100th Episode: A Look Back and Forward

Michael, let's go back in the time machine to October 2017, and both of us were in Nebraska speaking with trustees at Bellevue University. Do you remember what happened afterwards?

I do, Jeff. I remember riffing together for nearly three hours on the future of higher ed. When we were finished, someone came up to us and said, you know, you guys should do a podcast together about the future of higher ed. And lo and behold, future you was born just a few months later. And Jeff, I think it started really off as a fun hobby for both of us, almost a side project. And given that, it's hard to believe that as we approach the end of our fifth season, this is our 100th episode of future youe. Today, we'll both think about the past five years and look ahead to what the next five years hold for higher education.

This episode of Future youe is brought to you by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and by salesforce.org subscribe to Future youe wherever you get your podcasts and follow us on Twitter at the Handle futureyoupodcast. And if you enjoyed the podcast, please leave us a five star rating so others can discover the conversations we're having about higher education.

I'm Jeff Salinga.

And I'm Michael Horn.

And so here we are, the episode 100 of Future youe. And in the last 99 episodes over five seasons of Future youe, We hope that in the interviews with university presidents and former presidents, as well as other higher ed leaders, entrepreneurs, policymakers, journalists and authors, among others, that we've given you a flavor of the issues and the people shaping higher education. The future you, of course. But I've always thought Future youe had a double meaning as well, the future of you as a learner. So I hope that you've learned something that about your own learning journey as well.

And Jeff, our listeners and their feedback and suggestions really helps make this endeavor worth it for both of us. And we want to continue to encourage all of you listening to reach out with comments, questions, suggestions, because getting listeners more involved in the show is a goal I know we both have for the next 100 episodes.

Uh oh, Michael, I think you just committed us to another hundred episodes. So it's not only our listeners, Michael, but we've also been fortunate to get the podcast sponsored in recent years. So thank you to those organizations you hear at the beginning in the middle of each episode, including the gates foundation and salesforce.org today we're going to start with some memories from the first five years of the show and what has happened in higher ed. And then we're going to turn to predictions for the next five years. And Michael, I know how much you love making predictions.

Indeed, Jeff Clay, you know, Christensen always said a good theory helps you navigate the future. So from disrupting class in K12 to disrupting college and higher ed, I have never shied away from a prediction, be it closing colleges or the percent of students learning online. But for today, we also asked some friends of the podcast, three presidents who appeared on some early episodes to provide their own predictions for the next five years. And then, Jeff, you and I get to react to those in the second half of the show, as well as share predictions that came out over social media from our listeners in recent days.

So, Michael, I'm going to put you on the hot seat first. There's obviously a lot ahead for higher ed in the next five years, but we've also covered a lot on the show over the last five years and of course a big part of that was Covid related. So let's start there. Over the last five years, as you look over the past 99 episodes, what

struck you so, Jeff, for this I wanted to steer clear of what I'm often known for, which is predicting the numbers of schools that will close or merge. We've certainly covered that aplenty here over the past five seasons, so I'm going to try to avoid that. Jeff.

Darn it, Michael, I was really hoping that we would get that headline number that we could advertise in promoting the show.

Yeah, I'm avoiding the headline search engines, I suppose. But Jeff, I want to go a different direction, which is, by my count, we've had at least 27 current or former college or university presidents on our show, and they've ranged from people who are leading community colleges to HBCUs and from state comprehensive universities to R1 institutions. You know, they've led institutions from across the country in geographically disparate places, from West Virginia to California and from Louisiana to New Hampshire, New York, Georgia, Arizona, and more interestingly enough, actually, we've had only one president from an Ivy League tier school. So I think we've listened and learned on this podcast from presidents that represent a set of institutions that frankly, broadly and roughly mirror where students enroll proportionately in the US and thus really represents the diversity of higher ed. And by my count, of that group, eight of the schools were at one time or another, in the last sort of recent history, they were smaller Schools, fewer than 3,500 students when you include grad and undergrad. And I'LL rattle them off quickly. Simmons University, Morehouse, Paul Quinn, Trinity Washington University, Dickinson Davidson, Dominican University of California, and then the one that no one today would call a smaller school, but it once was, which is Southern New Hampshire University. And hopefully I didn't leave out any or include any that I shouldn't have. But interestingly, Jeff, only one of these, Paul Quinn College is what you would call a really small school, one of the 40% of institutions with fewer than 1,000 students.

And, Michael, that figure always strikes me right that 40% of the American higher education market is made up of colleges with fewer than 1,000 students. Because one of the predictions we're going to hear later from a president is really focused on scale. And clearly scale starts much larger. I think, given tens of millions of students that need to be served around the world, it's going to start much larger than 1,000 students. So does that mean we're ripe for a topic that I think we've discussed probably more than anything else on this show, which is consolidation?

I'm really trying to steer clear of it. Jeff It's a topic I think that we've exhausted, at least for now. Instead, I want to reflect on something that Mary Marcy spoke to us about on the show, which is that for small colleges that are tuition dependent, while it's true, like there's a lot threatening right now in higher ed, there's actually a lot of opportunity as well. And Mary addressed that in her book the Small College Models for Sustainable Futures. And she listed out five different strategies that institutions could pursue. And when I reflect back on what we've done in the show, I think we featured schools, many of which have shown very different ways to carve out what Joseph Ayoun, president of Northeastern, called differentiating, not just being diverse, but really to create a distinct offering that allows them to not just survive but actually thrive. And I won't go through them all, but just to give a sense of the range, you have Southern New Hampshire University and Simmons really leaning into online learning. And SNHU, of course, went from roughly 500 students online in 2010 to over 160,000 now. Jeff so about a decade later, and Simmons changed from being Simmons College to Simmons University, which there's recent research that shows that when you rebrand like that, it actually helps schools attract more applicants. Then you have Paul Quinn College leaning into being one of nine federally funded work colleges with some very neat models that have dramatically lowered the cost of higher ed for students who typically don't have a lot of means Then you have Dominican, where Mary was president, and. And they've done an assortment of partnerships and a true rethinking of its curriculum to create something that's distinct but also true to its mission and origins and valuable. Now, Morehouse, perhaps more than any other on this list, you know, they started with some real prestige. The phrase the Morehouse man comes to mind, Jeff. But Morehouse is also doing some very interesting things with online learning and a coherent strategic plan to bolster what it does and extend who it serves. And then you have Davidson, that you know quite well, which has done remarkable things to bring in key skills that are valued in the workplace and merge and put them alongside the liberal arts curriculum that they're so well known for. And of course, Trinity Washington University, its president, Pat McGuire, grew the institution from, get this, Jeff, roughly 300 students when she took over in 1989 to some 1,700 students to day by bucking tradition and leaning into their location of Washington, D.C. changing to a more active learning pedagogy to match what their learners needed, frankly, not what the faculty wished that they were getting, and leaning into greater diversity and better programming to match the job market. And, you know, you get the idea there's not one common playbook among those to survive and thrive as a small college, but I think there's some common imperatives. One, know who you are built to serve and lean into serving them well. And that means, second, don't try to be all things to all people. Third, differentiate for sure. But as you do, make sure you're doing so with a value proposition that, as we've spoken a lot in the show this year, is valuable. Right? We'll have a return on investment because I think more important than affordability in higher ed is really value in far too many colleges right now, just don't showcase that real value. But when you do so, the price in resources, you know, your dollars, time, whatever, it's more than worth it. And as you differentiate this, the fourth one I guess I'd list lean into what makes you special and different. Don't try to take on or do something that isn't authentic to your mission or your past or current assets. And if you do this and you serve students well, as you do so, I think there are a lot of opportunities ahead, and innovation can really help you carve out a great path forward. And so maybe, Jeff, that's my prediction for the next five years, which is the opposite of consolidation. But for those smaller schools that lean into what differentiates them and nail people's jobs to be done, what's valuable. I think they're going to thrive. And yes, they won't be rendered a statistical footnote in my list of schools that close.

Michael, that quote you chose from President UN during our tour at Northeastern the difference between a diverse higher ed system and a differentiating one is one that also stuck with me since that interview. And I think the playbook that you laid out is a really good one. And I'm going to add one more, and that's kind of get out of your own way. And I think you you mentioned that a little bit with Pat McGuire and what she did at Trinity. You know, as we tape this, I just got back from Arizona State, where I was visiting with a program that I helped start there, the Academy for Innovative Higher Education Leadership, which is a partnership between ASU and Georgetown. And it takes mid care leaders in higher ed through an innovation journey to help them in their own jobs and their careers. And we have visitors come in from other universities from time to time, sitting presidents usually. And this time one of the presidents who came in was Lori Carroll, who's the chancellor of the University of Minnesota at Rochester and the Rochester campus. If our listeners don't know the story of the Rochester campus, which is where the Mayo Clinic is located in Minnesota, it's really different than any other institution within that University of Minnesota system, right. It's small, it's about a thousand students. It's really young. It just opened in 2009. It doesn't own any of its own buildings. Right. So it's doing it all through public private partnerships in terms of real estate. It awards tenure to faculty, get this not on the research in their disciplines, but how best to teach those disciplines. Right. How that contributes to student learning and development. And as I was talking to Lori, it really reminded me of something that Kasha Lundy from EY Parthenon said on a recent episode of Future you that the way most universities are constructed and organized today is not the way we would do it if we had to start them all over again today. And I think the Rochester campus obviously got the chance to do that. So they were kind of lucky to work with that blank slate. But as Lori Carroll told the fellows in the program at asu, the there's no reason why they can't do that at their own institutions. Right. They just have to better understand what are those barriers that, to be honest with you, we have largely put in place ourselves whether that's how institutions use semesters, course requirements when they teach and really have to decide what they want to do away with. So that's the one I would add to your list about how to survive is to think of this as a design challenge. And what are those barriers to student and institutional success that you really can deconstruct?

Jeff, I love that my friend Alex Hernandez, who used to be at the Charter School Growth Fund and then was the dean at UVA's Extension School and is the incoming president at Champlain College, he always says educators give away so many degrees of freedom that they didn't even know they had because they start with these basic templates and don't leave them behind when they turn to this design challenge. So I want to turn now to you, put you on the hot seat, because I'm curious, what's something that, as you look back at our five years, you've thought about and you wanted to highlight?

Yeah. So, Michael, I want to focus on talent and specifically leadership and staff because, you know, we talk a lot about the quality of U.S. higher education and its top place in the world. And when we do that, I think it's mostly about faculty in two parts, right? One part is their research prowess, the knowledge creation portion of their jobs. And the second part is how faculty shape the next generation, right. In their role in research and teaching and mentorship. But as I look back on the topics we've covered on future you and the guests we've had on the show, there's a whole swath of the academic workforce that frankly, we don't really treat as talent. And I'm thinking specifically of the staff, but maybe even leadership itself. So let's first talk about leadership. So often in academia, when somebody moves into leadership from the faculty, we hear quote, unquote, they're moving to the dark side, right? And that really doesn't make it appealing to academics who might make great deans or provosts or even presidents. And let's zero in on the presidency for a minute. The model of the college presidency, in my opinion, is really broken, right. These have become short term gigs, five to six years at the most for many of these presidents. And that's a lot less than the average for corporate CEOs. And I think this problem with the presidency really starts with the process of hiring the president. I think search firms are recycling the names of candidates. They're not incentivized, meaning the search firms are not incentivized to take risks and who they recommend. And their goal is really to get in and out of this process as fast as possible. Because that's how they maximize their fee. And new presidents, meanwhile, are really looking for low hanging fruit in these jobs that they can harvest for accomplishments that can send them onto their next job. Or at least they can show that they've accomplished something. If things go south with the board, as they sometimes do. And there's a lot of strained relationships between the board and faculty. And we're also in a pretty tough fiscal climate right now. So on the presidency in particular, I think we need to do a few things. One is encourage, both through the search process and through contracts, presidents who will stay. One thing to note about the three presidents we're about to hear from in the second half of the show is that their accomplishments have come over 10 plus and in some cases 20 plus years. Now, I'm not saying we need presidents to stay for 20 years, but I don't think in my opinion you could turn around to college in three to five years. Second, we need to really think presidents as talent and develop them as talent, have scouts and coaches in finding the next generation of leadership and helping them along in many ways. It's almost as if they need agents, right? Talent in Hollywood, the news media, the sports world. They all have advocates working on their side. And we need the same in higher ed. We need to stop depending on search firms to solely source presidents. There's not a weak that goes by where I don't get a call from a search firm saying essentially, Jeff, give us some more names. Right? We need some more names for this search.

Yeah, I hear you, Jeff. It's interesting, just two reflections off that. I think the need for time is really important and it's not something we talk nearly enough about. I'm working on a new paper that takes this tools of cooperation framework that Howard Stevenson at Harvard developed alongside Clay Christensen about how do you get change when people do disagree. And one of the mechanisms of movement and building culture so that people will agree, frankly, is demonstrating success on sort of that low hanging fruit stuff that migrates you to a place where you can really put these bigger changes into effect. And that takes time they don't write about in the paper. But as I was writing about it and using these case studies, exactly what you said jumped out is that all of these changes took place over several years. And so you need a board of trustees that gives that sort of rope, if you will, to the president so that they have that political capital. And it's something that I listened back to the Pat McGuire episode, first season we did, and she talked a lot about how her board just really gave her a lot of insulation so she could make the changes she needed to make. The second thing that just resonates on the talent development, something we talk a lot about, the professor, I think, at ucla, who wrote about, often we like to select for people based on them, quote unquote, having the right stuff like magical charisma or stuff like that, as opposed to asking have they had schools of experience that translate into the things they will actually be doing in the job. And it turns out that being a president or a provost, a lot of the day to day things, they don't come naturally just from being a star faculty member. Right. They're actually specific schools of experience in terms of budgeting and leading and working with people who don't agree and fundraising and on and on and on. That actually should be cultivated, I think, very intentionally through a series of posts for those that want to go that route and are able to then therefore lead. Well, in higher education, which I think leadership is one thing, but leadership in higher education, you know, has its own specifics and peculiarities, shall we say, Jeff, that are distinct from other sectors.

Yeah. And Michael, just to move off of presidencies for a second here, the bigger issue to me is, as I look back on our episodes, the last 99 episodes over the last couple of years, is we focus a lot, obviously on the show around innovation and change in higher education. But the question to me is, who's going to carry all this out? Obviously the president and leadership matter, but the front line to students, prospective students, innovations around employer relationships, online programs, co op, student engagement, you name almost anything that we have talked about over the last five years is you really need talented staff behind them. And I think for so long, higher ed has really depended on finding staff who were driven to their mission, people who wanted to work for universities because of their mission, and as a result were willing to take lower salaries or work on campus and et cetera. But I think higher ed, in my opinion, has done a terrible job in developing their staff and specifically in succession planning as well. And colleges and universities, they think of themselves as learning organizations, but they think of themselves as learning organizations for everyone else besides themselves. They're not really good internal learning organizations. And also, I think before the pandemic, the thin margins many colleges and universities were operating on meant that they hired staff at low salaries and they might have had to sacrifice talent or they expected people to do the jobs of two or three people. And then the pandemic hit and people started to really reevaluate their lives. And now the rest of the corporate world, of course, is facing this as well. And they're thinking about more flexibility. You can live anywhere, work from home, four day work weeks. They're also investing, as you know from your role at Guild in continuing education, and upskilling and reskilling their employees. And so it's no wonder that we see higher ed is losing staff right now, right? They can't pay as well. They don't really do the training and professional development that's needed. They too often need to be in person for work. And they don't necessarily, and these are employees, don't necessarily believe in the mission of the university anymore. Not, not all of them. So I think going forward, simply put, we're going to need to think of staff as talent. And what does that mean? I think there's a couple of things that I think we need to think about. One is what is the core of the university and what is the context that surrounds that core? And I think that we're going to have to really rethink where do we outsource staff if it isn't student facing and it isn't unique to higher ed, physical plant finance it. I think we really have to have a serious conversation about how to outsource a lot of that work so that we could invest more in the core staff that is student facing. Second, I think we need to develop that court staff, right? What is a development plan that keeps them in higher ed and helps develop them over time? Third, I think for our undergraduates particularly, we need to start to frame higher ed as a career. I don't think there's anyone working in higher ed today who went to college saying I want to work for college or university, right? So why don't we take advantage of these young adults that we have on our campuses and really try to frame higher ed as a career to them. You know, Trinity College in Connecticut, for example, is thinking about developing co ops for their students in it. Now obviously that's going to give them real skills that they could use to leave higher education, but perhaps they could work in higher education. So what are some of the student jobs that where you can help develop these careers among your own undergraduates and really think of student jobs, not only developing skills for them to go elsewhere, but perhaps stay within higher ed. And then fourth, I think that colleges and universities really need to do a full analysis of what they need so that they're not trying to spread too many jobs over too many people and that you're paying them appropriately. It's interesting. Just in the last couple of weeks, Moody's put out a warning to colleges about staffing because they know that there's this war for talent going on in every industry and they're really worried that higher ed is going to have a hard time filling these jobs. And I think that, you know, colleges and universities were able to coast with the staff that they had before the pandemic and now they're going to have to compete in this much larger market for talent going forward and that's going to impact how they are going to be innovative over the next five years.

Sage words, Jeff, I would say and stuff that we will want to dig in more on as we turn the corner on our first hundred episodes as we're finishing this up. But for now we're going to leave it there. And when we come back, we'll feature the predictions of three previous guests of Future youe, as well as your ideas about what's next and our thoughts and reactions on those predictions. Stay with us after this short break on the 100th episode of Future youe.

This episode is Also Supported by salesforce.org salesforce.org is proud to partner with institutions like yours to build a better future for for all. We believe creating a technology enabled personalized and continuous experience throughout the learner lifecycle is so critical to driving student and institution success from anywhere. Learn more@salesforce.org highered we're back on Future

youe, our 100th episode. So we asked three college presidents, all of whom appeared on the podcast in its first season, to send us their predictions for the next five years. So let's hear what they have to say. First up is Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University. Since 2002.

We're going to see massive expansion of higher education both in the US and globally. This expansion is going to be implemented or the result of four simultaneous accelerations. One is the acceleration in scale. The sheer number of individuals on a planet of 8 billion people seeking higher education will accelerate far outstripping everything that we have available in terms of infrastructure or means without massive technological innovation, number one. Number two, the second dimension of change driver here relative to massification is time. No longer will higher education just be a short window of time before age 30, but will be a universal thing, universal learning, lifelong learning, what have you. The third dimensionality here is personalization. That massive expansion will be also a result of the empowerment of fully personalized methods for learning. And the fourth driver of massive expansion will be design differentiation, the notion that we'll have not five types of colleges and three types of universities, but 25 types of learning institutions, 25 types of colleges, 10 types of universities, thousands of other pathways of learning, and so forth and so on, all of which at the end of the day, actually is higher education. So one prediction, five years massive expansion of higher education both in the US and globally.

Love Michael's vision, Jeff. It obviously reflects what we've talked a lot about on the show, and I'm struck by how fundamentally optimistic it is compared to the traditional narrative of challenging demographics. Right. And I think what Michael's comments show is there's a lot of opportunity when you realize how many people worldwide will need and want education throughout their lives. And I agree with him on this. I also love his point about no longer a few types of colleges, but really a broadening of types of programs and organizations and institutions that serve adults. And what I read into that is that some of those will be accredited colleges and universities and many others not, but they will all comprise what we sometimes loosely call a system of higher ed. And if we take that expansive view of it, then I think he's onto something. But I will say if we look at just the five year window in just accredited schools, then I'm less certain that we will see this sort of massive expansion within just five years. What do you think, Jeff?

As you know, I'm a special advisor to asu and Michael Crowe is anything if not impatient. Right. So I have a feeling that these things may happen. He probably didn't take our instructions on five years that seriously. He probably thinks they could happen sooner. But for most people, you're probably right. I think it was the design differentiation that I found pretty fascinating as well. Right. Going back to what I was talking about earlier with the University of Minnesota at Rochester. And my question though is how can we encourage colleges to rethink their missions and even their organization? I think there's going to have to be some incentive to do that. And whether that comes from the government at the state level or federal level, and I'm probably pretty skeptical that that's going to happen. But some sort of innovation fund where colleges could tap and the only way they really get paid out of that innovation fund is if they change and rethink their mission, organization, the types of degrees that they get that they give out and so forth, I think that's what's going to have to happen. And whether again that comes from the government or probably more likely from big nonprofit foundations I know if I sat on the money of Mackenzie Scott or others, that's probably where I would put my money is to encourage that innovation.

I agree, Jeff. I'd love to see like a new schools venture fund for higher ed. Right. But let's turn to our next guest who came back and gave us a prediction. It's Pat McGuire who mentioned earlier, and she's been president of Trinity Washington University since 1989 and was on our first season of future youe.

So here's patience Driven by what we learned in the pandemic and the pressure to diversify revenues in an era of declining numbers of high school graduates, higher ed in the next five years will break free from the rigidity of traditional semesters and even degrees as the premier credential, replaced by flexible shorter term learning opportunities leading to more certificates and stackable credentials. Continuing education programs, once the backwater of the academy, will grow in importance both as revenue generators and incubators of best concepts for long term program change as even the most traditional universities look to capture the market of more than 35 million adults who started but did not complete college. In the same way, lifelong learning will move from a sideline curiosity to for ambitious 30 somethings to an absolute necessity for professional advancement across the entire career span. With all things technology dominating the menu of course offerings, residential campuses will also adapt to having more older students in residence for shorter periods of time for professional and executive programs. Elites may continue to ignore these trends, but for the vast majority of institutions of higher education, the most creative will thrive while the hidebound will die.

It was interesting that Pat talked about adult students, because so often I hear college presidents saying that's what's going to save them are this huge market of adult students. In many ways, adults are the siren song for a lot of these struggling colleges, and I just don't think enough of them are willing to change to make that happen. Obviously Trinity did that because it was their path to survival. In many ways, I think colleges are going to have to set up entities within their institutions, perhaps even move them off campuses, much like Southern New Hampshire did when it moved its online division off campus in order to give people within the university within the college permission to break the rules to serve adult students. I just don't see colleges and universities serving adult students in the way that they need to be served under kind of the traditional construct of most colleges and universities.

Totally agree with you, Jeff, and that autonomy is critical for this type of innovation. As we've talked about in past episodes of the show I will say I love Pat's vision and I feel like so far they're all singing our tune as well. I'm also struck by how on message it is with what Michael Crowe had to share. And as we've discussed, though, I do think there will be continued friction between institutions and between institutions in the workplace with stackability, you know, even as a lot of entities right now are trying to solve and pave the way. But I do think that these squabbles over verification of actual learning will continue to be obstacles in the way, and I'm not sure that will be resolved in the next five years. But I couldn't agree more with Pat that continuing ed is really the locus for accredited institutions for where the innovation can come from. Those are sort of the schools within the schools that you can set up. And, you know, it's obviously something I've been saying and writing about for years now, so perhaps I'm a broken record. But autonomous models, as you said, are clearly important because that's where schools can pioneer disruptive innovations themselves. And I think that she's right, that many of the exclusive institutions, frankly, will be able to ignore some of this innovation and just they'll be able to at least keep skating by and will decide on their terms whether to engage or not.

JEFF and finally, before we get to some listener predictions, here is Michael Sorrell, president of Paul Quinn College in Dallas since 2007, with his prediction for the next five years,

more and more of what we have once considered to be the elite institutions will realize that the only way for them to continue to meet their enrollment goals is to dive headfirst into addressing the needs of adult learners. So more and more this idea that college is only for traditionally aged students and the English model of residential campuses will give way to just a cold hearted fact that students are older and if you want to go get more students, you're going to have to go get them from the adult population.

JEFF so what I found interesting about this, besides the fact that all three presidents chose independently to focus on adult learning and we didn't give them any direction or tips to do so, frankly, it took us by surprise that they all focused in the same area. But what I took from Michael Sorrell's comment is that beneath all the overlap between these three predictions, one big difference I think I heard is that Michael is saying the cold hard reality will essentially cause exclusive institutions to focus on the adult learner, which is different from what Pat argues. And I think the reality is we'll see A bit of both, like Pat's right, that, you know, these institutions won't have to engage in serving adult learners to the extent of big scale. But I think by the same token, many already have and many will continue to lean into the adult learner out of a sense of mission and purpose and opportunity, not because, perhaps because they need to or want to grow, like Michael said, but because they'll see it as consistent with their broader mission in society. Jefferson, what do you take away?

Yeah, I actually found the same thing. I actually thought Michael might have made a mistake when he said elite institutions, but I think he was deliberate in saying that, that not as many institutions, first of all, are as protected as they think they are by the market, but that the fact that There are these 35 million adults out there sitting out there who need further education or need to complete a degree or need another degree, as opposed to about 2 million high school graduates in the U.S. and if you were Apple Computer or P and G or Macy's, right, if you were any other industry essentially outside of higher education, and you were looking at your market, and on one side you saw 35 million, and on the other side you saw 2 million, well, what market would you go after? Whether you were an elite product or not, you would find out that there's a way to serve that. It's just like Toyota and Lexus, right? They figure out how to serve the top of the market, but also the middle of the market. And it's really amazing to me that you have, you know, hundreds, thousands of institutions, I would even argue going after this small, minuscule part of the market that means the high school graduates as opposed to this 35 million in a growing adult market out there. It just makes no sense to me from a business perspective. And I think that's really what Michael is saying with his perspective.

So, Jeff, that caps off. The president's giving us some thoughtful predictions for the next five years, but let's turn to some predictions that our listeners sent us over social media.

Yeah, so we have Gary Stocker, who runs the website College Viability, and he said buyers, and this is my, if you read my book, buyers and sellers. So these are the institutions that have to heavily discount or sometimes just discount tuition to get students. He said that buyers will merge, 10 to 20 colleges will merge together in an attempt to get the scale and market share that they need to stay financially viable. I thought that was an interesting idea, that we're not just talking a merger of a couple of colleges, but a much larger group of colleges might merge together. We had Laura Venos, who is a college and career counselor in Fairfax County Public Schools, and she wrote that more colleges and universities will offer a deferral to a January start date spring admit option. So we're going to have different calendars for college freshmen. We also had Robert Gibson, director of learning technologies at Emporia State University, and he wrote, based on what I'm hearing from the ASU GSV Summit attendees, private equity would infuse more money into higher education equivalencies, serving as a disruptor to the traditional model. This may lead to more education and training that is direct to consumer.

So three interesting ones there. I've got a few more to read, Jeff. Brian Reed, an associate provost at the University of Montana, said two things. One, more states and industries will do away with a BA as a job qualification and two, outside of elite higher education, 18 year olds will opt out of higher education in greater numbers above and beyond anticipated demographic declines. That is, even if the students are available, they will not be enrolling. Big words from Brian. And then we've got Kevin Malloy from Workday who said an outsourcing of more services, especially in the trades that maintain an aging campus. And then one more that we got, Jeff, that we will read. We unfortunately didn't get to read them all. We had a lot come in but from Travis Smith, compliance administrator and higher ed doctorate student at Indiana University. And we should note one of our biggest fans. So thank you to Travis. He wrote and said college athletes will be employees at certain institutions.

Amazing, Michael, Amazing group of predictions from our listeners. Any overall thoughts on these predictions?

I'll give three quick lightning thoughts. 1. I like the 1020 college mergers idea, but I think it may be too complicated given accreditation, as we've learned from the experience of our guests Jeff Sinise earlier this year. And I think that's where a creative partnership as opposed to a consolidation may be more likely. Second, Brian's prediction about more 18 year olds opting out of higher ed. That should be both sobering, but I also think it's realistic. And if Pat and my namesakes Michael and Michael are right, then I think higher ed will figure out how to innovate to become more valuable throughout people's lives, just not necessarily when they're 18 to 22. And finally, just Travis's comment. I agree, Jeff, that college athletes will be employees or at least paid at some institutions, and that we will see that materialize and sort of change the fate of college athletics even more in the years ahead. But Jeff, is there one or three that you want to take?

I'm just going to take one. And it was the one from Laura, who is a college and career counselor in Fairfax County Public schools in Northern Virginia. And this is about the pathway into the college. I think that especially over the next decade, we know that there was a lot of student learning loss during the pandemic. We know that there's a lot more questioning about college and that transition from high school to college. So I think we're going to see a lot of differing pathways into college. We're going to see some early college programs grow. I think we're going to see many more summer transition programs grow because colleges are going to want students that are better prepared to start as freshmen. I think we're going to start to see first year students start elsewhere. Right. Our friends at Virto Education, where they get to start their freshman year overseas. I think we're going to start to see a, a much bigger group of those types of organizations start up where students can start elsewhere besides a college campus. I think one of the things that the pandemic taught us is that there is going to be a lot more flexibility and optionality. And that's not just going to include for undergraduates, but it's also going to include that pathway from high school to college.

And you know, Jeff, I'm a big fan of colleges figuring out ways to do that gap year or discovery year like Virtual has done. So I think that would be a prudent path. But we will leave it there for today's show. And thank you all for listening and helping us make it to our 100th episode. And here's to the next 100 for future you.

Sa.