Re:University Reflections (Part 1): Change Doesn't Always Start at the Top

I left the Re:University conference feeling inspired about the future of higher education, while also being realistic about the hard work ahead. 

Universities are being asked to perform a difficult balancing act: reframe and defend the importance of their work, become more cost-effective, align more closely with labour market and national needs, and navigate rapid change enabled by AI.

None of this is easy.

Much of it is uncomfortable.

And all of it is happening whether we feel ready or not. 

Universities also aren’t especially known for being forward-looking organizations. Medieval robes are still worn at convocations. The idea of learners gathering to be guided by faculty and library resources isn’t that far removed from how universities operated centuries ago. Many of these traditions are worth preserving, and I would argue some absolutely should be. 

But tradition alone won’t carry the sector forward. 

Change doesn’t always come from where we expect 

One theme that came up repeatedly at Re:University is that change-makers aren’t always the people we assume they are. 

University presidential tenures continue to shorten; for example, in the US the average time in current presidential role has dropped from 8.5 years in 2006 to 5.9 years in 2022¹. In many institutions, the president’s role has become more ceremonial, focused on fundraising, external relations, and facilitation, rather than on directly driving a long-term vision to life. 

That doesn’t mean change isn’t happening. 

Some of the most meaningful change I’ve seen in higher education has been driven from the bottom up. The people doing the work every day are often the ones who know where inefficiencies live. They can tell you which parts of their jobs bring a mix of dread and drudgery, and which parts feel like a poor use of their expertise. 

When appropriately empowered, these teams can help institutions become more effective, more resilient, and frankly, better, with fewer resources than before. 

A sector in motion, whether we like it or not 

We are in a period of profound change. Sector-altering cuts continue to be announced, including on the final day of the conference. 

Navigating cuts is never easy. The work rarely shrinks alongside the workforce. Those who remain often carry survivor’s guilt, wondering why they kept their roles while valued colleagues did not. 

If we’re serious about supporting knowledge workers in this environment, we need to think differently about how we organize work, use data, and tell our story. 

One useful framing came from Brian Rosenberg, Visiting Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and former President of Macalester College. His advice to universities was simple, but not easy: 

1. Tell the truth 
2. Think like a startup 
3. Look and listen outside the walls 

While his remarks were aimed at institutions as a whole, I think they apply at every level. 

Tell the truth, and show the work 

“Telling the truth” can mean many things. Here, I want to focus on transparency about outcomes. 

Universities need to help both internal and external communities understand pathways through the institution, and the outcomes students actually achieve. This means going beyond the usual retention metrics (term 2, year 2, and so on) and applying similar lenses to questions people care about: 

• Did participation in a specific program or course alter student persistence? 
• Did it help students discover a new academic or career path? 
• Did it lead to different long-term outcomes? 

We also need to do a better job connecting our work to community impact. How do students, alumni, and research contribute beyond campus? 

Did they support community organizations? 
Help employers grow? 
Improve health outcomes? 
Start businesses? 
Strengthen public services or national capacity? 

Universities make all of this possible, but the surrounding community doesn’t always see it. 

To tell these stories well, the underlying data has to be trustworthy, automated, and actionable. 

A health tech graduate 

Imagine a student who enters a health technology program as a first-generation learner from a rural community. During their studies, they complete a co-op placement with a regional health authority, receive targeted academic advising after a difficult first term, and later contribute to a capstone project focused on improving digital patient intake workflows. 

After graduation, the student remains in the region and joins a health technology firm serving local hospitals. A few years later, they are leading a small team, hiring graduates from the same program, and collaborating with faculty on applied research projects. Over time, they become an engaged alumnus, supporting student placements and industry partnerships that strengthen the local health ecosystem. 

Stories like this happen every day across our institutions. Too often, however, they surface only as one-off anecdotes, assembled manually for speeches, reports, or fundraising materials. When we rely on these handcrafted examples alone, we dramatically underuse the depth and richness of the data we already have. 

Each moment in this lifecycle likely lives in a different system: admissions, student records, experiential learning, alumni relations, advancement, research administration, and external labour-market data. When viewed in isolation, they look like disconnected transactions. When brought together, they form a coherent narrative about social mobility, workforce development, and community impact. 

By intentionally connecting these data points, institutions create the foundation for something more powerful. With well-governed, integrated data, AI tools can help surface patterns, connect outcomes across the student lifecycle, and automatically generate credible, evidence-based stories about how education translates into real-world impact. This moves impact storytelling from a manual, episodic exercise to a scalable, repeatable capability that supports decision-making, accountability, and public trust. I’m still of the belief there is a great place for human storytellers, but for illuminating the community impacts in real time I think technology can play a great role.  

Too often, data teams are treated as a supporting function. I’d argue that they are actually an enabling one. They make it possible to see across the full student lifecycle and track moments that matter. 

Doing this well isn’t trivial. Connecting data across systems remains one of the hardest problems in higher education, a theme that came up repeatedly at the conference. But when institutions invest in quality data pipelines, clear governance, and strong security practices, it becomes possible to tell impact stories at scale, not just during the twice-yearly scramble to refresh promotional materials. 

Think like a startup (yes, really) 

“Think like a startup” is often shorthand for creating space for experimentation, and accepting that some things won’t work the first time. 

Nearly ten years into building Plaid, I can say with confidence that creating new ways of working is not for the faint of heart. You start with an idea, test it, learn from it, iterate, test again, and repeat until you understand whether it can actually work. 

Inside higher education, this might look like giving teams safe spaces to experiment. An enormous amount of reporting is still manually stitched together in spreadsheets. Not because people lack motivation, but because they lack the tools, permissions, structures, and support to rethink how the work gets done. 

A good place to start is small: 

• Run pilots with clearly defined scope 
• Use synthetic or anonymized data 
• Create sandbox environments 
• Invest in learning through courses, conferences, and outside expertise 

This isn’t about reckless experimentation. It’s about helping teams learn faster, and avoid the most painful lessons by learning from others. 

So where does this leave us? 

It leaves us connecting more deeply with peers, both inside and outside our institutions. It leaves us questioning whether the way we’ve done things for 20 years, or 500, is still serving us well. 

And it leaves us with an opportunity. 

An opportunity to build institutions that are more transparent, more adaptive, and more aligned with the world they serve. An opportunity to create a legacy that allows higher education to help shape the future we want for our children, and for generations beyond. 

It won’t be easy. But I left Re:University more convinced than ever that it’s possible, and that many of the people capable of leading that change are already in the room.