reinvent

The Reinvention of Liberal Arts Colleges — from educationnext.org by Jon Marcus; via Ryan Craig
To remain relevant amid evolving attitudes toward higher education, Brandeis University and institutions like it are redefining their purpose

By the fall, the university will have reorganized itself into four new schools that bring together existing professional programs in areas such as business, technology, and public policy with liberal arts disciplines including history, biology, philosophy, and sociology. Before the first semester starts, each arriving student will be assigned not only an academic adviser, but also a career counselor. And in what has become the most prominent symbol of the strategy, graduates will leave with “career-competency” transcripts alongside their conventional ones, listing what skills they have learned that employers value, from communicating and writing to proficiency with AI. This second transcript also will include internships and jobs students have held as well as microcredentials, which the university now gives them a chance to earn, at no additional cost, in digital-knowledge-economy subjects such as data analytics and statistical analysis.

Let’s record the durable skills. Let’s record the life skills. Let’s record the career skills.” That way, employers will understand exactly what students have been taught to do—as will students themselves.

…
The liberal arts are in a quiet crisis of their own. The number of bachelor’s degrees awarded in the liberal arts—generally defined as a broad education offering majors in humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and math—fell to a 30-year low in 2024, the latest period for which data are available, according to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. That was 30 percent below the peak in 2012. Students have instead been choosing majors in subjects they consider tied directly to careers, including business, management, and health professions.

AI Is Changing Career Guidance. It May Be Missing the Hardest Part. [Tavenner & Dulin Salisbury]

On 10/08/2026, in career development, education, education reform, emerging technologies, K-12 related, more voice more choice more control, motivation, parents/guardians, passions, reinvent, skills, student-related, youth, by Daniel Christian

AI Is Changing Career Guidance. It May Be Missing the Hardest Part. (Diane Tavenner, Futre – Part 2) — from humanistxyz.substack.com by Allison Dulin Salisbury and Diane Tavenner
“AI is getting very good at telling young people what they could do. The harder question is who they want to become.”

Diane’s view is that you cannot shortcut the work of figuring out who you want to become. Young people need to form hypotheses about the lives they might want, go out into the world and test them, reflect on what they learn, and change their minds. Parents, teachers, mentors, and other caring adults matter enormously, but their job is to help a young person make sense of the evidence, not supply the answer.

I find this framing particularly important right now. The world of work is changing quickly, and AI will keep getting better at showing young people their options.

But having more options, or better information about them, doesn’t necessarily make it easier to choose a life.

Want to Close the Skills Gap? Bring Learning Closer to Work — from campustechnology.com by Elise Awwad

Key Takeaways

The skills gap is a workforce access problem as much as a talent problem: Employers broadly plan to upskill workers, yet many employees still lack sufficient time or access to AI training.
AI fluency compounds where workers already have access: Employees who use AI regularly build confidence and capability, while those whose jobs keep them farther from the technology risk falling further behind.
Upskilling works better when learning is integrated with work: Employers and higher education should create pathways that combine technical and durable skills with on-the-job application, rather than treating reskilling as an individual responsibility.

The skills employers say they cannot find are increasingly the skills they expect employees and candidates to arrive with, fully formed, at their own expense.
…
Upskilling or reskilling is often framed as an individual responsibility: a matter of initiative, of staying current. But if employers need these skills, they have a stake in making sure workers have a realistic way to develop them.

Several items re: the changes needed within higher education

On 09/14/2026, in 21st century, adjunct faculty, business side of he, career development, change, changing business models, collaboration, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, corporate / business world, cost of getting a degree, culture, dangers of the status quo, entrepreneurship, expectations, experimentation, faculty/staff, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, higher education, ideas, innovation, instructional design, leadership, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, liberal arts, lifelong learning, new business models, reinvent, skills, society, staying relevant, strategy, student-related, surviving, teaching & learning, traditional / tradition, United States, universities, youth, by Daniel Christian

Below are several items that were either mentioned by Matt Tower or I came across them via offshoots of items that he linked to:

Future Universities Alliance Names Inaugural Innovation Sandbox Cohort — from provost.duke.edu
Program incubated by Duke brings together higher education innovators from 23 countries for year-long peer exchange

The Future Universities Alliance has selected 49 institutions from 23 countries for the inaugural cohort of its Innovation Sandbox, a 12-month peer learning program for higher education leaders advancing ambitious, institution-level innovation.The cohort brings together founders of new universities, administrators and faculty leading high-stakes changes within established institutions, and leaders of proven models exploring how their innovations can travel to new contexts. Participants were chosen through a competitive process that drew applicants from around the world in its inaugural year.

A makeover for college: No gym, no meal plan and two years of work — from npr.org by Jon Marcus

An entirely new college is being planned here to change not only how higher education is delivered, but at what price. It also proposes to highlight ways the current business model no longer works, as evidenced by the 152 colleges and universities that have closed or merged since 2016, and the 442 others that a new projection says are at risk.

So deeply entrenched are the problems confronting higher education that a growing chorus of innovators says the easiest way to fix them is to begin again from scratch.

All undergraduates should get work-based learning, v-cs say — from timeshighereducation.com by Jack Grove. NOTE: this item is behind a paywall.
Bold plan to support graduate employment would require placements for 1.4 million students annually

We Keep Designing the Future from the Past — from LinkedIn.com by Monty Alger

Once globally preeminent, U.S. universities are sliding into decline — from hechingerreport.org by Jon Marcus
High costs, political attacks take a toll as fewer students come, top scholars leave

Top scholars are leaving. Fewer international students are coming. U.S. universities are slipping in international rankings. And American universities have failed to keep pace as other countries pour resources into their higher education systems.
…
Blaming the interruptions in funding that have already occurred, top research universities have admitted 15 percent fewer doctoral students for the coming fall, including in fields such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing, according to the Association of American Universities, or AAU. Many didn’t take any new doctoral students at all.

Colleges made deep staff cuts while adding tenure-track faculty last year — from highereddive.com by Ben Unglesbee
The latest survey of higher education employees from CUPA-HR found the biggest spike in tenure-track professors since at least 2016.

Dive Brief:

Full-time staff at colleges dropped 6.6% in 2025 compared to the year before, ending several years of growth, according to data released Wednesday by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources.
The decline was even sharper among part-time staff, whose ranks plunged by 23.9% last year, CUPA-HR’s latest survey data showed.
However, faculty numbers grew overall during the year. Tenure-track faculty headcounts saw the largest spike at 7% year over year, the biggest increase for that group since at least 2016.

Pace of college closings picks up, with more projected — from hechingerreport.org by Jon Marcus
Falling enrollment, rising debt have put an estimated 1 in 4 institutions at risk

More than 440 of the nation’s private, nonprofit four-year colleges and universities are now at risk, based on enrollment trends, debt and other measures, according to projections by Huron Consulting Group. That’s a quarter of the total.

Among the most endangered: small, rural and religiously affiliated institutions.

And how to dispose of the real estate is among the least of the challenges facing shuttering campuses and the students they serve.

University of Houston slashes 40% of courses from its core curriculum — from highereddive.com by Ben Unglesbee
The Texas institution cut about 100 classes, including in women’s and LGBT studies, to comply with a state law mandating general education reviews.

Dive Brief:

The University of Houston has slashed about 40% of courses from the flagship’s core curriculum as it works to comply with a new state law dictating the architecture of general education requirements at Texas public colleges.
In the 2026-27 academic year, UH will adopt a core curriculum list with roughly 100 fewer classes after the University of Houston System’s board unanimously approved administrators’ proposal on Thursday. Among the classes dropped were courses in women’s and LGBT studies.
The overhaul is meant to satisfy the Texas statute known as SB 37, which mandates that public institutions’ core courses be “foundational” to postsecondary education, prepare students for the workforce and civic life, and cover “a breadth of knowledge.”

From DSC:
Re: Jeff’s posting above…I think that faculty often taught what THEY wanted to teach — versus what the market was asking for. If I were on the academic administration side of the house right now, I’d be seeking out and listening very closely to what the adjunct faculty members on campus are saying.

Will this new company be the largest company on the Internet by 2030? [Christian]

On 08/01/2026, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adult learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), career development, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, communities of practice, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, cost of getting a degree, credentialing, curriculum, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, disruption, education, education technology, elearning, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, global, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, informal learning, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, internet, K-12 related, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning preferences, learning spaces, lifelong learning, love of learning, more voice more choice more control, motivation, online learning, online media, online tutoring, pathways, personalized/customized learning, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, reinvent, society, staying relevant, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, training / L&D, United States, vision/possibilities, web-based collaboration, youth, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
The vision that I’ve been tracking for well over a decade begins with this graphic:
.

Could LearnVector be this next-generation company/platform? Perhaps. Time will tell.

Per Matt Tower via The EdSheet Vol. 38 dated 7/31/26:

Coursera bets $100M on its own co-founder: Andrew Ng’s new venture LearnVector lands one of the largest single checks in edtech this year — from Coursera, the company he founded 14 years ago.
.

LearnVector.ai

Reconnecting Professional Learning — Reflections from [Lucy Gray’s] ISTE Panel

On 07/14/2026, in adult learning, Apple, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, collaboration, communities of practice, education, education technology, ideas, instructional design, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, pathways, professional development, reinvent, relationships, teachers, by Daniel Christian

Reconnecting Professional Learning — from elemenous.substack.com by Lucy Gray
Reflections from My Wednesday ISTE Panel

At ISTE this year, I facilitated a Wednesday morning panel on professional learning. The session I organized was titled, The Future of Professional Learning: Connecting Educators Across Borders. I was joined by fellow Apple Distinguished Educators Tami Brewster, Bethany LaDue Nugent, Marcus Borders, Jason Krug and global educator Julie Meltzer. Our focus: How do we move professional development away from isolated, one-time experiences and toward something more connected, meaningful, and human?
…
The panel was grounded in a few simple but powerful ideas: professional learning should nurture, guide, and empower. It should be relevant, contextual, reflective, and sustained. It should recognize educators as capable professionals, not as people who are broken and need to be fixed. Too often, professional development is still designed around deficit thinking. Too often, teachers’ needs are not the starting point, and sessions become dry, one-directional experiences where information is delivered at them rather than built through conversation and collaboration, with little choice, little personalization, and little connection to the realities of their classrooms. Our panel served as a call to action to re-think professional learning.

We explored six different approaches to professional learning, and while each model was distinct, a clear through line emerged: relationships matter most.

Virtual Conferences at Scale — Lucy Gray — Actionable Innovations Events / GLOW
Micro-Mentorship — Tami Brewster
Networked, Values-Driven PD — Julie Meltzer — Institute for Humane Education
AI-Personalized PD Pathways — Marcus Borders
Share Stories with Voice — Bethany LaDue Nugent
Speak Your Crazy — Jason Krug

Our Padlet – Share resources and introduce yourself
Our Slides – Meet our panelists and learn about our work
Our Google NotebookLM – This notebook contains dozens of resources related to research and best practices in educator professional learning
The Connected PD App – This is an app I’m building in Base 44 to help people plan great professional learning experiences

Also from Lucy Gray, see the following for some nice tips and resources:

How I Spent My Time at #ISTElive26: Learning, Connecting, and Looking for What’s Next
A few reflections on AI, global learning, libraries, coaching, creativity, and the conversations that made ISTE meaningful.

Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Entry-Level Work: A Framework for Safeguarding and Reinventing Early Career Pathways

On 06/29/2026, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, career development, change, corporate / business world, economics, global, participation, pathways, policy, reinvent, society, student-related, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Entry-Level Work: A Framework for Safeguarding and Reinventing Early Career Pathways — from the World Economic Forum (weforum.org) and PwC

Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping how organizations hire, develop and advance talent, and this is most visible at entry-level. Globally, more than one in three young workers are employed in occupations with medium to high exposure to AI-driven task change. How these roles evolve will have significant implications for organizational performance, workforce participation and economic mobility.

The Current State of Play: AI in Higher Education and the Road Ahead [Gamby, Kil, Koblic, LeBlanc, Moldoveanu & Siemens]

On 06/29/2026, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business side of he, career development, change, colleges, community colleges, corporate / business world, culture, emerging technologies, ethics, expectations, experimentation, faculty/staff, game-changing environment, generational differences, higher education, ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, IT in HE, leadership, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, liberal arts, morals/values, organizational change, pace of change, parents/guardians, personalized/customized learning, policy, reinvent, relationships, skills, society, strategy, student-related, teaching & learning, trends, United States, universities, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

The Current State of Play: AI in Higher Education and the Road Ahead — from er.educause.edu by Tanya Gamby, David Kil, Rachel Koblic, Paul LeBlanc, Mihnea Moldoveanu and George Siemens

The conventional explanation for this strategic vacuum points to the speed of technological change; it is moving too fast for institutions built for deliberation. That is true. . . and incomplete. The deeper issue is cultural. In fairness to higher education, many industries are struggling to keep up with the pace of AI advances. Higher education, however, moves even more slowly and is not built for the kind of transformational speed now underway. Getting institutional stakeholders to engage, rethink the work, and move faster may be the central challenge facing presidents and chancellors today, and that’s saying a lot in such volatile times.

From DSC:
I highlighted this paragraph because it hits upon the key item involved here — culture. “The deeper issue is cultural.” I think that’s a very true statement.

Part of the culture and setup of many institutions includes giving faculty members full rein of their classes and their departments. Faculty members have a great deal of leeway and power in how they do things. So trying to get X faculty members to get on board — including the Department Chairs — is not an easy task.

Another part of culture involves being willing — or not — to change in the first place. Some institutions are like Google and are used to making changes and being more innovative. But those institutions are not the norm, at least in my experience. And this doesn’t even address another topic the article mentioned — the pace of these changes. As the authors point out, most institutions of traditional higher education are not equipped to deal with the current pace of change (nor are most of our other types of institutions and our corporations as well).

I’m going to end this posting with another brief excerpt from the article:

Institutions rooted in human relationships, committed to truth-seeking, and oriented toward the full development of persons play a central role. AI cannot manufacture the experience of mattering to another human being. It cannot model intellectual courage or ethical discernment. It cannot build the kind of community in which students discover who they are and what they believe.

These are not small things. They are, in fact, the things most worth doing. At their best, colleges and universities are not only preparing better workers but shaping individuals and strengthening society.

From DSC:
Following are several companies that are using AI to connect people to work. That’s a significant piece of my Learning from the Living [AI-Based Class] Room vision.

These companies were listed on an article entitled,
“Can AI be an effective career coach?”
— from achievepartners.com and Ryan Craig

FutureFit AI
Bridge the gap between talent, training, and employment at scale

AI-powered workforce technology connecting people to careers, employers to talent, and workforce partners to tools for integrated and intelligent workforce systems.

PathPilot AI

Empowering every job seeker with personalized AI coaching. Helping organizations scale career services and improve outcomes.

Empower Students with Career-Ready Skills
Help students discover career pathways, develop essential skills, and connect with opportunities. PathPilot provides personalized guidance that scales across your entire institution.

AI-powered career exploration and pathway planning
Skills assessment aligned with NACE competencies
Resume builder and interview preparation tools
Job matching with local and national employers
Institutional analytics and outcome tracking
Integration with existing career services systems

Pathific — Design your future
The all-in-one platform that connects your strengths to programs, careers, and real salary outcomes — powered by AI.

High school, post-secondary, newcomer to Canada, or career change — Pathific meets you where you are.

Your all-in-one career compass
Quality career guidance shouldn’t depend on where you go to school, when you start your journey, or where you come from. Using the latest AI and comprehensive Canadian data, we built a platform that gives everyone clear, data-driven pathways to their future. No more one-size-fits-all advice. No more guessing. Just your strengths, connected to real data.

OpportuNext

See Where Your Skills Can Take You | Find new career path opportunities with one simple search.

OpportuNext from Signal49 Research is a free-to-use career tool created in partnership with the Future Skills Centre. Using big data, it matches a person’s skills with viable career paths — often including some you have not considered.

Two years ago, AI broke assessment. Now, it’s helping us to reinvent it. — from linkedin.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman

Also from Dr. Hardman, see:

A new study shows AI helped deliver 1.5 years of maths progress in 8 weeks — here’s how. — from linkedin.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman

…a new study shows AI helped deliver 1.5 years of maths progress in 8 weeks — here’s how.

Google DeepMind just shared the results of a randomised trial involving 1,763 students. Half used Gemini’s “Guided Learning” to learn maths; half didn’t.

The result: the group working with AI gained the equivalent of 1.2 to 1.7 years of extra progress compared to those who didn’t.

It’s tempting to read this as “Gemini’s Guided Learning mode works!” But the key point here is that Gemini didn’t work alone….

Look closer, and what made the difference wasn’t just the tech — it was a great teacher making expert use of it.

And here’s the link to Robert’s posting on LinkedIn.

OPINION: If higher education wants to rebuild public trust, start with making college affordable — from hechingerreport.org by John B. King, Jr.
Addressing high tuition, food insecurity and child care needs are important first steps

Higher education is under siege, with many students and parents balking at high costs. In a series of op-eds, university leaders lay out their efforts to keep college affordable. This is the first in the series.

For many people across the country, paying for college is the largest investment they will ever make. Increasingly, it’s one that feels out of reach.

Over the past two decades, tuition and fees at private, national universities have jumped by 112 percent; at some “elite” and highly selective schools the annual cost of attendance now approaches $100,000.

If higher education is to rebuild public trust, affordability can’t be an afterthought. It must be at the center of our strategic focus.

Also from The Hechinger Report, see:

What it’s like to enter the job market in the middle of an AI revolution — from hechingerreport.org by Neal Morton
‘It’s not looking good’: The unemployment rate for recent grads is the highest in five years, but AI is not primarily to blame — at least not yet

Addendum on 6/10/25:

The Real Mission of Higher Education Is Hiding in Plain Sight — from insidehighered.com by John Warner
A guest post laying out a path forward for all institutions.

Most colleges and universities are not actually organized around learning. They’re organized around teaching, research productivity, rankings, revenue, and the preservation of institutional prestige. Students sense this, even when they can’t articulate it. The public senses it, too. Academic researchers themselves have been making this argument for decades, but it has rarely felt more urgent than it does right now.

The Yale report says, wisely, that “trust is earned by doing what you say you’re going to do.” Universities say they’re about learning. The way to rebuild trust is to actually mean it and to build institutions that prove it.

The Yale committee is right that trust must be rebuilt through action over messaging. The most fundamental action, and the one most often overlooked, is this: Get learning right.

This $10K AI School Promises to Future-Proof Your Career [Urwin]

On 05/12/2026, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, accessibility / UDL, Alternatives, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, collaboration, colleges, communications, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, education, education reform, education technology, emerging technologies, entrepreneurship, experimentation, faculty/staff, Google, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, K-12 related, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning spaces, Microsoft, pace of change, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, real-world assignments, reinvent, skills, staying relevant, student-related, teaching online, United States, universities, vendors, by Daniel Christian

This $10K AI School Promises to Future-Proof Your Career — from builtin.com by Matthew Urwin
Khan Academy, TED and ETS are starting a new program to equip students and professionals with the skills to thrive in an increasingly AI-driven economy. Here’s what you need to know.

Summary: The Khan TED Institute is a higher-education program that will teach students and workers how to use AI through interactive learning. The program’s AI-centric curriculum is an unproven approach, though, casting doubt on whether it will actually improve learning outcomes and career prospects.

Higher education might be on the verge of a radical overhaul to bring it up to speed in the age of artificial intelligence. At the TED2026 conference, Khan Academy, TED and ETS announced that they’re partnering to establish the Khan TED Institute — a new program that reorients the college curriculum around AI. By joining forces, the education technology trio aims to develop an alternative to traditional universities that better tracks student progress, teaches more relevant skills and provides a more personalized learning experience.

Accessibility is another major tenet of the Khan TED Institute. Its virtual nature allows anyone with an internet connection to participate in the program and makes it easier for students to move at their preferred pace. And because its curriculum prioritizes competency over course credits, advanced learners can complete the program in a shorter period. Time isn’t the only thing students can save on, either: The Institute promises a bachelor’s degree for less than $10,000, offering a much more affordable alternative to the typical four-year degree.

From DSC:
Faculty senates don’t do well with this pace of change. But to their credit, few organizations can begin to deal with this pace of change.

Learning Ecosystems

Categories

Tags