Higher education is navigating a polycrisis, a confluence of demographic shifts, economic instability, political hostility, and technological disruption that has pushed American colleges and universities into a period of managed decline. Bryan Alexander joins us to explore what that means for the future of higher ed. While agency is unevenly distributed, we all have choices to make, and together, we can shape what comes next.

Bryan Alexander, PhD

Bryan Alexander is an internationally recognized futurist, author, and consultant whose career has been devoted to understanding and shaping the future of higher education. He earned his doctorate in English language and literature from the University of Michigan and has since built a body of work spanning faculty roles, nonprofit leadership at the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education, and his own consultancy, Bryan Alexander Consulting, LLC. His three books from Johns Hopkins University Press — Academia Next, Universities on Fire (winner of the 2025 Frederic W. Ness Book Award), and his most recent, Peak Higher Ed: How to Survive the Emerging Academic Crisis (2026) — have established him as one of the field's most authoritative voices on crisis, change, and what comes next. He is currently a senior scholar at Georgetown University, where he teaches in the Learning, Design, and Technology graduate program.

Alexander speaks and publishes widely, with articles and commentary appearing in The Atlantic, Inside Higher Ed, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. He has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, Reuters, and Times Higher Education, among many other outlets. His book Academia Next received the Association of Professional Futurists' Most Significant Futures Work Award, and Universities on Fire was recognized with the 2025 Frederic W. Ness Book Award from the American Association of Colleges and Universities.

Resources:

Alexander, B. (2026). Peak Higher Ed: How to Survive the Emerging Academic Crisis. Johns Hopkins University Press https://peakhighered.com/

AI Substack https://aiandacademia.substack.com/

Alexander, B. (2023). Universities on Fire: Higher Education in the Climate Crisis. Johns Hopkins University Press.