The Alliance for Strategic Innovation (ASI) identifies and nurtures innovative collaborations among CIC member institutions to build a shared, thriving future for independent higher education in the United States.
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About the ASI
Established in 2024, the Alliance for Strategic Innovation grew out of a recognition that the challenges facing independent higher education are discrete and profound, and that the most viable means of responding for many institutions is through innovation and creative collaboration. Through the insight and support of CIC member presidents, scholars, funders, higher education policy experts, and other thought leaders, the ASI is committed to developing models of collaboration for independent colleges and universities. The goals of the ASI are to support institutional mission, enhance financial sustainability, elevate student success, and enhance affordability. This initiative is led by Mary Marcy, president emerita of Dominican University of California and author of The Small College Imperative: Models for Sustainable Futures (Routledge, 2020).
Over the course of the 2024–25 academic year, the ASI convened its group of interested stakeholders to determine where collaborative efforts would be most viable and would yield the greatest impact. Based on these conversations, CIC has developed a set of initiatives to support mission, enhance institutional financial sustainability, elevate student success, and bend the cost curve. Over the course of the 2025–26 academic year, the ASI will continue to develop and refine these initiatives and engage member institutions.
The ASI initiatives will function as a coalition of the willing, with CIC providing resources and a framework for developing collaborative projects supported through philanthropic funding.
If you or your institution is interested in participating in one or more of these initiatives, let us know.
CIC has been a trusted partner to independent colleges and universities since 1956, serving over 700 institutions, state councils, and higher education organizations across the United States, and is uniquely positioned to advance this effort.
Current Initiatives
Three initial concepts have emerged from the ASI work in 2025 to build initiatives focused on deepening career preparation, revitalizing the liberal arts bachelor’s degree, and streamlining admissions processes. With generous support from the William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust, CIC will spend the 2025–26 year refining these three concepts for collaboration, building a coalition of engaged CIC member presidents, and exploring further grant funding to support pilot initiatives.
Deepening Career Preparation through A National Career Center
ASI members all agree that tying education to career is crucial to the value proposition of CIC member institutions, and to the vision of opportunity for the over two million students these institutions serve.
CIC envisions building a national career center that will strengthen college-to-career pathways, working with an initial group of pilot institutions. The center would augment individual institutions’ career services offices, offering innovative and deeply relevant resources and attracting top employers by promising access to a large pool of students across a region or nationwide. The national career center could include support for students in aligning their academic backgrounds with their desired careers and recommend courses and programs to cover any skills gaps, as well as offering professional development for career services officers. In addition, the national career center could collaborate with major organizations such as Mentor Collective, Burning Glass, and LinkedIn to support students in developing their online network. Finally, the national career center could work closely with the selected pilot colleges to develop programs and connections aligned with those institutions’ existing programs and build upon current business and professional relationships. Because existing relationships would be shared and expanded through the collaborative, every student would have an extensive national career network and set of opportunities, with a team of career advisors available for personal assistance.
CIC will develop a framework for a national, collaborative career center that would use contemporary technology and expertise to expand the capacity, reach, and network for career planning and placement for participating campuses through a design workshop to be held in Spring 2026. This workshop will bring campus teams together with subject experts and industry leaders to create the initial design for the center. The design work will consider how to support career planning across different regions and institutional types, develop a governance and business model, and lay groundwork for fundraising and other activities to establish this new center.
A Renewed and Redesigned Bachelor’s Degree in the Liberal Arts
ASI conversations generated many compelling ideas concerning the structure of the bachelor’s degree, particularly in liberal arts fields, with an emphasis on redesigning and reimagining this central offering of many CIC member institutions to respond to the needs of contemporary students and to use technology and high impact practices in more creative ways.
Rather than identifying a single model, the ASI will hold a national convening in 2026 to explore a variety of future directions for the liberal arts undergraduate degree. The work will focus on elevating what is essential in a liberal education, while evaluating the need for innovation and adaptation in the current environment. Considerations will include how to make the liberal arts relevant and applicable to a variety of career and life opportunities, the use of multiple modalities for delivering programs, and the opportunity for meaningful collaboration across institution types and regions.
A Streamlined Application Process to Increase Enrollment
Shared admissions initiatives were a popular topic for discussion among ASI leaders. Drawing on the work of the Lumina Foundation on “The Great Admissions Redesign,” the ASI is exploring how CIC member institutions can learn from and contribute to this work to fundamentally reimagine admissions, enrollment, and financial aid systems to serve today’s students more effectively, with a particular interest in direct admissions initiatives.
ASI is considering conducting a landscape analysis of the emerging direct admissions ecosystem at independent colleges and universities around the country. The aim of this study is to provide campus leaders with information about trends and opportunities, while also providing policy makers with the information they need to advocate for the inclusion of interested independent institutions in statewide and regional efforts.
Want to learn more? Sign up for updates on ASI initiatives.
Have a question about the ASI, or want to discuss a potential collaboration? Please contact Stephen Gibson, director of programs, at sgibson@cic.edu.