The university innovation alliance

We were thrilled to hear that Paul Quinn College's Michael Sorrell was recently named Higher Ed Dive's President of the Year for such student-centric initiatives such as lowering annual tuition, helping the college become a federally designated work college, and allowing students to work part-time as part of the curriculum. Earlier in 2018, President Sorrell was awarded the inaugural UIA National Award at our first ever National Summit. The speech he gave upon accepting it was was incredibly worthwhile.

An op-ed by UIA Executive Director Bridget Burns was recently featured in the Washington Post. Entitled "College rankings need more focus on graduation rates of low-income students," it highlights the particular challenges college rankings create for college and university leaders and poses a timely solution. Read it here.

Great news! We've extended the deadline for the UIA fellow position at Arizona State University by one week. The new deadline is Friday, July 13th 2018 at 5pm Mountain Time. For more information about this position and how to apply, visit the UIA fellowship program page.

Note: if you'd just like to know about future job listings with the UIA, you can simply send an email to talent@theuia.org with the subject line "future opportunities."

Great news: we just kicked off our annual round of national recruiting for UIA fellows. The UIA Fellowship is a full-time, paid 12-24 month leadership development program that places top-tier early career professionals with institutions across our eleven member alliance. This year, we're recruiting for UIA fellows at Arizona State University, Ohio State University, University of California Riverside, and University of Central Florida. Get all the details here and spread the word! Note: we're currently recruiting for project fellows as well.

Portland, Ore. – The University Innovation Alliance (UIA) today released the formal agenda for its first ever National Summit for Student Success Innovation and Campus Transformation, which will take place April 3 through April 5, 2018 in Atlanta, Georgia. The Summit builds on the Alliance’s commitment to identifying, scaling, and sharing innovations that improve college graduation rates for first-generation college students and those from low-income backgrounds.

Portland, Ore. – September 25, 2017 – College completion data released today by the University Innovation Alliance (UIA) shows that the number of low-income graduates has increased by 24.7 percent among participating universities over the past three years, marking significant progress toward the Alliance’s goal of graduating an additional 68,000 undergraduates by 2025.

PORTLAND, Ore. – August 16, 2017 – The University Innovation Alliance (UIA) today announced a new scale initiative designed to ensure that students who face financial challenges at the end of their studies aren’t prevented from graduating. The new initiative will provide students at its 11 partner universities with completion grants to alleviate financial pressure in their last semesters.

When it comes to the classroom, we don’t want just one winner, which is why in the past we've used the Final Four as an analogy for the kind of thinking higher education should avoid.

We argued that while rounds of elimination may be exciting when it comes to sports, it’s misplaced in higher education where an unrealistic “beat the odds” mentality has traditionally held too much sway and is particularly out of place with respect to low income and first generation students.

With the college degree ever more critical to economic mobility — both at the individual and national level — large public research universities have been stepping up to help America regain its edge. Universities are expanding access to high-quality education, increasing completion rates among first generation and low income students, and adopting new methods for preparing a new generation of students for a rapidly evolving economy.