Financing Higher Education Innovation That Lasts
How can institutions move innovation beyond the pilot stage? By building the financial model early, aligning resources with strategy, and creating partnerships that help successful ideas scale.
Why Sustainable Funding Matters
Financing innovation is more than a budget exercise. It determines whether flexible pathways, new delivery models, and other student-centered ideas can become lasting parts of an institution.
This month, the Presidents Forum will share how members are financing higher education innovation and building sustainable models around what works.
Policy and Partnership Updates
The Forum is monitoring the Department of Education’s proposed accreditation, innovation, and modernization rule, military tuition assistance provisions in the NDAA, and uncertainty around Pell funding.
Innovation Listening Sessions are also shaping the Innovation Blueprint. Collaboration partners will soon add their perspectives to the process.
Looking Ahead to Dallas
Members and partners will continue the conversation in Dallas on November 12–13, focusing on the policies, partnerships, and financial strategies that turn bold ideas into lasting improvements for learners.
Transcript
This month at the Presidents Forum, we are focused on a question that sits beneath almost every conversation about the future of higher education: how do you pay for it?
Financing the future of learning is not simply a budget exercise. It is a strategic challenge that determines which promising ideas survive their pilot phase and which ones don’t. The institutions that consistently turn innovation into lasting change are, almost without exception, the ones that worked out the financial model early. This month we are looking carefully at how our members are doing exactly that — and what the rest of us can learn from them.
There is significant activity on the policy front as well. The Department of Education has released a new proposed rule addressing accreditation, innovation, and modernization. The rule loosens some older constraints but tightens requirements around transparency, independence, and student protections. The public comment period is now open, closes on September 21, and is available in the National Register.
On the legislative side, the National Defense Authorization Act continues to move forward, carrying with it the military tuition assistance provisions we have been monitoring closely. Pell funding remains unsettled as well. We will continue to watch both and will report to you when there is something definitive to share.
Closer to home, we have been conducting innovation listening sessions with our institutional members, and those conversations have been genuinely informative. What we are hearing is actively shaping the Innovation Blueprint, and we will be bringing our collaboration partners into that process soon so that their perspectives can help build it as well.
All of this work will lead us to Dallas on November 12th and 13th where we’ll work together in person.
Thank you, as always, for the trust you place in the Forum. We look forward to a productive month ahead.