So Long, Summer: We're Back

Jeff, it is good to see you. I feel like summer has just whipped by and there were probably realistically only two weeks where you and I did not actually talk with each other. But it's been a while since we've been together with our listeners, so it's, it's good to see you in that venue.

Yeah, no doubt, Michael. It's also good to see you and to our listeners. Welcome back to Future youe. As we embark on this, our eighth season. As is our custom on this, our welcome back episode will run down some of the things that we've been up to and take stock of some of the headlines in higher education while we are gone, all with an eye toward what they mean for what's next in higher ed.

This episode of Future youe is sponsored by the Build and Melinda Gates foundation, working to eliminate race, ethnicity and income as predictors of student educational success. This episode of Future youe is sponsored by Ascendium Education Group, a non profit organization committed to helping learners from low income backgrounds reach their education and career goals. For more information, visit ascendiumphilanthropy.org subscribe to future youe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you enjoy the show, send it along to a friend so others can discover the conversations we're having about higher education.

I'm Michael Horn.

And I'm Jeff Salingo. So it feels great to be back. Although this summer we did offer a special bonus episode from the conversation I moderated at the Jobs for the Future JFF Annual Horizon Summit. And we've also been reissuing some of our top episodes from Season 7 for listeners looking to catch up on anything that they missed. We've also been planning for this season and like last year, we'll be in your feed about twice a month, sometimes more, sometimes less, when we take some of those extended breaks during the holidays and spring break. Because, you know, it's still higher ed, Michael, and we have a calendar to follow. Right?

Exactly. We're not going to deviate from our traditions, Jeff. And but on those notes, and sort of traditional, non traditional if you will, we we actually have more stop on the Future you campus tour already scheduled. It's coming up this fall in Orlando and it's going to be an interesting campus stop. And the reason I say traditional non traditional is because we're going to be with a university that Jeff doesn't really have a campus. That's because it'll be with none other than Western Governor's University, the nonprofit that has some 175,000 students enrolled at any given point in time, give or take 10,000. But no physical campus per se.

Yeah. And speaking of experimenting, Michael, we're also experimenting with video this year. So you might be watching some of these clips on. On YouTube. Not every episode, but for selective episodes, will. Will be on the future you YouTube channel. So be sure to subscribe there too. Although, Michael, as they say, I think I have a face for radio, so I'm probably better to. To be just on. On audio. Right.

Well, I. I was going to say, Jeff, that finally they'll be able to tell us apart because our voices sometimes are so similar that they could just clue in. Or I can put on this chief disruption officer hat and then they'll really know who's who. Right. You know, I love that.

Thankfully. Thankfully, it's blue.

Yes, exactly.

We've had. Speaking of fun, I think both of us have had a little fun away from the broadcast. You probably had a little bit more fun than I've had this summer. So tell us a little bit about your summer. What were some of the highlights? And I think you also have some big news that we have talked about on this podcast before.

Yeah, well, let's start with personal highlights and then we'll get to news, if you will. But I was in London with the family. Broke our pledge not to travel away from New England during the summer. But that's because I got Wimbledon tickets, Jeff. And as you know, I'm a tennis nut, so I had to be there. I was at Wimbledon. It was great. Stayed with a classmate. Super fun kids. Had a lot of fun in London. Did not take them to Wimbledon. Definitely the right call. A lot of lines, lot of crowds, a lot of rain delays. But it was fun. We came back and then I got Covid. And frankly, you probably still hear the gravel in my voice. Four weeks later, I have still not fully kicked all the symptoms. But that was good because the big news category literally yesterday. So the day before we're recording this, I was recording the introduction for the audiobook of my new book that comes out this fall. Thank you. It's called Job moves. I think I got. Yeah, we could show the COVID job nine steps for making progress in your career. It's out November 19th, and we're feeling really good about the advice that we've come up with, frankly, for both individuals who might be struggling in their current job and looking to get back into the job market or trying to figure out what's next. All those categories, as well as at the end of the book, some advice for managers, mentors, organizations, employers about how to help those individuals and retain them in the war for talent that is always taking place. Because, Jeff, the reality is it seems like we're not doing either well, particularly, excuse me, either one particularly well right now. Case in point, 1 billion people, Jeff, switch jobs worldwide every single year. And of those, hundreds of millions end up disappointed. So we know we can do better and we've got a process that we've built with my co authors, Ethan Bernstein at the Harvard Business School, Bob Mesta of Jobs to Be Done fame. We've researched it, we've prototyped it, we've helped real individuals since 2009 with it, over a thousand individuals. So we're excited to get it out in the broader world to I'm Going to Dream will hopefully be hundreds of thousands. Jeff.

Well, Michael, I think if you could convert even a small percentage of those billion job switchers, you'll have such a bestseller, you might not even do this podcast anymore at that point. I hope that doesn't happen. We've talked about this book a couple of times, and I must say I always wondered nine steps and not 10. So maybe you could answer that for our, for our audience. But I'm also hoping that maybe you'll have a president who's going to be out of a job on January 20th. Want to buy that book? You know, President Biden joked a few weeks ago with content creators at the White House that he'll be looking for a job, so maybe you'll get lucky and he'll pick up the book and put it on social media for you.

I'd be honored to be working with him. But the, you know, nine steps, not ten. It's funny, our agent said she, in the history of representing books, has never had a book with a number in the subtitle. And she, that was a streak she wanted to keep. And then she was really disappointed when we ended up with nine steps and the publisher said not too many steps. We want to make sure it's digestible and doable. So, so that had something to do with the number nine, where we ended, where we ended up. But Jeff, let's turn to you. It's Enough about me. I'd love to hear highlights from your summer. I know you had some pretty neat travels according to Instagram anyway, and everything on Instagram is obviously true. But I also know you've been on, you know, deep on your own book project of your own once again, despite your better judgment.

Yeah, well, again, I, I every Time I'm in the midst of one of these books. I'm like, what the heck am I doing? And the summer. And for some reason I always end up writing these books during the summer. The manuscript is due in November, so that's really what I've been doing mostly most of this summer. It will be out a year from now, so I'll talk more about it as we get closer. But, but here's really the elevator pitch, right? My last book was about how colleges pick students, and this is more about how students pick colleges with an eye toward broadening that search list. And there will be a reference or two Michael in there from what is now. I cannot believe this. Two books for you in choosing college. So it means that you're writing a lot faster at a faster clip than I am. So I have to start catching up. But, but I did get away this summer as well. We had plans to visit our friends who work for the US Government in Switzerland. So once again I had the chance to see how that country does education. And I must say I continue to love the idea of apprenticeships beyond the trade. So I know that's going to be an issue that we're going to get back to at some point this year, including on our campus tour at wgu. Now, I will tell you the highlight of that trip for my teenage daughters. It just happened that one very, very famous artist was on tour in Europe this summer. So I'll let our audience guess who that was and maybe our producer, Michael will add in a little clip there if we're allowed to, of some music from that very, very famous artist.

I'll send you a picture, Jeff, of her house actually, from Rhode island where we were vacationing. You can see one of her know, 19 houses.

So, yeah. Anyway, I'm assuming that most of our listeners who've guessed it's Taylor Swift by now. But, but enough about us and Taylor Swift. Although again, every time we mentioned mention Taylor Swift, I think our numbers of listeners go up. So, so maybe we do need to mention her more often. But, but, but Michael, I think there was a, a lull in the news about higher ed most of the summer because I think everyone was trying to catch their collective breath after a year of FAFSA and protests. But, but it's started to pick up again in the last couple of weeks, including about those two stories in particular FAFSA and protests. So on the fafsa, it seems year two of the simplified version might just be a little less rocky than year one. But maybe not as much as we had hoped. I think there were groans in August when the Education Department announced that FAFSA for next year won't be ready, get this, until December 1st. That's two months later than usual. The agency will release the form to a limited number of students and institutions for testing on October 1st. So depending on how that goes, I guess, hopefully December 1st still works. But, you know, that announcement was met with a lot of groans among higher ed because the FAFSA had real enrollment consequences for this fall. And we won't fully appreciate that, I don't think, until the National Student Clearinghouse comes out with its numbers. But just based on conversations that I've been having with enrollment leaders, the numbers are definitely going to be down, no doubt about it.

Yeah, Jeff, I'm hearing the same thing and curious to see where it lands out when it, when it all goes through. I think it's been interesting to see the different coverage also of fafsa. Some, you know, the administration put a real positive spin on it, obviously. Like, we have a real deadline this time. Let's see what actually happens. But, Jeff, there was obviously the other big story from last year, which was the campus protests over the war in Israel and Gaza. And the fallout continues, of course, as we're recording this. Colombia's president became the latest to resign after months of pressure over her handling of the pro Palestinian demonstrations on campus. So I'll say, Jeff, I'm not sure I'm surprised when I saw the news, but I didn't see it coming when it did, if that makes sense. Jeff, like I had this. Oh, okay, I guess I understand that, but. Whoa, that just happened?

Well, President Shafik made it longer than the other two Ivy League presidents who resigned for similar reasons at Penn and Harvard. So I think that's probably why it was a surprise. Perhaps we thought the initial storm had passed over the summer and that she'd survive. But it may have been the summer that seems to have eventually dinner in. Right. In her statement, she said the summer allowed her to reflect, especially with her family, about how difficult this job has been. And until her and unlike her two counterparts at Penn and Harvard, she had a new job lined up outside of the university with the British foreign secretary. So she's going back to the UK where she had come from before Columbia. I think the other shoe that dropped here, Michael, though, over the summer was the resignation of several deans at Columbia who were caught in late May during a campus forum on antisemitism, sending mocking texts about this panel that they were attending. And I think that really showed us that this was an administration that really lacked the confidence of anyone. And when that happens, ultimately it's the leadership that needs to go. And, of course, those deans also resigned. We saw something similar in August happen at Florida A and M University. Now, a different issue there than student protest. And there's really a thread here, Michael, I think, to all these leadership changes happening in higher ed that I want to get to in a minute. Now, Florida A and M, a public, one of the nation's top HBCUs, the President, had resigned. This is kind of a crazy story. Abruptly over the summer after a report revealed the institution had kind of rushed the vetting process of a record gift, $237 million, that it had announced during its spring commencement. Well, it turns out that there wasn't really a gift there. And then recently, the interim president asked the entire leadership team to resign. This story, to me, has so much intrigue, Michael, because it even played a small role, according to the publication Puck, in the president of all the way up to ABC News being pushed out. Kim Godwin was an alum of Florida A and M, and she dispatched two camera crews to cover this big gift, which of course, turned out not to be a gift at all. It's just a really crazy story.

Really crazy. It was hard to follow as it was breaking. But, Jeff, you did tell me that there's a tie between all those resignations. I'm looking for that one.

Yeah. Yeah. So I do finally want to get to that point. Right. So in all these cases, right, we have Columbia, we have Harvard, we have Florida A and M, we have Penn, and. And by the way, let's add the University of Florida to that list where former US Senator Ben Sasse was president there for kind of a hot minute at the University of Florida. He stepped down because of health issues with his wife. His wife is having. And here's where this story is going. Interim presidents and the slow role of searching for a successor. So what's happening in all these cases is that we have interim president coming in. And I think what ultimately may be the impact here is what's happening with these presidential searches. You know, academic searches have always taken a long time because of the nuances of the academic calendar. But I'm now starting to wonder if appointing interim chiefs who kind of know the campus, because maybe they're the provost, right, which happened at Harvard, or maybe they're a former president, which is happening at Florida, where the former president's coming back. It really allows this cooling off period and then the search starts. So what I think we might be seeing in all of these cases, and maybe this is going to be the norm going forward, is just longer transitions. Now, you know, at the presidential level, the US Presidential level, right, we're seeing a major presidential campaign, right. Might be the shortest in history by Kamala Harris. And in higher ed, it seems like we're going in the opposite direction, right, where the selection of a leader takes a lot longer. Now, I posted about this recently on LinkedIn and Holden Thorpe, who had been president at UNC Chapel Hill, he piped up in the comments and he said, you know, a longer period might be good because the interim comes in and then when the new person eventually comes in, the new permanent president comes in, it's more about the future than the past. And by the time the interim's been there for a year, maybe even two years, maybe even longer, everybody kind of forgets about the person the interim replaced. And we could really focus on the future. Now. I'm not quite sure what to think of that, Michael, because I do worry already that presidential transitions were slowing down kind of institutional momentum for change and innovation. And that was a problem even before the last four years. And I think the last four years in higher ed has proven that we need more change and innovation and at a much faster clip. And if that's going to slow down because of these presidential transitions, I do worry about that a little bit.

Yeah, that's sort of my instinct as well, Jeff. And it's probably a question of continuity. Do you have momentum towards something, a transition? Probably not. Great. You know, if you're trying to make that break from the past, resettle things, maybe it makes more sense, I don't know. But from my vantage point at Harvard, where we now have a declared three year presidency for President Garber, this dynamic seems unlikely to settle down. Jeff. And the churn just sort of continues. Which brings us to our next story, which is something everyone in higher ed has been talking about and worrying about.

And it's finally here. It's finally here. Michael, We've been talking about this enrollment clip, it seems forever. And the peak class of 2025. So this year's high school seniors, they are the peak class. The number of high school graduates is great. Going to is projected to peak this year at 3.9 million with that class of 2025. And after 2025, the US will expect successfully fewer annual numbers of graduates in virtually every graduating class. Get this all the way at least through 2037. And 2037 is projected to be about the same number as the class of 2014 with 3.5. So, you know, kids. And having kids is getting a lot of attention right now, and at least among the. The vice presidents or I guess in the presidential election overall. And I think colleges are probably cheering that on because they need people to have kids.

Yeah, no question. And, you know, I think to some extent, Jeff, maybe this all wouldn't have been as big a deal as I think it's shaking out to be if, you know, our colleges were breaking at the seams with students. Right. And the numbers going to college and they were over capacity, you know, or. Excuse me, right. Like just turning away students at their doors. But instead, that's not the picture, as you know, better than I do. Students graduating from high school going directly to college had dropped from the high of 69% to 62% at the most recent checkpoint from the data there, which has left the opposite picture on college campuses. A whole lot of empty classrooms, a lot of spare capacity. And that's before the numbers, as you said, start to drive back down again.

Yeah, Michael, I think that's a real key number that we don't talk about. We tend to talk about this high school graduating class instead of, okay, what is the percentage of that high school graduating class going right on to college? And as you said, right. It's dropped from 69% to 62%. So even if we were able to just keep it at 69%, we'd have hundreds of more, thousands of students in that pipeline. And. And I think the question really should be, like, what's happening there? Why has that dropped off? I really do think this is worthy of more research. But in between trying to keep my butt in chair to write this book this summer, I have spent some time with boards and senior leaders at DePaul and Penn State. I'm also spending some time with folks up in Canada, with college leaders up in Canada, because this isn't just a US Issue. And there's a few things I'm seeing here about why this direct high school to college pipeline is leaking so much. One is this is largely a community college problem. We had the episode where we talked about the value of community colleges with Dave Clayton of Strada last year, and I encourage people to go back to that because he talked a lot about how we could increase the value or at least the perceived value of community colleges. This is a big issue among men. Again, I highly recommend Richard Reeves book on what's happening with boys and men and particularly in higher education. Again, if we could just get some of those numbers up, we would improve on this college going rate. I think many of us are also skeptical. Both of us, I think, are skeptical on the whole dual enrollment thing. We did a whole episode on that last year. But there's growth there. We know there's growth among dual enrolled students. How can we get more of those students in and through the college pipeline so that they are getting that degree? But you know, at the end of the day, Michael, perhaps we go to a place that we always do that. Maybe there's just too much capacity in higher ed. Maybe there are just too many institutions with too many seats. And I think that brings us to the prediction you made with Clay Christensen years ago that 25% of colleges, you know, will close, merge or go bankrupt by the end of the 2829 academic year. That was the original prediction anyway. And you updated that on Forbes recently. It's a topic I know we've addressed several times. So what did you learn when you, you dug into the numbers?

Yeah, absolutely, Jeff. But one thing first. I want to go back to something you said on a previous episode last year, which was there's no question like we have too much capacity for the high school going to college student. But if we looked at the adult learners, millions and millions, you know, 40 million with some college, no degree. Another, I'm blanking on the number of millions. Right. With no college, period. There's a lot of green space there for higher ed. If they could figure out, you know, how to shift their models, maybe an apprenticeship job, embedded learning in some meaningful way, there's some opportunity there. But, but just to go to your question, I first, I confess I was surprised when I looked into this for the article. I was thinking, you know, I should probably update the prediction. We're probably still far off even though all the headlines talk about a college closing every week. But what I found was that over 15% of degree granting institutions, Jeff, have already closed since we made that prediction. Now most of those are for profits, about 80%. But if you look at the nonprofit private colleges, just a hair under 10% have now closed their doors. And frankly, you know, sometime by December, I think it'll be 10% of private nonprofit closed colleges have either closed or announced that they will close. So that's roughly 160 private non profit colleges since we made that prediction. If Look, Jeff, another 250 consolidate over the next nine years. And that's just a rate of 27 to 28 a year. Well, then that's a quarter of private non profit schools right there. And let's put that 28 number into context. That's just roughly two a month, which is what we were doing a couple years ago. And as you know, in the spring we were averaging one every week, and we haven't even hit the demographic decline that you're talking about. And actually in the article it occurs to me I sort of misstated it because I said we're a year away. I was thinking a year away right from the peak class coming in, but really it's two years away when you think about it. And it's also before we even get into the conversation of mergers. JEFF and as I looked at mergers, I was specifically looking at public institutions because it's sort of this truism that public colleges really never close. I think the maximum I saw in a given year was like 4 in the data set. But by my unscientific count, as I went through some of the data, we now have at least 60 fewer public institutions thanks to mergers. You know, since we made that prediction that that's a lot fewer institutions. So I, I guess I left all this, Jeff, thinking, wow, the prediction actually is coming truer than perhaps I had come to expect because of all the skepticism on LinkedIn and elsewhere that you and I see from traditional higher ed media. And as you know, I'd been sort of revising and saying, well, it's probably 20 years, not 15, but I think this is, there's a chance that the original prediction actually comes true. JEFF Now, I think the final thought, though I have on this is it kind of doesn't matter if the prediction materializes precisely because to me, one point to take from all this is just simply there are a lot of colleges in a world of hurt right now with business models and capacity that are not working for the current moment. They have instructional models geared around a certain demographic that are not working right now, and that is also leaving a lot of students enrolling in those schools that are very vulnerable. And those students in turn are very vulnerable when those places close. A lot of them, we knew, do not go on to higher ed. And if they do, fewer than half will actually graduate with a degree that's no good for anyone. JEFF and so that's sort of where I, how I digest, you know, the. So what of all this?

Yeah, and I think, Michael, I think, you know, maybe some of your critics and Clay's critics around this always thought that maybe you were kind of celebrating this as a good thing. Right. Like that, that the market was consolidating and changing and that that would bring innovation. Right. You know, old players going out, new players potentially coming in. And I'm glad that you ended on that point because I don't think you're trying to do that. Right. You're just pointing out the inefficiencies in this market and that, that this is what's happening in terms of especially these smaller institutions. And I think that continues to be the problem here, is that I pointed out on LinkedIn recently, in some ways higher ed is almost like your local dry cleaner, right? It's like there's a lot of really small institutions out there that have like, you know, one shop essentially, you know, trying to compete with all these other players out there on, on so many fronts. And, and I think size and scale, and I'm not talking somebody has to be the size and scale of Ohio State or Arizona State or WGU, but you know, operating a college or university at 800, 900, a thousand students I think is just going to become incredibly difficult if it's not already, and I think it is already, unless you have essentially, you know, billions of dollars in the bank. And besides a Grinnell, I can't think of a lot of colleges that have that much money and are that small that are, that are out there.

Yeah, I agree, Jeff. And I was listening recently to Apprenticeship 2.0, which is a podcast that Reach University puts out. Joe Ross and Mallory Dwindle palace, who of course has been on Future. You were talking about some of this and they made the observation that, you know, higher ed is, is, is resilient, but it changes over time. Right. Like the original, you know, first century higher ed in America, you're learning Latin and Greek. That's not the case anymore, Right. It's, it's evolved, it's changed. And their hypothesis was like, look, some subset of these institutions are going to figure out how to serve institution or students with apprenticeship based models as their particular argument. But I think the bigger point is with business model learning model innovations that really make this a more accessible, more affordable, better value proposition for many more individuals, that'll be a good thing. I think when that happens, just the challenge I think we're facing right now is a lot of colleges and universities either don't believe that this is coming or don't have the capacity, frankly. Right. To do the innovations that they need to do well.

And speaking of that, you know, the institutions I think meet the market are Going to be the ones that succeed. And so something that caught my eye, Michael, was something that happens kind of every year around this time, and that is surveys about what Americans think about higher education. Not only what they think about it, but what they want out of it. Two in particular I want to point out first is New America's annual survey on higher education called Varying Degrees. And then Third Way as well has done a survey of high school students about what they think about higher ed and what they want out of it. Three things I took away from these two surveys, Michael. One is in the Third Way poll, which was for high school students. Not surprising. What do students want? They want career services and need based financial aid. That's, you know, it's affordability and outcomes. They want that a lot more than the bells and whistles. Particularly by the way, athletics. So I find it interesting, by the way, what are struggling colleges leaning into right now? Ding, ding. Athletics. You know, Michael, I teased on social media recently about a source for my new book who I have dubbed the College Closer. This is a guy who goes in to close colleges for creditors and hopefully one day we'll get him on this podcast. You're going to read about him a little bit in my book. And he told me one sign of a struggling college is that in their last years, right before they close, they usually add athletic teams in an effort to boost enrollment. So I think again, we're going to come back to that on another episode when again, I hope you could join us. You know, in the meantime, two other things from these surveys. One is on the New America survey, you know, we're going into an election this fall. What's fascinating to me is there's bipartisan dislike of higher ed and that's pretty hard to do, right, to have both sides of the aisle kind of hate you. You know, both groups similar, you know, they do not think that higher education is doing fine right now. 36 and 39% of Democrats and Republicans, I mean, we're pretty close on that and it's pretty low. And they agree that cost is the biggest barrier to enrollment for most individuals. 87% of Democrats and 78% of Republicans and also in that new America survey, two thirds don't think of four year degrees affordable for middle income Americans. You know, and again, since we're in election season, to quote James Carville, you know, as he said, it's, you know, it's about the economy, stupid. Well, for higher education, as we've said multiple times, it's about the, the job and affordability. And the other interesting thing, Michael, is when you look at the breakdowns by income in that New America survey, half, half of Americans with incomes over 100,000 don't think that Americans can get a high quality education after high school that is also affordable. Now why is that income level important? Because according to research from Phil Levine that I've been working with for my new book, he's an economist at Wellesley, the median income in the US for someone with kids approaching college age is around 75,000. So at 100,000, half of Americans don't think college is, is affordable. Wow.

Well, and look, Jeff, obviously these numbers, this discomfort with higher ed on both sides of the political aisle, that's been trending in that direction for a while. But I, I will say I was impressed, as I often am, frankly, with actually how informed Americans are, because the survey, the New America survey you pointed out also showed that Americans really do get the value of the degree when you earn it in most cases. But my take is that they think the path to getting there is risky and frankly, they're not wrong about either of those. Right. If you look at the stats, if you don't complete and a lot don't, the downsides of student debt with no degree and frankly, underemployment are real. You know, those are real weights on you and Americans seem to know that. So I think that's very interesting. Secondly, I will say I always like to tell people, far more valuable than doing a survey is watching what people actually do, not what they say. Actions speak louder than words. And look, we're seeing the trend lines, right? We, we talked about the decline from 69 of high school graduates immediately enrolling in college to 62%. That's really, you know, that, that's not just saying we're upset with higher ed, that's actually acting it as well. Jeff.

Yeah, and again, I think what do people do, I think is important to watch what do consumers want? And I think higher ed needs to react to what consumers want a lot more. So let's leave it there, Michael. And we'll take a quick break and we'll be right back on Future you to talk about a few more headlines.

This episode of Future youe is sponsored by Ascendium Education Group, a non profit organization committed to helping learners from low income backgrounds reach their education and career goals. Ascendium believes that system level change and a student centric approach are important for our nation's efforts to boost post secondary education and workforce training opportunities. That's why Their philanthropy aims to remove systemic barriers faced by these learners, specifically first generation students, students, incarcerated adults, veterans, students of color, adult learners, and rural community members. For more information, visit ascendiumphilanthropy.org

this episode of Future youe is sponsored by the Gates Foundation. Students need support at every stage of their education to career pathway and colleges and universities need to evolve to meet their changing needs. Learn more about the Foundation's efforts to transform postsecondary institutions to be more student centered@usprogram.gatesfoundation.org.

Welcome back to Future youe. Jeff, let's go to a lightning round on a few things after we went deep on a bunch of issues there. Where do you want to start?

Well, I think we talked a lot about opms online program managers last year and two, you being one of the biggest, ending up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal probably way more often than they wanted to do to be to be on that front page. And they declared bankruptcy. So what do you make of this?

Well, I think we both said it no surprise that they declared bankruptcy. I think we said on the show last year that we thought that they would do so. What I think was surprising, Jeff, was how quickly they had worked out all of the restructuring of contracts with their debtors. So they basically declared bankruptcy and immediately were out of bankruptcy. It was, it was. I don't know that I had seen anything like that in education before. I thought it was impressive. And so, you know, will it herald a return to growth? Let's see. They obviously need capital with that business model, so let's see how that shakes out.

Yeah. And two quick thoughts, Michael, on this. We know that online education is only going to continue to grow. We've seen that in the numbers, particularly post Covid. We know that institutions are going to need that revenue source. We also have an election going on, of course, which I want to get to in a minute. And the regulatory environment around online education and opms in particular is still kind of up in the air. So I think those two things kind of are clashing right now and I think that we're going to have a lot more visibility into what's going to happen in 2025. So speaking of that, we have an election going on. Any thoughts on this?

Yeah, we do have election going on, Jeff, and at least One of the VPs has called higher ed, I think, the enemy, if I'm not mistaken, Jeff. So there's a lot of swirl. What's catching your eye though, in particular?

Yeah, well, the VPs, I think, are also kind of interesting to me because you have undergraduates from Publix, which often doesn't happen. A lot of them, as we've talked about in the past, hail from your undergraduate alma mater and your graduate alma mater, I guess, too, right? But Here we have VPs who are from Publix and in the case of, of walls, from a regional public. Maybe it's the. Another sign of the declines of the Ivies, Michael, because I know people love to tell that story. Even if J.D. vance went to Yale Law School. I, I must say, Michael, I think I sent this to you when it came out. The Washington Post wrote this great story about J.D. vance's travels and journey through higher education. And they had this great anecdote when J.D. vance ended up at Yale Law School and there was a party and they were having trouble tapping the keg and somebody yelled out, we need the kids from public colleges. Where's the kid from public college? To help us out? And J.D. vance was able to raise his hand and help out. So I just thought that was a really funny anecdote about kind of a serious subject here about how people think about higher education, where they went. You know, historically in the U.S. of course, we've had most of our presidents and vice presidential candidates come through, you know, the most selective institutions. So it's kind of a breath of fresh air, to be honest with you, especially with these two VP candidates and obviously Harris coming through, Howard as well, and hbcu. Something just different finally. So I'm happy that that's, that's happening. There's another story that caught my eye, Micha was about report cards that don't line up with actual performance. There was this research that was written up by Jill Bar at, at Heckinger. Just wanted to kind of get your thoughts on, on this study.

Yeah, I thought it was interesting. Basically the study, right? They saw that grades, as you said, don't line up with actual performance based on objective test based measures. When they trained people in mastery grading, right, they saw like a slight change from like 36% to, you know, like a couple percentage points or something like that of alignment. But nothing really meaningful to me. Look, it's. We obsess over grades one. I think it's got to be mastery based learning. Put that first and then we'll figure out the grading second. And I know you had a great newsletter, sort of skeptical, right, of these schemes to change grading systems. I totally agree. Like, it's the end of the process, right? But number two, I Think, at the end of the day, even in mastery based learning, the person grading can't be your own teacher because they have a biased view of you. They have, you know, they have their own things. They're frankly trying to coach you and help you and then they're judging you. That's completely awkward. And I've seen it up close, Jeff. My kids, as you know, are both in Montessori school that is a mastery based or competency based school, at least for English language arts and mathematics. And I know their relative strengths. They're in two different classrooms, so they have different groups of teachers. And it was fascinating to see the grading of one one of my kids where she was getting mastery on certain skills that I knew my other kid, frankly was stronger at. And then I looked at her report card and she was not getting mastered in those same skill sets, even though I know she's stronger. So I was sitting there seeing it play out right in front of me of these inconsistencies when you have teachers grading their own students. Jeff.

Yeah. And so, Michael, one other story I want to get to because I think it represents a big shift in where the puck is going in higher ed and, and I call this the rise of the public universities.

All right, that's a teaser, so you're going to need to say a little bit more.

Okay. Well, it is a tease because I'm going to have a chapter in my book and as you know, we don't like to talk too much about what is in a book until it actually comes out. But I just got back recently from the University of Alabama and you probably have seen in recent weeks because it's rush season down there for the fraternities and sororities and Bama, Rush is a big thing on TikTok and elsewhere on, on social media. And I did get to see some of that. But I also was able to see the brand new admissions welcome center for the University of Alabama. And let me tell you, Michael, I was blown away. It is housed in a former state mental hospital. It's a very old building in Alabama, in fact, on the historical registry. And they redid the building, they put a lot of money into it. It's a very immersive experience, a lot of video, a lot of things to kind of touch and feel. It feels like you're almost in a museum, a modern museum in terms of the experience. And again, because about 60% of students at the University of Alabama are from out of state, that like, visit experience is absolutely critical. But what I'm finding from my book is that everybody is trying to copy the University of Alabama playbook, meaning big public flagships, and trying to attract more out of state students to the public flagships. And the University of Alabama kind of was at the the vanguard of this 20, 20 years ago where they started to offer a lot of financial aid to out of state students. And now basically what's happening is that other flagships kind of got smart to this and have started to do the same thing. And so the interest interesting thing that when I was down in Alabama and one of the things I was reporting on is how do they stay a step ahead? Because they're now thinking, especially with the demographic cliff, we're kind of going into a new era of higher education. And their visit experience particularly has to be so engaging in order to get those students to consider coming to Alabama. So the money helps. They have a big honors college that helps. Obviously Bama Rush and football and all that stuff helps. But, but it also helps to have this kind of great experience when you're down there to try to lure them in. And that's, I think this kind of rise of the publics is going to be something that we'll be talking a little bit more about this year. But again, as I said, I'm really focused on it in the, in the new book because I think people are starting to think about the cost and value of higher education, as we mentioned earlier. And publics are being considered now by, I would say, parents and students who might not have looked at public universities, even public flagships in the past. And again, beyond the public flagships that we talk about often, whether that's Berkeley or Michigan or Chapel Hill, we're talking about public flagships in a lot more states now that have copied this playbook.

Well, now that explains the text message I got from you with this time lapse video that looked like a stunning museum thing. It was like no admissions office I ever was in when I was looking at colleges. But I guess my big conclusion out of that, Jeff, is Roll Tide.

Well, thank you everybody for joining us on this, the start of another season of Future New. We will be back with our kind of usual format with a guest in our next episode. But you know, Michael, we did this survey of our listeners and if you haven't taken that survey, it's still open and we'll make sure that there's a link to it in the show notes. But in the survey, people told us that they kind of like the mix of different types of episodes, sometimes just me and you sometimes having a guest our Higher Ed 101, where we dive deep into a particular subject and we can bring back those this year as well. And so we'll be bringing back these episodes where it's just Michael and I a couple of times throughout the throughout the year. Be sure to follow us on social media so that you know when new episodes drop. Also, subscribe to our newsletter. Our newsletters, the ones that both Michael and I put together, as well as the Future you newsletter. And you can find all of that on the future you podcast.com so futureyou podcast.com our website. So until next time, take care of yourself and always keep learning. Sam.