Steve Jobs famously said, “It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the Navy.” Amid higher education’s increasing closures and consolidations, shrinking enrollment, aging infrastructures and students’ skepticism with current tuition models, scholars have rightfully ascribed this quote to the rise of challenger brands in higher education offering cutting-edge curricula.

If one could start a higher education institution from scratch, what would be jettisoned, what would be retained and how would it work? Would tenure, research, shared governance and the place-bound semester schedule exist? Which barriers to student success would be identified and dismantled first?

San Francisco Bay University is a self-proclaimed challenger brand institution located in the middle of Silicon Valley with significant resources and no debt. I have been honorably discharged from the metaphorical Navy to assume life as a full-time pirate.

As provost, I have been pushed to confront many of the quasi-religious assumptions usually held in academic affairs without guardrails or reason to pause for the first time in my 26 years in higher education. Having the ability to redefine academic operations and execute novel solutions that best drive student success has forced me to examine some of the most problematic areas currently facing more established institutions, and then move in a decidedly different direction.

So what needs to change? My institution—along with a handful of compatriot challenger brands such as Minerva University, NewU University, Olin College, BYU-Idaho and the Golisano Institute for Business and Entrepreneurship—endeavors to operate efficiently while best-serving students. Here are some examples of notable academic operational differences at my institution, which are shared by many of the aforementioned universities.

Tuition is very low, if not free.
We have no tenure. Shared governance looks more like distributed leadership. Faculty and staff are evaluated and rewarded similarly from a unified employee handbook.
Classes are capped at 20 students and taught year-round.
Students have access to unlimited mental health support.
The general education curriculum delivers durable skills like agility, empathy, emotional intelligence and problem-solving, which Silicon Valley employers have told us are important. Each course has infused generative artificial intelligence (genAI) assignments and is supported by an AI tutor.
We are currently discussing removing grades from general education courses.
We are working with our accreditor to offer 90-credit baccalaureate degrees, allowing students to graduate 25% faster and with 25% less expense.
All students will graduate with little to no debt.

With such unique opportunities also come unique challenges

Chief among them is recruiting highly qualified faculty who are both experts in their field and eager to forgo the status quo. This means abandoning the common prestige of academic rank, perceived stability of tenure and political capital of shared governance in exchange for the opportunity to be part of something disruptive to the higher education industry.

Faculty are expected to be on campus 40 hours a week and are required to participate in pedagogical training. This perceived loss of faculty autonomy is another challenge to overcome in attempting to reframe the focus of institutional culture from faculty to students. As Provost, it is difficult to consistently articulate the logic and benefits of zagging when everyone else is zigging.

What does the future hold for challenger brand universities?

I have been thinking about disruption in higher education for many years. When an environment fails to evolve, something never-before-seen always comes along to change the game. Look at Blockbuster Video, Kodak Corporation and Toys “R” Us and consider what they have in common.

Higher education is behaving much the same way. Until institutions acknowledge both the impending disruptive threat and the risk of not appropriately responding, they are vulnerable. The current generation of college students is putting less emphasis on name brand recognition and status and are more focused on fit with their values. This means the larger brands in the Ivy League and other hyper-competitive privates will be unable to thrive as they have on brand recognition alone.

Whether working at an established brand or challenger brand institution, everyone must admit that higher education as a global sector has failed to deliver on its value proposition to students. Faculty must stop blaming administrators, and administrators must stop blaming faculty. Governing boards must act boldly and be willing to make unpopular decisions to course-correct their enterprises. Each group must have the objective self-awareness to realize their own part in the systemic inertia that is miserably failing students.

By truly placing students at the center of every decision, faculty, staff, administration and boards might usher in meaningful change over divisiveness. Institutions can begin to think and behave as challenger brands might, embracing the Amazon-like ethos to become Earth’s most student-centric university. The periodic review of mission, vision, values and standard SWOT exercises inherent in the accreditation self-study cycle is a perfect opportunity for stakeholders to take an honest look at themselves and decide whether or not it is more fun to be a pirate.

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Had enough with the status quo? Heed the challenger brands

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