Category Archives: Uncategorized

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.

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.

Mega-Universities and Disruption of Higher Education

I have written a new piece for Forbes.com about the rise of the “mega university,” including enormous online universities like SNHU and WGU and massively scaled universities like ASU and CFU. These giant universities are re-writing the value proposition for higher education in favor of convenience and efficiency – and while they may not reach the same quality of experience as the top traditional universities, they are becoming increasingly popular for their lower costs and greater efficiency. The article explores how these universities and others have grown and some details that help fuel their popularity and growth. It also briefly describes some of the results of ASU’s growth under the leadership of Michael Crow and its role as a “fifth-wave university.”

Campus of Arizona State University – from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Arizona_State_University#/media/File:Asu_campus_1.jpg

Higher Education in Mexico

Mexico’s higher education system is growing to meet the needs of its people, and Mexico’s college-aged population has grown dramatically, with attendees more than doubled from 1.9 million in 2000 to approximately 4 million today. With 120 million inhabitants, Mexico operates over 231,000 schools that serve 21 million students in basic education. Its system of higher education institutions is spread out over 32 states to serve a population that speaks more than 60 languages. In a recent piece for Forbes.com, entitled “Mexico’s Growing Higher Education System,” I describe how Mexico is working to meet the needs of its people for education at all levels, including government initiatives that have created new universities, online programs like MexicoX, and multilingual education programs to meet the needs of students in states like Oaxaca and Chiapas. You can read more about this piece and the contributions that Mexico’s leading universities, such as UNAM and Monterrey Tec, are making to innovate and provide higher education for Mexico and the larger Latin American region.

Photo of the Monterrey Tec ITESM Campus Monterrey – RectoríaEl triunfo de la cultura (Jorge González Camarena), from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ITESMMonterreyRectoria03.JPG

New Forbes.com piece – AI for India’s Future

My new piece in Forbes.com explores how AI in India is being developed by the combination of India’s thriving startup and tech sectors and university partnerships. The AI ecosystem in India includes new universities such as the Jio Insitute, founded as a philanthropic effort by Reliance Industries, and the new Universal AI University. The piece also includes quotes from an interview with Shailesh Kumar, the Dean of Jio’s AI and Data Science program. It includes some impressive ways AI is already impacting India’s healthcare, agriculture, and education systems. These impacts will also have larger ramifications for the world as other countries in the Global South adopt similar AI systems for their development.

New piece on Economic Growth and Education in Europe for Forbes.com

During the past few weeks, I have been fascinated to study some of the ways in which Europe is lagging in growth, as documented in the influential Draghi Report on European Competitiveness, while simultaneously leading the world in other indicators such as longevity, reduction of carbon footprint, and reducing income inequality.

It was fascinating to talk with some of the leaders of institutions in Spain, which I used as an example of how European countries try to preserve their legacy of culture while moving forward thoughtfully into the future. An interview with Ivan Bofarull, the Chief Innovation Officer of the Spanish Business School Esade, gives a new take on disruption innovation based on synthesis. The piece is available here on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanpenprase/2024/10/01/educating-for-europes-unique-style-of-economic-growth/

New Article – “The AI Education Leapfrog in the Global South” – for Forbes.com

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/

Forbes Article on the New Batch of Indian Universities

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!

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!