The University Innovation Alliance launched one year ago this month, and the progress in our first year has surpassed our expectations. We’ve sparked a national conversation challenging the existing values system in higher education. We’ve advanced new ways to incentivize collaboration and reward institutions for innovation that demonstrably improves outcomes for all students. And we’ve educated the higher education community, policymakers, and the broader public about the hard work needed to uncover new solutions that advance student opportunity.
We’re especially proud of 4 milestones:
- We set ambitious public goals for our collaborative effort, highlighted by our commitment to graduate an additional 68,000 students by 2025 (at least half of whom will be low-income graduates). President Obama publicly recognized our commitment at the White House College Opportunity Summit in December. Responding to our effort, the White House created a new track at the Summit to reward and incentivize collaborative work.
- We’ve seen two rankings—U.S. News & World Report and Washington Monthly—expand their focus to applaud institutions for innovation. Four of our campuses and three of our university leaders have been recognized for their innovative work. All 11 UIA campuses are now advancing the use of predictive analytics to support student success. We chose this innovation as our first major scaling initiative based on the positive impact it already had on three of our campuses.
- We’ve launched a new organizational model on university campuses to build internal capacity to drive innovation. Today, 10 UIA institutions have hired an innovation fellow, sharing ideas across campuses and providing capacity to accelerate innovation.
- For more information about our accomplishments in year one, including plenty of photos from our major events, check out our Year in Review.