Higher education is losing students, losing trust, and losing millions of dollars each year—not because people don’t care, but because the system was never designed to work the way students actually live, learn, and persist.
In Disrupting a Broken Education System, Dr. Marie Michelle “Rosie” Rosemond pulls back the curtain on the hidden structural failures quietly draining institutions of both students and revenue. Drawing on original research, real institutional outcomes, and leadership experience in higher education, she reveals why traditional retention strategies fall short—and what must change to produce measurable, sustainable results.
This is not a critique from the sidelines.
It is a blueprint for rebuilding higher education from the inside out.
At the center of the book are three original frameworks that redefine how colleges design, measure, and sustain student success.
Through real-world examples, leadership insights, and evidence-based analysis, Dr. Rosemond demonstrates how institutions can increase retention, improve equity, and recover millions in lost revenue—without overburdening staff or students, and without relying on expensive vendor solutions.
Readers will discover how to:
Identify where institutions unintentionally lose students and money
Move from “retention talk” to retention results
Align advising, academics, and data ecosystems
Design systems that support belonging, readiness, and persistence
Use data with dignity, transparency, and purpose
Build cultures of accountability and continuous improvement
Backed by original research and a publicly available dataset housed at Harvard Dataverse, this book bridges scholarship and practice in a way few higher-education texts do. It speaks directly to presidents, provosts, deans, faculty leaders, institutional researchers, enrollment professionals, policymakers, and consultants who know the system must change—but need a roadmap for how.
Students aren’t failing college.
The system is failing students—but it doesn’t have to.
Disrupting a Broken Education System is an invitation to rethink, redesign, and rebuild higher education so that institutions thrive, students succeed, and data becomes a tool for justice—not judgment.
Higher education is losing students, losing trust, and losing millions of dollars each year—not because people don’t care, but because the system was never designed to work the way students actually live, learn, and persist.
In Disrupting a Broken Education System, Dr. Marie Michelle “Rosie” Rosemond pulls back the curtain on the hidden structural failures quietly draining institutions of both students and revenue. Drawing on original research, real institutional outcomes, and leadership experience in higher education, she reveals why traditional retention strategies fall short—and what must change to produce measurable, sustainable results.
This is not a critique from the sidelines.
It is a blueprint for rebuilding higher education from the inside out.
At the center of the book are three original frameworks that redefine how colleges design, measure, and sustain student success.
Through real-world examples, leadership insights, and evidence-based analysis, Dr. Rosemond demonstrates how institutions can increase retention, improve equity, and recover millions in lost revenue—without overburdening staff or students, and without relying on expensive vendor solutions.
Readers will discover how to:
Identify where institutions unintentionally lose students and money
Move from “retention talk” to retention results
Align advising, academics, and data ecosystems
Design systems that support belonging, readiness, and persistence
Use data with dignity, transparency, and purpose
Build cultures of accountability and continuous improvement
Backed by original research and a publicly available dataset housed at Harvard Dataverse, this book bridges scholarship and practice in a way few higher-education texts do. It speaks directly to presidents, provosts, deans, faculty leaders, institutional researchers, enrollment professionals, policymakers, and consultants who know the system must change—but need a roadmap for how.
Students aren’t failing college.
The system is failing students—but it doesn’t have to.
Disrupting a Broken Education System is an invitation to rethink, redesign, and rebuild higher education so that institutions thrive, students succeed, and data becomes a tool for justice—not judgment.
10 copies for professional development, institutional reading, consulting training.
