ASU breaking the mold of higher education

Arizona State University is not like most institutions of higher education. And that’s a good thing, according to university President Michael Crow.

“It really isn’t our job to be clonal,” he says in a recent Times Higher Education article. “Clonal replications lead to really bad outcomes in nature, and they lead to really bad outcomes in markets and in economies. You need more differentiation.”

Crow espouses the idea of the “New American University,” one which does not conform, but rather departs from the norm in order to pursue discovery in all aspects of learning.

As the article reports, this new model of higher education seems to be working: “The year after Crow took office, ASU graduated fewer than 9,000 students. Last year, that number had risen to about 20,000. Twelve years ago, the university conducted $100 million of research, compared with $420 million in the past 12 months.”