Last year, Jihan Quail rejoined 2U as head of global growth, higher education, returning to the company he 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 him a broad view of the ed-tech landscape.
When we met last fall, our conversation kept circling back to an interesting question: What makes someone return to a company after years away? His insight into why he chose to return now—and how he thinks about working together at the university—struck me as worth sharing more widely.
Full disclosure: I am an (unpaid) member of the 2U University Partner Advisory Council.
Q: What was it about this time—and this leadership team—that made you want to return to 2U?
A: It came with time and people. I have worked closely with many of these leaders in the past. I know how they make decisions, how they perform under pressure and what they prioritize. They are strong, disciplined and focused on building something lasting, a rarity in an era of real upheaval across higher education and ed tech.
Spending time away from 2U, working in other educational and ed-tech organizations, has given me a clear view of the world. I saw how different organizations respond to pressure, what they do for themselves and how universities have changed their thinking about collaboration and the services they need.
This work is deeply personal to me. My first job outside of Yale was teaching English in Brazil, walking into a classroom with no shared language and not knowing exactly what I was doing. It was humbling and exhausting, and it made me appreciate how personal and important education really is. That vision remains with me, as my career took a winding path through renewable energy and technology.
At that time we made another thing clear: Universities are under real pressure, not just performance. There is a huge problem of confidence in higher education itself. I believe deeply in the long-term importance of universities and what they make possible—and in the lasting value of higher education to students. I want to help universities navigate this time. The right partnership can help them respond quickly to the needs of the market and emerging sectors and deliver strong results for students. That’s what 2U was built to do, and this is the team I want to do that work with.
Q: Now you have seen the place of partnership in many places. What are universities asking for today that weren’t there a few years ago?
A: The change has been amazing, and I find it really exciting.
When I first joined 2U in 2016, many universities were still learning online for the first time. They were confident in their product and quality of education, but the equipment was not common. They needed a guide—someone who could say, “Here’s how this works, here’s what to expect, here’s how to get you there.” The question was simply: Should we do this at all?
By 2019, that had changed to: We’re going online—who should we partner with? Now, in 2026, the conversation is more complex: We have built real capabilities, we understand our strengths and we need a partner who can fill certain gaps.
That is a very different dynamic. Universities don’t really want someone who will do everything. They are looking for a developer who can complement their builders. Maybe they have a solid plan for an online degree but need partners to think about how that pairs with lifelong learning and other credentials. Maybe they have instructional design covered but need a high-quality marketing activity that they can scale and reach a global student network like edX. The conversations are very clear, strategic and obviously very interesting.
This is healthy in the market. Institutions have more knowledge, which raises the bar for everyone. And for us in business development, it means that every conversation is a real problem-solving exercise—not a pitch, but a real effort to figure out what this institution needs to reach the students we’re trying to serve.
Q: What’s different about how 2U approaches those conversations now that you’re here for the first time?
A: We have always started by listening. That hasn’t changed. You can’t design a good partnership if you don’t understand what the person is trying to achieve. But the toolkit has grown significantly.
When I was here before, our model was completely automatic—long term, one way of doing things. That worked well for institutions that built Internet systems from the ground up. But universities have developed. Many have developed real skills over the past decade. They don’t need the same things they needed in 2016.
We are now more flexible in the way we build partnerships. We can adjust the scope, horizon and financial model—all based on what makes sense for the particular institution and program. If you want to run a clinical psychology program on a national scale with placements in all 50 states, that’s a different conversation than launching a small group-based program where you’ve already assembled a program design. Both are legitimate methods, and we can support either.
That flexibility makes the job more collaborative. You co-design something rather than assembling a template partner. To me, that’s the most rewarding part of this job—the puzzle of figuring out what will really work for each agency we serve.
