The Solution Trap: A Guide to Better Decision-Making for Higher Education Leaders

New learning models. Structural reforms. AI-powered everything. Higher education is drowning in solutions to the many problems we're trying to solve. Each arrives with urgency, optimism, and bold promises. Yet the same persistent problems persist: declining enrollments, rising costs, political pressures, and eroding public trust.

What if the real issue isn't the solutions themselves? Perhaps it's the way we choose them.

In The Solution Trap, Dr. Brian Fleming reveals the hidden forces that push higher education leaders toward the wrong solutions. Having advised hundreds of colleges and universities through these exact failures, Fleming shows how even the most capable decision-makers are pulled off course by three predictable lures: urgency, imitation, and survival. These shortcuts feel responsible in the moment-until you're explaining a multi-million-dollar failure to your board.

Through vivid stories and practical tools, Fleming offers a way out. You'll learn how to:

• Recognize the problem before attempting to solve it, and consider why we so frequently overlook this crucial step.
• Resist the vendor pitch that sounds too good to be true (because it is)
• Frame problems clearly, and the right solutions will emerge.
• Generate better solutions by reframing challenges, testing assumptions, and exploring insights from different industries.
• Conduct small pilots that uncover truth, not merely activity.
• Cultivate leadership habits that shield your institution from costly misdirection.

Part cautionary tale, part practical guide, The Solution Trap reframes higher education leadership as a discipline of clarity: the habit of pausing long enough to understand what a problem truly is before deciding what to do next.

The Solution Trap is for leaders who are tired of buying hope and ready to build clarity.

Brian Fleming, Ed.D., is the author of The Solution Trap: A Guide to Better Decision-Making for Higher Education Leaders. His work centers on a simple but often overlooked question: What problem are we actually trying to solve?As an advisor to colleges and universities, nonprofits, foundations, and education technology firms, Fleming works with leaders navigating complex decisions related to innovation, strategy, and organizational change. His approach draws on human-centered design and improvement science to help organizations define problems more clearly before moving to action.He is the founder of Design Futures and holds a Doctor of Education from Vanderbilt University.