Kicking Off a Fall Like No Other

So, Michael, it's great to see you over Zoom again. Although it seems like just yesterday we were recording the last season of Future youe. So it wasn't really much of a summer break for us this year, was it?

No, not, not at all, Jeff. And certainly not for the leaders, faculty and staff at colleges and universities around the country either, as they've been planning, as you know, frantically for the fall. And that's exactly what we get to talk about today on our first episode of this new season, a Summer during COVID and Higher Ed, and what our listeners can expect during season four of Future youe. I'm Michael Horne.

And I'm Jeff Salingo. And welcome to Future youe. Today is our customary welcome back show, but it doesn't really feel all that normal because it's been a pretty unusual summer for higher ed. As we all know, generally, summer is a time for pauses in the academic calendar, for faculty and staff to refresh and gear up. And they've been certainly gearing up for summer, but not perhaps getting so much time to refresh. When I look at my Twitter feed, I'm just talking about all the stress on higher education faculty this summer who've had to plan for both being in person in one moment and then teaching online another moment. And, Michael, that's, that's meant for the news cycle in higher ed. It hasn't slowed down one bit either, even as we took a brief hiatus from Future you.

Yeah, and it was certainly brief, but it was interesting, Jeff. I was talking to an NPR reporter just the other day on the higher ed beat, and he was remarking at just how there's been no let up in the news cycle this summer for colleges and universities and subsequently for him. And so I thought it made sense for us to start today's show right there to, to catch up on the summer in higher ed and our reflections on what's transpired. Jeff. At a high level anyway, which it's gonna be a good precursor, I think, to how we've planned out the season of Future youe, which if I've learned anything, you know, we should be wary to say that these are definitive plans. Cause everything could change as we as we learned last year. But our plan at least is to continue to focus on the dramatic changes occurring across the higher ed landscape. Thanks, of course, to COVID 19, but also some of the trends that were happening before the continued digitization of the university, challenges to the business model of higher ed and more.

Yeah, Michael, I think that's a good plan. And I probably put plan in quotes, right, because we started last season, we had kind of, I think two different seasons of Future you last year, kind of pre Covid and post Covid. And we're kind of still in that mode this year as well. And I'm particularly excited because we have a pretty awesome slate of guests coming up on Future youe. We have the president as well as the CFO of Dickinson College in Pennsylvania to talk about how their reopening plans to changed over the summer. We also have Marnie Baker Stein of Western Governor's University who's gonna be on talking about the digital transformation of higher ed and what this moment means not only for online learning, but something I think most college leaders are talking about and that is the future of hybrid learning, partly face to face, partly in person.

Yeah, it's a good point. And I'm also excited because we've for a long time talked about having our friend, the president of Southern New Hampshire University, Paul LeBlanc, on. And while I think we thought we would do it in person and we were waiting for that, right, Mom? We're going to do it over zoom. And we're going to be thrilled to talk with him later this season about certainly the dramatic announcements that Southern New Hampshire University has made. But even more so, he started to reflect a lot more about what those changes means for higher ed more broadly and the different business models that'll make higher ed sustainable in the future. And to that end, I'm also looking forward to continuing one of our themes from the end of last season, which is to talk about how to communicate in higher ed in a crisis to all the different stakeholders that a campus has and to expl the importance of communications. Because, Jeff, I'll confess, at least from my perspective, that's something that a lot of folks, not just in higher ed, but K12 as well, have just fallen a bit flat on over the last few months. And I think it's something very worth exploring. On that note, Jeff, I'll, I'll also say the other thing I'm really excited about before we get into some themes from the summer, and I'm sure it's not something you're at all excited about, but your new book is coming out in just a few weeks. It's, you know, we've been talking about it a lot and it's, it's finally here. And for those listening who don't know, the book is called who Gets in and a Year Inside College Admissions. And it's available for pre order now but we're going to devote a whole episode to it because, Jeff, you don't have to say this, certainly, but I will for you. It's a really good book. I learned a ton from it, even as someone who's embedded in this higher ed world. And I think for everyone who reads it, it'll be eye opening. I'm curious, you know, a lot of folks are saying, well, he reported it before the pandemic. Hasn't a lot changed. How are you thinking about the relevancy in this time? I confess from my perspective, I think it's still relevant. But I'm curious how you're thinking about that.

Well, I appreciate that, Michael, and I keep telling people it's relevant and here's why I think it's relevant. The best analogy that I'm giving to folks right now because I'm a huge, as you probably know, I'm a huge baseball fan. Really was hoping to celebrate here in my hometown of, of Washington, the Nationals world championship last year. But of course, nobody's allowed in baseball stadiums.

But they're still playing well, at least you guys are.500. The Red Sox are sinking quick. So go ahead.

That's true. What I think is interesting to me as we think about how baseball is being played is that it's still on the same field, but the rules have slightly changed. And I think that's the same thing in college admissions. The college admissions process is still going to be played on the same field. Institutions will still have their priorities in terms of what they're looking for in students. But some of the rules are going to change mostly around testing because the SAT and ACT have canceled a ton of tests and they're probably going to cancel more this fall. And as a result, a lot of institutions have gone test optional. And so that's the biggest probably rule change. But as you know from reading the book, I talk a little bit about how testing or talk a lot about how testing is not as big as people think it is in college admissions, especially parents and students. So that's the good news for the book in most cases and really looking forward to that episode where we could dive in a lot deeper.

Yeah, one quick thing on the testing just because, and we'll talk about it more. But I've actually been very frustrated that people haven't read your book yet when they've been talking about the testing conversation because it feels so separated from what you reported and revealed about how tests are or often really are not used as people think they are in admissions. Jeff yeah.

And it's really scary. Michael. I've been doing some webinars at night with parents and students and the amazing stories you're hearing from people who are willing to travel three or four states away hours, overnight trip just to take a test. And they don't believe. And this is something again, I think we'll talk about when we do the show on the book. They don't believe colleges are really test optional. And they think, well, if they really are test optional, why don't they go test blind? So it's something really excited to be digging into deeper in another show. So, Michael, let's talk a little bit about the summer that is the summer of 2020, although I hope that that we possibly could just forget about this in a couple of years. What are some of the big themes for you as you think about the summer?

Yeah, unfortunately I think history books are going to continue to reprise it. But you know, I think obviously the big themes are probably no brainers. I mean, college is reversing, reversing their reopening plans. Right. That's been a huge storyline, something we predicted on Future you. But now we're seeing it materialize really en masse over the last month and a half or so. And I think the other one is that the major football conferences have started to call off their seasons. Not everyone, but a couple big announcements in the last week. And that was something we also talked about on the final episode of Future you, where we said, pretty sure college football is not going to be an easy thing to pull off.

No. And it's fascinating to me, the Big Ten and the Pac 12 being the first among the big Power 5 conferences to call off the fall season. And I was talking to a senior college leader who's had experiences at multiple Big Ten institutions. We were talking specifically about Nebraska, of course, because there was rumblings that Nebraska might try to play outside. They might try to play outside the conference. I don't think that's going to be easy. But one of the things that really interested me about why the Pac12 and the Big Ten were leaders on this and the Big Ten in particular, is that I worked on a paper a couple of years ago for the Big Ten Academic alliance, which is kind of the academic side of the Big Ten. One of the questions that was being asked by the funder of this paper, which was a big foundation, was could we have similar academic alliances through the other athletic conferences, the acc, the SEC and so forth. And when I did the interviews for that, one of the things I realized is that in the Big Ten and, and a little bit in the Pac 12 as well, is that institutions see themselves as academic peers. Yes. I know Michigan thinks they're better than probably everybody else. And Northwestern is like kind of the outlier in the, in the Big Ten because they're the private among all these big publics. Right. But, but, but for the most part, they, they think of themselves as peers. And in one of the examples that was given to me from somebody in the acc, for example, is, you know, we have Duke and Louisville, and, you know, Duke is a top 10 research university, and no offense to our listeners at Louisville, they're not. And so we don't see ourselves as academic peers. And so when the presidents get together, there's not as much commonality among them as a result. Right. They're a little further spread out geographically, although all the conferences now are, I guess. But more so, the presidents don't always see eye to eye because they don't necessarily agree on the academic side of things. They're really there only for the athletics. And that's why I think in the sec, you know, you have Vanderbilt in Alabama and you have the Big 12, you have Texas and then Oklahoma. So because of that, I think that's why we're seeing, I think, the Big 12 and the Pac 12 start off on canceling their season.

Yeah, that's super interesting. I'd love to switch gears a little bit because it relates to something that, that you wrote about recently. Because we're going to get, I mean, let's actually just say this. We're going to have plenty of time to get into some of these reopening questions in fall football and so forth, particularly in our very next episode of Future youe, when we have Dickinson's president cfo, as well as feature the College Crisis Initiative at Davidson to talk about how they're tracking colleges reopening plans. But, you know, talking about sort of the interaction not just between universities, but within universities. You wrote an article over the summer for the Atlantic titled Colleges Are Deeply Unequal Workplaces. And I'd love to dig into what you wrote and maybe starting Jeff with the premise behind the article, because that is quite a provocative headline.

Yeah. So, you know, it's something that I've always thought when I was working at the Chronicle in terms of what a college campus. You know, we tend to think of college campuses as places for students, but at the end of the day, they're also workplaces employing hundreds and thousands of people. And I always remember people talking about, about the faculty, tenured faculty versus non tenured faculty, and how you're kind of in a club once you get tenure and you don't want anybody else in the club. Well, I think those clubs also exist between faculty and staff. And that's a really big divide in higher ed, where you have administrators on one level, then you have faculty and then you kind of have everybody else. And nobody was really talking about that. And the premise for the article was the New York Times wrote this piece about all these professors not wanting to come back into the classroom. And I'm thinking, well, staff really don't have that choice. And then Florida State University came out with this policy that basically said everybody has to get back to campus if you can. And by the way, we're not going to support you working from home if you also have children at home. It was remarkable. But again, faculty at most campuses right now, they have the choice about whether to come back, whether to teach in person or not. And they have the flexibility to do that with office hours and when their courses are, staff don't. And so really the piece was trying to explain 50% of employees in higher ed are staff. But we also tend to think of staff as people in the dining halls and people driving the buses on campus or people taking care of the physical plan. But there's also all this other staff that has grown up over the last couple of decades in higher ed. Academic advisors are staff people who make the HR functions and the IT functions. They're all staff lawyers. Right. So these are also very professional people as well, kind of in many ways on the same level as the faculty. They're just not treated the same way. And compare that to other workplaces in America where you have management and staff. And yes, maybe there are higher level staff and lower level staff, but I don't think see this wide gulf between faculty and staff and other workplaces, maybe in hospitals, between doctors and nurses, but not in quite the same way, I think, as we do in higher ed.

Yeah, it's an interesting point, Jeff. And I take it maybe one step further, which is that I think so much of the reopening decision and conversation has been safety for students in the media and sort of parents focusing on that rather than thinking about what this could do from a spread perspective, transmission outbreaks in communities and things of that nature. And the focus on staff that your article had really brings that to light because they're sort of the front lines. Right. Of that conversation and a significant piece of the equation, maybe more so the Students might get sick, maybe they won't get seriously sick, maybe they won't go to the hospital. These staff members could. Right?

Yeah. And the other thing is that they have very little protection compared to the faculty. So when we see, and we're going to be talking about this with the College Crisis Initiative, when you're tracking who gets to work at home and who doesn't, but more so who's been laid off, who's been furloughed, much harder hit on the staff than the faculty. Even though I think it's the staff that if you really want to come back to campus, you need staff there to get it going. They're the engine that makes the campuses run. Even if the faculty, I get it, are the professors and are the instructors. But if you don't have that underlying basis, those underlying folks, to get the campus running, you're not going to get back to campus.

Yeah. Well, I encourage everyone to read the article. Colleges are deeply unequal workplaces. But, Jeff, with the remaining time in this episode, I'm going to switch topics on you and go personal for a moment because I know it wasn't quite the summer we had all imagined, but what was your best moment from the summer?

Well, Michael, we had plans to go away to Ireland this summer that were with family, extended family, and that was canceled, of course, like most people's plans. And so we spend a lot of time locally. And I think probably the best moment is we got, you know, as you know, we're in Washington, D.C. we got away to the Eastern Shore of Maryland on the Chesapeake Bay this summer with the, with the kids and just had a kind of a very relaxing week doing some canoeing and paddle boarding, eating crabs, and you kind of appreciate what's in your backyard a little bit more. We've been spending a little time, Washington is.

Is dead.

It's empty right now. And so we've been also going down to see the monuments, which we were never really able to do in the summer with the hordes of crowds. So one thing that I think is great, and my kids are 8 and 10 now, is we're really appreciating what's in our backyard. And so in some ways, I'm kind of glad that we got this summer I'm not traveling and we're able to look at what's in our backyard and appreciate it a little bit more. So, right back at you, Michael. What's your summer been like? What's the best moment for you?

Yeah, I mean, as you know, I came down to D.C. with my family for a week. It wasn't under great moment. It was a family funeral, which is a tough way to start things. But I would say the positive side, right, was my kids, me, my wife, getting to spend time with my side of the family and just really be around each other, even if we were physically distant. It was an incredible moment. And then, like you, we came back and immediately went to Rockport, Massachusetts. So our backyard, not a place where we would have rented a house ordinarily, I think, but just had a week together. Being together and like you not traveling for the summer and just being around my kids, that's been awesome. It's been, it's been a heck of a lot of fun. And, and I think those are what will take from the summer. Right. Is to pull forward is a lot of those memories of togetherness on a lazy beach in Rockport.

So did you have a chance to. To read anything over the summer?

Yeah, Jeff. So I, you know, didn't get maybe the reading time I expected over the summer because the absence of playing time and kids around and so forth. But did did get some moments and two books popped to the top of my list that I'd recommend. One, I finally read the Wise Men, Six Friends in the World. They made the Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas book that they wrote years ago fascinating. Just thinking about shaping the post World War II era and sort of what's going to come in the post Covid era. A lot of reflections from that. And then the second one is a book that's not out yet, but I got to read Joseph Ayoun has an upcoming book with MIT Press and got to read that and sort of like a spy thriller on how Northeastern responded to the COVID crisis. It's a gripping read. What about you?

So because I was preparing to launch a book, I didn't get as much reading as I had hoped, but I did read the End of October, which is Lawrence Writes a Novel on a Global Pand Boy. How I wish I could be an author who years ago would write a book that would come out about a pandemic in the middle of a pandemic. That's the type of book you want to read. I read it while we were on vacation. I think people were wondering why I was reading a book about a pandemic in the middle of a pandemic. But it was a great read and really hoping to read more fiction in the coming year. Although did read a nonfiction book in many moments. So, Michael, I think that's probably a good place to leave it and to tease what's coming up. A lot of what's to come on Future youe. And we're really excited for this year. And to that end, I think we ought to end on two things.

Michael all right, go for it, Jeff.

So first, I think we're excited because we have a new producer helping us out on the show, Matt Krupnik. So we still have our audio producer with us, Steve Shigeris from past years, but Matt is joining us mostly on the content side of things. Many people in higher ed might recognize his name. He's a freelance reporter and editor who has contributed regularly to the New York Times, the Guardian, and Heckinger Report. He was a reporter, a former reporter with the center for Public Integrity's investigation unit. So really a long history in covering higher ed, and we're really excited to have him on our team this year. In terms of helping us out with these episodes, we're also going to do our best to start adding some regular segments to the show, some of our top reads in higher ed, and answering questions from our lawyer listeners. So please keep pinging us. We know we get questions sometimes and we're hoping to answer more of them this year than we have in past years.

Yeah, that sounds like a good plan for the season ahead. And we'll continue to keep plan in quotes because you just never know what's going to come down, what 2020 is going to throw at us. But we'll leave it there for our first episode of Season four, and we'll see you next time on Future youe. Hey folks, Michael Horn here. Hope you enjoyed the latest episode of Future youe. 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.