ASU leads movement to reinvent higher education

Newsweek is pointing to ASU as a leader in the movement to radically redesign higher education and the role of universities around the globe.

"Michael Crow is overseeing one of the most radical redesigns in higher learning since the modern research university took shape in 19th-century Germany. Since taking over as president of Arizona State University in 2002, he's not only doubled the budget to more than $2 billion a year, hired dozens of world-class researchers and rapidly raised the academic profile of what used to be a mediocre school; he's also transforming the way Phoenix-based ASU sees itself—and helping reinvent the university for the global age," reads the article published online Aug. 9 and in the Aug. 18-25 issue of Newsweek.

The article points to ASU moving away from "traditional departments, lumping pieces together into custom-built 'transdisciplinary' institutes." The goal to break down the traditional barriers and create new ways of approaching a problem.

Article author Stefan Theil points to ASU's College of Nursing an Healthcare Innovation as a living example of that concept. "Thus ASU's new College of Nursing doesn't just focus on bedside care, but has architects, policy experts and business professors working together on health-care innovation," he writes.

The article also highlights the university's effort to serve as an economic driver for the state's economy, pointing out the School of Sustainability bringing "together professors from 35 disciplines studying urban development in Phoenix and across the Southwestern United States, bringing in expertise on subjects ranging from desert-water ecology to energy-saving building design."

"It's all part of a fundamental rethinking of how universities should function in the 21st century, a process led by Crow and a small number of like-minded pioneers such as NYU's John Sexton and Olin College's Richard Miller," writes Theil.