Category: Q&A

Visions of Morocco often conjure vast deserts and bustling cities. Al Akhawayn University, quietly tucked in among the Middle Atlas Mountains, is more likely to be covered in a dusting of snow than sand. The surprises don’t end there. 

Since 1995, A.U.I. has led with an American style of liberal arts education that is different from every other university in the country. The idea came out of a partnership between two monarchs — King Hassan II of Morocco and King Fahd of Saudi Arabia — who also inspired the university’s name “Al Akhawayn,” meaning “two brothers” in Arabic.

That founding emphasis on connection and mutual support — global and local — remains. Current President Amine Bensaid has been building out a particularly robust approach to student affairs based on helping students, struggling with wellbeing much like in the U.S., develop meaningful relationships with both each other and the world.

With LearningWell, Bensaid talks about pioneering and preserving the liberal arts core, while adapting to the unique needs of his students — and the country.

LW: I’m interested in how the liberal arts model came to A.U.I. and to Morocco. Could you tell us more about that?

AB: The vision for an American-model university in Morocco is something that late King Hassan II had, in the late 70s or 80s, I believe. The rest of the education landscape in Morocco is all modeled after the French system, so the general idea was to have a pilot, or just an experiment, in Morocco for an American-model university. And then when he finally got to do it — that was in the early 90s — it was clear that it would violate a number of things in Moroccan law on higher education with respect to pedagogical norms and governance. 

As a result, a separate law that would govern the university was created in the form of a Royal Dahir. In that royal decree, in the preamble, it was almost like he saw September 11th coming: He wanted the university to graduate a different breed of graduates who would be ready, willing, able to contribute to mutual understanding between different civilizations. We were not only going to do a university based on the American model but specifically a liberal arts and sciences kind of university. 

So that’s really where the whole thing came from. It felt like a little bit of a vision for a monarch that saw that there was this system that could give better results for the kind of transformation that he was imagining.

LW: And maybe with that, your work around student life is also really unique, right? What goes into that approach?

 AB: Historically, the model for student life in Moroccan public universities has been inspired by the model in French public universities, where it’s not designed to play a role in student success and identity. In Moroccan public universities, typical student life consists mostly of housing and meals, with housing provided to a relatively small percentage — maybe 10 to 20 percent of the student population. At A.U.I., about 85 percent of students live on campus; campus life and student activities make up a significant part of a student’s college years. By design, it is meant to be immersive and provide a transformational experience. A.U.I. also brings some of the learning even closer to the dorms through living and learning communities — for example, for first-year students. Today, many private universities in Morocco do offer student activities — in a way probably inspired more by A.U.I. than by the French model — in addition to housing and dining, although they’re still not on an immersive and transformational model where student life is at the heart of the university experience.

LW: How did you get so invested in the student affairs and residential life piece?

AB: The investment is really in the convergence between student affairs and academic affairs to provide an integrated transformational experience that makes a difference in the life of the student. So the short answer is we were looking to have an impact where it was most needed, which really is just being true to A.U.I.’s mission. The long answer has to do with A.U.I.’s history and journey.

A few years after A.U.I. started, it came to feel important to further institutionalize its practices and for some third party to make an external evaluation regarding A.U.I.’s mission of implementing the American liberal arts model in Morocco and the benefits it sought for its students. So A.U.I. embarked on NECHE’s process of accreditation, which was a process of seven years, and we received our first accreditation in 2017. In 2018, when the thinking started towards a new strategic plan, the reflection was: ‘Okay, well A.U.I. has now delivered on its mission because NECHE has certified that we have done what we were supposed to do.’ The question then became: ‘Okay, so what do we now do?’

Considering A.U.I.’s history and DNA, the answer came very naturally: ‘Let’s use what we’ve learned to contribute to Morocco’s human development efforts. Let’s capitalize on our experience to act as a living lab to address one of our country’s challenges.’ The colleagues who were working on this came back with a proposal: The economic situation in Morocco included a highly respectable G.D.P. growth of about 3.5 percent per year on average over 20 years. But socio-economically, it had not created enough jobs. 

And especially, there was a challenge of unemployment among young graduates. The team further suggested: ‘Considering the fast pace of change in the world of jobs and employers, shouldn’t we also be concerned at A.U.I. about what would happen to our graduates if employers start asking more for technical skills than for general education? So why don’t we extend our liberal arts and sciences model to extend our definition of student success as including career success?’

But then a group of faculty said, ‘Well, you guys want to take young Moroccans, and you want to work with them in order to adapt to the fast pace of change of the job market. But you don’t realize that for the past few years, we feel that these students of the new generation themselves have been changing!’ Some were saying, ‘Things I’ve done with my students that have worked well for 20 years now no longer work as well. I feel like they are different “breed” as students.’   

And so the team working on strategic planning went out and did some more desk research, and that’s when we — I, for one! — discovered the concept of Gen Z for the first time. So the team came back saying, ‘Yes, this generation may be different and what the colleagues are saying may be deeper than we think, and here are characteristics of this new generation. And by the way, there is an elephant in the room, which is the wellbeing mental health of this generation.’

“It was like, ‘Oh my God! We’re starting to see what was already happening in the U.S.!'”

So we decided then that we were going to further extend our model. In addition to augmenting our liberal arts model with a layer we refer to as career success — we called it, actually, R.O.I., return on investment — we’ll add another layer that we called V.O.I., value on investment, or student fulfillment. We decided to work with our student and find ways together that, by the time they graduate, will better equip them to pursue fulfilled lives. We became very excited about these strategic choices. The only trick is that our board approved this in February 2020 to go into effect starting fall 2020, and then we were hit by COVID in March 2020.

LW: Ah, so what ended up happening to life on campus? Were you fully remote during that time? 

AB: When we learned about the wellbeing challenges facing Gen Z, we were initially not seeing anything on campus in relationship to that. The only reason we started looking at this is because the faculty were saying they seem different in their teaching and learning. But we had no challenges with wellbeing whatsoever, and no challenges with mental health. A.U.I. is the only university in Morocco that, since 1999, hired a psychiatrist on a part-time basis for student support. But that was it; there was no mental health issue at all, and certainly not the issue we were reading about in the U.S. studies. 

But when COVID hit, yes, students were away for a semester, and then they came back in the fall of 2020. And when they came back, everything seemed to have changed. So what we were reading about that we were not seeing, we now started seeing. We had one student suicide, albeit not on campus. We had a waiting list to see psychologists that was about five or six weeks. So it was like, ‘Oh my God! We’re starting to see what was already happening in the U.S.!’

And so while our strategic project was forward-looking and aimed at ensuring that by the time our students graduate, they’re more resilient and better trained to pursue their fulfillment, they had a problem here and now! And we had to find the solutions, and the solutions that we discovered from universities in the U.S., we really did not think were adapted to us because they were just too expensive and not scalable for us. As we understood it at the time, the ratio of number of students to number of psychological counselors was key. For us, there were two or three challenges with that. One of them was that the Moroccan culture was such that it was a little bit taboo to actually go see a psychologist; two, it’s still too expensive. We were thinking, if we go the ‘American’ way, then by the time our students graduate, they would be dependent on a service they cannot afford once they leave the university.

So we started looking for something else. We decided to develop what we called the holistic strategy that is based more on prevention. (But, still, we hired two more psychologists ourselves and another part-time psychiatrist, and we brought down the waiting time on the waiting list to 48 hours. Now we don’t have any waiting list at all.) And we started working on this holistic strategy with sleep and sports and nutrition and substance abuse, thinking that we were going to speak to the emergency with the counselors but that we needed to do more work for a more fundamental solution. 

LW: Did you ever anticipate that student wellbeing would become such a big part of your work? How do you feel about it now?

 AB: I have an easy answer: No. I didn’t think at all that this was going to be a part of my work! But I believe that we have a critical mass of colleagues who are really passionate about the education that they try to offer. And as a result, from that perspective, I’m not surprised we got into this. Because with the parameters of the current equation, we believe we have to do this because it’s the right thing to do. In the same way that if there’s a problem with employment, you would do something about it, well, you have to do something about this challenge. And it’s deeper. And we feel it’s more in resonance with the spirit of the liberal arts tradition that, if you really want to make a difference — a meaningful difference — then you cannot afford to ignore this. And it’s a wicked problem. I mean, it’s not an easy one. So no, I did not expect it at all. But in retrospect, I believe it’s part of what we have to do if we’re sincere about the kind of difference that we want to make. 

LW: Post-pandemic, what does ensuring students get that “value on investment” look like? What are the priorities from the V.O.I. perspective?

AB: We have decided to work on four pillars. One is to work with our students on purposefulness.* You probably know about all the research that you’re more resilient when you have a purpose. Two is working on what we refer to as meaningful relationships. You know this long Harvard study on what makes a good life? So it turns out that the parameter that makes the biggest difference is these meaningful relationships or friendships. And so that’s our second pillar.

Our third pillar is about giving or generosity. Since 2004, A.U.I. has had service learning as a requirement. We were developing student skills and we were trying to give back, but we had not thought of it as really benefiting students’ mental health or wellbeing. We’ve now discovered we can also use it to loosen the grip of the ego and self-interest and shift the attention away from the self. 

“We decided that we were going to learn how to partner with our new generation of students.”

And the last pillar is about an observation, but then we were told that there was also some research for this: Our observation was that in Morocco, we were in a societal transition whereby parents did not seem to be as invested in educating their children. Traditionally, most moms did not work, but now both parents are working and have very little time for the children. And when they have some time for their children, they seem to spend it trying to become friends as opposed to educating. And similarly, when many of our faculty who are my age went to school, the neighborhood was also part of education — the neighbors would see behavior from a kid and would say, ‘No, you do this; you don’t do that.’ Similar things could be said about school.

So the feeling was that these components that went into a child’s education were weakening. And in parallel, our surveys of our students showed that on average, our students spent 40 to 60 percent of their time on social media. So it was like two phenomena happening in parallel — that on the one hand, they had weaker ties with their own environment and culture, and on the other hand, they were living in some kind of culture not tightly coupled with what they were living in physically. 

And so our assumption at the time was that, well, with this lack of cultural anchoring, one may be less resilient and more fragile. And as a result, we decided that we were going to offer an anchor, and that’s what we call the ‘cultural grounding.’ 

So these are the four pillars: purpose, meaningful relationships, giving, and cultural anchoring. Our assumption there — it’s a big assumption — is that if we work on these four things and our students get better on these four things during the four years or so that they spend with us, then that would improve their readiness for fulfillment.

LW: How do you go about helping them with those four pillars? Are there required activities? How do you tackle each one?

AB: So maybe there is one more element I should share with you. When we were finishing the work on our strategic plan in early 2020, we asked ourselves the question: What kind of relationship do we want to have vis-a-vis each stakeholder of the university? And the consensus was that vis-a-vis our students, we wanted to serve them the same way we serve our own children.

And so when we thought we were done, and we presented to students and said, ‘Here’s the kind of relationship we mean to have with you,’ then almost with one voice, consistently, they would say, ‘Oh, thank you. You’re so sweet, but no thank you.’ And we were like, ‘Okay, what kind of relationship would you like to have?’ They would say, ‘We already have a pair of parents, so thank you, but the relationship we would like a relationship is that of being a “partner.”’

So we decided that we were going to learn how to partner with our new generation of students. A.U.I. has had a student government from day one, but we decided to create another representative body of students that we call the Student Leadership Council, which is made up of the presidents of each club and association. We have over a hundred clubs, so it’s a large thing. The idea was that we were going to learn how to partner through that — through students who were closer to other students day to day. 

And the relationship to your question is that we took the entire V.O.I. strategy to this council. So we already had some ideas. For example, we started the work on purposefulness before we establlished this council. We adopted the human-centered design thinking. We started initially with the graduating cohort because we did not want them to leave without doing it. And then we included it in the work that we do for career preparation. And then we included it in our first-year experience and courses for academic success.

But at some point, we brought it to the students and we said, ‘Here’s our strategy. Here’re our four pillars. Here’s something that we’ve already done, but here is what we have not done.’ So they started working on the meaningful relationships. And so they made a plan, and they identified things that we had never thought about. So one of the things they came up with, for example, is that they feel that developing these kinds of relationships has happened for them more when they were working in teams on challenging academic projects. 

For the generosity and giving, we had almost 20 years of work on service learning, but now we were also trying to see how it could be used to contribute to wellbeing. And then for cultural anchoring, we found it more challenging. So we decided to move ahead with some actions while we keep working on the strategy for that. So the something that we did was, starting last year, we decided to offer our students an opportunity to discover our country through the different genres of music in different regions of Morocco. So we had a composer give a semester-long course on this, where over the course of the semester, he actually brought in different bands from different regions of Morocco, and they would talk about the history, the cultural aspect. But at the same time, they would actually play; they would perform. It was interesting, and it looks like the students liked it a lot. We’re now enriching that with a focus on deeper values in our culture and the way they can contribute to strengthening ethical leadership in our students.

LW: Have you been able to find partnership with other institutions along the way as your plans develop and change?

AB: Indeed! You know you sometimes think you’re the only one running into a challenge, and then you discover: ‘There are people like me out there.’ It’s so delightful and so exciting when you do! So just to say, our connections among colleagues and institutions in the U.S. who have similar passions and are acting on them, I believe, have been — I was going to say instrumental, but not just instrumental — a blessing. 

*The Path to Purpose initiative is A.U.I.’s four-year, campus-wide effort to help students reflect on and develop their sense of purpose. You can read more about it through the LearningWell Coalition. 

You can reach LearningWell Reporter Mollie Ames at mames@learningwellmag.org with comments, ideas, or tips.

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D. Graham Burnett is a professor at Princeton University. He is also a revolutionary in a movement aimed at protecting one of humanity’s most precious freedoms: our attention. For several years, he and his colleagues in the “Attention Liberation Movement” have been studying, teaching, and warning of the commoditization of human attention by tech companies who make trillions off their ability to capture and keep our eyes on a screen. What is at stake, according to the advocates, is human flourishing. 

The new book by Burnett and his co-authors — they call themselves the “Friends of Attention” — is called “Attensity!” It is a manifesto for attention activists (no training needed) to organize around what Burnett calls “the fight of our lives.” The book is both highly informative and surprisingly funny about a serious subject that appears to be hiding in plain sight. Everyone feels it, yet no one really calls it out, for reasons the book aptly explains. The prelude to each chapter affirms: “You are correct: something is seriously wrong.”  

In this interview with LearningWell, Burnett talks about how this movement came to form, how it is similar to social change movements of the past, what attention really means, and how we can band together to reclaim it. All proceeds from “Attensity!” go to the non-profit, the Institute for Sustained Attention, and its flagship project, the Strother School of Radical Attention. The book is available for preorder now.

Here is a preview of our conversation. To listen to the full interview, tune into LearningWell Radio on January 6.  

LW: This is a really important book, and it’s also really witty. I was literally laughing out loud. As a writer, I cannot help but ask: Was there a reason that you and your colleagues chose to write in this fun style on such a serious subject? 

DGB: Oh, thank you for that question. This book was literally written by a bunch of friends carving time out in the summers over a couple of years to take residency retreats and think and talk and periodically play wiffle ball, and then argue and talk and think more, and then draft, and then hammer it together. Some of what I think you’re referring to is the lively, uninhibited energy of the book, and I think we succeeded in capturing some of that rollicking vibe. 

LW: “Attensity!” is a call to arms. What is it that we are fighting against, and what is it we are fighting for? That’s a big question, I know. 

DGB: It’s big, but it’s also simple. I believe, and my colleagues and friends believe, we are in the fight of our lives. This is not a test. In the last 10 years, new technologies have made possible a new kind of human exploitation. It was not previously possible to turn the most intimate movements of the human spirit directly into cash. You could not monetize care, interest, or curiosity directly, but now you can with these extraordinarily powerful devices which we call phones, even though obviously they’re not really phones. They’re like little, mini supercomputers, highly networked in our pockets at all times. They’re cognitive prosthetics that have transformed the experience of personhood. 

“It was not previously possible to turn the most intimate movements of the human spirit directly into cash.”

These devices and the market gains they have made possible have enabled a multi-trillion dollar new industry that is quite literally commodifying the essential characteristics of human personhood. You know those books about how we have to learn to put our phones down? This is not that book. We all know that the devices are a problem, tied in complex ways to a global pandemic and when it comes to youth and mental health issues. They are seriously compromising features of what we thought of as our educational systems and our lives as individuals and in community. We know all that. 

Our book wants to point to the underlying cause of all this, which brings us to the idea of human fracking. The problem is not the phones. The problem is not social media. Because if the phones had been designed by your mom, you would use it to call your mom; and if social media had been designed by two artists and a Buddhist monk, social media would be like a groovy place for us to express ourselves. The problem is the underlying business model, which has essentially permitted a small number of heedless and greedy rational actors to maximize their return on investment. 

Their goal is to create systems that maximize our time-on-device selectively to stimulate components of our cognitive processes in highly Machiavellian ways to enhance our engagement experience at whatever cost to our emotional state. It is a project that is profoundly harming us. It is quite literally at odds with human flourishing in the most basic ways, and we need increasingly and clearly to call that out. 

Here’s where the book really makes its big move. We need to have a positive vision for an alternative, and this book swings in hard with a simple assertion: What we need is a movement. We don’t need screen time apps to assist us in protecting seven additional minutes of time with our device. We don’t need pharmaceuticals to assuage our cognitive capacities in their increasingly intricate anguish, although we are certainly happy that pharmaceutical products are available to help those of us who are suffering. But Big Pharma’s not going to save us. 

Big Tech’s not going to protect us from itself. And frankly, it’s not as if a bunch of regulators are suddenly going to appear and reign in the deepest pocketed, most technologically sophisticated corporations on the planet. That’s just not going to happen. What we need is collective action. We need to join together — recognize that the goodness of what we like to do with our mind and time and senses and with each other needs to be protected and enacted by us. We need to push back. 

You can reach LearningWell Editor Marjorie Malpiede at mmalpiede@learningwellmag.org with comments, ideas, or tips.

Wendy Kopp was fresh out of Princeton when she launched Teach For America, the premier teaching corps for college graduates hoping to change education and, with it, the world. Along the way, Kopp was able to prove that early career choice involving proximity to social challenges was the most fertile ground for strong leadership. Her proof of concept is the success of the program’s alumni — a group that includes leaders of education, social innovation, and government.  

Over 35 years later, Kopp is working to reinvigorate the national call to service among a generation jaded by the weight of the world’s problems and drawn to a culture, on and off campus, that puts “I” before “We.” Kopp, who is now the head of Teach For All, has recently launched Rising Generation, a campaign of sorts to change the perception about what constitutes a successful career and what it takes to be the kind of leader the world needs. 

The initiative aims to counter the declining participation among recent graduates in social impact jobs and the prevailing narrative that lucrative careers are the best path for our brightest students. In this interview with LearningWell, Kopp lays out the barriers and opportunities inherent in bringing today’s students into jobs that will change people’s lives, as well as their own.

LW: What was your main motivation in launching Rising Generation?

WK: For 36 years and counting, I’ve been obsessed with the question of how to inspire the next generation, first, to commit themselves to the work of Teach For America and, now, to the similar organizations across the global Teach For All network. Working alongside many others across the world, I think we all felt collectively like we were pushing a boulder up a hill in terms of inspiring the engagement we need for this work. 

In a way, I would think that it would be easier than ever to recruit this generation to commit two years to teach in under-resourced communities — to go through that kind of learning journey that gives them the capacity to tackle these systemic inequities throughout their lives. The challenges of the world — the inequities of the world — are more visible than ever. And yet, statistically speaking, more recent graduates are foregoing these opportunities and putting their energy towards, say, finance, consulting, and tech, than they did even ten years ago. I’m just constantly obsessed with that puzzle, and that was one factor.

“The ability for young people to assume professional responsibility in proximity to injustices is really crucial for developing the leadership we need in the world.” 

And then the second is the growing evidence we have across the Teach For All network about just how transformative those two years are for young people. That’s led me to believe that the ability for young people to assume professional responsibility in proximity to injustices is really crucial for developing the leadership we need in the world. 

Our research shows that through these two-year commitments to teach, these young people come to believe in their own self-efficacy and agency and come to believe even more in the potential of students and families in low-income communities. Their analysis of the issues they’re addressing shifts from thinking it’s more a technical fix — that more funding will solve the problem — to believing it’s a deeply adaptive systemic challenge. 

And their priorities shift. Across the world, 75 percent of these individuals of all different majors and career interests, who begin their two-year commitments to teach unsuspectingly, end up committing themselves to this mission long term. They’re working long term as teachers, school principals, school system administrators, social innovators, advocates, policymakers, and elected officials.

What that research shows us is that not only are we getting a different group of people who might not otherwise have engaged in this work and are staying with it but this experience is turning them into the leaders we need: people who have a sense of agency, who have a sense of possibility, who understand there’s no silver bullet solution and are committed to tackling the issues long term. 

Another factor, I have to admit, is my own kids. I have college-aged kids and, in spending time with them and their friends, I’ve learned more about their experiences and what they’re thinking about, and that gave me a sense of possibility that we could do something about this. 

I think it’s all of that. It’s seeing the challenges of recruiting the next generation to this work, understanding just how formative these kind of professional experiences are in generating the leadership we need in the world, and then finally coming to believe that we could actually do something about this problem.

LW: In a LinkedIn message about Rising Generation, you note that data from the Deloitte Global 2024 Gen Z and Millennial Survey showed some of those generations’ lowest–ranked considerations in deciding where to work were “its values and purpose align with my own,” “the positive impact it has upon wider society,” and “the opportunities it gives me to address social problems.” I’m guessing that was disappointing. What do you make of this, and do you think it reflects a real turn away from social impact careers? 

WK: Initially, I thought it was really surprising because there’s so much evidence that this generation cares so deeply about the challenges facing the world. I think there’s a deep concern among many, many young people that they would love to help make the world a better place. But what the latest research shows us is that they’re not thinking that the way to do that is through their jobs.

This is not a new phenomenon. The more I’ve talked to people, the more I’ve come to think of this as a societal norm. We think about our jobs like our houses. We get a job. It meets our needs, and then it’s how we do our jobs that matters — how we work with others, how we vote, and what we volunteer for that enables us to make a difference in the world. 

We need to really challenge that and help people understand that to tackle these big systemic challenges, it is going to take a whole lot of full-time, long-term work in the arena. It requires being close to the roots of the issues. It’s going to take going through the learning journey, trying things, learning from that process, and really playing the long game. 

One thing I’ve discovered is that there is such power in just naming this issue. That’s true for young people. It’s true for people at the university level. The most valuable resource in the world is the time and energy of our most educated young people, and we need to be conscious about that. We need to start thinking a whole lot more about how to make sure that their energy is tackling our biggest challenges and that these young people have the early experiences that will enable them to actually be successful in tackling those issues.

LW: We hear a lot about “sellout jobs” — this idea that our highest performing students are just being funneled into higher paying careers at the expense of doing good in the world or even deriving purpose from what they do. What do you think has led to this phenomenon? 

WK: There are so many different factors, but let’s unpack it a bit. Many believe this is an economic issue — that students are graduating with greater debt and greater financial burdens and are more worried about their financial futures. Those factors are real, but it’s not right to attribute this phenomenon to these factors.   

“Instead of thinking these four years are going to be a time of great exploration, they are met early on — sometimes as early as freshman year — with corporate recruiters.”

First, we should question the financial narratives that young people are telling themselves. If you really start talking to these students who are taking the “sellout jobs” and get your head around what they think their baseline salary requirement is, you’d be shocked. 

What the research shows is that students are far more likely to work in consulting, finance or technology if they are from an economically privileged background, so we can’t attribute this whole thing to the financial state of affairs. 

I think a really important factor is that these young people aren’t experiencing a campus culture that fosters deep intentionality and reflection on what they see as their purpose in life. What are their values? Where do they want to put their time and attention? Instead of thinking these four years are going to be a time of great exploration, they are met early on — sometimes as early as freshman year — with corporate recruiters.  

Before they can even think about it, here comes the very lucrative summer internships and then these two-year, post-college programs. There aren’t the countervailing forces on these campuses to create a culture of reflection and intentionality, and that’s a huge part of it. 

I will say there’s something that’s giving me hope in looking at the research and talking to young people about what matters to them, and that is their priority around learning and development. The corporations have convinced them that the path to rigor and learning is through working for their firms. One of the things we’re thinking about with Rising Generation is how we can help young people understand that if they want to be a civic leader in our country and in our world, they need to find their way to a professional responsibility that gives them proximity to the roots of the social challenges we face; only then will they gain the perspective, the insights, the relationships, and the credibility to ultimately make a difference against the big systemic challenges we face.

LW: Do you think this reflects a kind of “I” vs. “We” culture on college campuses? 

WK: We think a lot about that at Teach For All because we really believe that we need to shift the purpose of education from being about individual attainment to equipping young people to shape a better future — not just for themselves but for all of us. And I think if we don’t shift what happens in our classrooms to work towards that end, we won’t ultimately have the world that we’re all hoping for.

LW: How do you approach a problem like that?

WK: Well, this is how we see our work across the Teach For All network. The independent, locally led organizations in our network are working to develop what we’ve come to call “collective leadership” for ensuring all children fulfill their potential. By this, we mean we’re developing a critical mass of diverse people working around the whole ecosystem around children who are all on the same mission and who are reflecting and learning together and collaborating. As we develop this leadership, we’re orienting towards a vision of a world where all children have the education, support, and opportunity to shape a better future for themselves and all of us. We’ve recently launched the Global Institute for Shaping a Better Future to foster learning among leaders everywhere — across and beyond our network — who are committed to reshaping education in this way.

LW: Do you get the sense that graduates feel as though they will get to contributing at some point in their lives? 

WK: Yes. We have to give young people some perspective that you can’t go spend 15 years working in a skyscraper and be confident that you can shift gears and know exactly what to do to tackle the social inequities in the world. You have to go through a deep learning journey to be able to do that.

LW: What is it that’s unique about the Teach For America and Teach For All experiences in this regard? 

WK: I think that Teach For America and the Teach For All network partners are giving young people a chance to attain that proximity. You’re in a classroom; you’re seeing the microcosm of the world and all its social issues play themselves out in your classroom, and you’re on the front line directly working with students and families and others in the community. Our theory has always been that this would create leaders for social change far beyond education because the issues you see in a classroom are so systemic and cross-sectoral in their nature. 

LW: What can colleges and universities do to embrace that concept and try to help students think about the value of these early, social impact experiences? 

WK: I think this is so crucial. In the early years of Teach For America, we had so much allyship among professors and career service offices and college presidents in putting the Teach For America opportunity in front of their graduates. I think over time, we started hearing from folks that they needed to be neutral — that they couldn’t offer preferences for one job choice over another. And I’ve thought a lot about that because they’re professing neutrality, and yet honestly, they’re anything but neutral. 

A lot of people — a lot of career service offices — are encouraging young people to take more lucrative paths for a variety of reasons. There are notable exceptions. I think about Michael Crow at A.S.U., who every year invites the top few hundreds of students to his house and says, “I want you to do Teach For America.” That makes a big difference. There’s a lot that universities can do to help people think about these options that might not be as present for them, given the recruiting practices of these corporations. But by and large, that’s not our experience, and that’s very unfortunate.

LW: Finding meaning and purpose in your career has proven to lead to improved wellbeing, but you don’t hear a lot about that in corporate recruiting, I’m guessing.  

WK: This is one of the reasons we’re embarking on the Rising Generation initiative. I think we need to help young people understand — really think about — what it’s going to take for them to feel successful. I think we need to challenge the common narratives around that. There’s evidence showing that your wellbeing in the workplace is the biggest factor in your overall wellbeing. If you’re feeling the sense of purpose and connectedness to people through your work and a sense of agency and you’re able to contribute positively, that’s going to have a huge impact on your mental health. 

I think about the people I know who have done work that involves proximity to big issues and have stayed the course. They are some of the most connected, grounded, and fulfilled people I know. I think we need to help young people understand the long-term consequences of those first decisions that they make. 

LW: That’s a big part of Rising Generation, I assume. What are the ways you are going about this work?

WK: We’re really thinking about how to create a norm shift in how people think about first jobs.  

We’re organizing our work in three buckets initially. One is around data,  research, and learning — understanding how this issue is playing itself out differently across different segments of campuses and different student demographics and understanding what’s influencing young people and their job choices. We are going to pursue student-led focus groups to understand and inform the path forward. 

The second is what we’re calling University Community and Learning. We’ve found our way to so many people who are working on these university campuses, from some college presidents to career service office heads to professors and thought leaders, and all who are really focused on doing something different — who are challenging the prevailing narrative and working to foster more intentionality and reflection among students. We are aiming to bring them together and build community among them so that folks can support and inform each other and think together about how to propagate these experiments. 

The third bucket is around the options themselves because if you are a college student who doesn’t go the traditional path, it can be really hard to find your way to a job that gives you the kind of proximity you would hope for. We need to make the existing options more visible and create new ones. We think there may be some real opportunities to do that. 

You can reach LearningWell Editor Marjorie Malpiede at mmalpiede@learningwellmag.org with comments, ideas, or tips.

Despite her long career in academia, Hilary Link is a bit of an anomaly in higher education. Since becoming president of Drew University in 2023, she has been working hard to embrace change by seeking advice from the outside world. 

At a time when many in the sector are battening down the hatches, Link is throwing the doors wide open, viewing this challenging time as a watershed moment for higher ed. In November, Link will continue her Presidential Innovation Series, for which she invites leaders at the forefront of innovation and disruption in their industries to lead conversations that will help steer the future of higher education.  

Link has instituted her own major changes at Drew, a small school in Madison, N.J. with an iconic, leafy green campus and devotion to the liberal arts. Recruited to shore up the institution’s financial position, Link has worked with the Drew community to reimagine its pedagogy to better accommodate industry’s demand for job-ready graduates. At the same time, she emphasizes what should not change, like the ability of the liberal arts to help develop the human skills needed to navigate a complex world. 

In this conversation with LearningWell, President Link shares what she is learning and how she is going about crafting a “dream future” for Drew — one in which, she said, “everyone can be 100 percent themselves.”   

LW: You are both a president and a thought leader in higher education. What motivated you to start the Presidential Innovation Series and your upcoming convening “The Future of Higher Education”?

HL: As a scholar of Renaissance Italian Literature, I was trained to analyze texts, see patterns, employ words and visuals — as a window into other cultures and societies. I have always loved the meta process of stepping back from the text or artwork in which you are immersed to ask, “What is really going on here? What does this work tell us about the cultural, linguistic, artistic, religious, political context in which it was produced?”  

My scholarly work focuses specifically on theories of artificial perspective, so I embrace the concept of shifting where one stands to better understand the “big picture.” I see the convergence of being a president and being a thought leader in the higher education sector in similar ways. I have now been president at two institutions and dean of another, and while that work is all consuming, I always push myself to step back and puzzle over the “bigger picture.” How can what I am seeing at Drew University translate across the industry? What does my reading and careful analysis of this institution — like with a text or artwork — tell us about higher education in general and also this moment in our country, our world, our society? The fun for me of planning, crafting, and hosting the Innovation Series or speaking at a public convening is the chance to step back from my day-to-day work about Drew and learn from experts both inside and outside of higher ed — to help me and others see “the big picture.”

LW: In the series, you engage partners outside of higher education. What have you learned from that, both for higher education and for Drew University specifically?

HL: I have always been an interdisciplinary scholar, thinker, and do-er. My dissertation was on ekphrasis — written descriptions of visual works of art — which is a true convergence of art and literature. I have always felt that I saw new and different things in texts because I saw them through a visual lens, and vice versa. Similarly, as I have been on an “innovation journey” for Drew over the past 18 months, I have learned so much from innovators and disrupters in fields related to education but also completely separate.  

Often, the “aha” moments come from the concept of “far transfer” that David Epstein talks about in “Range,” one of my favorite books. I see how someone has evolved or transformed their sector, and it makes me see a higher ed-related problem in new ways; it makes me get creative about how we might do something similar in a very different context. The panelists at our November convening are just a sample of some of the fascinating people I have had the opportunity to learn from and be inspired by, and I am excited for other higher ed leaders — and really anyone interested — to learn from them and bring new ideas or ways of thinking back to their campuses or fields.

LW: You are an advocate for new models for liberal arts education. What needs to change? What changes have you made at Drew in this regard?

HL: Since arriving at Drew, I feel like I have been on a journey to understand where the rapid changes in our world are pushing higher ed, and quickly. I started by having deep conversations with anyone who would speak to me — innovators, entrepreneurs, investors, educators — and then crafted a white paper of my dream future for an institution.  

But then I put that aside because I knew this couldn’t be driven only by what I thought. Universities are complex organisms, and if we had any chance of evolving, these ideas had to bubble up more organically. So I brought in a brilliant scholar, Dr. Michelle Weise, who spent a year leading some of our most innovative faculty and staff on their own discovery journey. Michelle exposed them to many different models for education, introduced them to people thinking in very different ways about “K-Gray” education, and pushed them to iterate and ideate in really liberating ways.  

At the end of last year, we hosted a design-thinking charrette for about 40 campus members, and everyone agreed that any new direction for Drew needed to focus on the following human skills or qualities that we already value and prioritize: resilience, commitment to a common good, complex problem solving, and creativity and curiosity. 

Three future-oriented visions emerged for higher education, and groups of faculty and staff spent the past summer designing around those four values to arrive at possible prototypes to present to the community. We encouraged them to think big and challenge existing systems, while focusing on specific challenges Drew needs to solve. It was up to them to define those challenges. While the groups landed in very different places, their prototypes actually gravitated around the same critical features, which was a surprise: student-enabled, personalized/individualized learning; intentional, structured mentoring; applied learning; and accessible, lifelong learning based in problem-based/experiential frameworks. While we already do these things in small ways, the groups were telling us that this is where we need to go big. The coolest part? All of the prototypes in certain ways overlapped strongly with my original “white paper” vision, which further convinced me we are on to something.

The challenge now is finding the space where we can prototype these big, system-changing ideas while protecting the excellent learning experience our university has long provided and will continue to provide for current, traditional students. One idea is to create an incubation hub at Drew where we can play with the most compelling concepts, allowing a small group of students to collaborate with us in shaping a new educational pathway that includes all four critical features from the work of our staff and faculty. This approach can allow us to rapidly learn and find the clarity we need to move forward in the accelerating changes around us. This can of course be tricky. We know we have to move fast, but higher education’s DNA is to move only after deep, comprehensive thinking on matters; it’s how we have been trained as scholars.

I also think it is important to remember that institutions like Drew and higher ed in general do plenty of wonderful, transformative, and life-changing work already, and we see its effect in our current students. So I want to emphasize not just what needs to change but also what needs not to change about Drew and similar institutions: Even as liberal arts colleges might shift from disciplinary majors to more thematically organized knowledge focusing on the problems facing our world, the benefits of a liberal arts approach are amplified, not reduced. The broad interdisciplinarity that develops individuals who can think for themselves, face the uncertain and unknown, and contribute meaningfully to local communities and society at large remains. We’re essentially remixing our strengths for a new audience who are already arriving with different interests and needs.

LW: There’s strong evidence showing that how someone experiences college affects their wellbeing long after they graduate, particularly if they have had mentors and hands-on learning. Do you take that into account in thinking about policies on campus?

HL: I love that you asked that question! In fact, as we have been leaning into redefining the liberal arts for the future in ways that incorporate and employ technology and A.I., we have doubled down on those two concepts: the “human in the loop” — or even better, “at the helm” — or the need for strong mentoring in a new educational model; and the need to interweave applied learning, inquiry-based curriculum, and problem-based approaches with content acquisition. These are things that technology cannot do for us, yet, and these are the aspects that I believe must drive education forward. Those of us in higher ed and those of us who parent young people know all too well the challenges in mental health, isolation, lack of resilience, and need for community young people present with today.  

At Drew, we are trying to re-imagine higher education in ways that make it not just financially sustainable but that give young people the tools to engage with big global challenges, to learn through applying their knowledge, to have more say in what, when, and how they learn, and to give them a sense of human connection and relationship that they crave. We of course do many of these things already, but not systematically and not sustainably. We are pushing ourselves to be more intentional here — to shift and evolve so that we give students not just the tools to be well throughout their lives but also a desire to keep coming back to us in meaningful ways as they grow and evolve.

LW: Do you see this as a seminal moment for higher education?  Given the attack on higher ed, do you think the sector can move out of its defensive position and into a position of strength?

HL: I absolutely see this as seminal moment and a moment when most institutions have no choice but to lean hard and fast into innovation: different ways of teaching, less traditional definitions of a “student,” new modes of delivery and crediting experiences and applied learning, and more flexible ways of creating a sense of community. As the author and Drew Honorary Degree recipient David Epstein writes in his forthcoming book, “Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better,” institutions that embrace this moment of scarcity, overreach, and challenge to be creative and resilient and that reinvent themselves for a future that is already here, will thrive. 

While it is easy to fret and feel defensive and “batten down the hatches” while we hope for and wait for things to change or improve, I see this as a watershed moment.

While it is easy to fret and feel defensive and “batten down the hatches” while we hope for and wait for things to change or improve, I see this as a watershed moment. If we can come out of these challenges having heard and thoughtfully tried to address some of the public critique about higher ed and particularly the liberal arts — too politicized, too costly, broken, offering no value for workforce preparation — we can envision entirely new prototypes and models for the sector that are accessible, affordable, more relevant to all, and better suited to equipping future generations to control what they learn and when, in order to apply what they learn to solve big global issues. I have been beating this drum for more than a decade, but I think the sector is now being squeezed and pushed so much that real and lasting change can happen.

LW: What do you love about Drew?

HL: From the moment I stepped on campus as president, I fell in love with the tranquil and beautiful campus, the open, thoughtful, unpretentious and welcoming students, the inspiring faculty, and a community that cares deeply about each other and the institution. I love that Drew is a little quirky and that it holds space for everyone — no matter who you are. I love that you can be 100 percent yourself here. And I love that at a moment of deep crisis for the higher ed sector as a whole, this community has been open to change, willing to lean into where the future is leading us, and incredibly thoughtful about what we do well, as well as where we can be more agile, focused, and open to new ideas.