The New American University

ASU’s retention efforts have been successful so far. Their four-year graduation rate increased more than 20 percentage points during this reform period and is well above the national average, which is especially remarkable considering that ASU, by increasing access, also accepted many more students who are at higher risk of not graduating.

ASU might run like a business, but they seem to actually be running well.

ASU is an example of what President Crow and his colleague, William Dabars, call the “New American University”, a model that they hope other public research universities will emulate. There are a bunch of interesting aspects to this model, but the most striking, in my view, has been to throw away the Ivy League playbook, rejecting the idea that a u... See more

The Arizona State University charter state: ASU is a comprehensive public research university, measured not by whom we exclude, but rather by whom we include and how they succeed; advancing research and discovery of public value; and assuming fundamental responsibility for the economic, social, cultural and overall health of the communities it serv... See more

ASU hasn’t made progress without its critics, namely the claim that it’s become a moneymaking credentialing machine, handing out degrees to anyone who pays and corporatizing The Great American University. And again, because I don’t have experience with university administration, I certainly wondered, while learning about ASU, how many of their clai... See more

ASU embraces a high acceptance rate, admitting 86 percent of applicants, compared to Harvard’s 5 percent. Far from “lowering their standards,” Crow and Dabars see this as a fulfillment of their mission to provide a quality, affordable education to more people. The high acceptance rate is a starting point for ASU, not a backwards reflection of their... See more

Crow and Dabars don’t hold back in tearing down what they call the “Harvardization” of universities, where schools are responding to the higher education crisis by decreasing their acceptance rates and increasing their price tags, instead of trying to develop a better product that’s designed for the scale and type of demand we’re seeing today.

Vocational schools are, by definition, focused on training people to a specific set of skills. They don’t necessarily offer everything that a college student would receive from an undergraduate education, especially one with a liberal arts focus, which (theoretically, anyway) prepares students with foundational skills like critical reasoning and pr... See more

If you were like me, applying to college over a decade ago, you might remember ASU’s reputation as a party school for hot people. In 2002, Crow was appointed ASU’s 16th president, and he set about both developing and implementing a vision for reform. Today, ASU ranks as a top 100 research university worldwide [1], and has managed to do so while inc... See more