Hot Topics, Joseph Aoun

This is Future youe with Jeff Salingo and Michael Horn.

Welcome to another episode of Future youe. I'm Michael Horn, the chief strategy officer at Entangled Group that is helping put on this podcast and as well as a distinguished fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute, joined by Jeff Salingo. Jeff, it's great to be here.

Jeff Salingo, I'm a professor of practice and a special advisor to the president at Arizona State University, which is also helping us put on this podcast. And we're actually here at the new D.C. center of Arizona State University, which just opened. So you might be hearing some hammers and drills in the background or some car noise because we're right here on the street level at 18th and I. But it's great to be here. And welcome to another episode of Future you.

And we're playing with format. You'll get that sense. But basically what we're going to be doing is doing really interesting interviews, and we've got a really interesting one with the president of Northeastern coming up, but also us bantering a little bit and talking about the issues of higher ed of the day and certain issues that we'll continue to revisit, I think, and dig deeper over time on. But we'll also get to know each other a little bit more through this. As I've said, you clearly have a voice for radio, and I think I have the looks for radio. So together we'll make a good team. But what's interesting, what we've talked about, how you've gotten into higher education and the Chronicle and your illustrious career there, reporting and then editing. But you had a certain start with U.S. news and World Report in this space that I think would be interesting to the listeners. Yeah.

So, you know, even though I worked for The Chronicle for 16 years, my probably my foray into higher education reporting really started in the summer of 1994 when I interned between my junior and senior years of College at U.S. news World Report, which was over here, not far from where we are today on N Street, owned by, well, still owned by Mort Zuckerman. And it was still when it was a magazine, there was still a print magazine back in those days, before they were just back in those days. But I was one of about 12 interns who worked on the College Guide that summer. And so I spent my summer calling colleges and universities to confirm their data for the rankings and also to do some small stories on colleges and universities. So I would basically spend my day in the basement in this windowless room in the basement with interns. We had somebody from UNC Chapel Hill, we had somebody from Yale.

Is that the year that you switched the formulas?

Well, you know, we also had one from. We also had an intern from Princeton. And so the joke that summer was if with just a couple of keystrokes, we could change the rankings. They really put a bunch of, you know, 19, 20 year olds in charge of those rankings that summer. But we're really, you know, that got me kind of calling these colleges and universities to, to confirm these numbers. Back then, they probably didn't try to game the rankings as much as they do today, but I really did see the inside of that rankings. Business and U.S. news World Report at that time was the only place in that business. And we know that there's been a foray of new group of magazines that have gotten into the rankings business over the years, but it was, and it still is for U.S. news and world Report a huge, huge part of their, part of their business now. So, Michael, you also had experience in covering higher education in college, working for, like I did, my college newspaper. You worked for your college newspaper at Yale and you covered somebody who ended up making a big name for himself in higher ed.

Yeah, President Richard Levin. Rick Levin, as he's known to those who get to know him better. And it was fascinating. So I had what was called the Woodbridge hall beat my sophomore year, which just meant you covered all those people in Woodbridge hall on the Yale campus. Rick was there. And it was actually a great beat because every single night, all the reporters who had questions for Rick Levin, they all went through me. And so I would call him at home every single night around 8 or 9pm and we would have a phone conversation where whatever story I was working on, I would go through with him. And then I would say, okay, I have to go through a set of questions for this reporter and this reporter and this reporter. And you know, he'd make off the record jokes about some of the questions and sometimes give very serious comments. And. But I just gained an appreciation for how well he knew the university inside and out. All the departments, the operations, finances, protests that were going on, everything. It was just unbelievable, the capacity. And then shortly before he went to Coursera, I had a reunion there and my wife and I, he made time to see us in his office for a little bit. I think we knew he was leaving Yale, but he sort of didn't know what was next. And he was grilling me on online education. And then it was fascinating. I can't remember how Many months later, it was when he decided to make the jump to Coursera. Based on the conversation and really the point he had made was the direction he's taken. Coursera, which was, I don't think online education has a lot for an elite institution, but it probably has a very vital role to play for employers in the business community and so forth. And you have seen Coursera, I would say, pivot to really focus on courses that will help employees and businesses improve their skills and be prepared for the current economy.

That's a great inside story on the Yale Daily News. Everything I know about the Yale Daily News comes from watching the Gilmore Girls where Rory Gilmore was editor. Was she editor at some point?

I think that's right. An accurate depiction of what the newsroom looked like. Very accurate, yeah. With all the newspapers pasted up on the wall, you get to paste three to five of your favorite covers at the end of the year.

So you mentioned Chris, Sarah and you mentioned online education. And there's a lot of concern right now around the future of graduate degrees. In particular, we saw these law schools go through major issues a couple of years ago with huge drops in enrollment. Law schools really scaling back. We're now seeing that with the mba. A couple of months ago, University of Wisconsin at Madison talked about closing down their full time MBA program. They eventually reversed that idea a couple of weeks later after protests from, from alumni. But when I go to campuses, everybody's talking about kind of quote, unquote, the death of the mba. They're really worried about its future. So what's the future of these professional degrees?

Yeah, I think what we're seeing, so each context is slightly different. But the macro thing I think is that as you think about where disruption in higher ed, faster, cheaper programs, as our friend Ryan Craig, an author and venture capitalist calls them, can really make an impact. It's in these professional areas where there's a clear outcome that the people attending want out of them, which is entry into a profession, a job of some sort. And employers, if they can get these students for less money, will pay less premium effectively in terms of salaries and makes it a lot more. Makes it a lot more palatable. What's interesting is Clay Christensen is probably 20 years ago at this point, after Innovators dilemma had come out, he made news, I think in U.S. news and World Report, actually maybe USA Today, where he said, Harvard MBA, the Harvard Business School is in deep trouble. Thirty years from now, I think it'll be potentially disrupted. And so it was drop dead. Harvard says HBS professor, something like that. But the point he was making was that HBS continually goes up in terms of how much it costs over $150,000 now for an MBA. And year over year, the companies that will recruit graduates from Harvard Business School just are saying, forget it, we can't afford those salaries that are required for those students to pay back the debt. And so they stop recruiting there. And the only folks that recruit there now are financial, financial firms, startups that maybe can promise some outsized option value if they go public and things of that nature. Operating companies and really the lifeblood of the economy for so many years, just don't recruit there anymore. And so his point was we're leaving all these places without an obvious place to get students. And so they have to start figuring out new options that are more affordable and tailored to what their needs are. And it leaves a huge hole, if you, if you will, underneath the MBA market that you'll see new entrants start to disrupt it. And I think that's exactly what is happening is outside of elite business schools, the demand for the MBA is rapidly declining as people are finding faster and cheaper ways to get those skills, whether it's through a general assembly, whether it's through a Coursera, or even whether it's through their undergraduate program, quite frankly, where they're getting business as a big part of the degree and then able to level up to the corporate university plan, plural site that the business itself might offer for professional development training. And so the MBA as a result, I think you're seeing a hollowing out of the programs that are out of that top 20, top 30.

So we saw law schools, we saw, now business schools. Are we going to see, you know, there's been a raft of new professional degree programs, you know, even in journalism and over the, over the years, are we going to see this happen in all these different industries eventually? Where we're going to see kind of the faster, cheaper, better in all different types of professions, or this is going to be kind of focused mostly. And we haven't talked about medical schools.

Maybe this.

Medical schools are immune from this.

Well, medical schools are interesting because they have. So let's go to law schools for one moment because we actually haven't, I would argue, seen disruption of law schools themselves. What we've seen is disruption in the legal industry. And so automation that has allowed you to do far more with one lawyer, which used to take 10 lawyers within a law firm. So they're hiring fewer lawyers, less demand for new entry level lawyers coming out of law school. In addition, services like LegalZoom have taken out the bottom end of the market. So if you want a will, if you want a basic contract, things of that nature, you don't need to go to a lawyer or a law firm. LegalZoom will do that for you at a predictable rate, not an hourly charge where you're a little bit annoyed afterwards. And so that's hollowed out the need and demand for lawyers, which has hollowed out the legal market. My concern there for a law school is if someone in California where they let you sit for the bar, even if you haven't gone to an ABA law school, comes up with an apprenticeship program that's competency based, you move on upon mastery, you can show your skill set really quickly. Some of it's online, the knowledge base, and some of it is actually a practicum experience in a law firm itself, branded with a brand name law firm. Maybe that could be highly disruptive and much faster. So then you turn to medical schools. Just to get to your question. Medical schools are interesting because you have the same sort of certification, protecting the field, if you will. But what's interesting, I think is, you know, you see the rise of holistic medicine and things outside of the western

and other types of health care professions as well.

Absolutely. And there's huge demand for those. And that's sort of the low end of the market where disruptions start, I think. And I've heard university presidents say, we would love to create a competency based pathway where you could start and get your nursing degree in the first two years, jump off and go into profession, go and work, and then come back on and continue to add experience and go be a doctor, whatever it might be, and then et cetera.

So let's talk about that. Lifelong learning, Right. We know there's this demand for lifelong learning. Stanford D School a couple of years ago came out with this thing called the open Loop University. This idea that when you got accepted to Stanford at the age of 18, you get access to six years of education instead of four that you can use any time throughout your lifetime. So you kind of loop in and loop out. I love talking about this idea in talks. But inevitably somebody will stand up, usually the CFO of a university and say, oh, that sounds great, but how do you fund this idea of lifelong education? We have enough problems with students paying for what they have. And also the cost structure of a university is really dependent on like a regular churn of full time students.

Yeah. So I mean, look, each university's Gonna have to experiment in this area. But my sense is a place like Stanford, they're asking their alumni to give a fair amount of money each year. And their customers in many ways are actually more the alumni than the students because of the way the business model these institutions work and the hope for big gifts in future years to support the endeavor and pad the endowment. And so what's interesting, I think is as a tool of alumni engagement, rather than just asking for money each year for those great memories and to leave the place better than you found it and so forth, what if that's part of an ask of giving something that actually is tailored to what you need in an ongoing way? The second thing I would say is something that I think Wharton did very well when they went online. And I think they have more online graduates now than they have in the entire history of the Wharton Business School now, which is interesting. But they really focused around the online experience being at times of transition. So you don't necessarily need just general lifelong learning for its own sake. You, you might use a book for that. But at times of pivots in your career or when you're going to go do something else or end up in a new city or something like that, that's often when you need those educational moments. And so to have really a guide or a Sherpa or someone alongside you that can really help understand when you need those, you're paying those lifelong dues, but they're keeping up with you. So they're aware of what your life is. Maybe. Hey, I see. Just in the same way there's a financial planner that helps you think about events that you may not foresee.

That's a great idea.

Similar idea around the lifelong learning and then injecting the right learning experience at the right time, given how we're thinking about your overall life.

Yeah.

And you know, this is going to become really important in the future. You know, I've been doing a lot of work around the future of work and what it's going to look like, you know, the rise of the gig economy. We know most of the new jobs are in this gig economy. Both of us are in the, in the gig economy. I spoke at Google in New York recently and I noticed that, that people would walk around with two different color badges and it turns out that it depends on whether you're a freelancer, a contractor or a full time employee. And Google has more contractors than they have full time employees and they're not doing low level work at Google. Many of these people are doing high level work. So this is really going to become the future. And the question is, employers have always played that critical role in helping students adjust or helping their workers adjust to the needs of the workplace. You would get an annual review and they would tell you kind of what you're doing well, what you're not doing well, how to get more training, where to go, they'd even pay for it. And the question now is, who's going to play that role if you're not working for an employer? And I think that this is a terrific role for colleges and universities. And indeed, a few weeks ago, Joe Annun from Northeastern, the president of Northeastern, was here doing an event at Gallup around his new book. And I had a chance to catch up with him afterwards. And after we take this short break,

we'll be back to hear a little

bit about what he had to say. We just got done with this event at Gallup here.

In this new poll that Northeastern has done, and you just came out with a new book on the future of work. Is higher ed ready for the changes

that are going to happen in the world?

Are higher ed institutions ready and are they educating, preparing students in the way

that they need to?

Higher education should not be ready, only should lead the way. And if you're asking me what is happening in higher education, what I see is the following. First, people are now realizing the impact of AI on society, including higher education. Higher ed is realizing that because what we have done is launch AI, but we haven't looked at the consequences of AI on society, on work, on people. So first, we're realizing the impact. Second, you are seeing the beginning of some action in order to play a role and remain relevant in society, especially with the changes that we're seeing. So we are not leading yet. And that's our opportunity.

So what is the big opportunity? So in the poll, all these people that you interviewed and surveyed said they're kind of ill prepared or they feel like they're ill prepared. It seems like this is an opportunity. For example, we talk a lot about lifelong implementation education. This seems like a great opportunity as we think about higher education, not just as a place you go to for a couple of years, early part of your life, but that you actually attend, you know, in some way for the

rest of your life.

Absolutely.

Is that the biggest, one of the

biggest opportunities facing higher education right now

when it comes to the future of work?

Yes, that's one of the biggest opportunities, Jeff, because as we know and as we saw and as I mentioned today, the Overwhelming majority now of learners are lifelong learners. And you are seeing that the number of undergraduate students who are full time is really dwindling in the nation. So the opportunity is there. But what's worrisome about the survey today, when we released it, this was news to me, is the fact that people said we need lifelong learning, but we don't expect it from universities, we expect it from the employers. Why? Because universities have not embraced fully, we have not embraced fully the notion of lifelong learning as part of our core mission. And if we mean that it is a core mission, we will have to change the way we conduct ourselves and our business. So for instance, we create degrees and we expect them to come. You know, the whole notion of new offerings has to have employers at the table that will tell us, look, this is what we are expecting, this is what we need and we can design it accordingly with them. And I'm talking here about the lifelong learners. Similarly, the notion of offering a course at your campus is becoming not relevant for the learners because a learner is in the workplace, you know, they are professionals, they are working, so they need you to be with them whenever they can do it at their time. You know, so the notion of in demand is starting, there is burgeoning and we need to. Lifelong learning will require us to change the way we design programs and curricula, the way we offer them. And the notion of customization of what we do and personalization is going to be central.

And how about cost? Is it part of this maybe that people think higher education is too expensive? And so when they think about lifelong learning, they think, I'm not going to be able to afford this for the rest of my life.

That's certainly an issue. And what I am seeing that the universities that are involved in lifelong learning are much more versatile and much more market sensitive, to use this language, when it comes to cost. Because you can not charge a very high amount to a person who is already in the workplace and who needs to re educate herself or who needs to retool. So as a matter of fact, I think that you are seeing a drop in prices when it comes to lifelong learning because this is a domain that where the competition is there, which is good. And the competition is coming from two places. One is the companies themselves. And the companies will say, look, we're not going to send our people to you if you charge a very high amount or a high amount. And second is coming from another provider, the for profits. So yes, there is a pressure on cost there and you're absolutely Right. The survey is a wake up call for higher education.

Let's talk about Robot Proof, your book, a little bit. I was speaking at a high school in Atlanta recently and this question came up about the jobs of the future.

Right.

And these are high school students trying to figure out where to go to college, what to major in. What's your advice to high school students now if they ask you that question?

My advice to high school students is that do not restrict yourself to one field, one domain. As a matter of fact, as you know, in my book I provided a blueprint for what they can do. I said master the technical literacy, namely how computer works and how we can interact with them. Master data literacy, namely understand the enormous flow of information generated by artificial systems computing, etc. And try to make sense out of it and navigate it. That's what I call the data literacy. And third, focus on the human literacy, namely focus on what makes us unique as humans. The ability to be creative, entrepreneurial, the ability to be culturally agile, to be empathetic, to work with people and look them in the eye and understand them. And it's integration of the three that's essential. So if you are a student going to college, go for combined degrees in different fields. If they don't have a humanics curriculum, integrating the three literacies is what I call the humanics curriculum. Go for combined fields that will allow you to do that. Combine majors, majors and minors. But also go out test yourself in the real world through experiential.

So test yourself in the real world. I talked a lot in this, in this talk I gave in Atlanta about co ops, you know, gave a big plug to Northeastern. Why I'm still amazed, even in this day and age when we talk about the combination of the soft skills and the hard skills, classroom learning, experiential learning. Why are more schools not doing co ops?

The question is the following. Your question is what is the barrier to entry? And the barrier to entry I feel ultimately is the faculty himself or herself. Let me explain. You know, we have at Northeastern now over 3,000 employers, NGOs and for profits worldwide. And that's around the worldwide over 130 countries. So when faculty come to Northeastern, they know that experiential education is something that we do and we design the courses to integrate the classroom experience with the world experience. But I have to tell you, I saw it myself. When students come back from a co op, whether it's in San Francisco or in Cape Town and you are talking about an issue that they lived, whether it's in Shanghai or in New York and you're talking about the economy in Shanghai, you're talking about pollution in Shanghai. They can question you, they can tell you this is not what I saw. So in other words, the. They got out of the comfort zone and they get you out of your comfort zone as a faculty.

So are the faculty the biggest hurdle

then at some of these schools to co ops?

I think ultimately because you have. Because we are not interested in, with experiential education in sending students to co op or an internship or any experience. We are interested in the integration, the classroom. Because before you go you have to prepare them to understand the place they are going to, to understand themselves and then to while they are there we have a mentor that is working with them in the workplace. And when they come back it's integration that is key. So the whole continuum, the whole process means that they are at the time same center stage. And it's not the lecture that is the center stage.

But Joseph, this is a way that you differentiate yourself, right?

The Northeastern differentiates itself.

It seems in this era when so many colleges are struggling that this would be a way that institutions, especially when parents and students are so worried about getting a job afterwards. It seems like this would be maybe not a simple way, but a way to, to differentiate your institution from others.

I see signs and maybe you don't

want to encourage others to join you in this.

Usually no one has the monopoly of anything because this is a hundred year old innovation and it's amazing that it is still considered an innovation in higher education. But I see signs of change at two levels. Some interactions, international universities, namely global universities, non US universities want to really move in this and adopt experiential education. But also I am seeing signs where some liberal arts colleges are doing that because liberal arts colleges are waking up to the fact that they have to be very relevant in order to attract the students. You know, you know, you wrote about it, you discussed it, you lectured about it. Jeff yourself. They, you know, the situation is tough for liberal arts colleges. So I see some liberal arts colleges adopting experiential education.

So let's talk about that. And this will end on this about the future of higher ed, particularly institutions. You know, Clay Christensen recently said, you know, the bottom 15, 25% of different sectors of higher education are going to face a real tough future. I just wrote a piece about the demographic changes that are coming to the country, particularly in the Midwest and the Northeast where there are a lot of colleges, as you well know. You know Places like Boston, New York, are going to face a big cliff in terms of traditional students. Do you feel like, what do you think of these projections that perhaps hundreds of colleges might close? You saw in your own backyard in Boston, a merger or a takeover, I guess it would be of a merger of Wheeling, Wheelock and Boston University. Do you foresee more stuff like that, or do you see some closures coming?

What's going to happen?

I foresee more of that because, as a matter of fact, we have been asked to take some and, you know, to take over some of these institutions.

And do you want to do that?

You know, the answer is not clear. It's not clear because sometimes you have to look at it and say, am I better off launching something de novo rather than taking something? And, you know, and so that's the issue that you face constantly. But to answer your question about the future, higher education is a diverse endeavor, but it's not differentiated enough. I feel that apart from, you know, the institutions that have the huge endowment that will allow them to survive no matter what, people will have to start thinking about their differentiation in order to flourish and in order to attract students. If you want to think about your differentiation, you cannot do it unless you're in tune with the reality of the world. And that's the new opportunity for higher education. You know, AI is changing the workplace. AI is going to impact lives even more. And if you're oblivious to that, you are going to pay the price.

And are too many boards and presidents possibly oblivious to that?

Well, I think that's an opportunity. That's an opportunity that we have as presidents in order to lead our constituencies, to think about the future and see how we are positioning the institution with respect to this future. Either you lead or you disappear. Perfect.

Thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you, Jeff. Always good to be with you.

So that was a fascinating conversation with the president of Northeastern, who not only has a pulse on the future of higher education, but really the future of work and, dare I say, society. I'm curious, Jeff, as you were sitting with him during the conversation, what are the one or two aha moments that just sort of lit you up and said, whoa.

You know, people think of Northeastern because of its co op program, right? So they think of it as a very practical degree. But what really fascinated me was his focus on kind of the. What I would call the skills of the liberal arts, right? This ability to navigate ambiguity of the future and this need for teamwork and problem solving and things like that. So he talks about these future skills that students are going to need. And even at a place like Northeastern, which is so focused on practical hands on knowledge that students get through the co ops that they're going to need to have to figure out how to balance this in the curriculum. So I think that Northeastern sometimes gets a knock for being too practically oriented and many other colleges do as well. But I think many of these colleges are also thinking about how to blend those two things together.

It reminds me when Bob Mendenhall, former president of Western Governors, once said to me, you know Michael, the basis of a really good career program is actually a great liberal arts education and content knowledge and skills are not separable. They're actually a circle and thought that was a great way to frame it. So fascinating conversation and really appreciate you all joining us on Future youe. As a reminder, you can find us on the web, Jeff Salingo is jeffsalingo.com and on Twitter at jsalingo. I'm Michael Horn. You can find me on the web@michaelbhorn.com and on Twitter at michaelbhorn. And if you like the show, rate us and subscribe to us on itunes. It helps us find listeners. And more listeners means a more robust community and more interesting conversations. So thanks again so much for joining us. We'll see you next time.