His legacy at Arizona State University

Unlock the transformative legacy of Michael M. Crow, Arizona State University’s visionary 16th president since 2002, as he reflects on his tenure and the evolution of ASU into the model “New American University”. In this candid interview, Crow discusses his bold strategies for democratizing higher education—expanding access, boosting innovation, and forging global impact. He highlights landmark achievements, including groundbreaking public–private partnerships, ASU’s top sustainability and climate leadership status in Time100, and the deliberate restructuring of academic and athletic operations. Whether you’re in academia, STEM policy, or educational leadership, this video offers deep insights on institutional transformation, scalable reform, and why universities must lead in solving society’s most complex challenges. 

Well, I think what I'm most proud of is our attainment of democratic ideals. So, so, if you read George Washington — he never went to college. He was trained as a surveyor. Many of the other, quote unquote, founders of the country had gone to college, you know, Madison and Adams and Jefferson and Monroe and so forth. They'd all – Hamilton – they'd all gone to college, and he didn't. And so yet, he understood how important it was that some people go to college, how important it was to the success of the country.

So he had to, in his first State of the Union address when he was first made president of the United States, he said, you know, maybe need a national university. There have been six attempts to think of or conceive of national universities, but they never came about. The states wanted their own universities, or the churches wanted their own universities or, you know, Harvard wanted to be its own thing or whatever. All fine. And so a national university never emerged.

But what I'm most proud of is that we've emerged as a national university in service to the country, able to operate at scale, able to operate with agility, able to operate with a faculty deeply committed to the students. So I'm just one person in this sea of brains here, but what I feel most excited about, most proud of is that we actually built this different kind of institution and that we didn't do it by command. We did it by people becoming excited about the mission. So we built a new culture. So we have a new culture. We have a differentiated culture. We have a model that's working, and, you know, it's not easy. And not everybody's always, you know, overly excited about the complexities of the model, but we built it and the new culture and the new model is what I feel best about.