of students who deeply understand their role in communities and give back to those communities in innumerable ways. The impact of transforming these students and their communities is also impossible to quantify.

The article also shares stories from Soka University of America – where I work. This includes a quote from Orlando Bloom’s address at the SUA commencement describing how SUA’s founder Daisaku Ikeda told him, “The playwright August Strindberg wrote: ‘The actor must control the role and not let the role control him.’” Ikeda continued, telling Bloom, “The important thing is to remain true to yourself … You don’t define yourself solely in terms of your profession as an actor, or your work — that world is not enough for you, for you are dedicating your life to others.” This quote is a great encapsulation of the deeper meaning of both higher education and one’s work in life.

During the recent Memorial Day weekend, in addition to enjoying holiday barbecues, we should remember the sacrifices of our veterans in fighting for freedom and democracy.  Since the GI Bill was established in 1947, the US has generously given benefits to veterans to recognize their service, and the veterans also give back to the campus communities they have joined. And yet, with the complex paperwork requirements and confusing hurdles from both universities and the federal government, veterans often struggle to claim and maintain their hard-earned benefits. A new company, known as Milvet Navigator, is helping. You can read about this and the larger picture of veterans in higher education in my recent Forbes.com piece, which is entitled “From Service To Success: Making Veterans Feel Welcome On Campus.” Milvet Navigator, founded by Dr. Mahdi Omar and Paul DeCecco, a 29-year Army veteran, helps veterans and campuses navigate through regulatory complexities with new software systems. These systems also free up campus certifying officials to have more time to make these veterans feel welcome. Helping these veterans navigate their way back into life after military service, and making them more welcome on our campuses is the best way we can thank them for their heroic service to our country.

Michael Crow used to begin speeches to academic leaders with a slide that had a single phrase in bold letters – “Evolve or Die.” ASU’s Evolution is modeling the future of higher education. Crow’s work at ASU since 2002 has reshaped ASU from a conventional state institution into one of the world’s most innovative universities, with a unique institutional culture and mission.  Crow has described ASU as a “Fifth Wave” university based on its digital immersion, cost efficiency, and scalability. ASU also disproves the long-standing notion that academic excellence and accessibility are mutually exclusive. ASU Online is the key to expanding access, and in Fall 2023 alone, over 66,000 new students enrolled, 45% of ASU’s total student population. Crow describes the evolution of ASU’s online learning as the culmination of “five realms of learning” and has recently developed the new ASU College of Global Futures. As higher education enters what appears to be a dire and uncertain future, Crow is optimistic. You can read the full story with an interview with Michael Crow at my Forbes.com site and this link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanpenprase/2025/05/01/evolve-or-die–michael-crows-challenge-to-us-higher-education/

A new report from the SERU survey of research universities, entitled “The Multi-Engagement Model Understanding Diverse Pathways to Student Success at Research Universities,” shows that students at our nation’s largest public research universities are not “academically adrift.” The study was authored by John Douglass, Igor Chirikov and Gregg Thomson of the UC Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education. My new article at Forbes.com discusses the topic in more detail.

The report shows students are highly engaged across categories that develop their capacities across many dimensions of experience. The survey measures student focus and commitment to academic, research, civic, extracurricular, and career areas. “Students spend their effort not just in the classroom and truly benefit from a lot of different opportunities that research universities provide – research extracurriculars, civic engagement, career development,” says co-author Igor Chirikov, who notes that “students are active in different areas, and they don’t overlap.” These universities are also providing benefits after graduation, as shown in the report from Georgetown’s Center for Education in the Workforce. SERU member universities, all AAU or R1 institutions, provided an average ROI for graduates of bachelor’s programs in 2021-22 of over $236,000 after 10 years and $956,000 after 20 years.

You can see all the details on this topic in my article at Forbes.com entitled “SERU Survey Shows Students are Engaged and Not Adrift.”