Building Workforce Readiness Through Real Startup Experience
Release Date: 04/14/2026
Building Fairleigh Dickinson’s Lifelong Learning Ecosystem Across Five Generations
Changing Higher Ed
Program discontinuation is usually the fight presidents avoid. Fairleigh Dickinson University put a significant slate of program discontinuations and consolidations to a faculty referendum, and roughly 88 percent of the faculty endorsed it. The vote reflects a larger redefinition underway at FDU: a shift from the four-year degree to a university built around lifelong learning. In this episode of the , Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with and the first FDU graduate to hold the office, about the four-P framework guiding that redefinition: programs, people, partnerships, and place. Avaltroni...
info_outline
Pairing Liberal Arts with Tech Readiness: Five Institutional Decisions from Manhattan University
Changing Higher Ed
At Manhattan University, the case for the liberal arts is being made with outcomes, not nostalgia. Its graduates rank in the top 2% nationally for mid-career salaries, and The Wall Street Journal ranked the university 73rd in the country for graduate salaries, social mobility, and cost-effectiveness. The more useful story for institutional leaders sits underneath those numbers: a set of deliberate decisions about , technology preparation, faculty adoption, hiring, and alumni engagement. In this episode of the , speaks with , President of , about how the institution pairs a liberal arts...
info_outline
Student Retention: Using AI to Spot Disengagement Before Dropout
Changing Higher Ed
Most retention systems flag struggling students through grades and attendance. By the time those indicators fire, many students are already halfway out the door. Elvee's survey of 1,050 U.S. college students shows why: 86% start college highly motivated, 42% come close to dropping out at some point, and only 17% of those who struggle ever request help. In this episode of the , speaks with , CEO of , whose work with U.S. colleges centers on reading behavioral data for early signals of student disengagement. Drawing on his background in commercial technology, Dar explains how patterns in...
info_outline
Higher Ed's Trust Problem Isn't a PR Problem: AAC&U's Trust Agenda
Changing Higher Ed
Half of college presidents worried about public trust are answering with a public relations campaign. According to the AAC&U report at the center of this episode, that is a reasonable instinct but the wrong one. Public confidence in colleges and universities has slid for more than a decade, and messaging alone will not turn it around. In this episode of the , speaks with , lead author of and he co-directs AAC&U’s Advancing Public Trust in Higher Education initiative, about why trust has eroded and what campus leaders can actually do about it. Their conversation moves past naming...
info_outline
Why Research Funding Cuts Are a Strategic Risk, Not a Budget Problem
Changing Higher Ed
When the federal government freezes research funding, leaders tend to treat it as a budget problem: a number that was cut and might later be restored. The harder truth in this conversation is that much of the damage cannot be undone. Halted studies, shuttered labs, and departed early-career researchers do not simply resume when the money comes back. Research funding cuts are a strategic risk, not a line item. In this episode of the , speaks with , President and CEO of the and former chancellor of UC Berkeley. Dirks , reflecting on the protests that had put Berkeley at the center of national...
info_outline
When AI Finds the Administrative Friction Higher Ed Leaders Miss
Changing Higher Ed
Most AI conversations in higher education focus on the academic side. The administrative side gets less attention and is producing the bigger near-term financial wins for institutions willing to govern the rollout. In this episode of the , speaks with , about how AI is being applied across enrollment and advancement at institutions including Empire State University, Florida Southwestern State College, and Boise State University. Drawing on his career across Blackboard, Instructure, Kaltura, and now Gravyty, Beck walks through the specific case studies behind administrative AI adoption: a...
info_outline
Inside CSU’s ChatGPT Edu Rollout Across 22 Universities
Changing Higher Ed
AI implementation in higher education is often framed as a technology question. California State University treated it as with technology as the catalyst, rolling out ChatGPT Edu to 22 universities in 18 months while running the largest AI survey ever conducted at a single university system. In this episode of the , speaks with , about how the system designed and executed its generative AI implementation and what the of 94,060 respondents reveals about AI adoption, faculty engagement, and student behavior. Drawing on her work co-leading the academic side of CSU's GenAI initiative,...
info_outline
AI in Higher Education: Bias, Procurement, and Human Oversight
Changing Higher Ed
At sixteen, with straight A's in math and science, Dr. Karen Panetta's school career assessment told her to sell makeup or be a cook. A male friend with lower scores got engineer or politician. No AI was involved. Just a rules-based system applying gender and biographical filters to two teenagers. That same logic now sits inside AI tools landing in admissions offices and HR systems across higher ed, with one critical difference: AI does not eliminate human bias, it removes the human accountability that used to make bias correctable. In this episode of the , speaks with , Dean of Graduate...
info_outline
AI-First Business Education: How Kogod Transformed Culture, Curriculum, and Faculty Adoption
Changing Higher Ed
Most business schools are still forming committees to figure out what to do about AI. Kogod School of Business at American University formed a committee, but far from the typical higher ed standards. Leadership gave it six weeks and a five-page limit, and used the recommendation to integrate AI into every department, major, and minor. Three years later, undergraduate enrollment is up 40%, applications are up 50%, and more than 90% of faculty are using AI in the classroom. In this episode of the , speaks with returning guests , Dean of the Kogod School of Business at American University, and ,...
info_outline
Closing Higher Education’s AI Readiness Gap with Human-First Transformation
Changing Higher Ed
AI adoption in higher education is moving faster than institutional change models were built to handle. Students are already using AI at high rates, while many institutions are still trying to decide where AI belongs, who should lead it, and how much change is required. In this episode of the , speaks with , serial entrepreneur and founder of , about why higher education’s traditional playbook will not work in the AI age. Drawing on her work with Fortune 500 companies and AI implementation, Barua explains why AI should be treated as institutional infrastructure, not an IT project. She...
info_outlineMost institutions offer experiential learning. Few deliver it. The gap between the claim and the outcome is structural, and closing it requires more than a better course design.
In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast, Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Chris Crittenden, founder of Sandbox, a for-credit startup incubator operating at eight universities, about what it actually takes to produce the depth of learning that institutions advertise but rarely achieve.
Drawing on his experience founding and selling a technology company to Walmart, leading the entrepreneur center at Brigham Young University, and building Sandbox across multiple institutions, Crittenden explains how credit consolidation, real stakes, and interdisciplinary structure create the conditions for genuine learning. He also addresses how an AI-powered oral examination system solves the assessment problem that has long undermined open-ended experiential programs, and how institutions can build a program like Sandbox without triggering a substantive accreditation review.
This conversation is especially relevant for presidents, provosts, and academic leaders looking to close the gap between what their experiential learning programs claim to deliver and what they actually produce.
Topics Covered:
• Why most experiential learning is too shallow to produce genuine workforce capability
• How credit consolidation creates the structural conditions for deep learning
• The role of real stakes in developing professional skills that assignment deadlines cannot
• How to build an interdisciplinary program from existing approved coursework without a curriculum overhaul
• Why conventional milestone-based assessment undermines open-ended experiential learning, and what Sandbox does instead
• How to design a program that stays below the threshold for a substantive accreditation review
Real-World Examples Discussed:
• 18 Sandbox companies have received venture backing with a combined valuation exceeding $205 million
• Sandbox graduates who do not start companies consistently rank among the most competitive entry-level technology hires in their regional ecosystems
• The program has been replicated at eight universities by mapping to existing approved coursework, without triggering a substantive accreditation review at any institution
Key Takeaway for Leadership:
Universities already have the resources to build deep experiential learning programs. What is consistently absent is the leadership willing to pull them together: identifying faculty who want to work at the cutting edge, building the cross-departmental coalitions those faculty cannot form on their own, and absorbing the coordination costs personally. No new budget line required. What it takes is a leader willing to make the case, department by department, and follow through.
This episode gives institutional leaders a practical model for building deep experiential learning programs within the structural and accreditation constraints most institutions already face.
Read the transcript: https://changinghighered.com/build-workforce-readiness-through-startup-experience/
#HigherEducation #HigherEducationPodcast #WorkforceDevelopment #StudentSuccess