Episode
Students Are Acting Like Consumers. Higher Ed Needs to Catch Up
- Podcast
- Changing Higher Ed
- Published
- Mar 11, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2285
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://changinghighered.libsyn.com/-draft-p303-jeff-dinski
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Summary
Jeff Dinski helped start Cold Pizza at ESPN, the morning show that eventually became First Take. On a daily show, ratings are everything. You either produce something people want to watch, or you do not last. He carried that discipline into edtech, and it is the lens through which he looks at higher education: are you really giving students what they need, or are you producing what is convenient for you? In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast, Dr. Drumm McNaughton and Jeff Dinski, Chief Strategy and Corporate Development Officer at Ellucian , the largest edtech company in the world serving roughly half of all U.S. colleges and universities, dig into the structural forces behind higher education's confidence crisis, what Workforce Pell Grants will actually change, and what institutional strategy has to look like from here. This conversation is especially relevant for presidents and boards who want a clear-eyed, outside-in read on what students are demanding, where the federal policy environment is heading, and which institutions are best positioned to adapt. Topics Covered: • Why the confidence crisis has bipartisan roots and why neither political party has done higher education any favors • Why student pathways are becoming individualized and what that means for program design and delivery • Real examples of institutions where undergraduates do actual corporate work, not fetch-coffee internships, as part of their degree programs • What Workforce Pell Grants will fund for the first time and which institutions are best positioned to benefit • Why the DBA vs. research PhD distinction matters for building workforce-aligned faculty pipelines • The Silicon Valley master's program model: tenured faculty for foundational content, industry adjuncts for advanced appl…