Category: Blog

  • University Design | The University is a Unique Organization by David J. Staley

    I will confess that I am always amused when economists or social scientists formalize something most of us already understood, as if they had discovered it. In this case, I think two economists, David M. Cutler and Edward L. Glaeser, have done us all a favor with their report “How…

  • Identity: Reclaim, Not Reinvent by Melissa Morriss-Olson

    She Leads the Way: What Women Leaders Teach Us About the Leadership Higher Education Needs Now The third of seven short pieces drawn from conversations on the IngenioUs podcast. I’ve talked with more than thirty women presidents and senior leaders in higher education, and a few ideas kept surfacing no…

  • The Path: Composed, Not Climbed by Melissa Morriss-Olson

    She Leads the Way: What Women Leaders Teach Us About the Leadership Higher Education Needs Now The second of seven short pieces drawn from conversations on the IngenioUs podcast. I’ve talked with more than thirty women presidents and senior leaders in higher education, and a few ideas kept surfacing no…

  • The Power of Knowing Your Why by Melissa Morriss-Olson

    She Leads the Way: What Women Leaders Teach Us About the Leadership Higher Education Needs Now The first of seven short pieces drawn from conversations on the IngenioUs podcast. I’ve talked with more than thirty women presidents and senior leaders in higher education, and a few ideas kept surfacing no…

  • What Clay Has Taught Me About Leadership by Melissa Morriss-Olson

    A few years ago, I sat down at a pottery wheel for the first time and quickly discovered that clay did not care about my resume. The clay did not care that I had spent decades in higher education leadership, served as a provost, launched new academic programs, written books,…

  • The Loneliness of Seeing It Clearly Before Others Do by Melissa Morriss-Olson

    There is a moment in leadership that I have come to recognize more clearly over time, though I did not always have language for it. It does not come with a decision. In fact, it comes well before any decision feels possible, showing up more quietly, often in the middle…

  • University Design | Stickiness By David J. Staley

    I’m back from a consulting gig at a small university in a small city located somewhere in the Midwest. Compared to other similar institutions, this university is doing okay. Enrollment seems steady, donor relations are solid, they’ve built a raft of new buildings. The university has one distinctive major that…

  • What Leaders Know—but Cannot Fully Say by Melissa Morriss-Olson

    The hidden discipline of leadership is not just transparency. It is knowing when, how, and how much to say. In an earlier reflection, I wrote about the cost of what we don’t talk about in leadership. Silence, shaped by culture and expectation, can limit how effective we are. In my…

  • University Design | Educable By David J. Staley

    Leslie Valiant, The Importance of Being Educable: A New Theory of Human Uniqueness (Princeton University Press, 2024). Leslie Valiant begins his book with an extraordinary claim: “We live in an intelligence-driven culture.” (xiii) By this, he means that intelligence is everywhere in our vocabulary. We seek to measure it —…

  • The First Leadership Habit of Innovation by Melissa Morriss-Olson

    Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of interviewing dozens of college and university presidents on the IngenioUs podcast. One insight keeps resurfacing in those conversations: the leaders who succeed at innovation rarely begin with bold ideas. They begin with something much quieter—listening. Why listening—not vision—is where meaningful change begins.…

  • University Design | Interestingness By David J. Staley

    Kenneth O. Stanley and Joel Lehman, Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective (Springer, 2015) Jane Jacobs, the great urban theorist and activist, author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, did not start out with the goal of becoming the foremost writer about cities. …

  • The Cost of What We Don’t Talk About in Leadership by Melissa Morriss-Olson

    One of the things I’ve come to appreciate most about leadership—especially in higher education—is how much of it is shaped not only by what we say and do, but by what we learn to leave unspoken. Every institution has a version of this. Topics that generate discomfort. Questions that are…

  • University Design | The AI Symposium By David J. Staley

    Four years ago, we were blindsided by the unleashing of LLMs into educational spaces. Faculty in the humanities and qualitative social sciences have responded with a mix of bewilderment and resistance, some pledging to ban these tools outright, fearing that students would rely on them to generate essays rather than…

  • Why Innovation Fails: Reflections From Where I Sit

    By Melissa Morriss-Olson Innovation is a word we use easily in higher education. It appears in strategic plans, presidential speeches, accreditation narratives, and fundraising priorities. We talk about it as if its importance is self-evident—and perhaps it is. But despite the rhetoric, innovation fails far more often than it succeeds.…

  • University Design | Underemployment by David J. Staley

    The core argument in Peter Turchin’s book “End Times” is that social and political upheaval results from what he identifies as “elite overproduction.” Looking throughout history, Turchin claims that: when a state such as the United States has stagnating or declining real wages (wages in inflation-adjusted dollars), a growing gap…

  • University Design | Universities and Intangible Capitalism by David J. Staley

    In the Spring of 2021, during the closing moments of the pandemic lockdowns, after a year spent teaching classes over Zoom, an exasperated student, a graduating senior, quipped at the beginning of my class: “This sucks.” He was referring to the setting of my class and of his other classes.…

  • University Design | The Soloversity By David J. Staley

    The Economist recently reported on a new Silicon Valley trend: the “solopreneur.” They give the example of Sarah Gwilliam, who started a business offering grief counseling and the management of family affairs after the death of a loved one. (The Economist quipped that the business is “wedding planning for funerals.”)…

  • University Design | The Agentic Student by David J. Staley

    I caught a glimpse of the future the other day while attending a Zoom meeting. There were six of us in attendance that day: four humans and two AI note takers. Automatic note takers are not new, of course. We see them frequently pop up as one of the screens…

  • IngenioUs Leadership: Chaos as Catalyst – Piloting Through Challenges and Opportunities

    By Melissa Morriss-Olson “Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment, and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.”—Gilda Radner Higher education leaders today are navigating uncharted waters: global pandemics, financial upheaval, demographic shifts, and technological disruption. In this turbulent…

  • What Is a University For? Reclaiming the Role of Higher Education in an Age of Disruption

    By Melissa Morriss-Olson The views and opinions expressed in this post are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of any institution with which I am or have been affiliated. There’s no denying it—higher education is in a tough spot right now. The drumbeat of political interference keeps getting…

  • IngenioUs Leadership: Architects of Impact – Leading by Design

    By Melissa Morriss-Olson “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”—Albert Einstein Higher education leaders today face unprecedented challenges: shifting demographics, declining public trust, financial fragility, and rapidly evolving student needs. Within this complex landscape, some leaders are standing out—not because…

  • University Design|Perpendicular Futures: A Footlights by David J. Staley

    I define perpendicular change as an unexpected deviation from the assumed trend line, usually a 90° shift from the presumed direction the future is headed.  If it taught us nothing else, the COVID pandemic revealed that change is not always gradual or predictable or linear—it can be sudden and disruptive,…

  • IngenioUs Leadership: Seven Practices That Drive Transformative Innovation by Melissa Morriss-Olson

    “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” —Peter Drucker Higher education is undergoing an existential transformation. Rising college closures, student skepticism about the value of a degree, demographic cliff pressures, and accelerating advances in technology are all converging to create a perfect storm. In the face…

  • University Design | Rethinking the Major: Building a Resilient Education by David J. Staley

    Ned Scott Laff and Scott Carlson, Hacking College: Why the Major Doesn’t Matter—and What Really Does (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2025). Andrew S. Hanks, Shengjun Jiang, Xuechao Qian, Bo Wang, Bruce A. Weinberg, “Do double majors face less risk? An analysis of human capital diversification,” NBER Working Paper Series, Working…

  • Higher Education is in Crisis. Women Leaders May Hold the Key. By Melissa Morriss-Olson

    Since 2019, more than 60 U.S. colleges and universities have closed permanently, merged, or consolidated.[1] Another 200 private institutions face significant financial vulnerability.[2] With undergraduate enrollment declining by 8% over the past decade and public confidence in higher education dropping from 57% to 36% since 2015, the sector faces unprecedented…

  • University Design |The Plasticity of the University by David J. Staley

    Jessica Riddell, Hope Circuits: Rewiring Universities and Other Organizations for Human Flourishing (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024). As a theorist of higher education, I am very interested in imagining new forms of the university and have long been fascinated by the challenge of institutional transformation. Innovation in universities, as in any…

  • IngenioUs Leadership in Action: The Power of Purposeful Leadership by Melissa Morriss-Olson

    “Most of us go to our graves with our music still inside us, unplayed.” —Oliver Wendell Holmes Leadership in higher education is more than strategic planning and operational efficiency—it is about anchoring one’s decisions in a deeply rooted sense of purpose. Over the course of my interviews on the IngenioUs…

  • IngenioUs Leadership in Action: The Power of Unleashing Human Experience and Potential by Melissa Morriss-Olson

    “When doing what we most love transforms us into the best possible version of ourselves and hints at even greater future possibilities, the urge to explore becomes a feverish compulsion.”—Steven Kotler[1] Leadership in higher education goes beyond operational management—it is about creating a culture that inspires every individual to unleash…

  • University Design | Reading Gestures: The Power of Nonverbal Communication in Education by David J. Staley

    Susan Goldin-Meadows, Thinking With Your Hands: The Surprising Science Behind How Gestures Shape our Thoughts (Basic Books, 2023). As an educator, I am exquisitely sensitive to the information students are sending me with their gestures and body language, such that I am certain many find my pedagogical style a little…

  • Innovating Against the Odds in Higher Education Leadership by Dr. Melissa Morriss-Olson

    In a recent University Business column, an intriguing list highlighted the 100 best university presidents of the last decade. Surprisingly, none came from elite, resource-rich institutions. This revelation underscores a profound truth: leaders in under-resourced, less prestigious environments often develop—by necessity–a unique skill set that higher education urgently needs in…

  • University Design | Distributed Academic Leadership: The DAO University by David J. Staley

    An old friend of mine–we were both big soccer fans–once told me that the main job of a soccer head coach is to be fired. I never quite believed him when he told me that some 10 years ago, but now I don’t think I can deny the truth of…

  • The Top Three Lessons I’ve Learned from Hosting the IngenioUs Podcast

    By Melissa Morriss-Olson When I first envisioned the IngenioUs podcast, it was during a time of significant upheaval, as the world was grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic. Like many in higher education, I was searching for new ways to navigate the volatility and uncertainty that had become our new reality. What…

  • University Design | Relationships vs. Programs by David J. Staley

    I don’t mean to single out Wittenberg University, our neighbors to the west of us here in Columbus, but their recent decisions signal a disquieting trend in higher education. As reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Wittenberg plan to deal with a debt crisis and other similar problems affecting…

  • Eight Big Ideas for Navigating Higher Education’s New Era

    Let’s face it: higher education is in a whirlwind of change. It’s not just about keeping the lights on anymore—it’s about steering through a perfect storm of challenges while trying to spot the silver linings. Our Season 5 IngenioUs podcast conversations brought us face-to-face with some of the most innovative…

  • University Design | Educational Well Being by David J. Staley

    Martin Betts and Michael Rosemann, The New Learning Economy: Thriving Beyond Higher Education (Routledge, 2023). The philosopher Roberto Unger defines “the most advanced practice of production” in the world today as the knowledge economy, and Martin Betts and Michael Rosemann place learning at the center of this knowledge economy.  Incumbent…