Changing Higher Ed podcast 332 with Dr. Drumm McNaughton and Dean Scontras | AI Governance in Higher Education: Academic Integrity, Data Compliance, and Responsible AI Use

AI Governance in Higher Education: Academic Integrity, Data Compliance, and Responsible AI Use:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 332 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Dean Scontras

One university that recently began working with Island told the company its test scores had risen by roughly 30%. Dean Scontras is careful not to call that a trend, and he cannot say whether the figure covers one classroom or an entire system. It is also the kind of number most institutions cannot yet explain, because they cannot see how AI is being used on their own systems. The exposure rarely starts with an attack. It starts with a student, faculty member, or researcher copying something out of the learning management system and pasting it into a personal AI account, where the protections negotiated into the institution’s enterprise license no longer apply. In a classroom that becomes an academic integrity problem. At a research university it can cost grant funding.

October 6, 2026 October 5, 2026

Changing Higher Ed podcast 331 with Dr. Drumm McNaughton and Dr. Sean Stevens | What Moves a College's Free Speech Ranking? FIRE's 2027 Data Points to Leadership, Not Policy

What Moves a College’s Free Speech Ranking? FIRE’s 2027 Data Points to Leadership, Not Policy:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 331 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Dr. Sean Stevens

Texas A&M University holds a green light rating for its speech policies, meaning the rules on its books pass muster as written. It has typically ranked in the top 50 of the College Free Speech Rankings, sometimes the top 25. This year it fell from 47th to 192nd, making it the lowest-ranked green light school in the country. Harvard University, the lowest-ranked school for two consecutive years, climbed to 71st out of 261 without changing a single policy. Those two results point to something boards and cabinets tend to underweight. Written policy sets a floor. What moves an institution up or down is how leadership behaves when a speech controversy lands, and whether students believe the administration will defend expression when the rubber hits the road. In this episode of

September 29, 2026 October 2, 2026

Washington Update-The Federal Policy Changes Putting Title IV Eligibility at Risk - Changing Higher Ed podcast 330 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton with guest Tom Netting

Washington Update: The Federal Policy Changes Putting Title IV Eligibility at Risk and What the 2026 Midterms Could Change:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 330 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Tom Netting

For many colleges and universities, the most immediate threat to Title IV eligibility over the next two years is a number no one on campus controls. Student loan default and repayment rates have continued to be calculated through years in which collections stopped and borrowers were told they did not have to pay. Those rates drive eligibility decisions for every institution of higher education. They are running considerably higher than normal, and no regulatory accommodation has been made for them. That exposure sits on top of a federal agenda moving on several fronts at once. The One Big Beautiful Bill (OB3) regulatory packages are final, including an earnings accountability metric that reaches every program at every institution. The Accreditation, Innovation, and Modernization (AIM) negotiated rulemaking has produced proposed rules that

September 22, 2026 October 2, 2026

How to Scale Experiential Learning to Every Student:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 329 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton with guest Dr. W. Brooke Elliott

Most institutions measure access at the door. Admit rate, net price, discount rate, yield. The measurement stops at the moment a student enrolls, which means the parts of a degree that actually change outcomes, the live client project, the consulting engagement, the international immersion, get rationed to whoever finds them. Honors cohorts get them. Well-advised students get them. Cohorts of 30 to 40 get them. Everyone else gets the catalog. At the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois, accessibility is defined to include what happens after the door. Serving more learners and lowering the price are the first half of the definition. The second half is whether the experiences inside the degree are reachable by a large share of enrolled students rather than a selected few. That

September 15, 2026 October 2, 2026

Changing Higher Ed Podcast 328 Employer Engagement in Higher Education- Why Available Support Can Still Go Unused with Brad Griffith

Employer Engagement in Higher Education: Why Available Support Can Still Go Unused:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 328 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Brad Griffith

A twelve-person software firm in central Ohio ran six paid interns this past summer, put every one of them on real client work, and then filed with the state for reimbursement of a substantial share of those wages. One of those interns arrived from the University of Richmond with his placement funded by his own institution, roughly five hundred miles away. Others have come through Ohio State with donor money attached. That employer engagement in higher education still required the company to identify, assemble, and navigate several separate funding and placement channels. That is the part of the workforce-readiness conversation that tends to get skipped. The usual assumption is that closing the gap between graduation and employment takes new money, new programs, and new staff. In some states and at

September 8, 2026 October 2, 2026

Changing Higher Ed podcast 327 with Dr. Drumm McNaughton and Dr. Brooke Barnett | How a Tuition-Dependent College Built Non-Tuition Revenue That Strengthens Its Academic Mission

How a Tuition-Dependent College Built Non-Tuition Revenue That Strengthens Its Academic Mission:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 327 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Dr. Brooke Barnett

Private colleges under enrollment pressure get told to diversify revenue. The venture that follows usually either fails to earn or drags the institution away from the academic identity families were paying for, and the college ends up with a side business it has to keep defending to its own faculty.Rollins College spent more than a decade and $200 million building a three-part portfolio it calls the Innovation Triangle, and the three parts run on deliberately different economics. A boutique inn that doubles as a rotating contemporary art collection had sent $10.8 million to student scholarships as of early 2026. An art museum moving off campus into the community charges no admission and is designed to draw no institutional funds. An executive education institute, seeded with a $10 million commitment and

September 1, 2026 October 2, 2026

Changing Higher Ed podcast 326 with Dr. Drumm McNaughton and Dr. Evan Kropp | How to Redesign Your Institution for Adult Learners, Not Just Recruit Them

How to Redesign Your Institution for Adult Learners, Not Just Recruit Them:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 326 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton with guest Dr. Evan Kropp

The prospective students who say they are too old to sit in a classroom are not the ones institutions picture. That objection arrives as often from 25-year-olds as from 65-year-olds, and it is one of the reasons adults choose online delivery: not the schedule, but the wish to avoid being the old person in the room. Institutions marketing flexibility to this population are answering a question a large share of them did not ask. The barrier is embarrassment, and it is invisible in every enrollment funnel report because the people carrying it never apply. It is also one of several barriers that look permanent and are not. The American higher education system in use today was assembled over roughly the last 50 years, which makes its obstacles design choices rather

August 25, 2026 August 26, 2026

Changing Higher Ed podcast 325 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Evan Nierman | Crisis Communications in Higher Education: Reputation, Revenue, and the Cost of Silence

Crisis Communications in Higher Education: Reputation, Revenue, and the Cost of Silence:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 325 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Evan Nierman

Most institutions in a crisis don’t believe they’re in one. The word itself is the problem. Ask a president whether the institution is facing a crisis, and it conjures a scandal with a camera crew outside. Nothing on this week’s agenda looks like that, so the answer is no, and the subject gets put away for another quarter. The broader test is one sentence: a crisis is any circumstance with the potential to negatively impact reputation and/or revenue. The potential for harm is what brings a situation within his definition, even before it becomes an obvious emergency. A slow-moving controversy qualifies. So does a donor whose name has surfaced somewhere unwelcome, and a ceremony nobody planned for. None of them will announce themselves. In this episode of the Changing Higher

August 18, 2026 October 2, 2026

Changing Higher Ed podcast 324 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Mike McGetrick | Why Is Enrollment Falling Short When Admissions and Marketing Are Both Doing Their Jobs?

Why Is Enrollment Falling Short When Admissions and Marketing Are Both Doing Their Jobs?:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 324 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Mike McGetrick

A parent in a Spark451 focus group reported that her student did not open a single brochure until the admission letter arrived. That was when the family sat down together and started genuine due diligence. Set that against how enrollment budgets are built. The money and the staff hours load at the top of the funnel, into student search, lead generation, and the communications that drive applications. The deliberation that decides the class begins the day the acceptance goes out, which is roughly when most institutions ease off. Applications climb, the class comes up short, and nobody in the building has done anything wrong. In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast, Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Mike McGetrick, Vice President at Jenzabar, where he heads up Spark451, the

August 11, 2026 October 2, 2026

How Can Colleges Use Tuition Transparency and Brand Positioning to Increase Enrollment?:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 323 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Mike McGetrick

Open your institution’s Google Analytics and sort pages by exits. If the tuition page sits at the top of that list, the sticker price is ending the conversation before an admissions counselor ever learns a prospective student’s name. It is a diagnostic most cabinets have never run, and what it exposes is not a pricing problem. Higher education does not have one crisis. It has several that arrived close enough together to be mistaken for a single failure, which is why institutions keep answering a confidence problem with an advertising buy. The three pressures compound: a contracting college-age population, families interrogating price and outcomes with new rigor, and a sector that has permitted other people to define where its value lies. In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast,

August 4, 2026 August 23, 2026

Changing Higher Ed podcast 322 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Dr. Christa Davis Acampora | The Purpose of Liberal Arts Education in the Age of AI

The Purpose of Liberal Arts Education in the Age of AI:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 322 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Dr. Christa Acampora

In the same polling being read as a crisis of confidence, 93 percent of bachelor’s students said their degree was a worthwhile investment, and seven in ten graduates said theirs was worth the cost, per Gallup-Lumina data cited in this episode. The doubt is not about the education. It is about the price. Higher education keeps defending its value while the public is asking about cost, and generative AI has raised the stakes for that confusion: the competent outputs institutions have long rewarded students for producing are now something a machine generates on demand. In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast, Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Dr. Christa Acampora, philosopher and Dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia, where

July 28, 2026 October 2, 2026

Changing Higher Ed podcast 321 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Michael Avaltroni | Building Fairleigh Dickinson’s Lifelong Learning Ecosystem Across Five Generations

How Fairleigh Dickinson Is Building an Ecosystem of Lifelong Learning Across Five Generations:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 321 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Michael Avaltroni

Program discontinuation is supposed to be the third rail of a presidency. When Fairleigh Dickinson University compiled a significant list of programs to discontinue or consolidate, President Michael Avaltroni took the list to a faculty referendum. Roughly 88 percent of the faculty endorsed it. He credits the result to faculty who understood the evidence, had been brought along on the journey, and could see the decisions inside FDU’s larger redefinition of the university: a shift away from the four-year, time-dependent degree toward an ecosystem of lifelong learning. In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast, Dr. Drumm McNaughton and Michael Avaltroni, the first FDU graduate to hold the presidency, walk through the framework driving that redefinition, a university-of-the-future model built on four Ps: programs, people, partnerships, and place. Together,

July 21, 2026 October 2, 2026

Changing Higher Ed podcast 320 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Dr. Fred Bonato | What Manhattan University’s Top-2% Mid-Career Salary Ranking Reveals About Liberal Arts and Workforce Readiness

What Manhattan University’s Top-2% Mid-Career Salary Ranking Reveals About Liberal Arts and Workforce Readiness:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 320 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Dr. Fred Bonato

At Manhattan University, the case for liberal arts is being made with outcomes, not nostalgia. Its graduates rank in the top 2% nationally for mid-career salaries, and The Wall Street Journal ranked the university 73rd in the country for graduate salaries, social mobility, and cost-effectiveness. The episode examines the institutional decisions behind that performance, including interdisciplinary program design, technical preparation, faculty adoption, hiring, and alumni-supported career pathways. In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast, Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Dr. Fred Bonato, President of Manhattan University. Bonato’s career alongside interdisciplinary teams in the space program shapes the premise behind his program design: most of the world’s significant problems cannot be met with a single siloed discipline. The Underlying Bet: Transferable Skills Paired with Technical Fluency Bonato’s working definition

July 14, 2026 October 2, 2026

Motivated Students Still Drop Out: Using AI Behavioral Signals to Intervene Before Disengagement Becomes Attrition:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 319 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Raz Dar

Eighty-six percent of college students report being highly motivated when they start. Yet, forty-two percent of surveyed students say they came close to dropping out at some point, and across the market roughly 32 percent eventually do. Those figures come from a survey of 1,050 U.S. college students conducted by Elvee, and they reframe student retention as a strategic risk presidents and boards must confront: attrition is not a motivation deficit. It is a detection failure. Institutions still identify struggling students through grades and attendance, and by the time a student has failed an exam or missed several classes, many are already halfway out the door. The scale is national. Forty-two million Americans now sit in the some-college, no-degree population, and the old saying still holds: the most expensive college

July 7, 2026 August 27, 2026

The Trust Agenda: Why Advancing Public Trust in Higher Education Will Take More Than Good PR:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 318 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Dr. Jeremy Young

Half of college presidents worried about public trust are responding with what amounts to a public relations campaign. That finding, from an April 2026 survey of college presidents, describes a reasonable instinct, but it’s not the right starting point. Public confidence in colleges and universities has fallen steadily for more than a decade in longitudinal polling from Gallup, Pew, and NORC, and messaging will not reverse it. Trust is earned by doing the work and being seen doing it, not by talking about the work after the fact. That distinction drives The Trust Agenda: A Framework for Advancing Public Trust in Higher Education, the 2026 report from the American Association of Colleges and Universities. In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast, Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with the report’s

June 30, 2026 August 27, 2026

Changing Higher Ed podcast 317 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Nicholas B. Dirks - Why Research Funding Cuts Are a Strategic Risk, Not a Budget Problem

Why Research Funding Cuts Are a Strategic Risk, Not a Budget Problem:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 317 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Dr. Nick Dirks

When the federal government pulls research funding from universities, the damage does not land first on the institutions that make headlines or the senior faculty who can wait out a bad year. It lands on the early-career scientists, the graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and research associates who do the daily work of keeping long studies alive. They hold the least security, and when the money stops, they are the ones who leave. The grants can, in theory, be restored. The people who walk away cannot simply be called back. In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast, Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Dr. Nick Dirks, President and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences. Dirks first joined the show in 2018, as the podcast’s third guest, as the

June 23, 2026 June 27, 2026

Changing Higher Ed podcast 316 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Justin Beck - Administrative AI in Higher Ed- Finding the Friction Draining Enrollment, Retention, and Donor Revenue

Administrative AI in Higher Ed: Finding the Friction Draining Enrollment, Retention, and Donor Revenue:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 316 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Justin Beck

A 4% year-over-year retention gain sounds like a service-desk metric until the dollars get attached to it. At a 5,000-student institution charging $25,000 a year, with roughly 1,500 students per class, that lift compounds across the years a student stays enrolled into real money. Empire State University reported exactly that gain after rolling out AI-based virtual assistants across roughly eight departments, alongside a 25% increase in student engagement on those web properties. The correlation is meaningful for leaders building a business case, though leaders should treat it as a correlation worth investigating rather than a clean causation claim. Administrative AI is producing measurable financial gains at institutions that have paired implementation with strong change management. Empire State, Florida Southwestern, and Boise State are not the largest or best-funded universities in

June 16, 2026 June 29, 2026

Changing Higher Ed Podcast 315-Dr. Drumm McNaughton and Dr. Leslie Kennedy- Inside CSU’s ChatGPT Edu Rollout Across 22 Universities

What Higher Ed Leaders Can Learn from CSU’s ChatGPT Edu Rollout:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 315 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Dr. Leslie Kennedy

California State University expected about 50 faculty applications for its AI Educational Innovations Challenge last spring. It received 417. The system funded 63 projects with $3 million, and the projects will be showcased across disciplines this June. The ratio is what should matter most to other institutional leaders. Faculty appetite for AI is running roughly eight times ahead of what one of the nation’s largest university systems planned to fund. Boards should be asking a different question: whether their institutions have the governance, training, communication, and measurement systems to support responsible AI adoption. That data point sits alongside many more in Ahead of the Curve: What the Nation’s Largest University System Is Learning about AI, the largest AI perception survey ever conducted in higher education, with 94,060 responses from students, faculty,

June 9, 2026 June 29, 2026

Changing Higher Ed Podcast 314-Dr. Drumm McNaughton and Dr. Karen Panetta - AI Will Scale Your Institution's Existing Bias: A Procurement and Oversight Framework for Higher Ed

AI Will Scale Your Institution’s Existing Bias: A Procurement and Oversight Framework for Higher Ed:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 314 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Dr. Karen Panetta

Most higher ed AI procurement skip the four questions that determine whether the tool will scale institutional bias. A framework for presidents and boards on what to ask before signing. As a high schooler with straight A’s in math and science, Dr. Karen Panetta was told by her school’s career assessment that she could sell makeup or be a cook. A male friend with lower scores got engineer or politician. Dr. Drumm McNaughton, host of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast, was told by his post-Navy assessment to become a forest ranger. No AI was involved in either case. Just rules-based systems applying gender and biographical constraints. That same logic now sits inside AI tools landing in admissions offices and HR systems across higher ed, and McNaughton names the difference that

June 2, 2026 August 27, 2026

Changing Higher Ed Podcast 313-Dr. Drumm McNaughton, David Marchick, and Angela Virtu-313: AI-First Business Education & 40% Enrollment Growth-How Kogod Transformed Culture, Curriculum, and Faculty Adoption

How Kogod’s AI-First Business School Model Drove 40% Enrollment Growth in Three Years:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 313 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton with guests David Marchick and Angela Virtu

Most business schools are still forming committees to study AI. Kogod School of Business at American University formed one too, gave it six weeks and a five-page limit, and has since integrated AI into every department, every major, and every minor. The impact: Undergraduate enrollment is up 40% over three years. Applications are up 50%. More than 90% of faculty are using AI in the classroom. Bloomberg Businessweek called Kogod the first AI-first business school, and the program has been named among the top ten to watch two years running. What makes learning about Kogod’s transformation useful to other higher ed leaders isn’t about AI technology itself (for a change). What makes this discussion valuable is how the school moved from a dean’s instinct that AI would matter to a

May 26, 2026 June 27, 2026

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