If you’ve spent much time in higher education, you’ve likely heard the adage that it’s easier to change the course of history than to change a course… You likely know the rest. U.S. colleges and universities, even with recent upticks in offices and positions that include the word innovation in their titles, are often bureaucratic systems that are not known for swift adoption or adaptation to change. However, we find ourselves preparing students to live, work and lead in environments that are experiencing change at unprecedented speeds.
A primary role—if not the primary role—of most colleges and universities is to effectively prepare students for success in their careers and our global society by delivering high-quality curricula. Foundational to shaping these curricula are structures and principles of shared governance, which are particularly well developed in the U.S. and within its public universities. Within these structures, faculty carry primary responsibility for curriculum development, delivery, assessment and innovation. Well-designed shared governance of curricula ensures faculty engagement, improves academic quality and relevance, brings in diverse perspectives, promotes transparency and supports institutional and accreditation alignment (see AAC&U, 2008 & 2011; AAUP, 1966; Kezar, 2004; SACSCOC, 2024; Tierney & Minor, 2004).
While the principles and benefits of shared governance are well established and remain central to curriculum development and oversight in American higher education, there are tradeoffs to manage and opportunities to improve existing practices. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 notes that several current NACE career readiness competencies—also known as essential, power, durable, human (but no longer soft) skills will remain in high demand in 2030 (think: communication, critical thinking and leadership). However, nearly 40% of key skills required by employers are projected to change. Ensuring curricula remain grounded in discipline scholarship and relevant in an environment of rapid acceleration of skills evolution requires attention to and investment in the policies, structures, procedures and partnerships that shape curricula and governance.
In this essay, we take up the challenge of upholding shared governance principles while innovating to streamline curriculum development, implementation and review processes. Through our combined 37 years of faculty and administration experience across titles of professor, curriculum chair, faculty senator, department chair, associate dean, dean, vice provost and provost, we have observed and implemented various strategies and tactics to enhance operational efficiencies in curriculum governance.
Strategy: Streamline Policies
University and academic policies undergo regular review to ensure compliance with accreditors and other regulatory bodies. In addition to ensuring compliance, policy reviews can act as strategic tools to improve organizational performance, especially when adapting to change.
Tactic: Accelerate review cycles of academic- or curriculum-relevant policy
At many universities, the published review cycle for policies reflects minimums; policies relevant to areas that must adapt to innovation cycles may benefit from more frequent review. At minimum, accelerate the next review cycle for academic- or curricula-relevant policies to occur within the next academic year to ensure you proactively discuss and address needed changes, including removing outdated policies or addressing gaps.
Tactic: Articulate policy focus and scope
During the policy review, ensure faculty and administrators understand the focus and scope of policies. Clear policy focus with a defined scope helps increase efficiencies and reduce risk by managing mission creep and minimizing confusion regarding roles and responsibilities (e.g., clarifying purpose and decision-making authority).
Tactic: Separate policy from procedure
We often see procedure interwoven into policy documents; whenever possible, separate out procedure (or processes) from policy. Procedures typically require more frequent updates as universities reorganize, adopt new technologies and gain efficiency. Policies require regular review, but when written well and focused they will likely need fewer updates.
Strategy: Focus Structures
In embracing policy reviews as strategic tools, it is important to recognize that responsive, efficient and effective structures are critical to maintaining academic quality in shared governance while innovating in curricula. While there are some commonalities across curriculum governance structures, we have encountered significant differences across the nearly ten colleges and universities we have served.
Tactic: Examine committee composition
While faculty are largely considered responsible for curricula, that should not be interpreted to mean only faculty bring expertise to developing and shaping them. Staff and students often contribute key information and new perspectives in curriculum design and development; including them in early discussions—at the department and college levels—with a seat at the committee table can not only benefit the content of the curriculum but also avoid or at least reduce delays in the review and approval process.
Tactic: Clarify committee charge and member responsibilities
Take time each year to review bylaws for the committees overseeing curriculum changes. Curriculum governance groups at all levels should be familiar with their responsibilities, including which curriculum items each group is expected to consider (new courses, course edits, new programs, financial projections for new courses and programs, admissions standards, microcredentials, noncredit credentials, etc.); which committee members have voting rights; and how decisions and recommendations from the committee move forward. Ideally, this review with members occurs soon after elections and again at the first meeting. We’ve also seen great success in creating brief orientation materials or sessions to onboard and refresh members.
Tactic: Focus governing structure roles/responsibilities
Curriculum committees always seem to have full agendas, and now the pace of new course and program proposals, course and program modifications and deletions is quickening to meet students’ changing needs and those of the employment market they will enter after completion. At the same time, the work of faculty senates—representing and giving faculty voice in institutional decisions—has also increased. We have seen success in creating parallel, representative faculty governance structures outside the senate that focus exclusively on curricula. Building connection between the bodies for transparency and communication keeps all groups informed without overburdening one group or risking burying or delaying curriculum discussions and recommendations when university faculty are addressing other pressing, critical topics.
Strategy: Build Agile Processes
Agility is not usually associated with higher education institutions, but it is increasingly important, especially when addressing changing needs across the curriculum. Agile processes can enable faster decision-making, adapt to change when needed and encourage innovation.
Tactic: Provide on-demand access to reliable data
Curriculum innovation and decision making require reliable data—employment data, skills demand data, enrollment data from your university and others, community partnership data, faculty expertise data, financial planning data; etc. These data are often spread across multiple departments at a university—institutional research, decision support, enrollment management, career services and budgeting—or may not be available through the university at all. Standing up internal-facing dashboards and calculators that can be utilized or referenced throughout the curriculum cycle will enable faster decision making informed by regularly updated data.
Tactic: Differentiate review paths
Similar to focusing on governing structures, examining the review paths for curriculum decisions can reveal duplicate and unnecessary steps, approval stops that should be information notifications and costly time delays. By pushing final recommendations to the most viable local levels and removing review steps that do not align with shared governance nor add value to the process, you can add agility, remove administrative burden and increase time efficiencies.
Tactic: Examine curriculum cycles for flexible windows
Traditional curriculum cycles (often annual cycles) can cause significant delays in proposing and implementing changes or new programs. Off-cycle proposals or rolling submissions, when paired with a prioritization calendar, allow for structured submission cycles that include flexibility for innovation. For universities that only award credentials listed in the current academic catalog, midyear catalog addendums provide additional flexibility to introduce new programs or credentials and award them in the same academic year.
Tactic: Make the curriculum change process transparent and trackable
Most electronic curriculum management systems default to allowing curriculum changes to be visible to the university community, but some legacy or in-house developed systems may not have this functionality, or some universities may have chosen to turn off this level of visibility. In our experience, transparent curriculum processes are more efficient; faculty can track and follow up on stuck items and have proactive discussions while still early in review, reducing delays later in the process.
Strategy: Partner
Universities must continue to strengthen partnerships with industry, government and community organizations to thrive in increasingly lean and interconnected systems. Educational technology (edtech) solutions are also helping meet some of the more sophisticated or specialized needs within and supporting curricula. These collaborations, along with cross-university partnerships, enable institutions to share resources, drive innovation and expand their impact beyond traditional academic boundaries.
Tactic: Deep connections with community/industry boards
Colleges and universities that lean into community or industry advisory boards are well positioned to recognize emerging trends, especially in workforce needs and technology skilling. Engaging professionals in discussions about curriculum design and redesign has advantages beyond curricula content: networking, internship (or apprenticeship or clinical) opportunities and post-completion outcomes graduates experience.
Tactic: Edtech companies
We have experienced edtech solution fatigue in higher education. It seems that a campus unit implements a new technology solution or package of solutions every week, and we sometimes unknowingly adopt competing solutions to address the same issue across different university units. It is increasingly important to build coordinated partnerships with edtech companies and understand the ROI of the partnership—both immediate and across the contract. Well-researched and coordinated adoption and implementation of specialized solutions may lead to efficiencies, including updates and maintenance, that cannot be realized through homegrown solutions.
Tactic: Collaborate across colleges and universities
Collaboration within and across colleges and universities can reduce duplication, align resources and produce innovative and interdisciplinary opportunities for students and faculty. While initial partnerships within and across universities may require significant upfront investment in discussions of resource allocation, workload alignment and content agreement, established processes can be replicated across programs.
As the pace of change accelerates in the labor market and global society, the imperative for universities to respond swiftly and strategically has never been greater. Upholding the principles of shared governance while evolving curriculum practices requires a careful balance of tradition and innovation. By streamlining policies, focusing on structures, building agile processes and investing in meaningful partnerships, institutions can maintain academic integrity while enhancing responsiveness, relevance and impact. Ultimately, reimagining curriculum governance through these strategies ensures universities not only meet today’s challenges but position themselves to lead in the future of higher education.
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