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.”

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/

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/

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/