Mark Milliron, President and CEO of National University: The Future Will Favor Flexible Educators

For those understandably concerned about the future of higher education, the optimism of today’s WorkforceRx guest Mark Milliron should serve as a salve. The new President and CEO of National University believes we’re entering an historic era of reinvention due to new tech and tools that foster innovation. “I just think we're going to be able to try, test and learn in ways we haven't seen in a long, long time. It’s going to be pretty exciting,” he tells Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan. Milliron sees a future that will favor flexible educators focused on providing value to increasingly “non-traditional” students with complicated lives. That cohort is already a sweet spot for National University which was founded nearly fifty years ago to serve members of the military and is the largest graduate degree granting institution for diverse students in the country. “It's about offering diversified learning opportunities, allowing for short cycle education that ladders into degrees and offering a mix of on-ground hybrid and fully online to meet students where they are.” And with access to more data than ever before, Milliron believes educators will be able to determine what innovations work based on facts, “not based on who can tell the best story.” Don’t miss this expansive discussion packed with ideas about transforming work-study programs to boost healthcare workforce development, moving to a mastery-based learning system and the necessity of shifting to “whole human” education. “If you're serving adult learners, they're not leaving because they can't academically cut it. They're leaving because life happens or logistics get in the way.”