From quick fixes to adaptive evolution: Rethinking university transformation

In this episode, we explore what it truly takes for universities to adapt in a time of systemic pressure with Cameron McCoy, founder of the Adaptive Group and Rebound.

Drawing on his work on adaptive evolution and institutional transformation, as well as his contribution to the Future of Universities Thoughtbook | Entrepreneurial Edition, we unpack why higher education is struggling to keep pace with the scale of change, how incremental innovation often falls short, and what it means to redesign universities at their core. From the limitations of legacy models like the credit hour to the realities of serving increasingly diverse learners, we examine how institutions can move beyond patchwork solutions and build the capacity for continuous, meaningful adaptation.

You can read a summary below, and listen to the full interview in our podcast:

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Summary

Higher education is entering a period in which surface-level innovation no longer matches the scale of the challenge. Universities are being asked to expand access, prove economic and social value, respond to technological acceleration and meet the needs of learners whose lives do not resemble the traditional full-time student model. Yet much of the sector still responds with small fixes layered onto old systems without confronting the structures that make meaningful change so hard.

Cameron McCoy, founder of the Adaptive Group and Rebound, argues that this is the wrong level of response for the moment. His core message is that universities need adaptive evolution: a deeper, more systemic form of transformation that reshapes how institutions think, measure, design, and operate. It matters now because the pressures are no longer episodic. Demographic shifts, the rise of a skills economy, mounting questions about return on education and new technological realities are all forcing universities to decide whether they will keep patching the model—or finally redesign it.

Universities are being squeezed from both sides

Cameron describes a sector facing both compressive and reshaping forces at once. Universities are expected to produce more graduates to support economic growth even as traditional student populations decline. At the same time, a changing skills economy is raising new questions about whether degree pathways still align with the jobs learners will enter, while technology continues to redraw the relationship between pedagogy, access and quality.

Fundamentally, institutions aren’t change ready, they’re not adaptive.

Though Cameron speaks primarily from the US context, the pattern reaches far beyond it. Institutions built for a narrow learner profile now face a far more varied reality: working adults, first-generation students, learners with uneven access to time and technology, and students who are increasingly focused on affordability and outcomes.

In that environment, the central issue is not whether change is happening, but whether universities are prepared to respond at the level the moment requires.

Why innovation so often becomes maladaptation

For Cameron, one of the sector’s biggest problems is that many reforms are additive rather than transformative. Universities revise core curricula, launch certificates, build special initiatives, or introduce new delivery models, but leave the underlying institution untouched. The result is often more activity without more adaptability.

A redesigned curriculum may look contemporary, yet have little effect on persistence, career progression or long-term alignment with learner needs.

Higher education still produces knowledge at scale, but it often resists learning about its own business model, its operating assumptions and the day-to-day realities shaping learner success.

The credit-hour model is still holding institutions back

If there is one structural example that captures the problem, Cameron suggests, it is the credit hour. Universities continue to organise learning around seat time despite enormous changes in learning science and learner behaviour.

We still measure learning and how we construct the curricular pathways based on a concept that was developed in the 1880s.

That legacy model narrows what institutions can imagine by making it harder to design flexible pathways, harder to recognise learning in richer ways, and harder to build capabilities across a student’s full journey.

If critical thinking, communication, or problem-solving are treated as boxes checked in isolated courses, universities lose the agility required to meet contemporary educational and workforce realities.

Adaptive evolution starts with transforming the core

Cameron’s alternative is adaptive evolution, which he frames through the lens of dual transformation. First, institutions must recenter themselves: clarify what is timeless in their mission, improve operations, measure what matters and stop treating inherited practices as sacred simply because they are familiar.

Universities also need to become regenerative by designing beyond the constraints of their historical model and create pathways for very different kinds of learners without losing sight of their purpose.

You have to adapt to be able to design outside of the constraints of your historical approach to education

Cameron illustrates this with a practical example: an institution serving first-generation students may improve support structures and still see completion remain too low. A more adaptive response would ask bigger questions. What would it take to design a pathway not only for the student, but also for a working parent who cannot attend at fixed times, may lack reliable technology and may never have seen university as a viable option?

That kind of redesign requires more than good intentions. It requires human, technological, design, implementation and financial capabilities strong enough to support transformation at scale.

Trust and change readiness determine whether transformation lasts

Cameron points to three realities that shape whether change succeeds: how people react to it, whether they trust leadership, and whether they are invited to help create the pathway rather than simply endure it. Without that foundation, institutions fall into familiar roles—the receiver, the resistor or the controller—each of which assumes that change is something temporary to survive rather than a condition to work within.

Change ready at its core means that we’re learning and adapting and changing together, and that we recognise that change is constant.

That mindset also changes the resource question. Cameron argues that universities often assume they lack capacity when, in reality, they have not measured well enough to see where waste, duplication, and misalignment already exist. Real transformation depends on creating room for innovation and on refusing to treat every institutional problem as someone else’s silo. When institutions begin measuring what truly matters, they are far better positioned to free up the capacity required for lasting change.

Cameron McCoy’s argument is not that universities should abandon their core purpose. It is that they must redesign the systems around that purpose so they can serve a wider range of learners under very different conditions. The institutions that remain most relevant will be the ones willing to become more reflective, more self-aware and more capable of continuous adaptation.

Ready for more?

If Cameron McCoy’s reflections on the future of universities sparked your curiosity, you can explore his ideas in more depth in the Future of Universities Thoughtbook | Entrepreneurial Edition. In the book, Cameron joins 34 other global experts from academia, industry, and policy who share their perspectives on how universities must evolve to foster entrepreneurship, innovation, and real-world impact.

UIIN members have full access to the complete Thoughtbook here, while non-members can download a preview here to discover some of the insights and ideas shaping the entrepreneurial university of the future.

Stay tuned for the next episode on this series and don’t forget to follow us on your preferred podcast platform!