Daring to be different
ASU ’ s President is on a mission to increase accessibility and democratise education for all .
Michael Crow interviewed by Martin Betts
President Michael Crow is approaching 20 years as President of Arizona State University which has been ranked as the most innovative US university for seven years running .
He joined the HEDx podcast to share a clear message of the need for distinction and differentiation and of ASU ’ s mission to democratise higher education for the world .
Their technology-enabled strategy is breaking the mould of global higher education , and is measured by the students they include and building pathways for all to succeed .
When will others follow ? The biggest risk might be in not doing so .
MB : How did ASU get to be rated the most innovative US university for seven years running , and how important is that to you personally and to ASU ’ s mission ? MC : A few universities have broken out of the norm . They are able to scale , enhance outcomes , have broader and deeper social impact , and rates of learning enhancement and learning outcomes .
Arizona State University President Michael Crow . Photo : Deanna Dent , ASU
We are seen by many as the leader of that and innovation has become a central mechanism by which the institution ’ s social impact is accelerated . We realise that without accelerating innovation rates and adoption of new ways of doing things , our social impact will remain static .
If you want to increase all the things that people seek from higher education , you have to accelerate the rate of innovation .
We don ’ t pursue the ranking or accolade . We ’ ve brought in more than 300 technologies , and married them into our learning platform . Everything that we ’ re doing is core to our faculty on campus , and allows us to do more things beyond the campus and the projection of our teaching and learning assets .
You ’ ve launched an ASU campus in LA as a local base for online programs that offer opportunity to students who ’ ve been rejected by other campuses . What is the significance of this move for ASU and your competitors ? At the heart of our design is the notion of how you build academically excellent , highly competitive university faculties who can do what any other university faculty can do , write grants and perform grants and create new ways of thinking artistically or creatively .
How do you build a faculty that does that , and at the same time , not limit access to the institution unnecessarily ? What has happened in many institutions is that they cannot scale . And because of that , they have to constantly raise admission standards .
We haven ’ t expanded higher education to accommodate massive social growth and social diversification . The basic premise of our ASU model is accessibility and excellence and impact of the institution , all combined in one institution .
We are not suggesting that other institutions go away because they can ’ t scale , but we are suggesting that if someone doesn ’ t build something that does scale , we ’ re in for a world of underperformance and a world of economic and social instability . Too many people will not be able to have access to a great educational experience .
We ’ ve taken some of the ideas of the University of Bologna or Oxford and some of the ideas from Harvard and other institutions , and built a modern technologically enhanced university , which is focused on massive accessibility , projection , engagement , but with the faculty still in charge . It ’ s still their ideas , their content , their pedagogy , their research , their scholarship .
Most people will tell you that ’ s impossible . Well , we ’ re living proof that it ’ s not . We ’ ve taken our research funding levels accelerating towards $ 800 million a year of expenditure without a medical school , which is among the top 10 such institutions on the planet . And we ’ ve also grown in that time from 45,000 to 150,000 degree students in the same institution .
We ’ re not in the business of competing against the great public universities of California . The economy of California is larger than the UK economy . And they have 33 fantastic public universities and fantastic community colleges with millions of students .
We ’ re not competing against that , but we are , in our new modality able to project technologically advanced learning systems that can allow people to have access to universities , that don ’ t normally have access to them .
You launched a program to target 100 million learners worldwide by 2030 , delivered in up to 40 languages . Does this reflect the difference in the levels of ambition between ASU and some of its global competitors ? We acquired the Thunderbird School of Global Management a few years ago .
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