August 6, 2026
From ROI to Irreplaceability: What MRT Reminded Me About the Future of Higher Education
By Dr. Michael McCormick, Vice President, Innovation & Technology, CampusWorks + Dynamic Campus
At this summer’s Mackinac Roundtable on Talent, I joined higher education leaders who are working through one of the defining questions facing colleges and universities today: how do institutions prove their value without allowing someone else to define it for them?
Those conversations stayed with me because they were both urgent and clarifying. Leaders are not asking whether higher education matters. They are asking how to tell a fuller, more convincing story about why it matters now, and how to align innovation around that story.
For CampusWorks + Dynamic Campus, being at MRT was a reminder that our work with institutions is not simply about technology, operations, or efficiency. It is about helping colleges protect and amplify the mission that makes them indispensable to the students, employers, and communities they serve.
The Promise Is Both Essential and Contested
Deloitte’s 2026 higher education outlook included a line I have not been able to shake: “The promise of higher education has never been more essential, nor more contested.” That reality was present in many of the conversations I had with institution leaders at MRT.
Institutions are being asked to do more, prove more, and respond faster, even as demographic, financial, and political pressures intensify. The response cannot be limited to cutting costs. Higher education has to shift the conversation from the cost of college to the return on a credential, and then broaden what return actually means.
Dr. Dave Clayton, Sr. Vice President of Research at the Strada Education Foundation succinctly summarized this at MRT by highlighting a recent study demonstrating how today’s students want the promise of anything, with the certainty of something. That tension captures the moment institutions are facing: students still believe in the expansive promise of higher education, but they increasingly need a clear, credible path to a tangible outcome.
Higher education has to shift the conversation from the cost of college to the full return on a credential.
ROI Needs a Bigger “I”
In recent years, ROI has often been reduced to earnings at year one, loan repayment at year three, or salary at year ten. Those measures matter. Students and families deserve transparency, and institutions should be accountable for outcomes. But those measures are incomplete.
At MRT, I was reminded that the “I” in ROI cannot only mean investment. For many institutions, it must also mean identity, impact, and independence:
When colleges cede that broader definition, they cede the entire conversation. The question is not only whether a credential produces economic value. The deeper question is whether an institution is clear enough about its distinct value that students, families, employers, and communities can recognize why it matters.
When colleges cede the definition of value, they cede the entire conversation.
Spotlights Chase Attention. Lighthouses Create Trust.
The analogy I kept returning to after MRT was the difference between a spotlight and a lighthouse. A spotlight chases attention. It performs. It moves wherever the moment demands. A lighthouse stays put. It is steady, predictable, and trusted. Its value is not simply its brightness; its value is that it will still be there tomorrow.
Many colleges and universities are lighthouses for their communities. They are anchors of talent, access, civic life, and regional identity. The temptation in an ROI environment is to act like a spotlight: chase the loudest metric, the newest trend, or the fastest proof point. But staying true to mission is not the same as standing still. The institutions that will thrive are the ones that innovate from a clear sense of who they are.
Staying true to mission is not the same as standing still.
Three Innovation Moves Leaders Can Make Now
Build an innovation portfolio, not a single project. Too often, institutions place one or two large strategic bets and wait years to see whether they work. A portfolio approach lowers the risk. Choose a handful of small experiments, such as a new credential, schedule, advising model, partnership, or market segment. Fund them modestly. Expect some to fail. Scale what works.
Write your indispensability sentence. Put the strategic question of this decade on one page: What makes our graduates indispensable to the communities they will serve? Then test the answer with alumni, employers, and community partners. Listen for what repeats. Those repeated phrases belong in recruitment, advancement, board strategy, and program design.
Make AI a force multiplier for what only you can do. Technology should not dilute institutional identity. Used well, it can extend it. If an institution’s distinction is a community of educators who know each student’s name and story, AI should reduce administrative drag so advisors, faculty, and staff have more time for the conversations that shape persistence and belonging.
The Question That Changes the Conversation
One final reflection from the partner side of the table: the institutions I see gaining momentum are not always the ones with the largest endowments or the broadest reach. They are the ones with the clearest answer to a single question: For whom are we irreplaceable?
The institutions gaining momentum are the ones with the clearest answer to this question: For whom are we irreplaceable?
Get that answer right, and higher education does not have to merely defend the ROI argument. It can change it.
Dynamic Campus is a technology and functional managed service provider that has been dedicated exclusively to higher education for the past 25 years.
In 2026, Dynamic Campus and CampusWorks merged to become higher education’s comprehensive managed services partner.
