By Susan C. Aldridge, PhD
President, Thomas Jefferson University
To ancient Romans, Janus was the deity who looks both forward and back — the god of beginnings and ends, transitions and passages and choices. Today, Thomas Jefferson University stands at a point Janus might appreciate.
We are both gazing back — celebrating the bicentennial of our founding in 1824; recognizing our 200 years of impact on education, scholarship, research discovery and application — and looking forward: defining the ways we’ll have deep, meaningful impact in our third century.
Jefferson was founded as one of the nation’s first medical schools, the first to open a clinic for the poor and accept free patients, and the second with an associated teaching hospital. In 2024, Thomas Jefferson University has evolved to become a professions-focused, national doctoral research university — and a beacon of success for institutions of higher education across the nation.
Our admissions are growing, and our graduates have a 97% undergraduate success rate in job placement, enrollment in a graduate program, taking a gap year or completing military/volunteer service. Both are products of our novel, future-focused model for educating professionals whose careers will extend through the dynamic 21st century.
At the same time, Jefferson has become a research powerhouse whose world-class scholars and investigators work across the spectrum from scholarship and discovery to applied and clinical studies. Our external grant funding has more than tripled over the past decade. And our faculty, students and research staff conduct single discipline, multidisciplinary and cross-disciplinary studies in fields ranging from the life, physical and social sciences to arts and humanities, business, design and public policy.
Jefferson is also one of the very few multifaceted universities — that is, we have over 200 academic programs that range from architecture, forensic biology and fashion to strategic leadership — closely allied with a growing regional health system and a non-profit health insurer. In fact, the close relationship of Thomas Jefferson University, the 17-hospital Jefferson Health system, and Jefferson Health Plans makes us unique. So too may the fact that we are one of the few contemporary universities to have successfully merged two distinct academic institutions into a single, dynamic organization — one that is far more than just the sum of its parts.
We believe that our uniqueness creates an unprecedented set of opportunities, challenges and, frankly, responsibilities for who and what we become in our third century.
Our College of Population Health is a perfect example of how we are leveraging our unique characteristics and history to help address major challenges facing our nation. The first of its kind, the College addresses the large-scale social, economic and environmental issues that affect people’s health and wellbeing; and it’s doing so by leveraging the multidisciplinary knowledge and expertise available across the University, Jefferson Health and Jefferson Health Plans.
We believe too that, given our track record, we are well-positioned to help define a successful path forward for professions-focused higher education and cross-disciplinary research.
The Janus-inspired challenge we are pondering in 2024 is this: How do we build on all that we have accomplished thus far — and on who we’ve uniquely become — to ensure that the value of a Thomas Jefferson University education continues growing and the impact of our research continues increasing?
As a way to envision how we might respond to that challenge, I recently asked about 100 of our institution’s faculty and administrative leaders to engage in a collective thought experiment. Together, we considered a series of questions intended to broaden our perspectives on the opportunities, responsibilities and challenges that we should take on as we set out into our third century.
Four of those questions are relevant to leaders throughout higher education.
1. What does the world need from higher education — and what major trends in higher education (positive or negative) are we well-positioned to address?
The world needs much from us. It needs us to help improve human lives, fuel innovation, drive economic growth, develop and promote sustainable practices and build broader understanding and equity. Especially, it needs us to cultivate lifelong learning and the human skills needed to navigate the complexity of our changing world.
Our nation needs much from us too, particularly in economic terms. For example, although the traditional college-going population has decreased during the past decade, the country’s need for college-educated professionals is growing. In fact, one research study recently cited by the New York Times suggests that by 2030 the American labor market could face a shortage of between 6.5 and 8.5 million college grads needed for high-skill and knowledge-intensive jobs — a shortage that could result in $1.2 trillion in lost economic output.
While Thomas Jefferson University faces the same waves of change that many colleges and universities confront, our institution is well-positioned to thrive through the social, economic and technological dynamism we can anticipate in the next decade. I believe that our value proposition and our innovative and collaborative culture present a distinct contrast with the significant portion of higher education that is only slowly adapting to 21st-century realities.
2. What are the most significant emerging and over-the-horizon characteristics of the nature of work and of employers’ workforce needs — and how might we best address them?
The nature of work continues to evolve in myriad significant ways; the growing impact of artificial intelligence being only one, albeit major, factor. Over the past two decades, Jefferson has done a phenomenal job of building academic programs that respond to employers’ present and future needs from their workforces. Today, we’re graduating professionals comfortable with diversity of culture and ways-of-thinking; who are both facile with emerging technologies and understanding of their potential vulnerabilities; who are creative, collaborative problem-solvers, able to think and innovate across disciplines.
But all of higher education needs to keep looking ahead, anticipating continuing changes and how best to address them. In this respect, all of us face two key challenges: First, having the insight to identify which of the emerging and over-the-horizon workforce needs our individual institutions are especially prepared to address. Second, having the courage to create academic programs that reflect future needs — and to sunset those that do not.
In addressing those challenges, we must be wary of traditional assumptions about academic content and delivery methods. We also need to avoid false dichotomies, such as the necessity of choosing between liberal arts and professions-focused curricula.
3. What aspirations should we have regarding our comprehensive research programs — and how should we prioritize those aspirations in the coming decades?
This is a particularly important question for our University. While we have amazing breadth in our faculty’s basic, clinical and applied research and scholarly activities, there is an array of powerful opportunities as we collaborate throughout the full Jefferson Enterprise, including Jefferson Health and Jefferson Health Plans. For example, those entities provide University researchers with growing platforms for impactful data analysis research, important clinical trials, exploration of organizational dynamics, as well as vehicles for R&D in areas such as medical textile engineering and industrial design. As well, our intra-Jefferson research collaborations could catalyze new opportunities for support from federal, state, corporate and foundation funders.
That’s a key point because — although Thomas Jefferson University has seen extraordinary increases in external research funding during the past decade — we, like all leaders of research-intensive institutions, must be both strategic and creative in determining where we will grow our research enterprise. Having a surfeit of exciting opportunities for new and expanded research and scholarship puts a premium on careful assessment and prioritization of those opportunities.
For example, one of the key decisions we face reflects our Carnegie status: Shall we make the necessary investments required — such as creating additional doctoral programs and related research initiatives — to become an R1 university?
4. What can and should “global” mean for our University in coming decades?
The past four years have been ones of extraordinary challenge across the world. They suggest just how dynamic the future will be for any organization with a mission such as ours: improving lives. Universities in general — and Thomas Jefferson University, in particular — have numerous opportunities (indeed, responsibilities) to grow our global engagement.
At Jefferson, we are working hard to identify the right opportunities for a professions-focused university with a growing research portfolio and a steadfast commitment to our core communities. While there are similar organizations, no one is quite like us and no one does what we do at the same scale. Thus, we are working hard to identify the most powerful global synergies we might create for the University and for our sister organizations in the Jefferson enterprise. And to anticipate the potential pitfalls that go hand-in-hand with the most attractive opportunities.
Our faculty and administrative leadership are engaged in a broad and collaborative process to consider the questions I’ve raised here, and to make a series of concrete choices that will go a long way to defining who Thomas Jefferson University will be in our third century: what we will accomplish for our communities, our nation and the world.
Ultimately, if we do our jobs well, I believe that our successors — looking back from the University’s tricentennial — will be able to say: In its third century, Thomas Jefferson University helped ignite the new era of professional university education and research the world needed.