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About the Alliance
The Future Universities Alliance is a global platform connecting start-up, emerging, and established universities to reimagine what higher education can be. Incubated at Duke University, the Alliance operates as a pluralistic, open-source network that brings together innovators who embrace cooperation and are eager to adapt promising ideas to their own contexts. It accelerates the spread of innovative practices through shared learning, while rejecting the notion that education is a race or that one system can simply be exported to another.
The Alliance was born from a simple premise: meeting next-generation challenges, such as technological disruption, social polarization, economic development, and resource security, requires universities that can think and act differently. Around the world, new institutions are boldly experimenting with fresh approaches, while established universities are seeking new ways to serve diverse learners and adapt to rapidly shifting demands. The Alliance helps unite these efforts into a shared, open, and collaborative ecosystem.
Through a combination of a structured Innovation Sandbox, an annual Global Summit, capacity building and ongoing thought leadership and knowledge sharing, the Alliance creates a continuous cycle of inspiration, experimentation, and learning. Leaders shape priorities; institutions test ideas; peers exchange insights; and results are amplified across the global higher education community.
The Alliance’s mission is to cultivate fresh thinking and purposeful action into the global higher education sector. By fostering trust, collaboration, and practical innovation across borders, we aim to build a more adaptive and creative global ecosystem of universities equipped to prepare students for an increasingly complex world.
Innovation cannot thrive in isolation, nor can it stop at incremental change. By creating a platform for leaders to learn with and from one another, we ensure that promising ideas spread and that together, we tackle the systemic challenges reshaping higher education.
Alec D. Gallimore, Provost, Duke University
Mission & Pillars
The Future Universities Alliance is a learning network that accelerates the exchange of insights, improves the quality of learning, expands access to effective approaches, and strengthens the global ecosystem of educational innovation.
We start from a simple belief: universities thrive when they have a clear sense of their mission and are structured to pursue it within their own unique context.
No single model can meet the needs of every place or moment, and a healthy higher education ecosystem depends on multiple approaches evolving in parallel. At the same time, institutions of all types have a great deal to learn from one another. By bringing together universities that vary widely in maturity, scale, and mission, the Alliance creates a structure for collaboration and shared learning—helping institutions strengthen educational quality while extending access in ways that are sustainable and context-sensitive, and enabling institutions to move forward together rather than in isolation.
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An initiative that provides a space for innovative institutions to engage in iterative experimentation, cross-institutional collaboration, and shared learning.
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The Alliance’s anchor convening to showcase progress, co-design future priorities, and bring together leaders, funders, and policymakers.
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Capacity Building
Consultation, strategic guidance, and peer collaboration for leaders driving innovation and change.
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The Alliance will capture and disseminate insights and build a knowledge repository for the community.
Advisory Team
Ed Balleisen
Duke University (USA)
Tom Banchoff
Georgetown University (USA)
Dollie Davis
Minerva University (USA)
Ed Fidoe
London Interdisciplinary School (United Kingdom)
Michael Fung
Tecnologico de Monterrey (Mexico)
Kara Godwin
Pomona College (USA)
Michael Golden
University of Pennsylvania (USA)
Pano Kanelos
University of Texas at Austin (USA)
Cheryl Matherly
Lehigh University (USA)
Babs Omotowa
Nigerian Institute for Technology and Management (Nigeria)
Bryan Penprase
SOKA University (USA)
Matthew Rascoff
Stanford University (USA)
Wasif Rizvi
Habib University (Pakistan)
Sanjay Sarma
MIT (USA)
Pramath Sinha
Ashoka University (India)
Veda Sunassee
African Leadership University (Rwanda and Mauritius)
Fernando Valenzuela
Global Impact EdTech Alliance + Edlatam Alliance (Mexico)
Connie Yowell
Northeastern University (USA)
Yisu Zhou
Duke Kunshan University (China)
Leadership Team
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The Global Summit
October 3-5, 2026
Durham, North Carolina (USA)
A central anchor of the Sandbox experience is the first annual Global Summit. We anticipate this being an annual event, rotating between Duke and other locations throughout the world.
- This is a mandatory event for participants selected to the cohort.
- Each participating organization is expected to send 2–3 participants; this typically includes the Executive Sponsor and the Project Leader(s).
- The Summit will bring together all Innovation Sandbox participants, the Alliance Advisory Team, and invited leaders for shared learning, reflection, and connection across pathways.
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Webinars/Videos
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Media
Duke’s Future Universities Alliance: Solving The Most Urgent Problems Facing Universities (Forbes)
Duke Launches Global Higher Education Network (Duke Today)
