Going Big with Dr. Michael Crow: Redesigning the American University

Reinventing the American University: How Michael Crow Built a Culture of Continuous Innovation

What if the problem with higher education isn’t that it’s too ambitious—but that it hasn’t been ambitious enough?

On this episode of Going Big!, host Kevin Gentry sits down with Michael Crow, the longtime president of Arizona State University, to explore one of the most significant institutional transformations in modern higher education. Over more than two decades, Crow has challenged a deeply embedded assumption: that excellence requires exclusivity. In its place, he has built a new model—one rooted in access, scale, and continuous innovation.

From Navy Housing to National Leadership

Crow’s story begins far from the executive office. Growing up in a Navy family, he moved more than twenty times before college and attended seventeen different schools. That experience exposed him to the uneven quality of American education—and to the extraordinary, untapped talent spread across the country.

A pivotal moment came in 1968. As a teenager delivering food to a struggling family living in a tar-paper shack, Crow watched that same evening as Apollo 8 transmitted images from the moon. The contrast shaped a lifelong question: How can a nation capable of reaching the moon still leave so many behind? That question would later define his approach to higher education reform.

Redefining Success in Higher Education

When Crow arrived at Arizona State in 2002, it was a solid regional university. Today, it serves roughly 200,000 degree-seeking students, alongside hundreds of thousands of additional learners accessing its courses and educational resources.

The core shift came through a new institutional charter. Instead of measuring success by how many students are excluded, ASU would measure success by who it includes and how well they succeed. That meant maintaining academic rigor while expanding access. Admission standards remained strong—but qualified students would not be turned away simply to boost rankings.

At the same time, ASU dramatically expanded research capacity. The university now invests over a billion dollars annually in research expenditures, placing it among the most research-intensive institutions in the country. For Crow, scale and excellence are not opposites. They are mutually reinforcing when built with intention.

Culture Eats Strategy

Crow frequently references management thinker Peter Drucker, who famously argued that culture eats strategy for breakfast. For Crow, culture was the decisive battleground.

Universities draw faculty trained in thousands of institutions worldwide, each with its own norms. Rather than preserve the status quo, Crow pushed for a culture built around continuous innovation. The message was clear: “This is how we’ve always done it” would never be sufficient.

Departments were reorganized. Underperforming structures were eliminated. New interdisciplinary schools were created. Faculty were challenged to experiment with advanced learning technologies and new delivery models. Over time, even skeptics saw measurable results. Students once written off as incapable began thriving when teaching methods evolved to meet them where they were. Continuous innovation became not a slogan, but a daily operating principle.

Big as a Strategic Advantage

Critics often argue that large institutions become bureaucratic and slow. Crow took the opposite approach. Rather than multiply layers of administration across multiple campuses, ASU operates as a single, integrated enterprise supported by advanced technology.

Size enables investment in infrastructure smaller institutions cannot afford—teams of instructional designers, cutting-edge digital tools, and research partnerships with global industry leaders. The result is not a bloated system, but an adaptive one.

Crow’s view is pragmatic: the United States is already a large and complex nation. If universities do not operate at scale, they cannot serve a country of hundreds of millions effectively.

Responsibility Beyond the Campus

Perhaps the most provocative aspect of Crow’s philosophy is his insistence that universities take responsibility for national outcomes. If schools of education train teachers and principals, and K–12 systems struggle, universities must ask hard questions. If healthcare systems are unaffordable and universities train the professionals who lead them, accountability extends back to campus.

This shift reframes higher education as a public enterprise—one charged not merely with preserving knowledge, but with strengthening democracy and economic vitality.

The Next Generation as Motivation

Despite public narratives of decline or disengagement, Crow remains optimistic. Each year he meets thousands of incoming students whose aspirations are ambitious and constructive. Their energy fuels the institution’s drive to evolve.

For Crow, the work is unfinished. Continuous innovation is not a phase—it is a permanent commitment.

Going Big with Purpose

At its core, Crow’s message aligns closely with the spirit of Going Big!. Think bigger about what institutions can do. Refuse to accept inherited limitations. Measure success by impact, not prestige.

His advice to younger leaders is straightforward: understand history, recognize the opportunity of the present moment, and prepare yourself broadly. This, he argues, is the most positive era humanity has ever known. The question is whether we will build institutions worthy of it.