The Minnesota State system of colleges and universities is big and unwieldy and crucial to Minnesota’s ability to compete for good jobs, business growth, quality of life and general prosperity.

With an annual operating budget of about $2 billion, of which the Legislature appropriates about $700 million, with 30 colleges, seven universities and 54 campuses serving about 375,000 students, the system is important in every nook of the state. From St. Paul College and Metro State University through St. Cloud State and on up to Northland Community and Technical College in East Grand Forks, the system serves students and communities where they live.

Nearly 30 years after it was deemed a “system,” the quest to make it so continues.

Meantime, the market for post-secondary education, like the market for almost everything else, continues in a state of disruption.

Under Chancellor Steven Rosenstone, who retired last year, the Minnesota State system pursued an ambitious effort to face the facts of that disruption. Rosenstone’s “Charting the Future” project was sweeping, controversial and useful.

This past week, as the Pioneer Press reported, system leaders “said they will spend several months and $300,000 learning from trailblazers outside of higher education in hopes of inspiring innovation across the 375,000-student system.”

“Minnesota State Chancellor Devinder Malhotra and Board of Trustees chairman Michael Vekich said the system must take risks and try new things in the face of slumping state investment and declining public confidence in higher education,” Josh Verges reported.

The Forum on Reimagining Higher Education gets underway in September, Verges reported, with public convenings exploring trends in higher education.

“Participating will be a small number of trustees and five to seven thought leaders who will share how changing tactics helped their businesses adapt and grow,” Verges wrote. “The group will discuss how those approaches could be applied to the system’s 30 public colleges and seven universities.”

“Next spring,” Verges reported, “they’ll start deciding on the changes Minnesota State ought to make to become ‘the nation’s most innovative higher education system.’”

The questions, as always with big projects whatever the industry, include:

Innovative to what end?

How will we tell if something’s a good idea?

This isn’t saying anything that Malhotra and Veckich don’t already know. It’s simply to emphasize this: Worthy projects fizzle by the boatload for lack of a strong, clear organizing principle. And this: Sometimes the best ideas show up in tatters, without layers of complexity and folds of credential.

The system’s Forum on Reimagining Higher Education, drawing from learning without and within, is a good idea that could also be effective as all of our important systems deal with disruption. At the least, it will be an additional installment in the continual effort to face facts.