Complex institutions do not need smaller ambitions. They need one organizing logic. This piece explains how multi-unit colleges and universities can narrow to a real strategy by choosing what holds them together, what should stop consuming attention, and which future actually deserves resources.

Without strategy, every cut becomes a fight. Every donor request becomes an hour-long debate. Every decision exhausts your leadership team. Here's why institutions that don't make clear choices about where they compete waste time on things that don't matter — and what to do instead.

What happens when the smartest people in the room cannot agree on what growth means? A personal story about higher education, institutional strategy, and building a discipline that did not exist.

Higher education leaders often assume growth requires finding new audiences. A better question is whether demand is already there, but hidden by how institutions package, communicate, and deliver learning. Drawing on the NFL’s global strategy and the rise of women’s sports, this episode shows how growth actually happens—and what leaders need to change to capture it.

Higher education leaders often assume growth requires finding new audiences. A better question is whether demand is already there, but difficult to see or convert. Drawing on the NFL’s global strategy and the rise of women’s sports, this episode shows where growth actually lives and what institutions must change to capture it.

The biggest threat to traditional higher education isn't a competitor institution. It's a 19-year-old on YouTube with more daily influence over a student's financial thinking than an entire faculty. Here's what the data says, what it means for enrollment strategy, and what leaders need to do about it.

Higher ed isn't losing students to other colleges. It's losing them to YouTube creators, AI chatbots, and employer-sponsored learning programs. This episode names the forces pulling learners away from traditional institutions — and asks what universities are actually doing to earn the assumption that students will show up.

Growth in higher education often feels slow and expensive, but the deeper issue is structural. Most institutions are designed to build new offerings, not connect them. Drawing on cross-industry examples, this episode shows why growth keeps resetting instead of compounding—and what leaders must change to build systems that scale.

Higher education often approaches growth by building something new each time: a new program, a new process, a new system. But that approach doesn’t scale. In this episode, we ask a sharper question: Are institutions scaling what they do, or what they make possible?

Using examples from Airbnb, Shopify, and OpenAI, we break down platform strategy in plain language and translate it into a university context. The focus is not on becoming a marketplace, but on building shared infrastructure that allows learning, pathways, and value to carry forward across the institution.

We explore why duplicated work, disconnected data, and constant restarts limit growth, and what it would mean for colleges to operate as connective tissue across students, employers, alumni, and communities. The episode closes with three practical questions leaders can take into their next strategy conversation.

Higher education was built for a world where learning happened once and careers moved more slowly. Learner Lifetime Value offers a new strategic model for institutions that want to remain relevant across a learner’s entire career.

Most universities know how to ask alumni for donations. Far fewer know how to help them when industries shift and skills expire. Learner lifetime value offers a new model for alumni engagement built on ongoing usefulness, not nostalgia.

Most universities know how to ask alumni for donations. Few know how to help them when their industry changes and their skills start expiring. In this episode, Maya Evans explores learner lifetime value and why higher education must shift from one-time degrees to continuous value delivery.

Universities often move slowly because they were built to protect expertise, quality, and legitimate process. The next advantage may belong to institutions that add a new capability: learning quickly before making large commitments.

Universities are not slow because leaders do not care. They are slow because they were built for rigor, expertise, and legitimate process. In this episode, Maya Evans explores why higher education struggles to change quickly, how pilot fatigue drains momentum, and what fast-learning organizations do differently.

Many leadership teams still assume philanthropy will absorb federal funding cuts and protect the current model. This briefing explains why that rescue is not coming, how Workforce Pell changes the competitive landscape, and why funders are backing transformation over preservation.

Public trust in major institutions has eroded sharply, and higher education sits inside that reality. This article explores what college leaders can learn from the trust collapse and how trust is built through operations, not messaging.

Higher education often looks inward for answers to outward-facing problems. In this opening episode of Beyond the Ivory Tower, Maya Evans explores what universities can learn from sectors like healthcare, manufacturing, and business—and why the future of higher education depends on expanding how it learns.

Institutional trust is collapsing across society, and higher education is caught in the fallout. In this episode of Beyond the Ivory Tower, Maya Evans explains why trust is not a marketing problem, but an operational one, and what leaders must rebuild now.

In this conversation, I discuss what it actually takes to build growth strategy inside higher education today. We talk through why many initiatives stall, how institutions misdiagnose growth challenges, and what it means to move from idea generation to execution. This is not about adding more programs or chasing new markets. It is about building the internal clarity and capability required to make strategy work in practice.

Most grant offices are built to respond, not to lead.

This Business Model Canvas, adapted specifically for higher education, gives grant leaders a one-page view of how their office actually operates. It helps you step back from individual proposals and assess your funding model, partnerships, value, and constraints in one place.

Use this tool to identify where your current approach is sustainable, where it is strained, and where strategic shifts are needed.