Universities face a critical crossroads, in need of swift, targeted, and efficient actions toaddress future challenges. This necessities a strategic approach to updating and assessingengineering design education. Efforts to improve teaching and learning require systematicchange in many universities, yet research on structuring such change is scarce. Few studieshave combined a systems perspective with a functional operational level. This researchembeds design thinking to structure to isolated actions. Drawing from an extensive literaturereview of educational change frameworks and several illustrative cases, this article demon-strates the potential of design-driven change. It highlights how dynamic interrelations canfacilitate educational transformations across diverse academic levels. By presenting aneducational ecosystem as a framework for systematic educational change, design thinkingfunctions as a catalyst for educational transformation. The article also presents case findingsthat strengthen supportive actions ingrained in existing change research frameworks con-necting, them to a transparent approach for sustainable and careful decision-making.