Digital Transformation in Higher Education: Lessons, Challenges, and the Path Forward
Introduction Higher education is in the midst of its most significant period of disruption since the expansion of the land-grant university system in the nineteenth century. The forces driving this disruption — demographic shifts, cost pressures, workforce demands, technological change, and evolving student expectations — are not temporary or cyclical. They represent structural changes in the environment of higher education that will persist and intensify in the years ahead. Digital transformation is both a response to these forces and, when pursued successfully, an enabling strategy for thriving despite them. The institutions that are navigating this disruption most successfully share a common characteristic: they have pursued digital transformation not as a technology project but as an organizational strategy. They have recognized that technology, by itself, changes nothing — but that technology deployed within a coherent organizational strategy, supported by strong lea...