His approach to education stresses a cooperative new system called the "Conference Plan" which involved extensive one-on-one interaction between professor and student.

It required the college to limit enrollment and recruit professors who would be effective in their new educational mentoring roles.

He also advocated a policy whereby the student body could approve or disapprove of faculty hirings, and inaugurated the Walk of Fame.

Holt believed in the value of outstanding role models and brought to campus leaders in their fields including politicians such as presidents Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry Truman; inventor Thomas Edison; business leader J. C. Penney; poet Carl Sandburg; writer Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings; military leader General Omar Bradley; pioneering social worker Jane Addams of Hull House; jurist William O. Douglas, and actors such as James Cagney and Mary Pickford.

In 1933, the American Association of University Professors investigated several dismissals and forced resignations at Rollins College.