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How a New University in London is Redefining Higher Education for a Creative Future

Students at the London Interdisciplinary School working with founder Carl Gombrich (credit: Vivian Wan)

In a world where creativity is the #1 skill sought by employers (World Economic Forum, 2023), one new university is taking that challenge seriously. The London Interdisciplinary School (LIS) is pioneering a fresh approach to higher education by breaking down barriers between disciplines and the real world.

Founded in 2017, LIS opened its doors in 2021 as the first UK university in decades to grant degree-awarding powers from inception. Its mission? To prepare students for the complex, interconnected problems of today—from climate change to AI ethics—through a curriculum built entirely around real-world challenges.

Students at LIS don’t just study traditional subjects. They engage in “problem modules” that integrate methods like data science, ethnography, and narrative storytelling. Instead of lectures, LIS promotes a “prep culture” for interactive, project-based learning—complete with paid internships, consultancy reports, and video essays.

Co-founder Carl Gombrich, a physicist, philosopher, and musician, brings a unique vision of creativity and polymathy. He believes education should cultivate the kind of “transformational creativity” needed for deep innovation—and LIS is designed to do just that.

As graduates move into careers at Goldman Sachs, KPMG, or doctoral programs at Cambridge, LIS is showing how an education grounded in synthesis, creativity, and interdisciplinary thinking can equip students to shape—not just survive—the future. Read more about the LIS at my new article on Forbes.com at https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanpenprase/2025/04/11/synthesis-and-creativity-at-the-london-interdisciplinary-school/

New Skills Economy Insights Report from the Chronicle of Higher Education

The Chronicle of Higher Education has issued a new report entitled the “How Colleges Can Thrive in the Skills Economy” by Alex Kafka, one of their senior reporters. Alex interviewed me and included a few of those quotes in the report. My contribution was to validate both the larger “scaled” forms of higher education found at places like Western Governors University, but also to make the case for the “virtuously inefficient” forms of higher education found at liberal arts colleges like my own institution Soka University of America (SUA). By having smaller classes, more interpersonal interaction, and deeper engagement, such institutions can instill deeper values in students, such as courage, compassion, and wisdom (the key values of our institution). In the conclusion, the report included a quote from me that makes the case for liberal arts as follows, “to be smarter than a chatbot requires wisdom, and that takes time and can’t be rushed or easily quantified.” It was nice to be included in the discussion, which has a wide range of insights and is very much worth reading.

Below are the full versions of those quotes:

What drew the attention of the Forbes columnist, Bryan E. Penprase, to WGU is its emphasis on competency-based education. Penprase, an astrophysicist, explains to The Chronicle in an interview that WGU represents a fascinating contrast to Soka University of America, where he is vice president for sponsored research and external relations. Soka is a small liberal-arts college of about 450 students in Orange County, Calif. It’s secular but inspired by the Buddhist values of compassion and wisdom, and has class sizes of no more than 16 students. Penprase sees complementary roles for efficient and cost-effective learning of practical knowledge, as at WGU, and more intimate consideration of context, experience, identity, and purpose, as at Soka. “You need both,” he says, and notes that “an exclusive focus on proficiency and skills risks creating workers unaware of the deeper implications of their work.”

From the Chronicle of Higher Education report “How Colleges Can Thrive in the Skills Economy,” p. 19-20

From the conclusion:

Corporate America’s souped-up in-house learning capacity, then, is one more challenge among many for highereducation. In contrast to the efficiencies of competency-based education, particularly when it is fueled by AI, traditional liberal arts are virtuously inefficient, says Soka University’s Bryan Penprase. To be smarter than a chatbot requires wisdom, and that takes time and can’t be rushed or easily quantified.

From the Chronicle of Higher Education report “How Colleges Can Thrive in the Skills Economy,” Conclusion
How Colleges Can Thrive in the Skills Economyconnect.chronicle.com
Link to the Chronicle of Higher Education Report

Honoris United Universities and New Models for Higher Education in Africa

My most recent piece in Forbes.com describes some of the amazing work of the Honoris United Universities network, which operates across Africa with 16 institutions in 26 cities and over 100,000 students. The piece includes an interview with their CEO, Jonathan Louw, and one of their founders, Laura Kakon. Honoris has created a network of private universities in Tunisia, Morocco, Nigeria, and South Africa and provides affordable education to thousands of students in engineering, health sciences, architecture, and other fields. Many of these are new universities pioneering new engineering education models like the Conceive, Design, Implement, Operate (CDIO) model. The piece also describes the founding of the ESPRIT University in Tunisia and EMSI in Morocco, both of which provide top-notch engineering education and send their graduates worldwide to top firms, offering promising futures for thousands of new young graduates.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanpenprase/2025/04/02/honoris-united-universitiesnew-higher-education-options-for-africa/

DeepSeek as a Wake Up Call for the US to Support Higher Education and STEM

DeepSeek is a wake-up call to the US, as China is building up its universities, while the US is in retreat. A wide consensus in Washington has noted that the competition with China is the key geopolitical strategic challenge for the US. On the technology front, the Trump Administration is working to ensure that the US maintains its lead in AI. Vice President Vance reiterated this approach in his address at a recent Paris summit, saying “The Trump administration will ensure that the most powerful A.I. systems are built in the U.S. with American design and manufactured chips.”  However the race for the most power of A.I. systems may rely more on how well we can train scientists and engineers in our universities than the hardware that is used within the computers driving AI systems. In this area, while China is moving full speed ahead to build new universities and expand its innovation ecosystem, the US is in retreat, with funding for scientific research from NSF in paralysis, and universities are being attacked from all sides.  This situation does not bode well for the future if the US wants to maintain is dominance in science and technology. My new article in Forbes.com entitled “DeepSeek – A Wake-Up Call For US Higher Education” explores these issues in detail and documents how China has built up new universities and an innovation ecosystem that will create multiple Silicon Valleys within the country. One of the main centers is in Shenzhen, where the InnoX Academy trains the next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs as part of the larger Greater Bay Area expansion. This is explored in another article I have written for Forbes.com entitled A New School for Chinese Innovators – InnoX and XBot Park.

New piece on Forbes.com about XBotPark and Shenzhen’s InnoX Academy

My new piece on Forbes.com about XBotPark and Shenzhen’s InnoX Academy – It describes a new innovation ecosystem for fostering creative talent in China that is revolutionizing STEM Education in China and Beyond. The piece is at this link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanpenprase/2025/02/25/a-new-school-for-chinese-innovatorsinnox-and-xbot-park/

A New School For Chinese Innovators — InnoX And Xbot Park – my new Forbes.com piece

Using the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas as a starting point, where over 1500 Chinese companies exhibited, I have written a piece describing how Shenzhen is becoming one of perhaps several Silicon Valleys in China. Shenzhen is home to 35% of Chinese companies at CES, and is one of the fast-growing cities in what China refers to as the Greater Bay Area, which includes Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Macao and 8 other cities in Guangdong province. Together they are building an innovation ecosystem rivalling the US Silicon Valley’s.

Within Zhenzhen is a new institution, XbotPark and InnoX, that is creating a pipeline of China’s next generation of leaders in high-tech product development. InnoX and XbotPark were developed by Professor Li Zexiang, who is one of China’s top entrepreneurs.   The most famous of Li’s companies is DJI, which was started by Li Zexiang’s student at HKUST, Frank Wang. DJI is the world leader in consumer drones and now holds 75% of global market share with a valuation over $20 billion US. To learn more about InnoX and XBot Park, I interviewed Carol Yu, who is a founding Partner and the Associate Dean of Shenzhen InnoX Academy. Yu describes how InnoX and XBot Park work, and how it is beginning to transform STEM education in China and around the world

The piece is available on Forbes.com at this link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanpenprase/2025/02/25/a-new-school-for-chinese-innovatorsinnox-and-xbot-park/


New Forms of Higher Education will Build Pakistan’s Future

In my most recent piece at Forbes.com – I examine the impact of new universities in Pakistan such as Aga Khan University, Lahore Institute of Management Sciences (LUMS), Forman Christian College, and Habib University. These new universities provide diversity to Pakistan’s higher education system and are providing new and innovative forms of higher education. Pakistan itself has a rapidly growing population and is home to the third largest population of college-aged students in the world, after China and India, so keeping the most talented students within Pakistan to start new companies and provide opportunities for its future is vital for both Pakistan and the world. The piece also features an interview with Wasif Risvi, founding president of Habib University, who describes in some detail how Habib can provide “epistemic reparation” for Pakistan through its unique liberal arts curriculum rooted in the concept of yoshin, which roughly translates as grace. Habib is helping students rediscover the beauty and power of Pakistan’s culture to help them shape Pakistan’s future. I also had the opportunity to visit Habib University as part of a review committee in November. I was deeply impressed by the campus community and its commitment to students and to liberal arts. The piece is available at Forbes.com at this link:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanpenprase/2025/02/18/new-forms-of-higher-education-for-building-pakistans-future/

Saving and Reviving Liberal Arts Colleges

My latest piece in Forbes examines how colleges need to reinvent themselves to survive. The piece starts by noting that in the past two years over 30 no-profit, four-year institutions closed. But it also explores how, in other cases, such as Mills College, Hampshire College, and Sweet Briar College, the spiral toward closure was reversed, providing useful lessons for reviving liberal arts colleges.  The piece examines these three cases in more detail, explaining how Mills College merged with Northeastern to become the Mills Institute, how Hampshire College was prevented from closure by support from alumni and restructuring under its new president Ed Wingenbach, and goes a bit deeper in the case of Sweet Briar College. I interviewed Meredith Woo, who was the President of Sweet Briar College just after it was saved from closure, to discuss how she approached the problem of making Sweet Briar sustainable for the coming decades. She describes how she was able to “turn what seemed to be fatal into a life-giving force for us,” by “imagining how to make liberal arts more relevant for our time.” You can see the entire piece here on Forbes.com.

Link to the piece on Forbes.com:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanpenprase/2025/01/29/saving-and-reviving-liberal-arts-colleges/

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanpenprase/2025/01/29/saving-and-reviving-liberal-arts-colleges/

Competency Based Education and WGU

My new piece on Western Governors University on forbes.com is now out, and it explores how competency-based education, or CBE, has provided a more flexible and adaptable way for students to complete courses and their degrees. Instead of a fixed time for a course, students can demonstrate mastery of a well-defined set of tasks to move on to the next part of their education. The way that WGU has been built around CBE gives it a competitive advantage and has helped it become the largest university in the US, with over 180,000 students. My piece explores how WGU has reconceptualized how a university works, with a student-centered approach with faculty, tech staff, and administration all locked in on maintaining the “momentum” of students in their learning. My piece includes an interview with WGU Provost Courtney Hills McBeth and describes CBE programs at SNHU, Purdue Global, Northern Arizona University, and East Texas A&M University. The piece is online at Forbes.com at the link below:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanpenprase/2025/01/21/a-deep-dive-into-wgu-and-competency-based-education/

WGU Graduation Ceremony in Anaheim, celebrating thousands of new WGU graduates as they complete their degrees (image courtesy of Brooke Adams from WGU).

Five Forces Reshaping Higher Education

I have been thinking about how Michael Porter’s model for the Five Forces of Competitive Strategy, long a centerpiece of business strategy, provides a useful lens for considering the seismic forces bearing down on higher education today.

By Denis Fadeev – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32946157

These forces, which include competitive rivalry, the threat of new entrants, the bargaining power of suppliers, the bargaining power of buyers, and the threat of substitute products or services, apply to universities and colleges as they compete for dwindling supplies of students, face threats from new universities and substitutions in the form of micro-credentials, and face increasing bargaining power from students and parents as they reconsider the value of a college education. This piece is now on Forbes.com – and enumerates how these forces are reshaping our universities and colleges and how they will need to evolve and adapt to survive. Here is a link to the piece:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanpenprase/2024/12/23/the-five-forces-reshaping-higher-education/