An era of accountability has swept over the higher education landscape. Everyone it seems—legislatures, think tanks, newspapers, magazines, books, and bloggers—wants to “hold colleges and universities accountable.” They are attaching strings to budgets; producing reports that read like exposés; developing clever systems to rank and sort us; and writing books and articles that describe the end of college as we know it.

According to them, we need to be reformed, reimagined, and rebooted.

Momentum changes the conversation from how others are holding higher education accountable to why colleges and universities need to embrace the need to demonstrate their own responsibility. The responsibility paradigm that emerges fundamentally shifts the dialogue from fixing to preventing, from reacting to creating, from surviving to thriving.

To implement this new paradigm, the dynamics of virtuous cycles are introduced and described. These upward spirals build on their own successes and result in growing confidence—a sense of vitality and resilience. The future of these institutions isn’t the result of outside pressure or reformers. The future is something that can and should be created by those who take responsibility for it.