Welcome to Future U.

Hello there. I'm Jeff Salingo. I'm a special advisor and professor of practice at Arizona State University, where I run the Arizona State University, Georgetown University Academy for Innovative Higher Education Leadership. We're here at the D.C. center of Arizona State University on the corner of 18th and I on the street side studio. And it's great to be here today.

Yeah, no, excited to be here. My name is Michael Horne. I'm the Chief Strategy Officer at the Entangled Group, an education technology studio, and. And the co founder and a distinguished fellow, whatever that means, at the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, which I founded about a decade ago. And it's a thrill to be here talking about this. The idea for this podcast around Future. You actually started, Jeff, when we were at a university doing a talk riffing off various themes for the trustees there about the future of what will universities look like and why this matters.

Right. And so this is. The podcast is called Future youe. Michael and I will be kind of talking about the future of higher education every week, and we'll also be joined by guests on a frequent basis who are kind of shaping the future of higher education. And so why do this? Right. Why have a podcast on the future of higher education? And I think one of the things people don't realize is just how big the industry of higher education is. And I think people within higher education hate that word, and they don't consider themselves an industry. But you know, there's more than 5,000 post secondary institutions in the United States. Everything from the beauty school down the block here to Harvard University, they have about $500 billion in revenues, employ more than 3.5 million people, they hold more than a trillion dollars in assets and more than 20 million students enrolled in just American higher education institutions. So it really is a big business. And when you think about most of the colleges and universities that we know of, a couple thousand of them that we could probably recognize, you know, in many of the towns that they're located in, especially given the way the economy is going, you know, they're the largest employer and they're the center of most of these towns. So higher education and the future of it is critical to the economy of the United States and the world.

I think that's right. And it's something that a lot of people forget, which is to say that they'll look at a small college, I think 40% of that 5,000 or under a thousand students. Right. And so they'll say, what does it matter if that place goes out of business or changes. And they don't realize the fact that fabric of the community around the university and how pivotal those places have played in the lives of those communities into their futures. And so, as we're seeing higher education undergo huge change right now, this podcast is really intended for the leadership of those universities, the faculty at those universities, the alumni and trustees of those universities, and all the other stakeholders, influencers, policymakers, foundations that are actively shaping what will the university, what will colleges look like in the future? Because right now we're living through a sea change in society more broadly from the shift from an industrial to a knowledge and maybe even an automation economy. And higher education is inevitably going to get pulled by these currents.

Yeah. And to me, this podcast is of interest to anybody who has an interest in higher education. We're going to be talking about topics as diverse as the finances of small colleges, the purpose of college, we're gonna be talking about admissions and demographics. Maybe we'll even talk about athletics and the other third rails of higher education, maybe tenure at one point. But it'll be a fun time and really looking forward to this. Michael.

Yeah, and it's gonna be an exciting format, I think, with the interview of really interesting folks. And of course, Jeff and I are both on Twitter. We wanna hear from you about who we should interview. But we've got a great lineup for the first several episodes of the podcast of people coming in, shar expertise with us, cutting edge ideas, reports, books, thoughts that they have had on the future of higher education. And then Jeff and I, for better or worse, we'll get to banter. And with your radio voice and my looks made for radio, it should be a lot of fun.

It's going to be great and I'm looking forward to it. And hopefully you'll be joining us on a regular basis. Thank you.