Dr. Joshua Travis Brown, Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Education: How Higher Education Went From Mission-Driven to Margin-Obsessed

Market competition and the consequences of federal education policy have fundamentally changed our system of higher education and distorted the values of mission-driven schools. That's the stark reality depicted by Dr. Joshua Travis Brown of the Johns Hopkins School of Education in his book, Capitalizing on College: How Higher Education Went From Mission-Driven to Margin-Obsessed, which we’ll be exploring on today's episode of WorkforceRx. The deeply researched book draws on 150 in-person interviews with leaders at religious institutions to detail the non-traditional strategies they pursued to generate needed revenues, and analyzes what those choices mean for current and future students and the system at large. “It goes back to the moment where those institutions were about to close and the leaders said ‘we have to change in this moment of crisis. We've got to jettison norms and innovate.’” In this revealing interview with Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan, Dr. Brown shares candid conversations he had with leaders struggling with the tension between mission and margin. He also addresses the financially burdensome residential model and the case colleges need to make about the value of an on-campus experience, or getting a degree at all, in the age of AI. You’ll also hear why Dr. Brown thinks Americans have a distorted view of higher education, learn about the principles of innovation used by the schools that can apply to many types of organizations, and why he’s optimistic about the future of the sector.