Oregon Gov. Kate Brown on the Future of Higher Ed and Lifelong Learning

This is Future youe with Jeff Salingo and Michael Horn.

And welcome to Future youe. I'm Michael Horne and I'm joined for the first time in this show's history by a guest co host. We have Paul Friedman, who you may remember from last season on the show, the founder and CEO of the Entangled Group. Or of course, I'm the chief strategy officer. And the Entangled Group is an edtech venture studio, of course. And we had Paul on last year, not as a guest co host, but as a guest on the show talking about the future of higher education and the role that he's played throughout that. So, Paul, thrilled to have you on the show today.

Well, I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be promoted or demoted, however you have it, to be the first co host. And we'll do my best to step in for the honorable and esteemed Jeff

Salingo, two words that I'm sure Jeff will be delighted to hear attached to his name. And we're also thrilled today because we have a really exciting show where we actually get to sit down with Kate Brown, the governor of Oregon. Governor Brown, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

We're thrilled. And a question we always love to ask our guests on this show is how they got their start in higher education. But in your case, obviously, it's a little bit different because that's not your role. So reflecting on your path to the governorship, can you give us a little bit of a sense of how you got here?

So I've been in public service for over 27 years now. But I went to law school because I, I wanted the tools to achieve justice and equality in this world. And I got into public service because I wanted to be a voice for the voiceless. And my first opportunity was about six years out of law school. I had the incredible chance to advocate for a women's organization at the Oregon State Capitol, and it was a blast. I spent six months working on improving Oregon's domestic violence laws, working to strengthen our child support enforcement legislation, and working on women's health. And literally following the session, I got a call from my state senator, which is a pretty frequent path for women. Most women need to be asked to get into public service. And I got a call from my state senator asking if I was interested in serving in the Oregon legislature. My House member was stepping down and they needed to find someone to replace her. And she asked me if I was interested, and I said yes. As a young lawyer, as a now a Budding advocate, lobbyist in the legislature. I couldn't think of any better way to move my agenda. So I spent roughly 17 years in the Oregon legislature and then made the decision to run for Secretary of state. And in Oregon, the secretary of State is the lieutenant Governor. And so six years into my job as Secretary of state, when the governor resigned In February of 2015, I became the 38th governor of Oregon. So that's how I got here.

It's an amazing journey. And now, and now you're the governor of one of the fastest growing states in the nation. Interested in how that growth affects the higher education system in terms of, you know, capacity and in terms of making sure that higher education system is aligned with the needs of your growing workforce?

Well, I think for me, what's critically important in terms of higher education is that we make the system accessible and affordable to Oregon students. And so we've been working hard to improve outcomes in the university system and focused on a funding model that drives better outcomes. And what we're seeing on the ground is that our universities across the state are really focused on supporting a more diverse student body and making sure that these first gen students, diverse students, low income students, have access to the support they need to be successful. I think where our challenge is is that higher ed has really borne the brunt of funding issues for public services over the last couple of decades. In the early 90s, Oregon, actually, it was 1990, Oregon, created a property tax limitation system that essentially put funding for K12 schools at the state level instead of at the local level. And as a result, funding for higher education has really struggled. So they have really borne the brunt of these funding crises over the last couple of decades. And so we're frankly trying to figure out how we can invest more resources for a longer period of time to stabilize the system.

And I know one of the big issues that you're very passionate about is the equity diversity question, particularly not just in the urban areas that maybe folks in the rest of the nation think about, but your rural population as well. Can you describe some of the policies and supports that you've been putting in place for that population so that they get access?

Absolutely. And I think it's key that we make sure that not just our urban communities, but our rural communities have access to higher education. And I would include community colleges in that. One of our best initiatives, frankly, has been our Oregon Promise program. I think we were the second state in the entire country to ensure that every single Oregon high school student that got a certain grade point could access community college for essentially the price of books for free. And that's been a very successful program and it's certainly driven access in our rural communities. Places like Coos Bay, North Bend in eastern Oregon, they have a program already in place that does effectively that. So I know that by literally pounding down the doors in terms of community colleges, you're going to improve access in terms of accessing higher ed more generally. I think what we're doing online is great, but what I've learned from being on campuses is by having more campus locations in rural Oregon, you're going to make it more accessible for communities and families.

Can I dig into that for a moment? Because it's something we've noticed as well, is that online learning is a great way to level the playing field. But having those community supports in place is still important. And they don't necessarily look like a traditional college campus either. How have you all, from an infrastructure perspective perspective in the rural areas, started to create these community centers in effect?

Well, I think there are a couple of pieces. Number one, you have to have talented, dedicated staff that are willing to invest in their student population. And I think LeGrand Oregon is a great example of that, that they are very committed to making sure their students are successful, whether their students are learning online or coming in from Elgin and surrounding communities. So I think having that support, having a mentor, having someone who's willing to spend the time with the student, making sure the students have the tools they need to be successful. And the other piece is of course, removing financial barriers for our students.

Yeah, and you've talked a number of times about affordability and accessibility, and those things can go hand in hand. It's obviously been difficult for states to manage the cost of the higher education system. However, it seems like we're at a time where the employer side of the table, the demands of their workforce are just so profound now that they seem to be a willing participant in a conversation, potentially a willing funder. And what has your office done to support bringing business and higher education together in a conversation about access and affordability?

Well, I think it can't start at post high school. I think it has to begin, or at least we have to have the conversation at the high school level. And so my goal is to ensure that every student graduates from high school with a plan for their future. And that includes, you know, whether it's the tools to move on into a career, a plan to go to post secondary education or whatever it is university, community colleges, that they have that path in mind when they graduate. The best that I've seen is one of the programs in Southern Oregon and literally they are meeting, you've got the business community, the higher education community and the K through 12 community at the table on a regular basis, a monthly basis. We're certainly supporting that work by making sure that we remove any barriers. But they have selected the sectors they're focusing on and so they have a community effort to focus on technology, manufacturing and health care in the Rogue Valley arena. And literally they're all rowing in the same direction to make sure their students have the tools they need to succeed. And that's the best model that I've seen.

So another part of that pathway conversation that you've been thinking a lot about is apprenticeships, which is of course in the national dialogue quite a bit in all sorts of ways right now. But you all were one of the early thinkers on that. I guess I'm. Well, maybe let's start with this. Can you just talk to us about that push for apprenticeships and the character that takes on and then we can get into some of the follow ups maybe.

And it's part of our program we're calling Future Ready Oregon to close the skills gap between the workforce that we have and the workforce that we need to fuel the economy of Oregon's future. And we have a lot of skilled, a lot of highly educated folks in Oregon, but they aren't always accessing the higher paying jobs that allow them to save for a house, save for retirement, put their kids through college. And so the concept of next gen apprenticeships, they may not look like our father's or our mother's apprenticeship programs, but they're essentially the same thing. And it's hands on training in the field that they're interested in going in and hopefully a path for a really good paying job. The Apprenti program is the one we have chosen. We've got models in both Eugene and Bend, both of them seeing great success. They're attracting a really diverse skill set of folks. One woman had her PhD in biology and she couldn't find a job in Eugene, Oregon, which blew me away. She was back to learn coding through the Apprenti program. Another gal was out of the military and she literally left her children with their grandmother to spend six months in Bend, Oregon and get the training she needed in the software development arena.

So I'm curious and you just referenced it. These are really next gen apprenticeship programs. For a lot of people in the nation though, when they hear apprenticeship, they think of sort of the traditional blue collar jobs and how from your office you have a bully pulpit to sort of change that dialogue and realization. How does that, how are you spearheading that conversation and how does that conversation take place to help parents really see if my child decides to do an apprenticeship program? That's, that's a good path.

That's really an interesting question because I think there are definitely economic class issues around apprenticeship programs, right? And so I think there are a lot of kids out there who are, will not be, will be challenged in a college or a university environment, but they are very skilled young people. And how do we get them on the right career path? And I think we have to think of it as lifelong learning. Just because you do an apprenticeship program for six months or 18 months and get a particular type of programming skills and that doesn't, your education doesn't end maybe in five years you're going to be back on a shorter term type apprenticeship program, learning a new type of technology skill. And so I think we have to think about learning and education very differently than we did. When I was going to school, like I was in a hurry, I was going to law school, I was getting, want to get through college as quickly as possible. But we have to think about this as a lifelong system. And I talk about that is our education system is literally from cradle to career. We know that the brain development is in those early years, but we also know that the majority of the jobs that are going to be in the future 20 years from now aren't in existence today. So we have to train other skills, analytical skills, skills, team building skills that will be very useful to the jobs of the future.

It sounds like you need new models for the new jobs of the future. And when you think about that, when you think about apprenticeships or when you think about non traditional programs like coding boot camps, how do you balance the need for increased access to these jobs of the future with the need for quality assurance to make sure that they're high quality programs?

That's been something we've worked very closely with the private sector on. So just to give you an example, we have a few data centers in eastern and central Oregon that we have large companies at trying to think of which one is willing to be public about it. I think Amazon is one of their data centers. And we literally didn't have the people in Boardman, Oregon needed to work, work at these data centers. So literally Amazon came in and trained at our local community college, Blue Mountain Community College. So then they knew that the folks that were Completing that particular program had the skill set that they needed to be able to bring them on board and hire them. After two years, Amazon said, okay, you guys, you're on your own, you gotta be training them. But I think certificates, actual hands on competency based education is the wave of the future. Absolutely. And this is going to require us to partner very closely with the private sector. We can't do it without them. And so how do we partner in a way that makes sense for their workforce needs, but also makes sense for our educational needs for our students?

Governor Brown, you have the opportunity to travel around the state and see some of these next generation programs. Is there any experience that stands out in that travels?

So I toured at the beginning of the school year, I toured a number of career and technical ed programs because I want to highlight them in our work. And I walked into a culinary arts program in Junction City outside of Eugene. It's a pretty small community and in the culinary arts programs there's a lot of young men there and that's very different when I was growing up because it was Home EC and guys didn't do that when I was in high school. So I asked this young man, what brings you to this program? Why are you here? And he looked at me and said, you can't be governor alone. It requires a whole team. And that's what I'm learning in this particular program. Blew me away.

Wow.

It was amazing.

Wow. That's an awesome anecdote. Thank you so much for joining us and thank you so much for the work.

Thank you all. Delighted to be here and we'll be right back.

This episode of Future youe was made possible with support from the Academy for Innovative Higher Education Leadership. The Academy is a partnership between Arizona State University and Georgetown University and is the premier training ground for those who aspire to senior leadership positions in higher education and those who want to lead organizational change at colleges and universities in the future. This episode was also made possible with support from Entangled Solutions. If you want to shape the future of education, Entangled Solutions would like to hear from you. Entangled Solutions is hiring smart, mission driven team members interested in helping world class institutions solve their most vexing challenges in learning and education. Learn more at Entangled Solutions.

And we're back on Future youe. Coming off a great conversation with Governor Brown. Terrific insights across the board. Really thinking about the future of higher education and we could start at a lot of different places.

Paul.

But I guess one that I was struck by was her conversation around next gen apprenticeships and you heard her allude to some of the role that she has to play to sort of help the state, if you will understand that, that it's not sort of your father's apprenticeships. How do you think about this question? Because I think it's bigger in higher education.

Yeah. First of all, I thought she was tremendously impressive, really nuanced understanding of the issues facing higher education. And a lot of people are talking about apprenticeships, but I think that she was sort of more aware of some of the cultural constraints. I mean, we used to have an environment that told people that college wasn't for them, they weren't college material. And that ended up being falling down a lot of racial, class, gender stereotypes. And there's a lot of good work done over the last few decades about expanding that notion that says that college can be for everyone. And so now as you're introducing new programs like apprenticeships, you're fighting a historical cultural constraint because there's a lot of the middle class that believe that they should have the opportunity to go to college and they shouldn't be excluded from that experience.

Yeah. And that apprenticeships are somehow bad. Right.

And apprenticeships are bad. That apprenticeships are, you know, the last generation of apprenticeships. They're a second class opportunity to, you know, to career mobility. And I think it's, you know, I don't know that those concepts are, you know, fully incompatible. Just because a college can be for everyone doesn't mean it has to be for everybody. And I think those could be distinct notions. And I think apprenticeships falls into a, it could be, falls into a very good opportunity for certain folks who just need a different path to learn.

Yeah. And I thought she did a good job of thinking of higher education now as a pathway. Right. And she said the words lifelong learning and so forth. And I think in our industry it often feels like a buzz phrase and we wonder how many people outside of our bubble get it. But to hear a governor say that, from my perspective, was. Was really important. And she even sketched a path of, you would have an apprenticeship, you'd work five years later, you'd have a different experience. And so I found that pretty impressive. And then the other thing it got me to thinking of though was that I think we've seen this phenomenon a lot of times in higher ed where a new innovation that is just out of the mold comes in and people say, oh, it's for those people, it's not for us. And I'm just, I mean, you've been an innovator in this space, Paul, how do you break through that?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's difficult and I agree Governor Brown seemed to have a more nuanced perspective of both the opportunities of breaking through that historical concept, but also the cultural constraints of doing it. And it would be interesting to see whether she uses the bully pulpit of being governor to really push people to think about these silos very differently.

I think that's right. And if you start to see, I think maybe brand name schools even offering these apprenticeships as part of their, part of their offering for students, that could also I think go some way to breaking that perception. Because we know that elite brands drive the perception at least of quality in higher education.

No, no, no question. One of the other things I was, I was touched by is, you know, she was talking about access and she talked about access and affordability a lot, which was really comforting to hear. And she spoke to the value of access in online programs, which I think is, you know, a lot of the benefits of online programs, expanding access, particularly to rural areas. But she also talked about the need for community colleges and actually like a place based experience.

Yeah. And this has been obviously something that Jeff has written about, I've written about. A lot of people are starting to glom onto. I think that the future of online learning isn't just in clicks, it's in bricks as well. But from my perspective, those bricks are not going to look like the traditional campuses of yesterday. Sprawling places with greeny green grass quads and so forth. But really, you know, co working spaces where you can have community, where you can have mentors around you and so forth. And I think of a lot as the future of retail. Right. Which is large department stores going out of business like. But that doesn't mean that Amazon Warby park or Bonobos don't have brick and mortar locations, but they act as showrooms, not places where you stock inventory.

Yeah. And obviously retail and education are very different, but I think what they share is that they're fundamentally an experience, not a product. You know, it's not, you're not just, you know, you can't press a button to get on a pair of pants. You have the whole experience of finding what you're looking for, for and the way that you're supported. And although again they're very different in what they're intending to affect. But I think far too often people look at education as some sort of product. You press a button and get an education. And a lot of discussion then about just the technology, just the Online education delivery, just the content. But education is far more an experience and that means that the content, the technology is part of it. But so too is your interaction with faculty. So too is your interaction with, with your students. And she seemed to really understand that, particularly when she was talking about the benefits of the community college program in eastern Oregon.

So I was struck by, I guess by the same things. But something that you've said also to me in the past is that when you think of education as an experience, that's not just true for a four year program, it's true for a short boot camp as well.

Right. Fundamentally you're trying to create a change of state in the human being that's going through the educational experience. You know, you're trying to get them to learn something, you're trying to get them to think differently about themselves. You're trying to get them to think differently about their potential. That's true. Regardless of the format of the educational delivery. It's certainly a very important aspect and probably an under discussed aspect of the four year, the traditional four year college experience, but can also be part of a boot camp experience. And I think it's going to be as the governor rolls out all these next gen apprenticeships, it needs to be thought, thought about the, you know, the experience of that needs to be thought of that in the design of those as well.

Yeah.

I mean something that I find actually in terms of thinking of education as an experience is in higher ed circles, we've actually sort of said that that's a bad thing. Right. In terms of the four year degree and thinking about all the lazy rivers and other stuff that we wrap around the experience. But I think your bigger point is, right, that people wouldn't go to those four year experiences unless it was just that it was an experience. It was a coming of age moment. It was a who am I reinventing myself with new people? Yes. I get to take courses from excellent professors. I might even sleep through a few of them. But that's because I'm doing something really interesting to me with a group of people that I won't otherwise have this opportunity to do.

Right. And the only definition of experience isn't laying on a river or climbing a climbing wall. Right. You know, an experience can be a rigorous academic experience. It can be, you know, the ability to learn with peers or learn from peers. It can be interaction with faculty that really push you to think about yourself or think about the discipline differently. That's experiential as well.

Yeah. And so another thing that jumped out to me from the conversation was when you asked her about quality assurance and she talked about the that absolutely she's going to be bringing in new programs that have never had a place in higher education before and that she wants to make sure people graduate with a meaningful certificate or credential. Quality assurance is obviously a pet issue for both of us. And I'm curious, as an authorizer for states that listen to this episode as you think about their role in authorizing new programs, how would you think about quality assurance?

Yeah, I think the question that asks is a really tough one for anybody to answer because you have these two competing notions. It's a growing state of Oregon. It's one of the fast and growing states in the nation, particularly driven by technology. You know, probably the folks in Oregon, the business in Oregon can't hire engineers fast enough. That's sort of the typical situation across the workforce in the rest of the United States. And so they're very open to new models of non traditional delivery. They're very open to boot camps, very open to apprenticeships. They're very open to a bunch of things that fundamentally haven't been tested. And when you have a whole bunch of new providers coming into the market, you run the risk of some of them being in fly by night taking advantage of students. And I think it's a really tough challenge for states as they're encouraging more development of non traditional providers to balance the needs of educating a growing, increasingly diverse workforce with also ensuring that the providers that are doing that are high quality.

Yeah. And it's interesting, Ray, because it's not going to come out of their higher education boards these new programs. So they're going to have to use really, really the authorization that occurs through a very different channel of any education entity, be that a tutoring center or a boot camp, to start to think through these quality assurance mechanisms for authorization.

Right. And they do have those tools. I mean they do. You have to be authorized to operate in a state, particularly for an education business. They do have the ability to put the right level of, of regulation and review on top of providers coming in. I think there's a unique moment now, not just in Oregon, but really across the country, for those processes to be designed thoughtfully balancing the needs of there being providers that look different in terms of the education experience that they intend to deliver, but also ensuring that there is a quality assurance element and that the students are being protected.

Yeah. And I think they could actually take a page from the charter authorizing the. That's been done in K12, where you have a very clear charter that says this is what our mission is, this is what we're trying to produce, this is our plan to produce it, and then five years in, you should be holding us to account for these sorts of items. And I would say that's the part that the charter sector has fallen off on. But being very clear that these are quantifiable measures according to standards that you can measure and that are common across like providers, I think that's absolutely something that should be written into these charters and then you should actually judge them for it. And if they haven't held up their end of the bargain, then you have clear ample reason to shut them down.

Absolutely. And a model like that could certainly work in higher education and can certainly work in these non traditional segments. Particularly as you say, if they're combined with actually there being some teeth, you know, actually, you know, an organization that says this is our charter, this is our mission, this is the educational outcomes that, that we intend to affect. If they're not doing that, by all means shut them down. And if they are, then let them continue, encourage their growth, let them thrive.

The other piece that she talked about was access and affordability and the importance of balancing that in a state environment that in the case of Oregon is somewhat uniquely constrained because of moving all the K12 funding to the state level. How do you think about those two issues though?

Yeah, I appreciated the way that she talked about access and affordability together because I think that they are combined in ways that people don't always talk about. One of the biggest things that precludes access is the rising cost of tuition. And it's really difficult to make these traditional programs, new non traditional programs, accessible to a wider set of the population if they're not affordable.

Yeah. And the one thing I guess I'd love to see, we didn't push her or ask her on it. But just as a bigger statement, I'd love to see more conversation of income share agreements, learn and earn models, different ways to make it affordable that aren't relying on the states having to fill all that gap. And you asked about the businesses during the conversation, but I just think it's so important to come up with creative new ways of financing this because I mean, the reality is we can. We're seeing a blip right now where there's more funding coming in and costs are still outpacing that extra revenue. And we know K12 is going to always come before higher ed.

Absolutely. And even if you're not Building lazy rivers or wasting funds with those kind of things, the cost of education delivery are just going to increasingly go up. And yeah, it would have been interesting to have her because she has such a nuanced perspective on the issues, talk about some of these non traditional funding sources and what her view is of income share agreements or other ways of subsidizing education. And I was trying to push a little bit about bringing businesses to the table and seeing if there's a third funding source where businesses could be funding more educational delivery. Because at the end of the day, particularly for workforce aligned programs, they're the recipient, they're getting the benefit of an educated population. And so it would be interesting to see how governors bring them to the table as a payer as well.

Yeah, I think that's right. And we're not going to innovate our way out of this just by making expenses programs accessible. We'd have to make them fundamentally affordable somehow. And I think that is through a combination of innovation in the delivery coupled with an innovation in terms of the financing mechanisms and who is paying to your point. And I know you have some favorites of the businesses out there that are financing these in creative ways, right?

Yeah, well, we've seen a lot of these programs and I think the leadership has been in big tech for whatever reason. You know, Google has a program, Apple has a program, Amazon has a program, we've been a part of the program that Facebook has put together partnering with 20 community colleges across the country around a digital marketing certificate. Yeah.

Through Pathstream.

Yeah, Put through it through a company called Pathstream. And those programs have been really interesting and it's, and the businesses seem to be willing to put up capital to get the programs going. It benefits, you know, there's a real, you know, a social responsibility benefit that they're going for, but there's also a business benefit. If folks are trained on the platforms that they provide, they become product evangelists. They use the product more and it seems like a win win. And I think in a higher education system that's looking for more investors and more people to put up capital and knows that it can't keep raising tuition and passing on the cost to students, looking at companies in the business community, it's a good source of funds to subsidize the system.

Yeah. And as we wrap up the episode, I guess one thing that I'm curious about, and I don't actually know if you have an opinion on this, but we're in a really unique time in terms of the employment situation in the country where baby boomers are moving out of the workforce. It's sort of the flip of the 1990s where there were so many baby boomers in the workforce that they were funding Social Security to surpluses for the benefit of deficits and the like. We're in the opposite of that right now where they're moving out and it's creating really low unemployment, sort of strange supply issues of talent for unfilled jobs. And I just wonder if the economy flips or the demographics change. Obviously in, you know, 15 years from now, will companies continue to make those financing decisions?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's just an issue of the change in the nature of our economy. I mean, we're in a knowledge economy. The half life of skills is four years in declining. There's such a need to learn things and then learn new things within four years that certainly we have a unique moment from an economic perspective where we have a really strong economy above normal employment. And that always leads to companies willing to invest in training and professional development. But I think given the pace of skill development, they're going to have to continue to make this investment. I don't think this is an economic blip. I think this is a long term trend.

Yeah, well, let's certainly hope so because I think it'd be good for innovation and it'll certainly be good for the country. And so this, this wraps us up on future. You, Paul, thanks for joining as co host.

Well, thank you for having me.

And thanks of course to Governor Brown for joining us today and taking the time out to talk about her vision of higher education and how she's going to keep pushing to have it innovate. And as always, remember to spread the word about future. You subscribe to our podcast and rate us wherever you may listen to us. And thank you again for, for listening, for co hosting and we'll look forward to being with you again soon on Future. You.