Kickoff to Season 5

And just like that, the summer is over. And so too is the hiatus for Future youe. And here we are back with Season five.

Jeff yeah, that's right, Michael. And perhaps we all thought maybe prematurely a few months ago that when we did return so too with some normalcy to our lives and maybe to the show know vaccination rates were rising and COVID infections were dropping. But we all know that has changed with the Delta variant. Today on this, our 85th episode, we're going to discuss what else changed over the summer in Higher ed, the workforce, and preview a bit of what's coming up as we approach our 100th episode in the months ahead on future you.

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I'm Michael Horn.

And I'm Jeff Salingo.

Jeff, it is good to see you still virtually, although we're about to be together in person for ASU GSV and for those that don't know, that's an annual gathering of education innovation that occurs every year in San Diego. It's generally in the spring, but they've moved it forward this year just given all of the dances, if you will, around logistics of COVID But we're going to record two episodes there and it's going to be really good to be back. It's going to be good to be back in person with you, Jeff. And for our listeners, this opening episode will be a bit different from normal. It will be shorter and we won't have a guest. The format you're accustomed to, though, will return for our second episode when we broadcast from gsv.

Yeah, that's right, Michael. And today we're going to, I think, talk about the past few months, the the biggest stories that might stick in higher ed and we'll probably be doing a few episodes on those in the in the coming year, full episodes on those, you know, projects that we've been working on that might interest our listeners and, and what we've been reading or listening to this summer. Does that sound good?

Sure does, Jeff. So let's get started. I'm curious what you think were the biggest headlines in higher ed this past summer?

Well, I think there were, were several. Right. So there was of course Nicole Hannah Jones, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who was declined tenure when she was hired by UNC Chapel Hill because of some political interference over her work on the 1619 Project which examined the consequences of slavery in the U.S. she eventually got tenure from Carolina after several weeks and a lot of headlines. But then she decided to take control and go to Howard University instead. And so that was a big headline of course this summer. And then there's the, the 2U.ed X deal. And then of course there was vaccine vaccine mandates by colleges which were now seeing colleges enforced. There's this news recently out of UVA that they disenrolled more than 50 students for not having one. There was the Wall Street Journal's excellent coverage of the debt taken on for master's degrees that I think led to a lot of coverage. Some good, I will say, and some bad about whether the master's degree is worth it. But if I had to pick one, I'm going to pick the Supreme Court ruling in June that said the NCAA could not block certain education related payments to college athletes. And that was the, the same week that a bunch of laws took effect in the states that will allow college athletes to earn money from endorsement deals and autographs and appearances. Right. The whole idea of name a name, image and likeness debate that has gone on and in, in, in college sports for, for so long. I think this really kind of gets to the core of, of athletics and college athletics. And we, we tend to think of it, we tend to talk about it as amateurism, but we know that's really a myth. I think the only people that talk about it as an amateur thing is the NCAA itself. You know, we all knew it was a myth. And now the Supreme Court and the states really forced the NCAA's hand. And I think the, the question now is what happens next and its impact on, on, on institutions. There's, there's a great piece and we'll put it in the show Notes in Education next that just came out that really went through the history of this and the ncaa. And I was reading this piece before we went on the air and I just want to pull a few things out about it. You know, first of all, 65 schools in the most elite college athletic programs, right. Took an 8.5 billion in revenue in 2016. Right. So they're making all of this money on college athletics. And you know, and again it's at the very elite level here. But you Know, a lot of this was not going to student athletes because under these regulations, they couldn't get anything above the cost of attendance. And we saw within weeks, actually within days of these changes, but both the Supreme Court ruling and these laws in the states and then the ncaa, we saw a number of endorsement deals, you know, with, with a number of stars at different institutions kind of come to be. And in fact, in, in Arkansas, this barbecue joint, which was in this, which was in the, the next piece, you know, they decided to sponsor the entire offensive line of the University of Arkansas Raise Razorbacks men's football team, right? So you're going to see like this kind of constantly over and over again at the, at the biggest institutions. Now, there's a couple of things that I'm looking for in this, right? One is you're going to see a lot of conference realignment, I think now, because certain teams, certain conferences I think, are just going to get more money out of this. And, you know, we're already seeing it in just the last couple of weeks. We saw Oklahoma and Texas say they're leaving the Big 12 to head over to the SEC, which is already a powerhouse conference. And I think what's interesting to those who may not care about sports is that the realignment also has some academic realignments. You might remember a couple of years ago when Maryland and Rutgers came into, into the Big Ten. Remember, many of these institutions see each other as academic peers as well. That's definitely the case in the Big Ten. It's less so the case in probably the, the Big 12 or the SEC, but also the case, I think, in the, in the, in the pack 12 as well. So when you see realignment, there are other academic ramifications for that alignment beyond just what's happening in athletics. I also think that this is really going to cause some institutions to drop out of Division 1 or to drop football or perhaps basketball because it just becomes too expensive. You know, a lot of athletics we know is caught up in prestige in alumni. So I think we're going to see over the next couple of years a lot of debates on campuses that's going to pit different stakeholders together, including the faculty who in some campuses really don't like athletics and all the money it gets alumni who really, you know, cheer rah rah for, for their, for their team. And then you're going to see other presidents who think that it's necessary in order to, to maintain their prestige. Remember, a place like Georgia State didn't even have a football team until 2008. But largely they thought, you know, if we're going to be seen as a, as a major university in this country, you know, we have to have a football team. And they added that back in 2008. And then I think, I think the third ramification from this is going to be some presidents just saying, you know what, it's not worth fighting over anymore. And I'm just going to walk away. You know, we're already seeing some presidents leave prematurely and I think and we're hopefully going to do a show on that this, this season and I think that we're going to see maybe more of that in the, in the coming year. So I think conference realignment institutions really thinking about how much they want to do Division 1 sports, especially football and basketball and how much is that really tied up in, in their, in their rankings and their prestige and then presidents and whether they really want to stick this out and deal with the ramifications of this NCAA ruling. So how about you Michael, what's, what's the headline that caught your, your attention this summer?

Well, it's hard to argue with your list, Jeff. I think you have the major ones. And I just have to say I'm so glad that the O line got some love because a lot of times they didn't. So I love that you pulled that fact out of the next piece. But you know, I'll just add one more on top of the ones that you added which, which is movement in the federal government on financing of college was the other news item that I don't think has created the headline moment yet. But we did see President Biden push off student loan repayments to January 31, 2022. So that was another delay in response to the pandemic. I think that's significant. It creates more battlegrounds certainly around what will he ultimately do on student loan repayments, what will he cancel and so forth. But simultane we saw free community college perhaps get a way to get enacted into law that at least I and I think many others were skeptical would happen. But as part of the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill the Democrats would like to push forward free community college is very likely at the moment anyway. It appears to be part of that. So I think that's something to stay tuned on. But I'll weigh in on one of the headlines that you raised which was look, there were a number of eye popping fundraises and deals in ed Tech over the past few months. But you mentioned to you the OPM, we of course had Chip Palacek the CEO on this podcast acquiring edX, which we had, the CEO of edX, Anant Agarwal, on this podcast as well. And of course, EDX is the nonprofit that was run or is still run jointly by MIT and Harvard for the moment. And edX, you know, 39 million people, having learned on its platform, with a reach over well over 120 million, brings in over $80 million in revenue a year, but was consistently losing money. And from my perspective, I think both sides came out really well out of this deal. On the EDX side, you know, they had advanced major things in online learning, such as the Micromaster's degree, the micro micro bachelor's degree, this notion of stackability, right? Credits you earn from different places, being able to count towards something larger, really taking a degree and dismantling it into its component parts to make it much more modular and affordable. But while EDX traffic, while their traffic exploded during the pandemic, it couldn't possibly keep up with its competitor, which was Coursera, of course, that went public in the last several months. They grew even faster. And of course Coursera has deep access to private capital markets. And just the price of keeping up for EDX just kept rising. And at some point, I think Harvard and MIT came to the realization that having an entity that was growing but losing money and, and really required more investment to stay relevant, they had already put in $80 million into the nonprofit. It just didn't make sense from a mission perspective. And so of course, getting $800 million from 2U to purchase the asset to allow Harvard and MIT to do some research and development on the future of online learning, we can come back to that, of course, and where will it actually go? But I think that was a good, a good outcome for the universities and for 2U, of course, you know, I think this was tremendous for them because it allows them to better compete with Coursera, which was in essence positioning itself as a disruptor in the field relative to 2U. And now, thanks to the EDX acquisition, you know, 2U has a much bigger direct to consumer pipeline. They have millions of people that have been coming and will keep coming to the EDX website, fueled by incredible higher ed brands that they'll be able to take and say, okay, Jeff, do you want a degree? Do you want a certificate? Do you want a Micromasters? Do you want a micro bachelor's? And it's going to dramatically lower the cost of acquisition for their, for the bigger programs that 2U offers, for its boot camps, for its degrees and so forth. And, and I think that's going to be a tremendous win for them because online learning, many people don't realize this perhaps, but it's been a game where the costs to acquire students have gone up for most institutions over time. And for 2U, this is going to allow them to cut into that and give them a full sweep of products and services that run the gambit from free to their high priced and very high touch degrees, which are a differentiator in the space. So I think they came out, you know, really well out of this and they better position themselves against the disruptors like a Coursera or a Noodle Partners and some of those other entities that have differentiated cost structures. Now there's some questions here, Jeff, I think we'll have to see. Will the institutions that put their courses on edX, I think it's fair to say some of them feel blindsided and a bit betrayed. Will they keep their courses, their offerings on the edx and now to you platform going forward? That's something that we'll have to keep an eye on. But, but I think it's a fascinating set of developments in a very, in a part of the market that's maturing rapidly right now.

Michael, that was an incredible summary of what's happened and we're definitely going to do a whole show on this, by the way, for our listeners. I think there are just so many questions still to answer. And there were three things that you said that were interesting to me. One is you mentioned that $800 million fund and what's going to happen to it. And I think there's a lot of people out there who want to know, well, how are they going to spend that $800 million? They talk about research and things like that. It would be interesting. In some ways that's like a major foundation in terms of, in terms of what they could give out. And so we'll be very interested in that. I think you talked about that there were some academic partners that are not happy today because of this because they, you know, they wanted EDX to succeed as a, as a nonprofit. They were kind of all in on that and that's not what they have now. So I think that I would love to kind of dig deeper onto the academic partner side of the house. And then you were talking about what this does for, for two you. Which I think is interesting because if you look at the slide deck that two you put out when they made the acquisition, you know, marketing costs are a huge part of all of these opiums and you know, the more potential students you have out there, the potential to lower those marketing costs. But then on top of that, you also have, as, as you mentioned now, a broader sweep of products. And again, there was that slide that if you, if anybody goes to the investor deck that they put out for this, that shows now to you kind of controlling a larger portion of all the products that are out there in, In. In higher. In higher ed. But Michael, I think you're burying the lead a little bit because I know from our discussions over the summer that you have your own headline, that you're writing a new book. So can you, can you tell us a little bit about that?

Yeah, indeed I am, Jeff. For better or insane? I am. You know, I have a few. Insane might be the best way to insane for those that have done this. Right. Insane is always the operative word. But I have a few book projects on the burner. But the one that's in the here and now, if you will, feels like an urgent one. It's a book focused on K12 education. So sort of my roots right in the education space. That came out of a second podcast that I started during the pandemic called Class Disrupted. And it basically came out of this urgency, as I said, that I felt that we needed to comprehensively redesign schools to better serve all learners. And we're in this moment where we can question so many assumptions. We're going into a third year of uncertainty. And the fact that in our system today, students start out in kindergarten, fascinated by schooling and end up bored, that's actually not a coincidence. It's the logical outgrowth of how our K12 schools are built, which to be fair, they were a success design for the United States of America for many, many decades. But in today's day and age, in the knowledge economy in which we're living, in which we cover all the time in the context of higher ed, in the workforce, it leaves way too many students behind, and not just from low income and minority families, I'd argue, but literally everyone. And so out of the pandemic, in my view, we have a set of choices about what we build out of this devastation, what we choose to create. And the book is really about framing those choices and for me, putting some stakes in the ground about what I think schools should be doing based on the research that's out there. And it's everything from mastery based or competency based learning to upending our teaching model and moving to more co teaching arrangements and things of that nature. So I'm still looking for a Title. If anyone has any ideas and you're listening, shoot me a line. But the draft manuscript is due this fall, and then the book should be out in early summer, probably around July. So that's on my plate. But I know you have a few things you've been working on, too. Maybe not books, but you're certainly doing some writing right now. So what's out there that you'd flag for our listeners?

Yeah, there's no book yet. I actually took off a lot of time this summer to recharge my batteries and to think about a new book idea. But I did publish two short white papers on enrollment and pricing that update papers from a few years ago. The first iteration of the pricing one was something I did with you, and Rick Stasloff joined me on this second iteration. Rick, as many of our listeners might know, is a former CFO in higher ed and now consults with colleges on program mix and pricing. And we collaborated on this one. There are two takeaways from that paper and again, we'll put it in the show notes. One was around really aligning demand and cost of programs. You know, you, last year on Future you, we talked about a number of papers that we did and helped out on with Burning Glass. If you're around kind of new programs that were started that didn't have a lot of demand, didn't have a lot of graduates, Matt and I worked on a paper Matt Singleman from Burning Glass and I worked on a paper around trying to build new demand for programs coming out of the pandemic. And one of the things that Rick really added, I think, to this pricing paper was that pricing in higher ed really needs to align with the demand for programs and the cost of offering those programs. As we still know, many institutions can't tell you what it costs to provide a degree in X in over a year or over four years. And coming out of the pandemic, I think that's going to be critical. The other thing we talked a lot about was differential pricing. Michael, I don't know. Are you, are you a fan of Disney?

I personally like it. I'm not sure that my better half shares my sentiments, but I personally like Disney quite a bit.

Well, as you know, because I tweeted about this this week.

Yes, you did.

You know, Disney, Disney changed their they're fast passes, right. So they're now charging for them in, in a different way. And, and it was fascinating going through that, you know, the search, you know, they're doing everything from surge pricing to, to personalized pathways through the park. And as I was reading that story about, I can't even imagine the data work that went in behind this to determine how to price these things, when to price them, things like that, I started to think about what if we brought more differential pricing to higher ed? And as people noted when I tweeted that out, well, we already have differential pricing, but of course it's hidden from most parents and students in terms of merit aid and things like that.

But what if it's also backward, right? Because we, yeah, it's also backward, right. We put our worst price upfront and then hidden, you discount from there where, whereas generally you go with your low price and then you, you have the add ons. But. Yes, Jeff, but.

Right, but we know so much now about demand and, and what, you know. And again, if we go back to what Rick said, if we start to figure out how much these programs cost, we could potentially do more differential pricing. So, so Michael, I said up front that I've been less productive this summer because I took off a lot of time to recharge. We spent time in, in New England, the Jersey Shore, where I caught up on reading and a lot of other podcasts. So as we, as we wrap up today, I'd love to hear about your summer. What did you read? Did you listen to anything that might interest our listeners?

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I would say that's not, not productive time. Right. Recharging is very productive. So good for you. And you know, funny enough, my vacations were also spent in New England in the Jersey Shore, and yet we didn't get to meet up during them. So we'll have to rectify that in future. But I would say it's continued to be a strange summer up here. But you know, outside of almost finishing the last of Walter Isaacson's books, you know, I've been on this mission to read all of his books and I'm almost done with Code Breaker, which I will say is very relevant for the current crisis with the pandemic and the vaccines. Right. That have come out to allow us to hopefully get out of this and hopefully people listening, get your vaccines. But also for those interested in research in higher education, it goes into great detail about the academic rivalries that result around these breakthroughs in discovery and who takes credit for it and the patents and dollars that that means for the individuals, companies and institutions. So it's, it's, it's quite fascinating, I think, on multiple levels. I'll add that I'm looking forward to Paul LeBlanc's new book that's coming out this fall, which I've had a chance to read and I think will be an important one for policymakers in particular in higher ed. The only other one I'll mention, Jeff, is I got to read Tom Eisenman of Harvard Business School's book why Startups Fail. And I thought it was interesting for aspiring entrepreneurs in the higher ed space, starting companies out, being wary of the traps, if you will, that you can get into both in the early stage but also later stage after you've built a business and just to be wary of them so that we can see more success, frankly, in actually contributing value. But I'm curious to hear what's been on your playlist or your nightstand. And you also got to travel abroad for work actually, so I think people would love to hear what that experience was like.

So I wrote about that experience on LinkedIn, so we'll put that in the show notes as well. But I will tell you I went to a conference. There was only about 50 of us in Madrid, Spain. It was the Bankinter foundation put on a conference around the future of education and work. It was great. I got to meet some US Presidents that I hadn't met before, as well as a bunch of folks from Europe in this space. But getting there and back was not easy, I will tell you. Not only did there were a lot of protocols around testing and what you had to prove, but you know, there are a lot fewer flights now and when something goes wrong on your trip, as it did for me getting out of dc, it just backs everything up and, and it's not easy to switch flights like it was back in the the pre pandemic days. But I got some reading done as a result on that trip because I was stuck a lot and also listening I, I, I really am getting into the How I Built this podcast, which is really focused on entrepreneurs obviously. But, but Guy Raz, who hosts that show, also has been doing a virtual summit this summer and and he had one of my favorite authors on who is Adam Grant recently and it's an episode that I really think that college leaders or anybody that works in higher education should listen to that particular episode because Adam talks a lot about how ideas take hold and when we stick with a product for too long and what happens when that, when that happens. And I thought a lot about the analogies with higher ed is that there's so many ideas percolating now because of the pandemic, which one should stick and which One shouldn't. And Adam talks a little bit about that and then he talks about this idea of having one product for too long. And I think in many cases that's been higher ed. We've had one product, the residential experience, in a lot of cases the four year degree. And what happens to companies that stick with those products for too long. So highly recommend that, that, that episode in, in particular. So, Michael, as we get, as we close out this episode of Future youe, can you tell our listeners what to expect in the next episode?

Yeah, absolutely. We're really excited, as we said at the top, that we're going to be in person and get to have an interview in person as well with David Thomas, the president of Morehouse College. And look, Jeff, the big themes that I'm excited about exploring with him are first, what they learned and what Morehouse will take away from the pandemic. It's very easy to say, oh, we're never going to do X again from the pandemic, but what are they going to take forward? And keep, I think will be really interesting. And it's a big theme that we're seeking to explore throughout the year. And then secondly, I'm excited to dig into the, you know, the conversation we had up earlier about 2U. They have a very interesting partnership with 2U where they're launching an online bachelor's degree program this fall. And I'm curious how that relates to their broader strategic plan. Jeff?

Yeah, and I want to mention we're also going to start taking listener questions in the next episode. So please reach out on social media or in the Future youe Podcast Webpage. Future youe Podcast is the webpage. If we answer your question on the air, you're going to get this fancy future you Turvis Tumblr that is awesome out this year. It's awesome. If you go on social media, you can see a picture of it. But. But that's it for this week and for this opening episode. Thank you all for listening. Please tell others about the show. If you like it, please subscribe to it and of course, rate it on your favorite podcast platform. Until next time. Take care and we'll see you soon.