Professor Russell Crawford is Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Falmouth University and a Professor of Education whose work explores learning, personal development, and educational opportunity. A National Teaching Fellow, Senior Fellow of Advance HE, and recipient of the Times Higher Education Most Innovative Teacher Award, he is recognised for his contributions to curriculum innovation, student success, and the responsible use of emerging technologies. He also serves as an Office for Students Quality Assessor.
His scholarship and leadership span student transition, employability, belonging, assessment, digital learning, and artificial intelligence, with a focus on helping students and staff navigate uncertainty and realise their potential. He is particularly interested in the relationship between learning, identity, and opportunity, and in creating university environments where people can grow and thrive. A published author, keynote speaker, and contributor to higher education debates, Russell advocates for universities that expand people’s sense of possibility and equip them to make a meaningful difference in the world.
In an exclusive conversation with Higher Education Digest Magazine, Professor Russell Crawford talks about the changing role of universities, student experience, and the impact of AI on teaching and learning. He shares his perspective on academic leadership, curriculum innovation, graduate employability, and the importance of preparing students for an uncertain future. He also discusses the role of trust and shared purpose in leading institutional change and offers advice to young people navigating their careers.
What have been the defining moments in your career, and how have they influenced your approach to academic leadership?
Several moments have shaped me, but the most prominent one that comes to mind is moving from teaching practice and educational scholarship as the day job into institution-wide leadership. One of the surprises of moving into this sort of leadership was realising that the hardest part is rarely generating ideas, but rather, it is building the relationships and trust that allow good ideas to take flight.
This threshold concept was personally important because it taught me that good ideas only achieve impact when they are supported by effective systems, resources and relationships. Recognition as a National Teaching Fellow and later as Times Higher Education’s Most Innovative Teacher of the Year gave me confidence to pursue ambitious ideas, but also grounded my experience in realising that innovation only matters when it truly improves students’ experience in practice. More recently, leading strategic work on curriculum transformation, student success, online education and responsible academic engagement with artificial intelligence in HE has cemented in me that meaningful change is rarely delivered in one place or indeed, through one voice.
Collectively, these career experiences have made my approach to education flavoured equally by ambition and pragmatism. In the last six years, I have become increasingly interested in how people navigate uncertainty, whether that is students preparing for an unknown future or institutions responding to an ever-changing world. I explore the subtle balance in how institutions can scale what works without losing sight of the educational purpose that made it valuable in the first place, to make evidence visible without allowing data to replace academic judgement, and to create environments where colleagues feel able to question assumptions and explore new possibilities with a tinge of realism underpinning it all. One lesson that has stayed with me throughout my career, the successes and the less than successes, is that academic leadership is ultimately a form of stewardship, meaning the drive is to improve performance today while strengthening the confidence, capability and long-term health of tomorrow.
What do you consider the biggest challenge facing universities today?
The greatest challenge, in my view, is frustratingly not any single pressure, but rather their convergence and ability to synergise and impact the student experience. What concerns me most is that institutions can quickly find themselves responding to each pressure separately, when students experience them collectively. Universities today are operating in a rapidly changeable environment shaped differently by technological change, shifting learner expectations and demographics, new forms of partnership emerging in response to headwinds, and increasing public scrutiny that doubles as a test of trust in higher education playing out in public discourse. The opportunity for universities is to respond to these pressures in a connected way, using them collectively as catalysts for innovation, collaboration and renewal rather than, tempting though it may be, to hope that we go back even 5 years to the way things used to be.
The real leadership task facing anyone in the sector just now is how to hold academic quality, access, student success, financial sustainability and public purpose together despite the headwinds. Universities will undoubtedly need to make difficult choices about their portfolios and operating models, some very soon and in more than a few cases perhaps even existential in nature, while continuing to strategically invest in people, ideas and the student experience. That will require greater organisational agility, but cannot come at the expense of academic values, in my view. The universities best placed to flourish will be those that can adapt with confidence as a community while remaining clear about why they exist, what they stand for and the distinctive value they create for their students and society.
What do you believe makes a university experience truly meaningful and valuable for students?
A meaningful university experience must do more than provide knowledge or, indeed, a qualification. Those remain essential foundations of higher learning in my view, but their greatest value lies in what they enable students to become. It should help students develop a stronger understanding of themselves, their discipline and the contribution they can make in the world. Students enter higher study because, largely, they crave intellectual challenge, seek belonging, co-create supportive relationships, and in doing so, create meaningful opportunities to apply what they learn.
I have always been interested in the transition moments when students begin to see new possibilities for themselves. In my experience, the most significant outcome of higher education is not simply what a student knows, but what they believe they can become and then making it happen. My view is that the most valuable higher education connects disciplinary knowledge with curiosity, creativity, critical judgement and purposeful action, while recognising that a student’s discipline is a part of their identity rather than the whole of it. In doing so, it helps students recognise their strengths, navigate uncertainty and develop the confidence to pursue an intimidatingly huge range of possible opportunities they may not previously have imagined. Ultimately, a university education should expand a student’s sense of possibility and equip them to shape their own future rather than simply respond to it or lock them into one frame of mind.
How do you see artificial intelligence changing teaching and learning in higher education?
Artificial intelligence is already changing not only how learners complete tasks, but what universities choose to teach, assess, and value. If AI can produce a competent response to a conventional task in seconds, the answer cannot simply be stronger detection or blanket prohibition, as each is, in my view, a regressive step and, indeed, against the ethos of academic discourse and higher education more broadly. Universities inevitably need to reconsider assessment design and place greater emphasis on judgement, creativity, disciplinary understanding, ethical reasoning and the ability to evaluate and improve AI-generated material. Thinking along these lines, AI is just the latest in a long line of historical catalysts for assessment and learning reform, but here there are also significant opportunities. Used thoughtfully, AI can support feedback, accessibility, exploration and personalised learning, but adoption must be academically critical as well as cautiously enthusiastic. Students need to understand limitations, bias, authorship, copyright and the importance of retaining responsibility for their own learning. Our goal should be to develop graduates who can use these technologies confidently and responsibly while exercising the judgement to recognise when human expertise, creativity, ethical reasoning and contextual understanding remain indispensable. My on-the-record view is that I see AI as an educational and employability issue, not merely an academic integrity problem to “solve”. Our collective higher education goal should be to develop graduates who can choose to use these technologies confidently and responsibly while knowing when human expertise, imagination and judgement matter most.
How can universities better prepare students for the changing demands of the professional world?
I believe that universities need to move beyond seeing employability as something that happens at the end of a degree or even, at its most reductive, a metric to be addressed in that spirit. Preparation for professional life of any ilk should be woven throughout the designed student experience, connecting disciplinary learning with authentic challenges, industry engagement where appropriate, rooted in creativity no matter the subject and interlaced with collaboration and reflection as overtly taught skills rather than implicitly within the curricula.
It is equally important that we recognise that possessing skills is not enough and, in the face of the future, will never really be. Students must be able to identify an extra-disciplinary way to articulate what they have learned, explain its value beyond any specialism and thereby translate their experience into future opportunities. In my experience, success often depends not only on what people know, but on their ability to recognise possibilities, make meaningful connections and act with confidence when opportunities emerge. In my view, universities should, as a starting point in curriculum design, combine strong subject knowledge with adaptability, reflective capacity, diverse opportunity awareness and scaffolded professional agency over the duration of study. We cannot predict every role our graduates will hold, but we absolutely can help them become curious, confident learners who are able to navigate any change and self-create opportunities for themselves.
What has been your most valuable lesson in encouraging innovation and managing change within a university?
My most valuable lesson to date is that people, for the most part, do not resist change simply because they dislike innovation but rather, in my experience, they are concerned that the purpose is unclear, that practical consequences have not been understood, or that change is being done to them rather than with them, even when it might be well-meaning or in their interests. Sustainable innovation that endures therefore begins with establishing shared purpose and being sufficiently honest in the account of the problem being addressed, especially where that problem might seem insurmountable.
I try to establish the principles and outcomes that are non-negotiable, while involving those closest to the work in shaping how change is delivered, and my career has been a long learning curve, as you might imagine, of what worked and when it was less successful. Core aspects, in my experience, are shared evidence, collective accountability and clear governance, but also trust, listening and the willingness to revise the approach when facing unintended consequences. Listening matters, but leadership ultimately requires making decisions, balancing competing interests and maintaining direction when consensus is not possible.
It is a hard lesson, but leadership is not about having every answer at the outset, tempting though it is when one has the big picture as the day job. It is instead about creating enough clarity and psychological safety for people to experiment, challenge and learn, while maintaining responsibility for standards and results even if the end point is not going to please everyone. Most significant transformative university achievements, in my experience, depend less on direct authority than on aligning people around a purpose they understand and can help to shape and, above all else, staying the course once that point is reached.
What advice would you offer students and young professionals preparing to build their careers in an increasingly complex world?
I will pay it forward and offer them the same advice that was given to me over two decades ago: do not feel that you need to have your entire career mapped out because the twists and turns are the bits you will look back most fondly on. Looking back myself, many of the most important opportunities in my own career were not part of a carefully constructed plan despite the temptation to retrospectively join those dots with a more mature eye. Instead, they emerged through genuine curiosity, serendipitous relationships and a dogged willingness to say yes to challenges before I felt completely ready.
I would advocate building strong foundations in your chosen field, but remain firmly open to ideas, people and experiences beyond it. Learn to confidently articulate what you can contribute even if you do not truly feel that confidence, as it is not simply about what qualifications you possess. In doing so, you will develop the authentic judgement to question information, including the outputs of AI, and embody the confidence to change your mind when better evidence appears without the ego that can sometimes accompany that experience.
Perhaps most importantly, my advice would be to remain open to possibility. Careers are rarely linear, and some of the most rewarding opportunities I have experienced have emerged from unexpected, sometimes painful, places. The world of work will continue to change, but I have found that integrity, generosity, curiosity and the ability to collaborate remain valuable whatever role or sector you find yourself in. A successful career then, is not simply one that progresses bur rather, it is one through which you continue to learn, contribute and discover new possibilities for yourself and others around you.