Opinion: Matt Chang's model for university innovation

Business Journals

24-04-2025

Editor's Note: This article is an opinion authored by Chang Robotics CEO Matt Chang.
Student loan debt is back in the news. The aggregate of student loan debt is now $1.75 trillion in the U.S., with more than 60% of borrowers behind on payments. The issue is big enough to have reached the resolute desk for two presidents in a row. I'm proposing a systematic approach that will solve this over the long term for students, parents, universities and the federal government (taxpayers) who backstop these loans.
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As an engineer, I look to solve problems. As a robotics systems engineer, I solve the long-term issues for clients related to reliability, cost, inflation and future growth. One of the biggest issues we're solving for in 2025 is planned obsolescence and a robust digital architecture. At the pace of change of technology and society, what we design and build today must still be relevant 20 years from now. That means finding the core elements that will be the same over a long time period and planning upgrades to accommodate the known and unknown changes coming to society and technology.
Major technology shifts are afoot
This takes me to university innovation. We all know that universities are in a world of pain. Quite frankly, too many "kids" go to college today and not enough go to trade school, military or manufacturing. Private sector innovators like Google and Palantir Technologies are encouraging kids not to go to college and take their degree-equivalent training right out of high school. They want the best and brightest minds, and they want them working now, not after four years of university. Sure, big prestigious universities like Harvard and Penn will be fine. However, even those institutions are coming under fire for excessive grant funding and discriminatory admissions practices.
The real pain will be for smaller private colleges, specifically liberal arts colleges, that rely heavily on tuition for their revenue. One key issue is that liberal arts majors don't guarantee job placement or offer consistently high salary earnings for graduates. They tend to be expensive schools. After the booming classes of millennials, the Gen Z classes are 20% smaller based on population size. Parents are choosing the liberal arts less and less, and they want their kids to get jobs, high-paying jobs, that are harmonized with the new tech-enabled economy we live in. Mom and dad are saying: "GET OFF MY PAYROLL AND GET A JOB!"
Gen Z class sizes shrank by almost 20%
Furthermore, traditional industries and outlets for liberal arts majors are under fire. Trust in journalism is at an all time low, arts are being disrupted by AI and the digital revolution, and public policy and medicine have lost a lot of credibility in the wake of "trust the science" and now hugely unpopular Covid-19 reactions. In hindsight, I think we'd all handle it differently a second time around. The impacts of these mis-steps and mistrust come at a cost to undergraduate admissions in these fields.
On top of that, college tuition debt is at an all-time high. Too many students and parents are taking on too much debt, unable to repay the tuition loans on their after-college earnings. This issue has reached the level of national crisis as the federal government now holds most of the debt. At a time like this, value for education is what matters. I have tough news for new students wanting to follow their passion: If you get a degree in something that employers won't pay for, it's a hobby and not a career.
Student loan debt is soaring
Any of my followers know that I'm a huge STEM advocate. I serve on the board of the STE(A)M institute for Jacksonville University. The "A" stands for arts if you were wondering. I'm active in research partnerships with the likes of Georgia Tech, Northwestern University, Florida A&M, Carnegie Mellon University and MIT. My wife has a BS and a Masters of Medicine from University of Florida, and I have a BS of Civil Engineering from Georgia Tech and an EMBA from Jacksonville University. I used my education to become licensed as a professional engineer and start a robotics company. My wife practices life-saving care in a major area hospital. Together, we operate a family business. Our collegiate training equipped us for the workforce, first as employees, then as entrepreneurs.
One of my mentors and the dean of my business school, Don Capener, said to me: "It's not the price of your tuition today, it's the value of your degree in the future. You need to pick your university and your degree like you pick stocks. Buy low and sell high."
My own degree went from being unranked to achieving a global ranking of top 20, two years after I graduated in 2017. My engineering degree from Georgia Tech was No. 3 in 2005 and sits at No. 2 today. UF went on to become the No. 1 public university in the nation. Talk about value for money.
JU Ranked among best universities in the South
So, what are we to do about it? Sometimes it's best to be a fast follower. But who should we follow? Last week, Jacksonville University announced major reform to their degree programs, pairing down from 100 majors to the top 37. No one was spared from the re-alignment. As a board member, I had previously proposed two degree programs that I thought were highly strategic. The university added me to the planning of another. These new majors are related to robotics, autonomous systems and the space economy. The new strategy makes space for new focus areas. With the realignment, my own degree wasn't spared and the EMBA was put on pause. Mark my word, I'll put in the work to get it back so that we can keep developing the next generation of dynamic executives that has produced local in the Jacksonville talent like Nat Ford, Boyd Worsham, Kate McAfoose, P.E., Daniel Starratt, MBA, Michael Pyle and yours truly.
JU making waves and realigning its academic focus
This is a dramatic shift and shows a bold strategy for the university going forward. We have two deans that work at my company, a dean of engineering and business, and they would get PTSD from contemplating adding or deleting just one major. It's hard to understate what a seismic shift this is. A 63% reduction in majors is no small feat.
For me, change is exciting. I thrive in a fast-paced high change environment. Not so for most. As you can imagine, anyone that was personally affected by the changes is up in arms. Understandably so.
Change is also not new to Jacksonville University as they dropped their college football program a decade ago after learning that football spending was the same as all other sports combined. Since that time, the university has doubled down on student athletes, claimed two national titles, multiple conference titles and beat Duke University in lacrosse. (Gasp!) In fact, 25% of undergrads at JU are now student athletes, and the women's teams are benefiting from the additional budget that opened up after football was discontinued. Wise spending, excellent results.
While I served on the career resource board at JU, we implemented a mandatory internship requirement to graduate. Internships could be paid, unpaid or experiential (service in a non-profit). After that requirement was implemented - with a lot of debate from faculty - job placements on graduation soared from an industry average of 63% to a best-in-class 91%. We got this done under the leadership of my work-mom and dear friend Tony Higgs.
Two years ago the University opened an Honors College, which is like a concierge service for motivated students. Students get personal touch from enrollment, course work, internships, graduation and job placement. The service and experience are differentiated from just "going to college" to "being part of a family," which also includes family meals together! The President and First Lady of the university personally funded $10M to support the launch of the college and create the university's first endowment. Talk about commitment and belief in your work.
Now, under the bold leadership of President Tim Cost and the Board of Trustees, the university is realigning their academic focus based on what parents, students and employers want. They have invested and built world class facilities in cyber security and robotics.
JU Robot Studio — open to faculty, students and the community
The university opened the first downtown law school in Jacksonville and the first medical school in the city. After a partnership with Brooks Rehabilitation, JU's nurses achieved the highest nursing scores in the state of Florida. After the surprising results, Governor Ron DeSantis sent a delegation to JU to see how they are educating nurses and how all nursing schools in the state could model the education to increase nursing quality state-wide.
One thing is certain, in the future we'll need lawyers, doctors, nurses and engineers — and they will all need to be cybersecure. I'm personally committing my resources, capital and time to ensure this experiment is successful. For any haters, I have skin in the game, and I'm putting my money and my time behind this.
The future of universities is being prototyped right in front of our eyes. We just need to pay attention and adopt a fast-follower mentality. Jacksonville University is laying the blue print for all universities in the nation to follow.
Let's see how Jacksonville University does. Based on past performance, I expect excellent results. American universities, Let's go.
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