By John C. Hitt, president, University of Central Florida Posted Thursday, June 7, 2018 @ 6:29 PM I recently announced that I will step down from the presidency of the University of Central Florida after more than 26 years in this role. Few university leaders are lucky enough to serve so long at a single institution as I have. As I contemplate this change, I realize that there is more to do to improve UCF and higher education. I also know that UCF, like all universities, will need a president who is an academic at heart, an entrepreneur in spirit, and a visionary seeking to predict what students 50 years from now will need to succeed. Most important, we will need presidents with the ability and confidence to act decisively. We will need bold presidents who aren’t afraid to think and act big. And those presidents will need support — from governing boards, elected officials, donors, and faculty — so that challenging the status quo won’t jeopardize their jobs. When I arrived at UCF in 1992, UCF was largely a commuter school with limited selectivity, serving 21,200 students. Today, we exceed 66,000 students and award more degrees annually than any other public university in America. University housing fills 11,600 beds and our undergraduate admissions office receives more SAT and ACT test scores than any other school in Florida. I am especially proud that our minority population has grown from 17 percent to 46 percent. UCF has challenged the belief that in higher education bigger can’t be better. For us, the past 26 years has shown the opposite to be true. As enrollment has grown, not only have our average undergraduate SAT scores increased by nearly 25 percent, but the number of National Merit Scholars has climbed from 18 to 315 while our first-year retention rate has increased from 75 percent to 90 percent. UCF has achieved this success in several ways, but mainly through the mindset that bigger is better. Bigger is how we can achieve our goal of making education attainable for as many people as possible. We believe universities exist to make a brighter future for our students and our society. Starting from that core value, we don’t seek to brag about the number of students we exclude. Faculty and administrators should look for ways to serve more students, not fewer. Now more than ever, businesses see a college degree as a prerequisite to employment. We must find ways to prepare more people for jobs in a diverse and global economy. The need is particularly critical for low-income and first-generation students. As a first-generation student myself, I know firsthand the power of a college degree to transform lives and to increase economic opportunity. We believe transformative universities emerge from the meeting of diverse viewpoints. Too often, competition trumps collaboration in higher education. That is why I joined the presidents of 10 large, public research universities a few years ago to form the University Innovation Alliance. The Alliance is committed to drive real change in higher education by combining our intellectual resources. In short, if we have a solution that works, we share it. We believe a good idea should be copied. An example is UCF Downtown, a campus under construction in the heart of Orlando’s urban core 13 miles east of the main campus. The idea for UCF Downtown was born from a conversation with Arizona State University President Michael Crow about his university’s innovative campus in downtown Phoenix. Like ASU’s Phoenix campus, we expect UCF Downtown to foster strong learning and professional connections for students while revitalizing the surrounding urban area. We believe none of us is smarter than all of us. I have found that success is much easier when I have partners to share the work. Ten years ago, we worked with community leaders to establish our College of Medicine, which anchors a fast-growing area of Orlando now known as Medical City. To serve our Central Florida region, a healthcare partner will break ground this year on a university hospital adjacent to our medical college. It is tempting for those of us in academe to isolate ourselves from the communities around us. However, we need to resist that urge and be open to opportunities beyond our walls. We believe higher education should dare to innovate. As early adopters, we’ve been perfecting online learning for more than 20 years. Today, 81 percent of UCF students take at least one online or blended course. Online learning is closing the achievement gap by giving students access to courses that meet their schedules and needs. We’re also exploring adaptive learning, which allows students to move ahead at their own pace. This technology can accelerate the path to a degree and save students money. Predictive analytics allows us to identify students who are at risk of failure, employ intervention strategies early on, and keep students on track for graduation. At UCF, the power of scale has magnified our impact and changed lives and livelihoods. Likewise, every institution in its own way can boldly reimagine how to meet the challenges of tomorrow. Like Tweet Share < Back to News