Bryan Alexander
You help make this future…The future isn’t something just done to you. It’s not given to you. Every decision you make contributes. When you craft a creative work, when you teach in a certain way, or nudge a campus in one direction…or tell a story, or dream out loud, or influence younger folks, you help co-create what is coming up next.
About
Bryan Alexander is an award–winning, internationally known futurist, researcher, writer, speaker, consultant, and teacher, working in the field of higher education’s future.
Bryan speaks widely and publishes frequently, with articles appearing in venues including The Atlantic Monthly, Inside Higher Ed. He has been interviewed by and featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, MSNBC, the Wall Street Journal, US News and World Report, National Public Radio (2017, 2020, 2020, 2020, 2020), Marketplace, the Chronicle of Higher Education (2016, 2020), the Atlantic Monthly, Reuters, Times Higher Education, the National Association of College and University Business Officers, Pew Research, Campus Technology, The Hustle, Minnesota Public Radio, USA Today, and the Connected Learning Alliance.
Bryan’s book Academia Next: The Futures of Higher Education (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020), won an Association of Professional Futurists award. His Universities on Fire: Higher Education in the Age of Climate Crisis appeared in 2023 and won the 2025 Frederic W. Ness Book Award. His new book, Peak Higher Ed: How to Survive the Emerging Academic Crisis, appeared in January 2026. His other books include Gearing Up For Learning Beyond K-12 and The New Digital Storytelling (second edition).
Bryan is currently a senior scholar at Georgetown University and teaches graduate seminars in their Learning, Design, and Technology program.
He completed his English language and literature PhD at the University of Michigan in 1997, with a dissertation on doppelgangers in Romantic-era fiction and poetry. Then Bryan taught literature, writing, multimedia, and information technology studies at Centenary College of Louisiana. There he also pioneered multi-campus interdisciplinary classes, while organizing an information literacy initiative.
From 2002 to 2014 Bryan worked with the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE), a non-profit working to help small colleges and universities best integrate digital technologies. With NITLE he held several roles, including co-director of a regional education and technology center, director of emerging technologies, and senior fellow. Over those years Bryan helped develop and support the nonprofit, grew peer networks, consulted, and conducted a sustained research agenda. In 2013 Bryan launched a business, Bryan Alexander Consulting, LLC. Through BAC he consults throughout higher education in the United States and abroad.
Higher ed is heading into a decade of massive change — from the demographic cliff to enrollment shifts, political pressure, global instability, and the rapid rise of AI.
In this presentation, Bryan Alexander, futurist and author, unpacks the major forces reshaping colleges and universities — and what campus leaders should be watching as they plan for an uncertain future.