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The COVID-19 pandemic has forced colleges and universities to shut down their campuses—moving classes online and radically transforming their instruction and grading—and many in higher education are grappling with how to meet the moment. How best to serve their students and communities, focus public health research on the crisis, and produce useful medical supplies and equipment? None of us know how the world will look after COVID-19, but a crisis like this only underscores the importance of innovative and resilient institutions that prepare students to be innovative and resilient themselves.
At Ashoka U, we believe that equipping students, faculty, staff, and senior leaders to act as changemakers is one of the best ways to ensure that higher education will be able to respond to increasingly complex global challenges. When colleges and universities embed changemaking into their culture, operations, and educational offerings, they will be increasingly prepared to deploy their tremendous human capital—as well as knowledge and research assets—in trans-disciplinary, collaborative, and innovative ways to address the many challenges ahead.
When we founded Ashoka U in 2008, many people told us that higher education was a dinosaur, increasingly irrelevant, and resistant to change. However, we have seen a different reality working with hundreds of colleges and universities around the world who are proving that higher education can be a powerful force for social impact. We’ve been inspired by the institutions around the world that have worked to align their values, strategies, educational offerings, and operations in service of that goal. They are creating new educational pathways for changemaking, recognizing that students demand lives of purpose and employers demand the 21st century skills of empathy, creativity, and collaboration. Many share our perspective that students without changemaking skills will be left behind, making changemaking the new inequality. And, as institutions, many realize the need to rethink their organizational strategies, structures, and positioning in the face of trends like climate change, technology/artificial intelligence, shifting demographics, and growing economic and social inequalities.
What We’ve Learned About Changemaking Institutions
To kick off our in-depth series “Innovating Higher Education for the Greater Good,” we’d like to highlight some of the key insights we’ve learned from our global community of higher education changemakers. As outlined in the publication, Changemaker Institutions, we believe that social innovation in higher education is as much a process as an outcome, both an educational and an organizational change approach. For colleges and universities to co-create world-changing knowledge and impact with their community, they have to be able to respond quickly to community needs, work across disciplinary silos, and value and empower everyone as changemakers: students, staff, faculty, administrators, and community members.
This isn’t easy. Instead of starting an organization from scratch, established colleges and universities are rooted in enduring traditions, norms, and structures of the centuries-old institution of higher education. And while many of these are intended to support academic and research quality and rigor, they often fail to foster creativity or innovation that keep both knowledge and institutions themselves relevant.
However, we have observed a great deal of movement over the last decade:
- Campuses have gone from offering a single course on social entrepreneurship to a diverse array of changemaking opportunities.
- In addition to the term “social entrepreneurship,” campuses are increasingly using more inclusive language that invites all disciplines and stakeholders to participate: “social innovation,” “changemaking,” and “the common good.”
- A focus on social value for a limited set of stakeholders has been shifting towards the use of systems thinking to dismantle systems of power and oppression, blending the best of social entrepreneurship and social justice.
- Instead of treating social entrepreneurs and innovators as heroic leaders, we have seen more collaboration with those whose lived experience can best address social issues.
- From merely prioritizing curricular interventions (a course, degree program, or certificate) that promote social value, we have seen broader institutional cultures be aligned with social and environmental values.
- Corporate social responsibility and sustainability have gone beyond a portion of the business school, or part of an accreditation processes, to the broader emergence of the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings.
In our work with over 500 colleges and universities—including approximately 50 designated as Ashoka U Changemaker Campuses—we’ve found four key principles that foster changemaking graduates and community outcomes. These may seem like common knowledge to those with change management experience across other sectors, but they can be counter-culture in higher education, too often characterized by incentives and power structures that promote competition, silos, and risk aversion.
1. Aligning Vision and Strategy – Campuses that truly want to bring value for the greater good reflect this in their vision, mission, and strategic planning. In some cases, this may be a process of re-envisioning purpose and identity. In others, it is more about re-contextualizing the institution’s founding values and roots, amplifying that purpose, and realigning strategic priorities to live that more boldly and innovatively amidst changing student, community, and societal needs. But coordination and consensus on goals is critical to both signal institutional intent and guide institutional focus, budgeting, and decision-making.
2. Multi-Directional Change Leadership – Amongst campuses committed to rewiring their institutions for changemaking, some institutional change journeys are bottom-up, some are top-down, and some are sparked from faculty or staff in the middle. But wherever change begins, multi-directional leadership is critical: top-down leadership risks half-hearted compliance that falls short of desired outcomes, a bottom-up effort can fizzle if not supported by mid-level champions and resources, and mid-level innovation risks being irrelevant if not co-created with those on front lines of education and operation (and risks being sidelined as a “pet project” if not championed and resourced by senior leaders).
3. Empowering Values – Creating an empowering campus culture is not just about delegating authority and flattening decision-making structures. Instead, it’s about the belief that all people can be changemakers and have something to contribute—regardless of age, title, or status—and creating a campus culture that cultivates trust-based relationships and collaboration as key to achieving excellence in outcomes. When these values get reflected in organizational decision-making structures and operations, it fosters collaboration across disciplines and invites students and community members to be co-creators and co-learners together with faculty, researchers, and senior administrators.
4. Systems Leadership – Leaders need to both embody these values and also institutionalize them across the organization as they seek to innovate systems for more equitable outcomes—whether across campus or society. That includes recognizing that leadership can be enacted by anyone and often emerges through dynamic interaction and experimentation. Changemaking leaders on campus have a strong sense of purpose; express empathy and humility; align their actions with their values; foster inclusion, collaboration, and risk-taking; promote fluid teams of teams; and work to re(design) systems for the greater good. This aligns with many of the mindsets and skills that McKinsey & Co’s study of Ashoka Fellows revealed about systems change leaders.
Introducing the Series: Cases of Innovation and Changemaking
Throughout this series, we’ll share inspiring stories of change and innovation that bring new value to students, the institution, and society. Some models emerge from within colleges or universities themselves, while others are catalyzed outside of academia.
We will address the ways that colleges and universities are:
- Responding creatively to disruptions—e.g., increased competition, growing economic and educational inequality, or the climate crisis—to achieve new relevancy
- Addressing equity, diversity, and inclusion through student engagement, teaching, research, and policy work
- Rewiring themselves—whether via strategy, education, or research—for greater impact
It will also feature examples of:
- New organizational forms starting from scratch, whether a start-up college with innovative educational and operating models, or external partners bringing entrepreneurial pedagogies and pathways to existing institutions of higher education
- Intermediary organizations contributing to innovation and transformation across higher education whether on a national or global scale
A Call to Engage
This series will only scratch the surface of what has been, can be, and will be done. We hope that it can serve as an invitation to you to join us.
For those in higher education, this series invites you to imagine something new on your campus and be a part of systems change and innovation. We invite you to consider how your institution is embedding changemaking and innovation as a core priority and how you might innovate within your sphere of influence. If you are not already connected with Ashoka U, we invite you to join our newsletter for relevant news and updates and join a future Ashoka U Exchange.
For those in other sectors, this series will be an invitation to learn how higher education is preparing itself and its stakeholders to be changemakers for the greater good. It is also a call to consider how your work—whether in the private sector, public sector, or civil society—can leverage the huge assets that higher education has to offer—whether for your organization, future workforce, or community.
Wherever you are, the need for systems change leadership and innovation for the greater good has never been more pressing. Higher education institutions often serve as place-based, “anchor institutions”—well positioned to serve the needs of their community—but the impetus for innovative partnerships in changemaking will be a cross-sectoral imperative.
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Read more stories by Marina Kim & Angie Fuessel.