"A really interesting lesson in change management."

@michaelbhorn and @jselingo close out the conversation with @MelikPeter of @unityonsocial. Send your takes, your ideas and, as always, your hate mail.

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First-year students often say they never get to touch anything. Ian McDaniel walked into @USC's Rocket Lab as a freshman and was soon cutting carbon composites.

His case for building before the theory, and how it made his classes click.

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More than half of @USC's majors require an immersive experience to graduate, and almost all offer one.

Beong-Soo Kim on internships, a Maymester in another city, a program in Southeast Asia, and why it can't be "a one-size-fits-all solution."

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Northeastern's co-op is supported by more than 150 staff. How does @USC offer immersive learning without just adding cost?

Beong-Soo Kim, whose new provost comes from Northeastern, on the Trojan family as USC's advantage.

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The best college leaders have one thing in common, says @michaelbhorn: they're leaning into AI, not running from it.

@jselingo on the presidents who can hold two truths at once.

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New @Adobe research, previewed live on Future U: the top thing employers want now is "proof of capability."

Shauna Chung on what that means, and why 92% of employers expect decision-making and judgment to matter much more in three years.

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Before Intel went after the low end of the chip market, Andy Grove taught some 2,000 managers the theory behind it.

@michaelbhorn: educators should be especially good at using that same tool on their own campuses.

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"The idea that you would not practice it as part of your education is almost a foreign idea to engineering."

@gauravsukhatme on why @USCViterbi now makes every student build something. About half already were, on their own.

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Could other colleges copy Unity's playbook?

@MelikPeter says the process is transferable. Surviving it is the hard part: "It is ironic that people ask me how I survived it more so than how I did it."

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"The board meetings are honestly a pleasure."

Beong-Soo Kim on why board culture matters more than the textbook swim lanes, and what changed when @USC's board reformed its own governance.

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Two jobs for boards, says @michaelbhorn: hire a president who wants to win at a few things, and back them when it gets ugly.

Plus what Andy Grove did before Intel's big bet on cheaper chips.

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Families think about the cost of college. Colleges think about financial aid. Should @USC attack the cost side?

"I think they do," says Beong-Soo Kim. USC's smallest tuition increase in about 40 years was a signal that "the sticker price matters."

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Can today's college leaders meet this moment?

@jselingo: many "were trained, and they were brought up in higher education and academia in a very different era," and aren't used to making trade-offs.

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Essays are something AI is "very eager to construct and consume." So how should we assess learning now?

Former English professor Shauna Chung on making thinking visible: podcasts, round tables, video responses in their own voice.

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There are far more students looking for internships than there are internships. So @USCViterbi now requires every student to complete a practicum.

@gauravsukhatme: "It's a bold step, but... as President Kim said, I'd much rather take a big swing."

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"I call BS."

@MelikPeter on the idea that AI, like a library card, is all you need for an education, and why @unityonsocial had employees experiment with AI for an hour a day.

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A lawyer is trained to spot risk. So how does Beong-Soo Kim, a lawyer by training, balance protecting @USC against ambition?

Integrity first. Then: "I would rather take big swings and miss than not swing at all."

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What made a sitting college president write that colleges serve their employees more than their students?

@MelikPeter on the moment it clicked: "Wait a second. I could be part of the problem."

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"Experiential learning" risks becoming a buzz phrase. @michaelbhorn asked Beong-Soo Kim what @USC means by it.

USC calls it immersive experiences. More than half of majors require one, and the next step is weaving them into advising and the classroom.

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"We have launched many initiatives that have failed. The secret to our success is we've launched more that have succeeded."

@MelikPeter on how @unityonsocial sets the rules, limits and timelines before anything launches.

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"The top thing that employers are seeking right now is proof of capability."

Shauna Chung of @Adobe breaks it into three parts: apply what you know to a real problem, explain the decisions you made, and keep your own judgment when AI is in the loop.

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At a recent dinner of presidents and provosts, @jselingo can't remember anyone who'd been in their job more than about a year.

Meanwhile, faculty have learned they can wait leaders out.

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When AI can write the paper, what should a student show?

Shauna Chung of @Adobe, a former English professor, on making thinking visible, and the first-year writing project that ended up screened in full at a city council meeting.

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"I would rather take big swings and miss than not swing at all."

Beong-Soo Kim on why this is the moment for universities like @USC to take advantage of the disruption: "If we're not taking really, really big swings... I'm not doing my job."

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"I would rather take big swings and miss than not swing at all."

Future U went live at @USC: President Beong-Soo Kim with @jselingo and @michaelbhorn, then a panel on making every engineering student build something.

With support from @Adobe.

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The first question @MelikPeter put to his board: are you philanthropic, operational or strategic?

From there, @unityonsocial rebuilt its governance layer by layer, swapping consensus for decision-makers.

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"Oh, you can't do that. It's a regulation." Then you look, and there's no regulation there.

@michaelbhorn on how organizations start treating tradition like law, and why the grooves run so deep in higher ed.

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"Here's where we're gonna play, and here's how we're gonna win."

@jselingo on the decisive action most colleges are missing, and why waiting for competitors to close is not a strategy.

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What do we want students to be able to do when they leave? What do we want them to prove?

@jselingo pulls the episode together: the university of the future isn't the one that does everything. It's the one that knows where it can win.

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Governors everywhere want better pathways to careers. They keep hitting the same wall.

@michaelbhorn: K-12, higher ed and workforce systems "were never built to row in the same direction."

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When @unityonsocial kills a project that isn't working, nobody gets laid off. They move to another project.

@MelikPeter on the decision rules that make failing fast safe.

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Which repetitions do students actually need before they can responsibly hand a task to AI?

@jselingo on exploring, then exploiting, and the tipping point nobody can measure yet.

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How will AI change higher ed?

@MelikPeter: "I think anybody who could predict that right now is trying to sell a book."

His more honest answer: knowledge is getting cheaper, so the job may shift to certifying that learning is real.

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Why do so many colleges end up serving their employees more than their students?

@MelikPeter traces it to 1965, when access expanded but almost every college kept a model built for the selective few.

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"We don't have the assessment infrastructure at all right now."

@michaelbhorn thinks assessment may be the most interesting place in education for a philanthropy to put its money, and explains "repetitions to par."

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International and graduate students are "not the gravy train, the cash cow that it was to paper over these challenges."

@michaelbhorn: most colleges need a very different conversation. Where do we focus? Where are we excellent?

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@MelikPeter's painful line about the college presidency:

Year one, a listening tour.
Year two, an inclusive strategic plan.
Year three, a consulting job, and your successor resets the cycle.

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Alabama wanted nurse apprenticeships. Licensure rules said you had to finish school before you could be hired.

@michaelbhorn on the cascade of changes it took. Today: 30 institutions and more than 500 nurse apprentices.

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@unityonsocial broke the faculty job into seven distinct roles.

@MelikPeter on rebuilding a college "for an era of adaptation over preservation," and centralizing everything that doesn't touch a student directly.

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"We've always done it that way." "That is tradition here."

@jselingo and @michaelbhorn on the @MelikPeter line that stopped them both: "We all kind of just assumed that what was tradition was regulation."

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@Cornell, @VanderbiltU and Yale have all put out reports on the purpose of the university.

@michaelbhorn thinks that's useful work, and tells @jselingo why he disagrees with him about Linda McMahon's letter asking for exactly this.

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Everyone says AI means we need to slow learning down.

@michaelbhorn has a slightly different take: aim AI at the right level for each student and accelerate the foundations, so more arrive at college ready for the bigger questions.

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Ten years ago @unityonsocial had about 700 students. Today it has more than 10,000.

@jselingo and @michaelbhorn on a New England turnaround that doesn't get nearly the attention it deserves.

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Six white papers, a year and a half of work, five priorities for states that want real career pathways.

@michaelbhorn on Beyond Silos, and why he uses Chesterton's fence: know why a regulation is there before you tear it down.

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"Not enough of them want to win. They just wanna wait it out."

@jselingo on college presidents, the mergers nobody will start, and the missing bias to action.

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"We all kind of just assumed that what was tradition was regulation."

@MelikPeter of @unityonsocial on the slow realization that changed how he runs a college: "If you cannot be like them, you shouldn't act like them."

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@michaelbhorn still has his students write papers. This year he's adding an oral defense.

"Use AI all you want, but you'd better learn it."

On mastery, why novices need foundations before AI helps, and the case for speeding those foundations up.

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First you explore, building the knowledge. Then you exploit it, on your own and with AI.

@jselingo's question for higher ed: "How do we know when a student has gotten over that hump?"

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Ten years ago, @unityonsocial had about 700 students. Today it has more than 10,000.

@MelikPeter on why too many colleges serve their employees more than their students, and taking Unity apart.

New Future U with @jselingo and @michaelbhorn.

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MIT's former president Rafael Reif, to @hilarysburns of @BostonGlobe: "Are we forgetting what basic research has done for our economy?"

She says the administration is walking away from basic research and investing in applied and AI instead.

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When Yale announced a task force on the public's disillusionment with college, @michaelbhorn rolled his eyes. Then he read the report.

On why judgment needs knowledge, and the last time university presidents reshaped K-12.

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