Tales from a Higher Ed Disruptor

This is Future youe with Jeff Salingo and Michael Horn.

Welcome to Future youe. I'm Michael Horn, excited to do this podcast, particularly because we have one of our favorite people in the higher education landscape, Paul Friedman, who we both call a boss sometimes because he's the founder, of course, and CEO of the Entangled Group, where we both hang our hat for a little bit every single day. And Paul is a serial entrepreneur in education. He has been a watcher of the big trends in higher ed for a long time. And just excited to have you on the show, Paul. First of many, I hope.

Very excited to be here.

So, Paul, how did you, you know, you've been in education a long time, but one of the questions we ask almost all of our guests is, how did you actually get started in this world of higher education? Because. And why have you stayed in it so long?

Yeah, you know, I actually started in higher education kind of before I was born. You know, my family was in higher education. My father was a physics professor. My mother worked in research administration. And I grew up on college campuses. And that environment, that culture, has always been inspiring to me in a number of ways. And when I went to college myself, I got exposed to another aspect of the college experience, which is that you don't have to grow up with, you know, faculty members as parents to sort of have access to the college environment if you could be first in your family to go to college. And once you're at that experience, you are, you know, sort of a member of the community, and you're a member of a community that opens up access to a whole different part of society. And, you know, from that moment, I became, you know, very passionate about doing things that expand access, lower costs, increase the efficacy of higher education. And I've kind of done that as a education entrepreneur for my entire career.

You've described yourself often in terms of that entrepreneur title, if you will, that you've given yourself as in a different part of the world from the one that your parents obviously inhabited with higher education. Can you describe that what being an entrepreneur in this space means to you?

Yeah, it means that my mother will always ask me if I'm going to finish school for. For one. You know, I think there's various different definitions of an entrepreneur. I think the one that I like best is, you know, somebody who can imagine commanding resources that are not at their direct disposal. Right. They can sort of imagine a world of creation, using resources and using opportunities that they can't dictate the response to. And, you Know, sort of. I think that's very much sort of who I am or who I aspire to be. And the problems that I, you know, try to address are ones that are, you know, that affect education, which is the, you know, the community that I care about.

So what do you see as the most pressing problems right now facing higher education or that higher education needs to solve in society more broadly?

Yeah, I think that the problem we have as a society, which is broader than higher education, but for. For which higher education could be the solution to, is that talent is more evenly distributed than is opportunity. And that's a human productivity problem. Right. If we have a situation where we end up with opportunity going to a caste system to people who aren't deserving of it, you know, we end up not being as productive as human beings. Right. And I think higher. I think that's the problem that we're trying to solve or that I spend every day trying to solve. I think higher education is the best pathway to solve that problem.

So is that solved within traditional higher ed? Because as we look at traditional higher education institutions, you know, the places, the campuses that have been around for, in some cases, hundreds of years, we see, in some cases they're perpetuating that inequality.

Right.

There's numerous studies over the last couple of years that basically show the most elite colleges and universities in this country essentially admit and enroll essentially the elite of the country. And so if we're going to try to evenly distribute that opportunity, does that happen within those traditional colleges and universities? Or do you see kind of a new learning economy growing up around and eventually maybe even disrupting traditional colleges and universities?

Yeah, I think the simple answer is yes, no, in both. I think that tradition. You're absolutely right. Look, the very elite universities were never designed to be democratizing forces. They were designed by definition to be elite and exclusionary forces. Right. That's what they were designed to be. But their quality has created the whole brand around higher education. Right. That, you know, that is what trickles down to everything and what creates the great power of the classic diploma. And it cannot be ignored when you think about innovating or the next generation. So I think the elite institutions sort of have to be part of the kind of democratizing story. But you're absolutely right that more likely access will be created by institutions that were not designed to be elite institutions, institutions that might not be traditional kind of at all in a classic sense.

So what are some of the biggest hurdles, do you think, to change at traditional colleges and universities? It's clear they need to change. Many of them blame external factors, right? When I talk to colleges and universities, they complain about accreditation, which I know is a favorite subject of yours. They blame financial aid regulations at the federal. They love to blame outside forces. Sometimes they look internally. But as you think about the challenges and the opportunities, what are some of the biggest hurdles that you think are facing traditional colleges and universities?

I don't disagree that some of those challenges are challenges. And it's never too early for me to talk about accreditation. But I think first and foremost, there's a cultural problem within the colleges, within the colleges themselves. And there's. And there's two facets of it. One is just a sort of what ends up happening with any kind of community that establishes traditions is that the traditions themselves become the rule as opposed to what was underpinning, why the tradition was in place. And then people start to behave in certain ways with ignoring what the underlying principle is. So an example of that is academic freedom. Academic freedom is one of the most important parts of higher education culture, and it comes from a really important place, which is that, you know, our society seems to move in these waves between, you know, enlightenment and dark ages. And you, you know, you. If you want a institution of higher learning, you want that to be able to teach whatever is unpopular at the time, as long as that there's, you know, it's sort of principled from. From a discipline perspective. And so that the. The freedom to be able to teach what you want in the classroom and to write about what you want, research what you want about it, is very important. But that was never intended to be a freedom from accountability. Right. But after cycles and cycles of, you know, just talking about academic freedom, it gets to be expanded to sort of everything. And that makes it difficult to then put, you know, accountability measures in place or systems in place that run afoul of that tradition, even though the tradition has moved very far from the underpinning. And I think that's a problem. I think at elite institutions have a secondary problem, which is, you know, there are very few brands. You know, human existence is so fragmented that there are very few names that most. Most of the humanity knows. Harvard happens to be one of those names, right? And so imagine working for an organization that is, you know, that everybody knows, you know, that brand is actually a huge handcuff on what you can do, right? You weren't there when Harvard was built. You weren't part of building it. You're lucky to work there, right? And so the thing you fear Most is doing something that could harm that brand.

So they're risk averse as a result, tremendously risk averse.

And you know, the first principle of being entrepreneur is to be open to failure. I mean, you're more likely to fail than succeed and you're more likely to learn in failure anyway. And that's sort of part of the journey. And so anytime you're thinking about innovation or change, being afraid of failure is not a very good construct to be successful.

So I think that's a great diagnosis of what sort of caused these places to struggle. The broader system of higher education, really any system that's been around for decades, that's what causes it to calcify and so forth. The tougher question maybe, but maybe not, depending on your perspective, is how do you start to move that and change that? And so how do you, how are you thinking about that these days? You've obviously been in this field, as you said, for years. What do you see as the biggest opportunities to move that forward right now?

Yeah, and you know, I think it's pressures from outside and pressures from within. You know, I think there's, I think, you know, you do a lot of work, Michael, and you know, the classic theory of disruption, you know, and sort of higher education institutions have begun to bristle at the concept of disruptive innovation. But you know, disruptive innovation, innovation that really threatens core institutions is a nice forcing function to change. You know, people start to, you know, to move a little faster when they're worried that their market share is going to be, is going to be reduced. And we've seen that with things like boot camps, which initially came from without this side of the system and are now, you know, a number of traditional institutions are launching boot camps sort of underneath the auspice. And I think it's going to become also comes from change within and first and foremost, you know, institutions that have been able to figure out how to change their operating culture to incentivize and prioritize innovation. You know, you have Michael Crow on and President Sorrell on and, you know, a couple of examples of leaders who've been able to do that within their institutions.

And so.

Right. So how do you do that? So if you were running an institution and you had to create this culture of entrepreneurship or change or innovation within the institution, how would you go about doing that?

Yeah, I mean, I've been trying to study this because I think it's a really interesting problem. And, and you know, looking at the current cases and looking at, you know, even like USC and Northeastern institutions that were innovative sort of decades ago in ways that we sort of forget. It seems to me that it takes at least two people. You know, it takes. It takes a.

And do those people have to be at the top? Do they have to be the president and provost, for example?

So far, that's the pattern that I found that they have to be not necessarily the president and the provost, but you know, something like that equivalent. The president and a somebody who runs online operations at a major scale, or

the provost, someone who has access to budget and academics and so forth.

Somebody who has access to budget. Somebody could herd the cats of sort of internal folks. And then what seems to happen is that at some point the value structure shifts and innovation becomes prioritized. And what's amazing about faculty members is they tend to be very talented, very hardworking, very ambitious in ways. And if the incentive structure is to prioritize innovation or just to prioritize students, service or whatever the value construct you want to create, once that's in place, you're going to see tons of ground up innovation. And we've seen it happen at those institutions.

So flipping around now, we have a few minutes left with you. We've been talking a lot about inside of higher ed institutions. As we start to think about the entrepreneurs and those who are innovating outside of higher ed. Where do you see the big opportunities there? You're a serial entrepreneur, you're a serial investor in this space. What gets you excited right now?

I think there's. From an investor perspective, anytime you're at a inflection point in something as ubiquitous in society as higher education, you get to be excited. And we fundamentally are. My view is our society has made a transition to a knowledge economy and our higher education system quite kept up yet. And that creates all sorts of opportunities for change. I think the places that we're tracking most closely right now are in an area we call higher education employer interoperability. It's sort of the intersection of higher education and career. And my point of view is we kind of have a dysfunctional hiring system that's interfacing with a higher education system that's becoming increasingly dysfunctional at demonstrating talent and signal. And those two things are interoperating at a, you know, increasingly poor level. And there's going to have to be a lot of point solutions, vertical solutions, horizontal solutions that sort of operate in

that space, that bridge that chasm, in other words, and both. Do you see that going in so far as to actually influence how hiring managers at companies are thinking about job postings and how they think about talent and so forth?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the things from, you know, sort of journeys in other communities is there's been a lot of finger pointing at higher education for being bad at understanding what employers want. And I think some of that's very appropriate. And I think, you know, universities could do more of sort of looking at employers and asking good questions. But if you do spend time going to employers and asking questions about what they're looking for, you know, they're not particularly well informed either. Right, right. And so there's, there's, you know, there's dysfunction sort of on both sides of that very critical exchange. And I think there's, you know, will be a lot of exciting opportunities for entrepreneurial activity.

And so, Paul, one of the things, and I agree with you, that, you know, we're kind of in this era now of lifelong learning, that the future of work is really changing the course of learning and that employers, particularly in the signal question that you bring up is going to be critically important. But higher education obviously is not an inexpensive operation right now. You know, students are paying a lot of money at the undergraduate level, at the graduate level, at the professional training level. If education is going to be more lifelong and continual, there becomes a question. Either we have to figure out new ways of paying for it or we have to figure out new ways of lowering its price.

Correct.

And both. On both, yeah. And new payers. I mean, I think one of the questions you start.

What do you mean by that? New payers?

Well, look, one of the fundamental questions of education is who it's for. And that's a debate, I don't know that we've decided. Right. Is it for the individual, Is it for. For.

I mean, we may not have voted on it, but don't you think that a lot of people now think it's the individual good and that's who should support it?

No, I think there's a little bit of an exchange between people who believe it's sort of a societal good and that's why there's a public investment in it. And there's people who believe it's an individual good and that's why it's individual pay. And even the nature of the side old investment flows through the individual. But there's another beneficiary, which is the employer and there's, you know, there's an employer propensity to pay for the. For the what? The value that they're receiving. I think that's another source of capital in the system. And I think you're going to see, I think you're already starting to see models that leverage employer pay and particularly as you go to lifelong learning. I think, you know, the thing about for profit companies is their incentive structure is pretty easy to figure out. They're in business to make profits. Right. And so, you know, if it could be articulated in ways that prove out in terms of return on investment, that lifelong investment in their human capital, lifelong learning will return to the bottom line. You'll see more investment being made. And I think that's another source of capital. But I also agree that even with more money flowing in the system, technology will have to continue to do the thing that technology does, which is provide opportunities for scale and provide opportunities for lowering costs.

Paul, in just 15 minutes we've scratched a lot of surfaces and it just leads me hungry for more questions and conversation with you. So I hope you'll agree to come back on and chat with us sometimes.

I will come back at any time, but hopefully later in the day.

Yeah. Terrific. And for Those listening, it's 7:00am so thanks, Paul, for joining us. And we'll be back after this break on Future youe.

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. For more information and to apply to our next cohort, go to Georgetown Asu. Edu this episode was also made possible with support from the Entangled Group, where innovation meets operations. Entangled is a venture studio focused on helping the education ecosystem transition to support the knowledge economy. We build companies and nonprofits that support higher education institutions as they innovate to carry out their critical missions for society in the 21st century.

Welcome back to Future youe, and I'm here with Michael Horn. That was a great conversation with a good friend of ours, Paul Friedman, who is, you know, been known as an entrepreneur, a serial entrepreneur in education. And it's great that he talked a little bit about his background because we meet a lot of entrepreneurs. But I think his background, given that he grew up in an academic family, essentially as an academic brat, and that's always a good term, I think maybe changes his perspective a little bit on this field.

I think that's right. It gives him an appreciation for the richness and history of higher ed in a way that's not just homage to what's come before, but an understanding of why it's come before. And that's whenever I sit with Paul, that's what I take away from it is this deep search for why things are the way they are and then say, okay, if that's a principle and that makes sense, what's the right manifestation of that for the current era of what we're trying to accomplish? And his devotion to really using higher ed to change family trees is something that the first time I met him was at the ASU GSV conference probably eight, nine years ago on a roof deck back when it was at skysong at Arizona State. And it was the first thing he said to me. I grew up on a college campus. I love these institutions and, and this is what they can do for families.

And so what do you think other entrepreneurs in the edtech space who sometimes come from totally different backgrounds and sometimes maybe were an entrepreneur in a whole different field and saw an opportunity in education. And I think that's what sometimes bothers. I think people in higher education institutions in particular is that they just see someone in here maybe, you know, has a pretty good idea, but here to make a quick buck and then go move on. Like, what lessons do you think other entrepreneurs could learn from from somebody like Paul Friedman?

I think the first thing is that there's not a quick buck to be made, right. So if that's for sure.

And I think most education entrepreneurs have learned that, right?

And so if you think that's the mindset, you know, you're in the wrong field. Right? And so I think that that's one and two is having a deep devotion to student mission of institution, societal purpose. And actually, you know, Paul, I thought he was introspective on this question and not willing to stake a claim of is it for. Is higher ed for the individual? Is it for society? Is it for the employer? And I think deep down he believes that there's mixes for all of those things. And so having that healthy respect and then knowing what that means for innovation, what are the institutions going to be capable of? What's going to require change? And look, you know, a big thesis behind entangled is that venture capital is an inappropriate mechanism for higher education investment because it's looking for fast returns and education is not a fast return space and that's that those long timelines, he criticized some of the risk averseness, but some of those long timelines are actually important safeguards and important qualities of these institutions that have lasted centuries.

Like, for example, you talked about academic freedom and the need for it because we move from period sometimes in the country of enlightenment and the dark days. We didn't ask him where we are today. But, you know, he talked about the need for that. And I sometimes think that academic freedom is used as a hurdle to change in higher education. I think sometimes it's a false hurdle, right? Sometimes people just say, well, we can't do this because we have to go to the faculty, and we don't want to ask the faculty's permission. And I think part of the problem now with shared governance has its operating because I think it's truly broken on many campuses and how it's operated on most campuses is that, you know, shared governance, the way it's supposed to work on most campuses that you elect leadership, they have a handbook. They have rules of engagement with the administration of things that they're supposed to approve. But what ends up happening is that, first of all, most faculty don't really pay attention to that administrative or that representative structure until it affects them. And then suddenly they think they get to say they get to have a say on everything, right? Like, where are you going to put parking on campus? And everything else. And so most presidents get worn down, I think, by this process, because the faculty who have decided we're going to have this representative body most of the time either ignore it or they just go around it. And to me, that is not a good example of shared governance and how it should operate on most college campuses.

This isn't the question I was going to ask you, but hearing you just riff on that made me think of it. Do you think we see obviously a tremendous churn among presidents of colleges and universities? Do you think it's more because of external forces, boards and things like that, or because actually of the shared governance process and working with faculty that maybe creates change resistance when they know that they need to create change.

I think it's a combination of both. I think we have presidents who are really stuck in the middle between boards of trustees. And I sit on a board of trustees now, so I kind of see this who are really impatient and really want to move the needle faster, and faculty who really see themselves as kind of the keeper of the flame, right. When you talk to most faculty, they say, we've been here before this president and we'll be here after this president, and we've been here before this board, and we'll be here after this board. Right? And so in many ways, you have these two countervailing forces bearing down on the president and many presidents who are new to the position. I think this is why I think some of the best experience for a president is a somebody who's dealt with a board before, because I think that's critically important, and somebody who's been either on the faculty or dealt with faculty governance before, because if you have neither of those things, I think it's really difficult to be in that job.

I'm really curious. One other question on the academic freedom side, Jeff, which is, it seems to me that academic freedom is absolutely important to be able to ask the research questions you want to ask, to be able to explore the areas you want to explore. But it's also used by faculty members to say, don't tell me how to teach. And we're having tremendous breakthroughs right now in the learning sciences around how to reach individuals and help them learn better, more expeditiously, etc. And it seems to me, at least in the rhetoric, that sometimes faculty members say, keep that out of here too, because that's interference also, I think.

Yeah. And I do. And I think it's a lot about approach. You know, I was with Charles Isabel yesterday, actually, who started the online master's degree in computer science at Georgia Tech, the one that's gotten a lot of press. And one of the things he talked about is that they have the coalition of the willing there that started that, and there were some faculty members against it. Now, of course, now that it's doing well, he said basically every faculty member said, oh, I was always for this. Right. It's amazing how when things work out, everybody was always for it. Right.

Success is always a good deodorant, as they say.

And so I think that part of this is that you need to start. That's why I think innovation needs to start within specific departments or within specific schools. I think the risk tolerance is higher there. I think that if you fail, it doesn't affect the entire college or university. And then I think you scale those issues or those ideas from there. I think anytime you try to start this from the president's level on down, I think the president sets the narrative. They set the scene, they set the culture. But anytime you try to push this from the top down, I think that that's a recipe for disaster when it comes to shared governance.

So if we can square that with Paul's comment, and then we'll wrap up. My sense is president absolutely important to say, hey, we're innovating, but then not to say we're doing it across all the university tomorrow everyone flip over their jobs but actually to pick and choose your spots carefully create your new innovations where you have to create it from scratch carefully incubate in coalitions of the willing and so forth but really be the chooser if you will of those spots and make sure you're being opportunistic

and I think you can also do that quickly right So I think when when people hear that narrative you just spelled out they think oh that's why it takes so long to do things in higher ed. I think you can do all of that with speed.

Well those issues and more are all things to be explored next time Jeff so I hope you'll continue to join us and if you like the show make sure to rate us wherever you are listening and subscribe. That helps us find more listeners. So more listeners mean more interesting content, more access to interesting guests and until then we'll see you next time. Thanks for listening.