\n<\/p>\n
Last year, Jihan Quail rejoined 2U as global head of growth, higher education, returning to a company she first joined in 2016 and left in early 2020. In the intervening years, Quail held senior business development roles at Pathstream and Honor Education, giving her a broad view of the ed-tech landscape. <\/p>\n
When we met last fall, our conversation kept circling back to an intriguing question: What draws someone back to a company after years away? Her perspective on why she chose to return now\u2014and how her thinking about university partnerships has evolved\u2014struck me as worth sharing more broadly.<\/p>\n
Full disclosure: I am an (unpaid) member of the 2U University Partner Advisory Council.<\/p>\n
Q: What was it about this moment\u2014and this leadership team\u2014that made you want to come back to 2U?<\/strong><\/p>\n A:<\/strong> It came down to timing and people. I\u2019ve worked closely with many of these leaders before. I know how they make decisions, how they show up under pressure and what they prioritize. They\u2019re steady, disciplined and focused on building something durable, which is rare in a period of real turbulence across higher education and ed tech.<\/p>\n Spending time away from 2U, working across other education and ed-tech organizations, gave me a clearer view of the landscape. I saw how different organizations respond to pressure, what they optimize for and how universities have evolved their thinking about partnerships and the services they need.<\/p>\n This work is also deeply personal for me. My first job out of Yale was teaching English in Brazil, walking into a classroom with no shared language and no real idea what I was doing. It was humbling and exhausting, and it gave me an early appreciation for how complex, personal and vital education really is. That perspective has stayed with me, even as my career took a winding path through renewable energy and technology.<\/p>\n That time away clarified something else: Universities are under real pressure, and not just operationally. There\u2019s a broader crisis of confidence in higher education itself. I deeply believe in the long-term importance of universities and what they make possible\u2014and in the enduring value of higher education for students. I want to help universities navigate this moment. The right partnerships can help them respond more quickly to market demands and emerging disciplines and deliver stronger outcomes for students. That\u2019s what 2U is built to do, and this is the team I want to do that work with.<\/p>\n Q: You\u2019ve now seen the partnership landscape from multiple vantage points. What are universities asking for today that they weren\u2019t a few years ago?<\/strong><\/p>\n A: <\/strong>The shift has been dramatic, and I find it genuinely exciting.<\/p>\n When I first joined 2U in 2016, many universities were still going online for the first time. They had confidence in their brand and academic quality, but the mechanics were unfamiliar. They needed a guide\u2014someone who could say, \u201cHere\u2019s how this works, here\u2019s what to expect, here\u2019s how we get you there.\u201d The question was simply: Should we do this at all?<\/p>\n By 2019, that had shifted to: We\u2019re going online\u2014who should we partner with? Now, in 2026, the conversation is much more sophisticated: We\u2019ve built real capabilities, we understand our strengths and we need a partner who can fill specific gaps.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a fundamentally different dynamic. Universities aren\u2019t necessarily looking for someone to do everything. They\u2019re looking for a collaborator who can complement what they\u2019ve built. Maybe they have a strong online degree strategy but need a partner to think about how that pairs with lifelong learning and alternative credentials. Maybe they\u2019ve got instructional design covered but need a sophisticated marketing operation they can scale and access to a global learner network like edX. The conversations are more specific, more strategic and frankly more interesting.<\/p>\n This is healthy for the market. Institutions are more informed, which raises the bar for everyone. And for those of us in business development, it means every conversation is a real problem-solving exercise\u2014not a pitch, but a genuine attempt to figure out what this particular institution needs to reach the learners they\u2019re trying to serve.<\/p>\n Q: What\u2019s different about how 2U approaches those conversations now versus when you were here the first time?<\/strong><\/p>\n A: <\/strong>We\u2019ve always started by listening. That hasn\u2019t changed. You can\u2019t design a good partnership if you don\u2019t understand what someone is actually trying to accomplish. But the tool kit has expanded considerably.<\/p>\n When I was here before, our model was more comprehensive by default\u2014longer time horizons, a certain way of doing things. That worked well for institutions building online programs from the ground up. But universities have evolved. Many have developed real capabilities over the past decade. They don\u2019t need the same things they needed in 2016.<\/p>\n Now we\u2019re much more flexible in how we structure partnerships. We can adjust scope, time horizon and financial model\u2014all based on what makes sense for a specific institution and program. If you want to run a clinical psychology program at national scale with placements in all 50 states, that\u2019s a different conversation than launching a smaller cohort-based program where you\u2019ve already got program design covered. Both are legitimate paths, and we can support either.<\/p>\n That flexibility makes the work more collaborative. You\u2019re genuinely co-designing something rather than fitting a partner into a template. For me, that\u2019s the most rewarding part of this job\u2014the puzzle of figuring out what\u2019s actually going to work for each institution we serve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last year, Jihan Quail rejoined 2U as global head of growth, higher education, returning to a company she first joined in 2016 and left in early 2020. In the intervening years, Quail held senior business development roles at Pathstream and Honor Education, giving her a broad view of the ed-tech landscape. When we met last<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45312,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[23360,23361,23362,1226],"class_list":{"0":"post-45311","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-2us","9":"tag-jihan","10":"tag-quail","11":"tag-questions"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/45312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}