Behind the Headlines

Foreign.

Welcome to 2021, which so far seems a lot like 2020 doesn't.

Sure does, Michael. So we're going to kick it off in a similar way by talking to our friends in the news media. Last January, we had a reporter's roundtable with those in the higher ed trade press. So today we're welcoming two reporters who cover higher ed in the mainstream press. This episode of Future you is brought

to you by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

I'm Michael Horn.

And I'm Jeff Salingo. In my 20 plus years of writing about higher ed, I can't recall a period where the sector has been this front and center in the mainstream media. You can't really go a day without reading or hearing about colleges in the press. The coverage is mostly about the pandemic and the response to it, but but also about the future of institutions, admissions, testing, and continued conversations about equity in higher ed. On today's episode, Michael and I are thrilled to be joined by two great reporters who cover higher ed. Melissa Korn of the Wall Street Journal, who is also co author of a book on the Varsity Blues scandal titled Unacceptable, and Kirk Karapeza from GBH Radio in Boston. Welcome to future you, Kirk and Melissa.

Thanks for having us.

Good to be here.

So I love to talk with reporters about the business of higher ed. So I'm really excited for this episode, but I'm also interested in your response to this first question, because even though I know both of you, I don't really know the answer to this. Out of all the beats at your publication and at your radio station, how did you get started covering higher ed? Melissa, let's start with you.

Sure. So I got into journalism straight out of. I went from undergrad to grad school to Dow Jones. And higher ed was something that was relatable to me. Right. I had just come out of the universe. I just stepped down from the ivory tower, if you will. And I had friends who were struggling to pay off loans and families figuring out how to save for school for their younger kids. So it was relatable to me. And even though I'm not a financial publication, I really like writing about people. And even though I am well beyond college years myself now, I still really like writing about people. And higher ed is something that's relatable not just to me anymore, but to so many of our readers.

Yeah, the financial piece of higher ed, it's a. It's a big business. Right. So it, it seems to play well with the. The Wall Street Journal audience. Kirk, how about you?

Yeah, I had been a general assignment reporter in Wisconsin and Vermont, always in public media. I had occasionally covered colleges in those towns. You know, I was in Madison and then Burlington. I'm in Boston now. I joke that, you know, I only work in college towns. But in 2013, GBH was launching a desk in Boston devoted to higher ed. And believe it or not, at the time, the Boston Globe, which is New England's largest newspaper, didn't have a reporter, you know, focus solely on this beat. So. So we thought this was a hole that we could fill. And I always quote the famous line from this is Spinal Tap, when the band's Boston gig gets canceled and the manager tries to cheer everyone up by saying, yeah, I wouldn't worry about it, though. It's not really a big college town. Of course, you can't walk a few blocks in Boston without landing on a college campus. So we just thought, this is a great opportunity. When we announced it, GBH made this big deal about it. They sent out a press release to all the. All the schools, and I was just crushed with pitches, and it was actually disorienting. I didn't know what I was doing. I was like, should I be covering this grant and this new dean and this? And so we kind of. We regrouped. My editor and I regrouped, and we just came up with, you know, five or six buckets that we thought are the things we're really covering. And the great thing about covering higher education is, yeah, I occasionally step into a classroom, but it's about so much more than that. You know, it's about access and it's about opportunity, and it's about race and class. And as Melissa said, it's about covering people and getting out. And the most frustrating thing about this pandemic is that we're all holed up, and I can't go out and get that color and talk to people and spend a day with a student or a professor or an administrator. And we do our best with our iPhones and zoom technology, but it's really inhibiting.

But you do do a great job, Kirk, of giving a morning tweet every morning, telling us to get out there, unplug, and see the world.

That's right. Get outside.

Keep your mask.

That's right. It's taken a life of its own. I did that in March. I'm either like a toddler or an old man. I need routines. And so I get out there every morning, and I started doing it, and then I stopped. We got out of town for a couple days and I stopped. And when I came back, I had all these messages from mostly college administrators saying what happened to the morning tweet? So I kept it up, and I'll keep it up until we're all vaccinated and back on campus.

Well, we appreciate it. And before we get into story selection and stories for the year ahead specifically, we obviously had some breaking news as we were just about to record this, which is that Betsy DeVos, who has been the Education Secretary since the beginning of the Trump administration, resigned suddenly in the aftermath of the assault on the US Capitol this month. And as we think about her legacy, I'm curious from both of you, what one thing do you think she'll be remembered for? And, and Melissa, let's start with you before Kirk.

So I'm going to say kind of a theme that she'll be remembered for is deregulation specifically, I would say, probably in my mind, based on my coverage, Title IX specifically, and just the changes she made to how schools are supposed to navigate that very thorny field, frankly, in a way that a lot of schools really did not appreciate. Not that they were super happy with the prior guidance. But I think watching that saga over the past four years is something that will continue to see effects from that, including possibly reversing a lot of that under the new administration. But I think DeVos herself will be known for what she did on Title ix.

Yeah, that's really interesting. And certainly this pendulum, if you will, keeps swinging, it seems like, between different administrations. Kirk, what about you? In terms of legacy, what's your take?

Yeah, I'd agree with Melissa. I'd say policy analysts would say it's her effort to repeal Obama ERA regulations, whether it's protecting what many in higher ed see as predatory for profit colleges or giving those accused of sexual assault on campus more due process. I was thinking about this this morning. I think like anything, it depends who you ask. If you ask a political observer, they're going to say it was her nomination. You know, where Pence had to walk down there and cast the vote. You know that I think that's kind of seared in our memories. Most Americans probably couldn't name the Education secretary under Obama, but Everybody knows Betsy DeVos name, right. And so it's her nomination, but it's also her resignation, how she went out. And it's the timing of this, right? This is three years after white supremacists marched at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and two weeks before the official end of The Trump administration. Some. Some folks I talked to her, speculating she resigned her post not because of her conscience, but to avoid having to weigh in all this, weigh in on the 25th Amendment that would remove Trump. So we'll probably never know that. But among independent journalists like us, I think you ask us, and it's, for me, her legacy is communication style or her lack of communication with us. I know many journalists who collectively made thousands of requests to the Education Department to interview her, and all of them were either denied or ignored. And I think that's remarkable and the public should know it.

Yeah, I think it was a tweet from Goldie Blumenstick of the Chronicle this morning that said something like, you know, I guess I'm not going to get that interview request from back in 2017 or something like that.

How many, how many requests did you make?

I don't even know from me or my colleague Josh Mitchell in D.C. there were so many times that we were, as you said, not just denied, but that it's ignored. And that's. That's the most infuriating thing. Right. At least give me a solid. No, don't just pretend I don't exist, because that's not going to make me stop asking.

Well, obviously, we're going to have a new education secretary coming in, and maybe he will give some interviews. And we also have a pandemic raging across the country and on college campuses and in college towns. Is that what the year ahead will be about for both of you, or are there other. In addition, are there other themes or topics that you anticipate your beat focusing on this year? And I know that everyone's in competition here, so you probably don't want to give away your best ideas on your beat. But generally, what do you think are

going to be focusing? Our content's free. We don't have a paywall. We're free over here in public media.

So, Kirk, where are you focusing this year?

I mean, yeah, I mean, obviously since March, it's just been all Covid, all the time for the most part. Right. It touches everything. But, you know, it's so, as I said before, it's so inhibiting with the pandemic. We're really trying to take it like one week and one story at a time. You know, looking ahead, two or three stories, where in the past I'd identify one story and then we'd have kind of like, you know, a long Runway for other. Other stuff. But things are. Things are changing so quickly, and there's so much up in the air. I'm wondering, I just kind of have some big picture questions at the start of the year, like how can colleges improve public confidence in their institutions? Post pandemic. As we hopefully enter this final phase of the pandemic, how can schools position themselves to survive financially? They've lost so much money in this and they've lost so many students. But in 2021, I think we'll be focusing on career and technical education. We just did a piece about some liberal arts schools getting into this business as a way to stay afloat, offering certificate programs to adults. Earlier this year, I'm going to start exploring how colleges are trying to recruit young men since their numbers out now show that men only comprise about 40% of all college students. And keeping your eye also on the social justice movement after schools professor commitment to diversity and inclusion. Last year, after the murder of George Floyd, we started tracking how much contracting dollars they were giving to businesses owned by people of color and GBH. My team reviewed 700 contract active contracts that are held by this big college purchasing co op here in Massachusetts. And we found just 14. 2% went to Massachusetts certified minority owned businesses. So we plan to follow up on that piece and see if anything changes.

Melissa, how about you?

Yeah, so as Kirk said, I think Covid will color pretty much everything we write about in the coming months and year and perhaps years, plural. So it's been just nonstop. What does this mean for students? What does this mean for campuses? What does this mean for school finances? As we start the new calendar year, my interest is focused largely on access and the impact that the pandemic has had on college. Access, equity, the students for whom college wasn't a sure thing before. What happens to them? How do they still make their way down that path? Who needs to help them? You know, we've seen really disconcerting numbers in terms of FAFSA completion rates so far, year over year, down about 12% right now. If those don't bounce back, what does that mean? And you know, so much of that is because of the pandemic and the fact that everyone's lives have just been upended by this. So looking a lot at that, I'm also trying to write a little bit more about graduate programs and community colleges and regional publics, some of the schools that don't always get the most attention in the media, but educate the majority of the students in this country.

So I want to come back to that, but I think in the immediate term, I'm curious, you mentioned the financial future of Higher education that touches on a lot of those campuses that don't always get the most attention, the regional publics in particular. We know there have been some stories as of late about their financial futures. We're certainly seeing a lot of conversations around mergers in that space. Pennsylvania being a big one in that conversation, but also small, private liberal arts colleges. I feel like, Kirk, that's the time we get to connect. Every so often is another school in New England is having challenges. We've also seen, frankly, as I've been looking at it, I think fewer colleges close than I might have expected at this point, because they've been unusually adept at closing entire programs and laying off tenured faculty, which I didn't expect. What are you all seeing out there? What are you tracking? And what do you expect in the spring in particular, when maybe some tough calls have to get made on college campuses? Kirk, you want to start first?

Sure. I think in December, I think the New England border higher ed came out with an estimate. They found that the pandemic has cost schools in our region about a half billion dollars, and that is before you even account for increased Covid expenses. So I think what I'm looking at is federal and state aid, and will that be enough to keep these schools afloat? But, you know, in order to cut costs, I think we're going to see more colleges operate, you know, more colleges operating on the brink, consider alliances and potentially mergers. And of course, those were going on before all of this. You know, I think right before the pandemic, I think Boston College acquired Pine Manor's campus. Yep. You know, we had the fiasco here with Mount Ida, which shut down suddenly, and that kind of set off all kinds of red flags for schools. And the state stepped in and tried to monitor the financial health of schools. I mean, I try not to get ahead of our skis on this, and I can look at discount rates. And that tells. As a reporter, that tells me a lot about the demand for that degree. And we all know about the demographic cliff. Michael, you've written so much about that that these schools are facing, but I'm just looking at trying to find schools that are doing innovative things. Like, we just looked at Stonehill College, and they're. They offered a certificate now in photonics. They partnered with MIT and Bridgewater State here in Massachusetts. And the students are mostly low income. The woman we featured was homeless. She was a mother of twins, and she was homeless at the beginning of the semester. And Stonehill came in and gave her a laptop and helped her Move out of the shelter and into an apartment? I mean, those are the kind of. I think we can talk about institutional failure and mergers. And for my listeners, it kind of washes over them. But if we can get in there and really find out what are schools doing to survive and how are they helping students and keep the focus on the students and their stories, that's how we can provide narrative story listeners that they can really grasp.

That makes sense. Melissa.

I think it's what are they doing to survive? But also is it working? And that's, you know, we can't answer that question yet. It's going to take a while before we see this play out. But is a merger enough? Is some sort of consortium on in particular academic areas enough? Is an extra certificate degree or adult ed night classes or online programs, you know, when everyone else is also doing those, you're not differentiating anymore that, you know, you lose that edge very, very quickly. So I'm, I do, I don't think we're, you know, in the clear that school, schools that survived the fall are set and good to go. You know, we didn't see the closures at the rate that were predicted. We will continue to see more closures. I do believe so. But as you guys all know, it's pretty hard to kill a college. So we're not going to see scores and scores of them in the next few months, but there likely will continue to be some. We'll continue to see schools declare financial exigencies so that they can mess. Mess with isn't quite the right word, but so that they can adjust their staffing, their faculty staffing, kind of get in on those tenured faculty. And I think some schools are going to be continuing to rethink their athletic budgets if the pandemic continues to affect who can play when. If we lose spring season entirely, I think we'll have some really big impacts on the athletic budgets pretty soon.

So a word that's used often right now by everybody in the media is unprecedented, which could describe so much that's happening in our lives beyond higher ed. But let's just stick with higher ed for a second. So I'm really curious because everybody talks about, well, this is going to change higher ed forever. And I've written many of those things, too. And then, of course, you know, the pandemic will be over and we'll go back to the old way of doing things, but some things will change. And so I'm just kind of curious, you know, maybe some of the stuff we've already talked about or other things we haven't talked about. What do you think might. Might stick? It's interesting. I was talking to a vice president at, at Temple University. I was on an event with him recently and he said this might be the end of spring break. And I said, really? Like, we're not gonna like. Because we were talking about the calendar. And I'm like, you know, there's a whole business operation around spring break. I, I doubt that. But who knows? I mean, what could happen? Melissa, what do you think might stick?

So I will say I think actually spring break probably will return just because it's used as an opportunity for students to do study abroad without disrupting their semester, their trimester. Those short international trips are so popular now, and they're a way that schools can claim that so many of their students go abroad, even if it's for like four days. So I think spring break will come back. I think the academic calendar broadly may change a bit. We might see longer breaks between terms or just kind of an adjustment of what the academic year looks like more broadly, but not necessarily the death of spring break. I do think the kind of admissions will change. And this is something, Jeff, you and I have talked a lot about, but standardized tests, I think it's really hard to put that genie back in the bottle. I think it was Baylor just announced that they're going to extend their test optional for another two years because they saw perfectly qualified candidates apply this round without requiring the exams. So I'm really curious to see what some schools will do on that front. But I think it's going to be very hard to walk that back. Once they went optional, I think we're going to see some shifts in how schools recruit. They're not doing campus visits as much anymore. They're not going to high schools. High school students aren't going to them. How does that change? And then how schools utilize online courses for things like intro classes, big lectures, you know, some schools have been doing classrooms for a while. Others, this was completely foreign to them. And I think as they continue into the spring semester now and continue to work out some of the kinks, some may really see that as an opportunity to, okay, let's just keep Psych 101 online and we're going to use our classrooms for those more meaningful conversations and discussion groups and things like that. And more students maybe take a semester doing it remotely and then a semester on campus and kind of that residency element at a lot of schools may shift.

Kirk, how about you? Maybe it's not the end of spring break, but what might.

I think, yeah, I think this is one of those cases where this will change, if not everything, a lot of things. And the folks I'm talking to, I know it's early on, I think these schools are still just catching their breath after getting all their courses online and figuring out this new model. But I think a few college presidents I've talked to think that this will make the whole system more European. Where as Melissa suggested, if the sports programs are cut, there'll be less focus on sports, which is a big part of American higher education, and we'll see more students kind of pick a career track. Maybe earlier on, some of the students I've spoken with who are debating whether or not to defer for a year, I saw them struggling with that decision. And they would say things like, I could go on campus and live in the dorm with all my classes online, or I could, you know, take some classes at the local community college and, you know, volunteer for the Biden campaign in New Hampshire here and, you know, get some work experience under my belt before I decide what I really want to do. I think we're going to see students and families, you know, as consumers, be much more deliberate in their decisions and what they're doing. And there's such a premium on the in person classroom experience. Now I was talking to John Mitchell, the, the chair of the computer science department at Stanford, and his advice to professors now is obviously there's a premium on in person instruction. And we all now see how valuable that is now that we're all stuck in these pods on Zoom and how miserable it is. Right. He says his advice to the professors is if you are teaching hybrid or you have students in class, don't lecture. Don't lecture. Use all of that time for interaction and, and group work. And that's. This is kind of, this is part of the MOOC craze. Right. Which you've written so much about, Jeff, that this is. Why take philosophy from your. At your local community college when you can take it from Michael Sandel at Harvard? So it's kind of this. But this idea where you can assign lectures, whether it's something that you've taped or something that someone else taped, and then really make the classroom experience so much more interactive and valuable rather than you're just checking that box.

Yeah. Maybe on a kind of a silver lining here, maybe the pandemic actually changes the way faculty teach. That's crazy.

How many faculty does it take to change a light bulb.

Well, we were going to answer that question maybe when we come back after this break on Future Year, we have a ton more to talk about. We want to talk about a little bit about how the pandemic has changed your jobs a little bit more and also some of the stories that we're not talking about that we should be. We'll be right back here on Future Year.

Support for this podcast is provided by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, which is committed to preserving and expanding educational opportunity for today. Today's students, now more than ever. Learn more at postsecondary.gatesfoundation.org.

Welcome back to Future youe, where we're joined by Melissa Korn of the Wall Street Journal and Kirk Karapetza from GBH Radio in Boston. And Kirk, I'll let you quickly give us the punchline to the joke you posed at the end right before we went to break. And then I'll ask Melissa, I'll ask you a more serious question, if you will.

How many faculty does it take to change a light bulb? What's change?

All right.

Well, we're going through a lot of change right now.

We don't have sound effects on this podcast. You're lucky, Melissa. Let me take that as a segue into the question that I'm curious about because mackenzie Scott, the American novelist and philanthropist, most stories note also formerly married to Jeff Bezos, where she got a lot of the wealth from out of Amazon, she's taken a novel approach to philanthropy and it's had a significant impact for many higher ed institutions, many higher ed institutions at historically black colleges and universities, for example, that aren't used to this kind of philanthropy. And I'm curious, what do you make of this? Is this, you know, might this have a broader impact across the field? Do you think it'll change the institutions that even attract attention in the press based on sort of the storylines that she's used as she's made these gifts that have come out of nowhere for most of these scholars and institutions.

I'm really excited to see these gifts. I think it does help us change how we write about philanthropy and higher education at the journal. Most of the time we're not doing a story unless the gift is at least nine figures and kind of well into the nine figures at this point. Right. $100 million donation doesn't blow anyone away anymore. And the universities that often get them are ones that have gotten eight of them already. So I think the fact that these are the first time some of these schools are getting gifts of this magnitude. And it's her acknowledgment and her recognition that a smaller dollar amount goes a lot longer at some of these schools that have been kind of on shoestring budgets for so long, and they will likely remain on shoestring budgets, but use this to get some new attention, get some new energy, be creative, think bigger than they've ever been able to before. So I'm really excited by it. I don't know that others are going to follow suit right away. You know, we still. There are still two or three HBCUs that get most of the attention, most of the money. So if others follow suit and give to kind of a broader range of schools, I think that is huge and helpful and long overdue.

So as we hit the home stretch of the show here, I want to dig a little bit deeper into your jobs because I think that our listeners are kind of fascinated by what you all do. You probably would want to invite them to work someday to show that it's maybe not as fascinating as they. They think it is. But. But, you know, Melissa, you have obviously written this book on. On Varsity Blues, and I keep thinking that seems now, by the way, like, 10 years ago, but at the same time, it really started this year. That was in 2019.

Right.

It really started this time period where higher ed was just on the front page of. Literally on the front page of the Journal and leading the newscasts, both on our radio and television. And now, you know, I can't go a day, it seems, where there's not a higher ed story somewhere. Right. There's, you know, obviously the pandemic, but there's, you know, free college, the equity stuff we were talking about earlier, obviously the continuing fallout from Varsity Blues, admissions testing, you name it all. All the topics we've talked about today. How so? We talked a little bit earlier about how you got into these roles. You're probably thinking, oh, you know, higher ed, I could just do a story every couple of days, it would be great. But now it's just like it's breaking news, it seems, all the time. So how has this kind of,

you

know, where higher ed is so much further up the pecking order now, it seems, of stories? How has that changed your job? Melissa, let's start with you, and then we'll go to Kirk.

Yeah, I think the pace of news right now is astonishing and frankly exhausting for those reading it, let alone those writing or speaking about it or opining on it. You know, I joked while we were working on the book that I was really excited that after we finished, I'd get to take a nap. And then, you know, we handed in our manuscript and the kind of the world shut down a week later. So that was a very short nap. And I'm still looking forward to sleeping eventually. But, no, it absolutely has changed what we do and the pace of how we write. I think for me, it's a constant challenge, more so than ever before, to juggle kind of bigger picture thematic pieces with the breaking news. Right. I'll have the best of intentions to spend a day writing. And then three things happened. You know, something from doj. A school is postponing, reopening, and I don't even know if I'm disinclined to even come up with an idea of what it might be for fear of jinxing myself for the rest of the day. But it is astonishing just how much news there is right now and how central it is to so much of what we talk about in our daily lives. Right. Kirk mentioned earlier, like this, higher ed is about access, is about equity, is about workforce prep, and we're seeing so much of that play out right now.

Yeah.

Kirk, how about you? Yeah, I mean, before, when I kind of think about the beat and how we fit into the national conversation, you know, over the last four years, there was just so much noise with the Trump administration. It was just constant. Right. And so we. I feel like we had to break through that. And the Varsity Blues case for higher education journalists, you know, as. As shocking as it might have been, was kind of this gift for. For journalists. Right. I mean, I was in the room when U.S. attorney Andrew Lelling announced the charges here in Boston. And I remember we had. We got the press release, and my editor and I looked at it, and we were like, you know, major admissions scam. You know, should we even cover this? It's usually like something about the TOEFL and some Chinese nationals you know, cheating. Like, I wasn't even going to go. And then he goes, well, he says it's major. And they usually don't send out this announcement. Go down and check it out. And, you know, when he announced the charges and he kind of laid out exactly what they did, you know, we. And we were holding the indictment. You know, we were holding the. The indictment in our hands. And I'm frantically flipping through it. You kind of feel the. The light in the room shift. And, you know, as a. I'll admit, as a public media journalist, I had to Google Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin. I didn't know who they were. But then when I saw, you know, but then when it was once it was on, Becky, you know, my heart was crushed because I'd spent part of my childhood with Full House. But, you know, as you know, I always joke that while they're, you know, pre Covid, the higher ed beat in New England kind of ricocheted between the Moakley courthouse in Boston, where you had selective college admissions on trial in two separate cases, the Varsity Blues case and then the Harvard discrimination case, which was also from, you know, for my beat, that was, you know, that was also breaking news. And we were able to lead newscast with that. And then, you know, so it's basically ricocheting between the courthouse and these small private colleges like Hampshire in Amherst that's just trying to hang on and fill its seats and keep the lights on. And that story, in my opinion, is just as important, if not more important, than Varsity Blues and the Harvard discrimination case. And I think part of the job now is just being that much more deliberate about what stories are we telling right now and why? Why is this a story? Is it a story because it's on TMZ and I find myself in a courtroom next to, you know, the TMZ reporter and, you know, everyone else covering, you know, Lori Loughlin and Massimo Giannulli's sentencing? Or is this a story of, you know, broader consequence that affects the future of this country and whether we can remain globally competitive and, you know, provide enough affordable, high quality degrees to enough people in enough time to turn things around.

So just as we wrap up, one final question for both of you, and I'm going to ask you to keep it brief. So like, one or two word answer, but what's the story we all should be talking about that we're perhaps not right now because of all the news you just listed that has overwhelmed the beat. What's the one or two things on your mind that we're sort of missing right now? Kirk? Go for it.

One word? Yeah.

Okay. You could get two or three.

Okay.

But come on, you're in radio, you know,

I don't know. I mean, preserving democracy. How's that? Broader. Broader, that's right. Is that. Is that too broad or you want something more narrow?

All right, no, that's good. That's helpful. Melissa, what's on. What's on your mind?

That.

That the story that we should be talking about that we're not.

It's a story that I certainly hope to be talking about, and that's who's not going to college right now.

Yeah. No, that's perfect. And that missing generation or year or two right now is which, by the

way, is related a little bit to Kirk's Preserving Doctors.

They're related. Yes.

Yeah. Tying it together. But that is all the time we have for now. And just a huge thank you to Melissa and Kirk for joining us and kicking off the 2021 year in a better fashion than perhaps we had hoped from other outside events bringing us into this new year. But it's going to be a fascinating year ahead in higher ed, and we look forward to engaging with you on Future you. And to that end, Jeff and I plan to devote time to each episode answering listener questions. So please tweet or Facebook message us with what's on your mind and we'll do our best to answer. Thank you for joining us on this episode. And until next time, stay well. Hey, folks, Michael Horn here. Hope you enjoyed the latest episode of Future you. And just a reminder to please subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform and if you like the podcast, rate us so that others can find us and find out about the good conversations that we're having here. As always, thanks so much for listening.