Are institutions ready to rethink both value and learning design?

Welcome! The university sector, at least in some parts of the world, has been under a credibility crisis for as long as most people can remember. As we covered in November, the term “Mickey Mouse” degree dates back at least two decades. Pew research in the United States found 70 percent of Americans thought higher education was “going in the wrong direction”, up from 56 percent in 2020. The news doesn’t get much better elsewhere.

This week, we explore what can be done about it, using the perspectives of experts from last week’s QS Global Skills Week in Washington on how institutions can link research, skills and public value more deliberately. Doing so could help universities remain relevant and combat adversarial narratives. We also look at how meeting neurodivergent students where they are can help unpack their potential.

Stay insightful,
Anton John Crace
Editor in Chief, QS Insights Magazine
QS Quacquarelli Symonds

Unis urged to use research to remain relevant

By Jamaal Abdul-Alim

In brief

• Global leaders urge universities to leverage research and innovation to prove their public value and stay relevant amidst rising scepticism and the rapid advent of AI.
• Institutions are reinventing traditional models by commercialising breakthroughs like "Nerve Tape" and launching AI-focused degrees to align academic output with tangible, real-world impact and workforce needs.
• To thrive, universities must prioritise translational research and curate intentional, "real-world" learning experiences that foster entrepreneurial mindsets and directly reflect current market demands and technological shifts.

Amid the unfolding advent of AI in the workplace – coupled with ongoing skepticism about whether a college degree is worthwhile – universities must demonstrate their value through innovations that make a practical difference in the lives of students and everyday people.

That was one of several key takeaways from Global Skills Week – a convening that brought together campus administrators, industry leaders, entrepreneurs and others to discuss the role that higher education will play in creating the workforces and commercial enterprises of the future.

“The universities of today, we need to reinvent ourselves,” said P. Srirama Rao, Vice President for Research and Innovation at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU).

“The old models are failing,” Rao said. “If we do things in the same old way, we are in for a surprise as we try to teach skillsets needed for tomorrow.”

Rao made his remarks during a panel discussion on translational research. As a tangible example of such research, he pointed to Nerve Tape – a tapelike material that Jonathan Isaacs, the Chair of VCU Health’s Division of Hand Surgery, developed to surgically repair severed nerves without the use of sutures.

The product recently received federal clearance, won Congressional recognition and will likely be one of VCU’s largest revenue generators in recent history, Rao said. It’s the sort of story that universities can use to make the case to justify the investment of public dollars.

“I think we have to measure, especially those of us who are public institutions, when we take taxpayers’ money, what is the impact we are having to the stakeholders, our communities and the people we serve?” Rao said.

Asked which skills are most critical for universities to teach, Rao said entrepreneurial skillsets for students “because they are the people who are going to sell the new next companies and what have you.”

He touted the fact that VCU has doubled its external funding to $568 million since 2018. He spoke of the need for universities to explore how they can take nascent technologies and “mature them to the point where someone would be interested in investing in it.”

Ebrahim Al Hajri, President of Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, spoke of how his university formed the Khalifa University Enterprises Company as a legally separate entity to focus on commercialisation of its research without burdening the institution with that job.

The company evaluates the intellectual property produced at Khalifa University and seeks to convert those properties into commercial opportunities, Al Hajri said.

“Publications are good,” Al Hajri said of his university’s record of publishing 75 percent of its articles in international publications. “But how can we impact society?”

At a separate session, panellists discussed the promise and limitations of AI in health care.

Constance St. Germain, President at Capella University, said research shows that today’s students in health care “know that AI is coming, but they don’t have the time and skill to really understand how it can better serve them”.

Consequently, she said, her university is “building AI into the system”.

Eric Armbrecht, Professor and Senior Advisor to the President at Saint Louis University, shared a similar development at his university, which he says started a new master’s degree in AI medicine.

“We’re trying to intersect our clinical professional education with the technology side at the same time,” Professor Armbrecht said. “I think that’s just the reality of being an educational institution is just doing what’s happening in the market now. If you’re not doing that, you’re doing a disservice to the learners that are coming to you.”

Professor Armbrecht said other disciplines, such as business, could draw inspiration from the clinical learning required of physicians and nurses.

“Unfortunately, many universities leave it up to the student to just go find a random thing,” he said.  “It's like, ‘Well, go there, good luck, and write an essay about it.’ It's not curated in the way that the health professions do because they're so intentional about a certain set of experiences so that they can assess the performance of the student in that real world environment.”

Jamaal Abdul-Alim is a veteran education journalist who resides in Washington, D.C. His articles have appeared in Washington Monthly, Education Week and Diverse: Issues in Higher Education. An avid chess player, Jamaal was named “Chess Journalist of the Year” in 2013. Known as “Professor J” among his students at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he teaches journalism, Jamaal is the founding editor of Sneaker Theory, a website that grew out of a project he did to complete a “Sneaker Essentials” course in 2024 at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

Redesigning learning for neurodiverse students

By Chloë Lane

In brief

• Universities are redesigning curricula and governance to meet the needs of neurodiverse students and help them thrive in academic and professional life.
• Institutions are deploying staff training, AI-driven transcription tools, and flexible one-on-one support to reduce cognitive load and create adaptable, inclusive environments for all students.
• Success requires embedding inclusion into governance and diversifying assessments. By celebrating neurodivergent strengths like creativity, universities enhance learning outcomes and prepare students for entrepreneurial careers.

Young people are talking about neurodiversity more than ever before, largely thanks to TikTok. A quick search for #ADHD on the app results in more than five million posts.

The platform is helping to make information about neurodivergence more visible and accessible than traditional medical or professional resources, affirms new research from the University of Canterbury. It gives young people a space to assert their identities and connect with others who share similar experiences.

While critics warn about the dangers of young people self-diagnosing, these videos also encourage people to seek professional diagnoses. In England, for example, ADHD medication prescriptions have nearly doubled from 127,000 to 248,000 between 2020 and 2025, which clinicians link at least partly to increased public awareness due to social media like TikTok.

As diagnoses rise and conversations become more open, higher education institutions are also rethinking how they can tailor their academic offerings to make learning easier for those who have cognitive diversity.

Introducing practical changes

For some highly practical higher education programmes, neurodivergence can offer students unique benefits.

Certain structured, fast-paced environments, such as professional kitchens, can play to the strengths of some neurodivergent students, explains Lisa Peel, Head of Learning Resources at the Swiss Hotel Management School (SHMS). This is mainly because students need to be very organised, and instructions are straightforward and clear. Mistakes are corrected instantly. “Plus, they can demonstrate creativity – a quality often reported by neurodivergent students,” she adds.

SHMS specialises in hospitality management taught at a higher education level. At the school, faculty are trained on how to effectively teach students with neurodiverse behaviours. “Every lecturer was more aware of students’ needs and able to provide additional support,” shares Peel.

Neurodiversity training to staff is offered in the form of a ‘Bite-Sized Inclusion’ series at Hungary’s Corvinus University of Budapest. This three-part workshop was created to strengthen inclusion in teaching and learning, and to inspire inclusive learning environments.

Running across two semesters, the series combined concepts with practical frameworks, backed up with reflective, case-based work. Corvinus worked to ensure this inclusion training was informed by theory but directly transferable to classroom practice.

“The key to meaningful learning is the ability to fully participate and to do that in a safe environment,” says Kata Dósa, Head of the university’s Centre for Teaching and Learning.

So far, the workshops have helped faculty to design more inclusive and pedagogically flexible classrooms. For neurodiverse students, this translates into clearer structure, and more accessible materials, as well as more varied interaction and assessment formats.

“Students are more likely to engage, persist and contribute at a high level when teaching design recognises cognitive diversity as a resource rather than a deficit,” says Dósa.

Building support into the structure

Some institutions are even embedding neurodiversity at governance level. At Switzerland’s César Ritz Colleges, it now sits formally within the institution’s Diversity and Inclusion framework alongside gender equality and harassment prevention.

“We realised diversity is much wider than cultural background – students also think and learn differently,” says Tanja Florenthal, Executive Director of Quality Assurance at the school. “It’s not handled case by case. It sits within governance, policies and monitoring like any other priority.”

One of the ways this is demonstrated in practice is assessment design. The school diversifies its assessment formats, using a combination of presentations, group projects, reflective work and case analyses, rather than relying exclusively on high-pressure written exams. These formats naturally allow students to engage in different ways, meaning all styles of learning are tested.

At Manchester Metropolitan University Business School in the UK, inclusion is also now viewed as mainstream rather than a specialist provision. “With 17.14 percent of students declaring a disability, the Faculty of Business and Law has embedded inclusion at scale,” says Dr Katharina De Vita, Faculty Director of Education at Manchester Metropolitan University Business School.

Since 2022, 3,400 undergraduates have engaged in a strengths-based development framework, supported by digital tools such as ‘Genio Notes’, which enables lecture recording, transcription and AI-generated revision quizzes.

By embedding strengths-based development within the curriculum and deploying these types of AI enabled tools that reduce the cognitive load for students, the school hopes to create structured, repeatable and flexible routes into learning.

“For neurodiverse students, innovation in pedagogy and digital design is not an add-on; it is central to equitable participation and success,” adds Dr Andrew Wilson, the school’s Department Education Lead and Senior Lecturer.

Making subtle, everyday changes

Some institutions focus less on providing formal training and implementing grand changes, and more on the practical everyday details. Support is subtly built directly into the structure of teaching and interaction at online higher education institution, the Open Institute of Technology (OPIT), by ensuring students have lots of opportunities for one-on-one time with faculty.

OPIT encourages students who are hesitant to interact in group environments or require additional support to attend professors’ regular office hours or contact their tutors, who are available six days a week, 12 hours a day. This provides a lower-pressure channel for students who need more time to process and formulate questions.

“We emphasise from the start that seeking support is normal and encouraged, and that it is part of how students navigate their learning journey, not a sign of difficulty or failure,” explains Sara Ciabbatoni, Senior Program Coordinator at OPIT.

From the start, OPIT runs sessions specifically on how to optimise the use of the online campus: setting notifications, syncing calendars, tracking deadlines and enabling accessibility features on the platform. All lectures are recorded, accompanied by a transcript and a summary, which reduces the pressure of having to capture everything in a live session. Programme coordinators help students to create a structured plan that covers when to attend live sessions or watch recordings, and how to distribute their work for upcoming assessments.

The school also promotes the use of project-based assignments, which offer more flexibility than traditional exams. Each one is open for at least a week to give students the chance to effectively manage their workload. This can help neurodiverse students to process information at their own pace and reduce the pressure of listening and taking notes at the same time.

“Support is not one-size-fits-all: students with the same diagnosis may require different forms of assistance,” says Ciabbatoni.

Docsity, created by OPIT’s Founder, Riccardo Ocleppo, provides another way for neurodiverse students to engage with learning material. Used by nearly 34 million students worldwide, the note sharing and collaborative learning platform uses AI to turn student-submitted notes and lectures into clear transcripts, summaries and interactive concept maps.

Inclusion is a core focus for the platform: through collaboration with tutors and teachers specialised in neurodiversity, the app has been designed to be accessible, with features that support students with ADHD or learning disabilities.

Chloë Lane is a gold-standard NCTJ-trained journalist specialising in higher education. A former Content Editor for QS, Chloë has a wide range of experience writing articles for a variety of B2B and B2C publications about topics related to business schools, universities, careers and academic research. When she’s not writing or interviewing professors, Chloë loves to run, and can usually be found training for a race. Currently based in London, Chloë grew up in Leicestershire and holds a Bachelor’s in Economics from the University of Reading.