Pardis MahdaviCo-founder and CEO, MyUni Education · Reimagining higher education for workforce outcomes

Why Higher Education Must Change | Dr. Pardis Mahdavi

23 Jun 2026 · 3 min

Watch on YouTube

3:00

In this interview, Dr. Pardis Mahdavi (Speaker A) argues that American higher education is at a tipping point, citing a historic drop in student retention—43 million Americans have started college only to drop out—and warning that a generation less educated than its parents poses a grave national‑security and democratic threat. She critiques the current system’s focus on conformity, urging a shift toward an educational model built on expansion, exploration, and authentic self‑discovery. Drawing on her personal story as an Iranian‑American who fled the 1978 Islamic Revolution, she highlights intergenerational trauma, resistance, and the fight for women’s freedom, even recounting a harrowing experience in a Dubai shipping container with trafficked women. Throughout, she weaves her extensive academic leadership experience (dean, provost, president) and authorship of ten books to underscore the urgency of reform.

Chapters

What would happen if we looked at education through the lens of expansion and exploration rather than the confines of conformity?
I was a dean at the University of Denver. I was an uber dean at Arizona State University.
I was a provost at the University of Montana. I was president of the University of La Verne. Throughout my career, I've written 10 books. One of the hardest things for me was watching I was watching young people come to school with, like, big hopes, dreams, and ambitions and watching them get crushed. And that was what I couldn't uphold anymore. Higher education is at a tipping point. Faith in higher ed is at an all-time low in America. 43 million Americans started college but dropped out. It is the first time in American history where the generation coming up My kids will be less educated than their parents, and to me, that's one of the largest national security threats and threats to democracy that nobody's talking about. How do we expect students to find their path, passion, and purpose when we drop them into these ecosystems? I often tell people I grew up caught between 2 worlds. I grew up on a bridge in many ways. So I'm Iranian-American, and that hyphen is pretty significant. I grew up here in the United States, a child of the Islamic Revolution of 1978 that forced my parents to flee. The punishment for women being seen in public with painted nails was that our hands would be dipped in buckets of cockroaches. There weren't enough cockroaches in all of Iran to punish all of us. And so victory was ours. Not just a feminist issue, or not just an issue for— about women or women and girls. This is a human rights issue. This movement is truly intergenerational. Your intergenerational poverty, intergenerational trauma. The Iranians demonstrated intergenerational strength and intergenerational resistance. Freedom at all costs. And freedom comes when you are your authentic self. I'm like, think James Bond. Like, I have ended up in a shipping container in a port off the coast of Dubai with a bunch of trafficked women, actually, and 3 dead bodies.
They can
take your belongings, they can take your home, they can even take your
country, but the one thing no one can ever take from you is your education. I want to help other people get that which can never be taken away from them.