Chief Change Officer - #360 Bridget Burns: Breaking the Higher Ed Hunger Games—Part Two

Episode Date: May 10, 2025

If students are graduating into a broken job market, can we really call that success?In Part Two, Bridget Burns, CEO of the University Innovation Alliance, zooms out to expose the cracks between graduation and employment—and shares what it actually takes to close them. From outdated career services buried in basement offices to siloed AI initiatives happening in secret, Bridget makes the case for a total redesign of higher education’s operating system.With a blend of empathy and systems thinking, she outlines how her team redesigned career prep using design sprints, empathy interviews, and playbooks adopted across campuses. If you care about mobility, modern learning, or making education work for today’s students, this conversation goes beyond policy—it gets personal.Key Highlights of Our Interview:Nobody Likes Change—Unless It’s Theirs“Everyone who says they like change is a liar. You only like the change you helped create.”Empathy Is a Skill, Not a Soft Word“People are walking around with broken hearts—because leaders shelved the thing they built or made them feel disposable.”AI in Higher Ed: Same Problems, New Arms Race“Thousands of staff are working on the same AI problem in silos. What a waste.”The Risk of Reinventing the Wheel—Again and Again“Everyone’s designing alone, heads down. Students lose while schools compete.”Career Services, Reimagined from Scratch“We mapped the mess, interviewed students, and redesigned career prep as part of the classroom—not just a résumé workshop in the basement.”Faculty as Career Coaches? Yes, and Here’s How“We embedded career activities into every course, starting from day one.”From Data Deserts to Playbooks“Most schools didn’t even track career services usage. That’s not strategy—that’s hiding the scoreboard.”The Real Measure of Value: Social Mobility at Scale“We’re done with ‘graduate and goodbye.’ Now we’re building systems that track—and improve—students’ lives after college.”Designing a Smart Future, Not Just Smart Classrooms“Higher ed wasn’t built for today’s students. We’re fixing that—with urgency, alignment, and a new North Star: mobility.”______________________Connect with Us:Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Bridget Burns  --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.EdTech Leadership Awards 2025 Finalist.17 Million+ All-Time Downloads.80+ Countries Reached Daily.Global Top 1.5% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>160,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<

Hi, everyone. Welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. I'm sure it is a modernist community for change progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. Today, I welcome Dr. Bridget Burns from the University Innovation Alliance. Bridget and I met at South by Southwest when we were on the same judging panel for startups

in education technology. That was a time before COVID. Many changes have occurred ever since. Bridget has navigated these changes firsthand in higher education. She is now leading a university innovation alliance focused on improving graduation outcomes for students from low-income families, a mission tied closely to her own background. In this episode, we'll explore how she convinced 11 schools to work together, shifting the paradigm from competition to collaboration. We'll discuss the resistance to change because of poorly designed processes and how improving

these processes led to much greater acceptance. We'll talk about the importance of empathy, curiosity, and ownership in driving change. We'll also cover how AI is reshaping education and the challenges institutions face in integrating this technology. Lastly, we'll explore the crucial transition from education to employment and how her organization is helping students achieve better life outcomes. Sit back and enjoy this unfiltered conversation packed with insights and practical advice.

Yeah, empathy, curiosity, and ownership are crucial for change. Like you said, no one really likes change unless it benefits them in some way. It also needs to generate collective benefits. People often ask, why this change? How can we make things better? Why does my contribution matter in this case or that case? How can I help? Maybe I can help more than you expected. Ownership isn't just about being informed or notified. It's about contributing to the evolution of the change and being responsible for the outcome. If the outcome isn't as good as expected, how can we work together to make it better?

This sense of ownership, this power of ownership is so impactful. Yeah, it's invite your people to know like into the problem that you need to solve. People love to solve problems. People love to be helpful. But what they don't want to be is a cog in a wheel told to do X or Y. And they also literally work in that area. They might have some ideas. Listen, I know that you can have employees that you're like, ah, they're just not going to want it. Like the reason just all I'm saying is that the resistance is justified. And if you are so out of touch with your people, that you can't understand that, then you've been at it too long.

And you need to give yourself a micro dose of a empathy sprint to go out and remember why you started doing this work, remember why you cared about the people, remember why you chose to be a leader. Because I get dismissing people and because you, because I feel like people who work in any industry, my observation is there's a lot of people walking around

they're walking around with broken hearts because they've had a leader who's betrayed them. They've had a thing that they worked on for 10 years that got shelved at the last minute. And they remember that they showed up, that they missed dinner with their kids to build that thing. And you're just gonna turn it off.

You're just getting rid of it. There's all these people who are carrying around these stories of bad experiences from change. And then there are leaders who are carrying around this mythology about people being lazy or people not wanting to do stuff. And I just, it doesn't serve us and it is not, it's not reality. And we are not our best selves when all we're doing is living out a story we're telling ourselves about other people. And so you just got to tap into curiosity, it's going to be your best friend. And if you don't have it right now, you got to give yourself, you got to pull back out of the work and get back to caring about people and remembering they all have a reason to

feel the way they do. Honestly, if I had an office and someone came in and said, hey, we are going to implement this change. And because of that, I'm going to move from my corner office to a shared desk in a large area. I wouldn't be happy either. I can totally resonate with that scenario. Speaking of humanity, there's one growing area we are all watching closely. AI. AI is here to stay and will impact all areas of our lives, including education. There's a lot of hope for its potential in education.

So for a change leader like you, the question isn't just about integrating AI into higher education, but how to make the best use of it. Based on your experience working with these leaders and institutions, what could be the hurdles or challenges for the institutions in embracing and integrating AI into teaching, learning and administration? How can they create a collective, intelligent scenario that many people are looking forward to? So I think the thing that is going to get in the way are things that are very human. The first thing I'm observing is that we have this natural tendency to compete with each other. There's like an arms race usually when something's new and that's what's happening with AI. So what you have is thousands of people across higher ed, different institutions who are all trying to figure something out

simultaneously. And what a waste that we are not finding a way to work together, that we are not teaming up on the shared objective that you just put forward because this is a space that's hyper competitive and we will batten the hatches and not share with anything with anyone and students will be worse for it because you need the people who are in the classroom and people who are outside the classroom finding ways to collaborate with peers not just at their institution but do it in a way that advances the entire agenda forward for everyone, which is we have big questions around learning that we need to address. We need to figure

out how to make it so that any person can learn. We need to figure out how to make it more sustainable for every person to have access to personalized learning at scale. We need to figure out the efficacy and the safety issues that are definitely going to happen and are popping up already. And instead what you're having is a bunch of people who are working individually with their head down, separated, all figuring out what problem they want, how they want to use AI or whether they don't. And then there's a large swath of higher ed that is more risk averse. And so they may or may not be using it at all. And so you're going to see a new like version of the haves and have nots.

And for me, what I just always I'm predisposed to notice the big picture and to be a systems thinker on this. And so I just I see really big sector problems that affect community colleges, every type of institute, every type of university. And it's really about the students. It's about how we can weaponize this for good. How do we make it so that the people who work at a university who are, you know, front office

that are being overwhelmed by repetitive questions or repetitive issues, how do they use AI so they can actually not have to do that and instead can provide more hands-on support for students? Now, we're seeing that with chatbots as such. And how do administrators be more effective and efficient so that they can actually get through their days and be able to produce more things, to be able to accelerate speed, because that's a real challenge for us. And for faculty, just like it's learning, it's how do you use this ethically

when you're trying to, one of the biggest impediments for your time is grading. How do you use it from a pedagogical perspective to make it so that what you're doing is better? These are big questions that are not particularly unique. These are, I've given you what, that's like three problems. Those are sector problems.

And so it's just sad when we only focus on my institution wants to be first. So University of Michigan, go get them, or Arizona States, they're definitely out front on AI. But I just think that there are very clearly like same problems, like same team. And we have to find a way that we are going to collaborate in an effort to make our use of AI safe, effective, efficient, and trustworthy

and going to be able to, again, I think at the end of the day, it's about personalized learning at scale. And also make sure that what we're teaching today is not out of date because the future of work and how AI is disrupting the workforce and going to disrupt the workforce. That means that the things we're teaching now in certain classrooms today is no longer relevant. And there is, I have little confidence that individual disciplines are going to be in real time keeping up with that.

And if they are, it's one dean or it's one chair or faculty member. It's not the whole discipline working together to figure out, okay, so I can see that the role of pure legal is going to be changing rapidly right now because of chat GBT. Fundamentally, you can conduct a lit review with a well-trained model super effectively. What does that mean for how we can, I just think there's a lot that's happening so fast. So then if you're training people in the legal profession or anything related right now,

you should have a part of your curriculum about AI. You should be thinking about how the role of paralegal is changing rapidly now because of that. And so therefore, it's like we've always had a problem with our connection with workforce and now it's like it's on steroids and steroids are AI. And so again, every one of these is a sector wide problem. And I just say that my problem is the architecture of this entire sector would make it so that we would hunker down and work alone independently and wait until we feel like we have a peer-reviewed article to publish before others find out what we've been doing and students cannot

afford to waste that time. Your response is totally relevant, not just about AI, but in other matter, I want to get your take on before we conclude this interview, which is the student outcome. Youth help a lot of students. According to your website, over 68,000 from low-income backgrounds are expected to graduate by 2025. That's a significant achievement and an important KPI. Now, given our discussion about AI, technology, and the job market, it's clear that the type and nature of jobs

are changing rapidly. Ultimately, we go to college to get a job upon graduation. So, outcome for UIA or any school isn't just about graduation, it's about helping students achieve better life outcomes through education, from graduation to employment. This transition from learning to earning is crucial. In terms of UIA, what have you done to help students move from education to employment? Perhaps is there

something currently in place? Or part of your future vision? Can you share with us what's happening at this stage? Yeah, in 2017, we partnered with Strata Education Network to, as a next, we do a big change initiative. So like predictive analytics, chatbots, proactivizing, our whole thing is scale. So we take a model from one place and scale it on other campuses and we learn a method for scale. Like how do you need to adapt that idea so that it survives and thrives in a different ecosystem and then we create playbooks for the rest of the sector to learn from us.

So that's been our model scale. But we ran into this issue in 2017 of this issue of college to career, there's nothing to scale. There are lots of little tiny things out there, but we recognize that the entire, we've come at this work thinking with the baseline belief that higher education was never designed around students. And that's the problem. And it was especially not designed around the students that we need to serve. Low income, first gen students of color.

So then we get to college career and it's, oh my gosh, if we thought we had bad design once, watch out because when you look at career services and just that model and that approach, it became very clear that was manifestation of what we're talking about. And we agree with you about the students measure their success by it's much more nuanced and complex, but they want a job, of course. So we did a multi-year initiative to actually come up with instead of the scale, it was about innovation, which was how should this be if we were to design it based around the needs of students and specifically use design thinking if you could reimagine that

whole college to career handoff around the needs of students where you could actually make up for privilege. Meaning if you looked at the data that a student from a low income background would have the same kind of results or outcomes as a high income student student who comes in with a deep social network, etc. And so we got seven universities together to first we started with process mapping as always to understand just how bad is this because the system seemed really dysfunctional for students. You have a office in some basement somewhere with like a tiny budget that nobody wants to go to other than to get their resume looked at.

And so we first started with this false assumption. We quickly checked, which was, let's see all the things that Career Services is responsible for and then let's like map those things and let's look at their KPIs and then we would be able to benchmark against those and try and improve those. That's what we thought. It turns out step one is we didn't have any KPIs because nobody was actually tracking any data. We had no idea that if you wanted to measure

the number of students who go into career services from certain backgrounds, they don't have that data. They don't even know how many people come in. Depending on who you're talking to, like they just, they're overwhelmed. One of my institutions had 70,000 students and they had two people in the office of career services. And so that was a bust. And we also mapped all of the things that campuses did around career

services and we found out the vast majority had no relationship with career services. Oh man, so if we were trying to fix career services, we were in trouble because it turns out most of these things report to the deans or they're over here in this other office. And no surprise, there's nobody at the end of the day who's responsible for career services or career outcomes for students. It's just very distributed and that's a formula for chaos. So that gives us, so already we're wrong in our design, but we've learned a ton. We also then get all the career services folks together and we engage in a series

of empathy sprints where we interview hundreds of students across all these campuses about what success in college would look like, what kinds of experiences have been most valuable to that end, what they've been struggling with, all that kind of stuff, and use those empathy insights to then generate, create design charrettes and design thinking sprints where we actually came up with prototypes of what would it look like if we actually designed this part of the higher ed system around the needs of students and came up with seven different prototype models that are then our next step was you could not implement your own idea and so Ohio State had to implement another campus's idea Riverside you see the University of Central Florida they State had to implement another campus' idea. Riverside, you see University of Central Florida, they all had to implement someone else's idea.

And that was a waste for us to be to not fall in love with our own idea. And then COVID happened. Despite that, much of that kind of calibrated it down a bit. But despite that, we did end up developing a robust playbook and a clear picture of how you should design that whole space. And the spoiler is there are several of the models that actually still live today. In fact, University of Central Florida just announced a $10 million gift to match their initiative that came from that project. Now it's several years later, and they're just continuing to expand it.

The outcomes have been improved. But again, it was hard for us because we couldn't baseline because turns out nobody captured that data. It wasn't as scientific as we expected it to be. But what we figured out is the only place that all students go is the classroom. And so instead of an office shoved in a basement, the answer is that career services people, professionals, they should be re-imagined as instructional designers and they should be coaches for faculty to embed career readiness into every single classroom,

starting from the first class a student takes. They should have a career readiness experience, activity or exercise. They should engage and learn from alumni who are working in the field. They should be doing team-based learning. They should be doing work where we actually use what is called NACE competency language, which is like language that you could use in a job interview to describe what you did in a class. And so it's things like that. It was also paid virtual and in-person

internships, micro internships, we implemented those. It was a variety of other suite of solutions. You can download the playbook on our website. So that's what we've done thus far. I would say COVID was a disruptor for us in a significant way because building change management was really hard during that time. But now, I will round the bases that it's been 10 years, that 68,000 data point you mentioned, we're now at 150,000 on that goal. That was the goal that President Obama announced of ours that was by 2025, then we've already hit 150.

And not by adding new campuses, this is just the original 11. But we are now about to launch our new goals. And I will say that it's a preview, but mobility is a big part of our focus going forward. And I will say that my campuses are not just interested in getting credit for measuring it, because the field is nascent on this issue. There's a lot of language and people talking about social mobility, da-da-da. It turns out that at most, campuses are at most measuring it. No one is trying to improve it.

And they, what happens is campuses find out they're good at social mobility because they wind up in a ranking. And that is sad. That is not where this field needs to be. We need to work together on this. So what my campuses are willing to do, and I'm just, my job is to raise the money is we will aggressively consume all of the existing measures, implement them.

So we're going to measure post-college outcomes. There's a couple of different options you can choose right now, and we're going to do a hybrid of them, whether it's income two years post-graduation, whether it's that you are employed within two years of college in a job that requires a bachelor's degree. There's another early measure that is basically found, this is from Strata Education Network, that the second that you are no longer eligible for social services is the moment

that higher ed was worth it for you. It'll be some hybrid of those things, right? Or there's the value commission from the Gates Foundation. So we're gonna do the measure, but what we're gonna do is set the baseline at where we are, and we wanna set targets to improve, and then we are gonna work together as a group to figure out what are the specific interventions

and supports that dramatically improve upward mobility for students across all backgrounds. And now we represent over 570,000 students, a significant number of those, almost 200,000 are low-income students. The data will be valuable for the field. So that's where we're gonna go forward. I would just say that from my perspective,

what's needed is we need a strategy as a country, a smart strategy that's about talent and opportunity in the future of work as a country. And we also need, each state needs their own strategy for talent and opportunity in the future of work as a country. And we also need each state needs their own strategy for talent and opportunity in the future of work. And by that, people are born all over in all kinds of backgrounds. And the job of higher education is to take someone, no matter

where they are born, what family they grew up in, to activate their talent so that they can contribute all of their potential, all of their skill, all of their talent to build a compelling like future for all of us, right? And each state should actually think about their demographics, the people who are born there, no matter what their natural resources, their industries, and they actually need to have a plan. Like as if an adult was in charge. And that's the part that I'm working on right now is I think that what would it look like for universities to operate truly as the talent activator that they are?

They would partner more closely with workforce. They would collaborate aggressively. They would do a much better job on the front end, making it easier for students to make smart and intuitive decisions about the kinds of careers that would be a good fit for them, and make it easier for them to make smart and intuitive decisions about the kinds of careers that would be a good fit for them and make it easier for them to make smart and intuitive decisions about what degrees to pursue or not pursue and what majors. I just think there's a lot to be fixed in this particular space and we will be ready

to announce our new goals and I look forward to working on this because it's a super interesting, meaty problem that I just think the only real threat for me is if we go it alone. If you have universities working on this issue alone because I agree with you that this is the reason people come to college and I think all students for you to announce the new goals because I can see this as a global issue for higher education institutions. Just a quick story to share with you. When you talk about career centers, I totally agree. Like a business, your clients are the students, but if the shop is set up in the basement,

the customers won't go there. Why not go to your customers directly, meaning the classroom, as you mentioned? From my experience, when I studied in the States, I attended Yale School of Management as an international MBA student. In the U.S., especially for brand-name MBA programs, they're all well-funded, have a lot of resources. From day one, they started talking about careers, preparing us for interviews and summer internships right from the start. That was just in August and September. And they were already talking about getting our resumes polished and reaching out to potential employers and alumni for informational interviews.

At first, I found it very stressful. But it was crucial training. They immersed us in the mindset and skill set needed. So by the time we graduated, we were better prepared. I graduated right after 9-1-1, which wasn't an encouraging job market. But I acquired essential career skills during those two years, even before LinkedIn and other technologies were in place. I think this kind of preparation is vital for undergraduates, regardless of whether they are at a state,

university, an Ivy League school, or anywhere else. At the end of the day, we study something we are interested in, and we want to use that knowledge to make money, support ourselves, and help others. We want to feel fulfilled. Education is a crucial means for us to achieve our goal and contribute to the society. If there are hurdles that hinder the process, it affects the mobility and progress of society, leading to social and economic problems.

Bridget, I really appreciate your time. I know we overran, but I didn't want to cut you off because you have so much valuable insights to share. I've learned a lot from you today. This has been a privilege for me and it's a great conversation. Feel free to cut out anything. I did go along because you asked great questions and it's always, it's nice to zoom back out and look at the work from a different altitude than I always do. And yeah, thank you so

much. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you like what you heard, don't forget to subscribe to our show, leave us top-rated reviews, check out our website, and follow me on social media. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Until next time, take care.