What is the “New Urban College” Model?

This is Future youe with Jeff Salingo and Michael Horne.

Michael Horne here, joined by my colleague, Jeff Salingo. And we're really excited to have our guest today. On today's show, one of the most innovative college presidents in the country been named, not just me saying it, but Michael Sorella of Paul Quinn College. Welcome to the show, Michael.

No, it's wonderful to be here. I appreciate the opportunity.

We're excited to talk, obviously, about all the innovations you've been doing at Paul Quinn, and. But before we get started on that, a conversation or a question that we love to ask our guests is just reflecting personally. How did you get in this crazy world of higher education to begin with? Why was this your pursuit that you chose to dig in on?

Well, I can't tell you. It was really my pursuit. My sister would tell you that I'm the black Forrest Gump. Right.

So I want to hear that.

So, basically what happened was I was an entrepreneur. I was running my own business. We represented, you know, major corporations doing crisis management work and high level public affairs. And the other half of the business, we represented professional athletes and college basketball coaches. One of my clients was attempting to purchase the Memphis Grizzlies. I was responsible for managing that purchase process. If we had been successful, I would have owned a small percentage of the team, and I would have been president of the franchise. So I'm on the highway driving to see Kevin Durant play at the University of Texas, and. And I get a phone call from the chair of the board, who says, hey, how would you like to be president of the college? And, you know, kind of like, literally like that. No, literally, that. That's what happened. Right?

I mean, had you attended Paul Quinn?

No, no. There's a little bit of a backstory that I'll come back to, but the, you know, I tell him, listen, I appreciate the offer. Thank you, but we're buying a basketball

team, which sounds like a much better deal.

I'm moving to Memphis. I've already picked out a great condo overlooking the Mississippi River. I have no idea what you're gonna pay me, but they're gon. And he says, well, just think about it. And I called my sister up, and I was like, hey, because my sister is a public school teacher in Chicago. She's the educator in the family. She would tell you proudly, I suspect, still today. Till today. And she, you know, she just. She's like, this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. She's like, of course, someone calls you up while you're driving down a highway to. To buy a basketball team, to scout a player for a team you don't have any money to buy. She's like, what? She's like, this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. You know who you are? You're the Black Forest Gump. Stuff just happens to you. She's like, are you gonna play ping pong in the Olympics next? But the way Paul Quinn came on my radar was that when I moved to Dallas from law school, I met a group of people playing basketball. They'd all been college basketball players as well, at a gym, and they were all Paul Quinn graduates. And they were really good people, and they welcomed me into their friend circle. And you know how it is. You move to a new city, start a new job. The people at the job are always great, but you need some friends outside of your job. And they welcomed me into their community. And I couldn't understand how people who were such amazing people were graduates of a school that everyone thought so poorly of, you know, in terms of just the national reputation.

Sure.

And I just thought that, you know, my friends deserved something different. And so when the last stable president before myself decided to leave, I just called up the search firm and said, hey, I think I should be president. And predictably, the search firm was like, who are you? This is ridiculous. You're 34, 35 years old. You've never worked in higher education. What makes you think you can be a college president? I was like, listen.

And did you have your. You have your edd? Did you have your EDD at that point?

No, no, it was just my law degree.

Okay.

And, you know, the lady blew me off, predictably. Right. Then she sort of made some phone calls and realized I was someone that maybe she should take seriously. Calls me back, says, go talk to the chair of the board. He is, you know, he was a bishop in the church, and rightfully so. He was just like, you have no educational experience. You're 34, 35 years old. What are you doing? Like, why do you think you can do this? I said, look, you don't need an academician. Right. You need a businessman. You need a salesman. You need someone who deeply loves his students. It's fine if you don't want to hire me, but don't hire the wrong kind of person. Didn't listen. And, you know, some other circumstances came to bear. He offered me a seat on the board. I sat on the board for a little while, was really unhappy because I didn't like the way decisions were being made and had decided to resume. Like, stopped coming to meetings and was going to resign from the board. Typed up my letter of resignation, put it on my fax machine. It didn't go through. Right.

It's probably because you were using fax machine, but we'll get to that one later.

Well, you know, this was 11 years ago, and I, you know, I'm not a person that's going to fiddle with things like that because I'm too impatient. And I set it on my desk and I'm like, I'll get back to this. The chair, the folks at Boston Consulting Group were doing an evaluation of the institution, called me up to interview me. I said, you don't want to interview me. I'm really unhappy. Like, I think this is ridiculous. They said, no, we've been warned that you would speak your mind. And had breakfast with them. We talked for three hours. I said, well, you guys get it. I said, but nobody else gets it. And they said, well, if they don't listen, they're going to have to close the school in a year to a year and a half. And I thought, well, maybe. Maybe that'll do it. They present the report. The guy who was the president at that time winds up packing up his stuff and just leaving, Right? And the. We had had. I mean, he was like the fourth or fifth president in the last four or five years of the school.

Can you give us a sense, just for those that are not familiar with the story of sort of the state of Paul Quinn College at that point?

Sure. It was broken, right? I mean, everyone was unhappy. The students were unhappy. The alums were unhappy, the faculty was unhappy. There wasn't a rich enough academic experience. There was a shortage of resources. The business model didn't make sense. When I got there, there were 30 days of cash left. It was late May. There was no commencement speaker. Five students had been qualified to graduate that year. I mean, just whatever it is that you imagined, right? And let me be clear, I had no context for this because the schools I went to function radically different. I just. I could not have even. I couldn't wrap my mind around. Literally, behind every door you opened, there was another problem. We had 15 abandoned buildings on the campus. I mean, little things weren't done well. For example, imagine people having cell phones issued by the college. And when they leave, no one gets them back.

Wow.

So you just start. You're paying a monthly bill of cell phones.

And so. So when you first got there as president, how did you. How did this not overwhelm you? How did you. How did you decide? Okay, well, here's what I'm going to attack first. Here's how I'm going to also do the tactical as well as thinking about the strategy for the future.

Well, it did overwhelm me. Right. I mean, I think it would have overwhelmed anyone.

Yeah, I would imagine.

Yeah. And it. It stressed me out because, you know, all of us have egos, Right. And everyone except for my current wife told me not to take the job. Right. They said. I mean, the best advice I got or the most encouraging advice I got was, well, you can't make it worse. Right? Like, literally, that was what passed for do this. Okay. And, you know, and people. You know, people are very clear, like, you know, this is gonna mess up your reputation. This will derail your career. This will be a really bad thing. And I just thought I was like, you know what? But I see a path. There are things I can do here to be successful, and I just, in my soul, believed it. But, you know, when all you do every day is just keep taking punches, no matter how big you are, no matter how strong you are, it wears you down. But we had a strategic plan that Boston Salting Group had created. It was a really good blueprint.

Okay, so you had that going in.

That helped. Yeah, that definitely helped. And then, you know, we just had this commitment. We said, look, we're going to become one of America's great small colleges, period. That's our goal. Everything matters. And there are no sacred cows. We don't have to be like, we're unencumbered by a history of success, so we can just do whatever it is we want to do that we think makes sense. Let's reimagine the possibilities. And then every day, I just went to war. And we found other warriors. Yeah.

So if any of our listeners Google Paul Quinn College, of course, probably the story that they're gonna come up with is one that you've gotten a lot of publicity about, which you did early in your career there, which was about the football team and the football field. Could you talk a little bit about that? Because I think that set the tone for the place, but it also set the idea and motion of this urban work college that we want to talk about.

Sure, sure. We sort of, you know, listen. We were a prolifically unsuccessful football program. Right.

Football in Texas.

Football in Texas. Right. And we couldn't afford it. We were spending a bunch of money on a football program that was unprofitable, that was unsuccessful, that wasn't producing graduates that were prepared for what life dealt next. And I know some of my alums who play football would take umbrage with that. And it wasn't all of them, right? But the numbers told the story. Too many of our football players weren't graduating. And that's really the group that I'm talking about. And so the team lost, and we couldn't afford it. So first thing I did when I came in was terminated. The football program, the football field lay vacant for about two years. And then this is just the Lord's work, right? I get a phone call one day, and this was the dark, dark, dark days, right? I mean, I'm talking about we lost 400 of the 550 students we lost in my first two years. We were fighting the accreditor, you know, at every turn. And, you know, I come back from lunch and I get a message that Trammel Crow called. And I didn't know Trammell Crowe, so I had no contact. I knew the company, and I thought one of my friends was playing a prank on me, right? I was like, my friends are jerks, right? And I call him back. It turns out it actually is Trammel Crow. And he says, hey, I like to go to lunch. I've been reading the stories about you, and I just want to see, you know, if you're really who articles seem to say that you are. And we go to lunch, and we hit it off. And the first few years, really, maybe the first four years of my presidency, I. I was aggressive about getting off campus, calling up other college presidents, going to visit their schools, studying what they're doing, right? Like, I attacked it with what you would hope would be the aggressiveness in a field that you're not prepared to succeed in. Right? Right. And he says, so I'm sitting there with him, and he says, hey, I'm interested in community. Oh. I said to him, hey, our community doesn't have a grocery store. We're in a food desert. People deserve food. They deserve a grocery store. He doesn't miss a beat. He says, you know what I'm really passionate about? I'm passionate about community gardens. And he starts talking about community gardens. Now, I don't claim to be a genius, but I recognized pretty quickly we weren't getting a grocery store. And so I'm like, you know, I've recently become fascinated by community gardens myself. 30 seconds ago, right? And he says, well, do you have someplace on campus where you could put a community garden? I said, yeah, we could put it on the Football field. He said, football field. Like, can you do that? I was like, yeah, I'm the president, we can do whatever we want to do. Right? So he gives us money to do a 30 yard teaching bed on there. He also starts talking about this. And early on, while we're doing the groundbreaking, he tells people at Pepsi, they come to visit and literally I'm just sitting at the table with them. I'm like, you know what we should do? We should turn the whole football field into a farm. And they're sort of like, do you have an agriculture program? I'm like, no. They said, do you know anything about farming? No. And I can see where this is going, right? And they say, well, do you have anyone to run the farm? I was like, I'll be right back. So I go and I call one of our staff members. I said, hey, you majored in economics at Spelman. And she said, I did. I said, great, you're going to run our farm. She's like, we don't have a farm. I said, well, we're about to have a farm. She said, I don't know anything about farming. I said, I don't care about that. Right. Just Google it, right? Just leave me alone. I gotta go back and finish cutting this deal. And that's how it all started. And you know, as I told the board, I said, this farm is gonna save our college. And they said, well, are we gonna make that much money? I said, you can't make that much money growing anything legally. Right? I said, but it changes the narrative. We move from people who appear to need things to people who believe they can give things of value. I said, and that begins to transform how people engage with you. And that's where I would tell you, that's really where the true transformation began.

So let's fast forward then and talk to us about what this vision is now and how you're executing on it in this urban work college.

Sure. So we've created our own form of higher education. It's an urban work college model. That model never existed before. And work colleges are this concept that helps students pay for school. They work and they go to classes. It's a great model because the reality of it is everyone's working anyway, right? I mean, 80% of independent students work more than 30 hours per week. 70 plus percent of dependent students work more than 20 hours a week. So people are working, they're just working in places that aren't tied to their academic pursuits or career interests. So we changed that model and said, well, look, we're in a city. We can't have all of our students work on a farm. We don't have the kind of things other places have. What if we tied this into the fact that we're in the ninth largest city in the country in an urban population? Why don't we just get internships and use that to bridge the gap, get companies to pay for that, which helps students who hold down their costs. Which allowed us to create a model that would allow students to graduate owing, you know, if they choose to, less than $10,000 of debt. Students now graduate with the ability to have a work transcript and an academic transcript. They know how to think and they know how to do. And now we're getting ready to build it out and create a national network of urban work colleges.

So. And then the turnaround story, before we get to the national question, results. How has it changed the dynamic on campus? And what do you see in terms of student body graduation rates to completely different school?

Right. So I inherited a graduation rate of about 1%.

1%.

1%. Do you understand how committed you have to be to only graduate?

I was gonna say that's pretty impressive.

I mean. Yeah, like, you know it is. You can write a book. That was the truth. So we've gotten that up now to about 31%.

Okay.

That's what it'll be this spring. And it's hard. Like raising your graduation rates without a gimmick is hard. And without a bunch of money to throw at the problem. We had a retention rate of around 33% and we've gotten that up now. The all school retention rate, depending on the year, it doesn't dip anymore below 66, 67%. And typically it's up around 70, 71%. But we're really excited because this past spring, I mean, this past fall, our fall to spring numbers for first time freshmen were 89%. Wow. And you know, our goal is to have an 85 to 90% retention rate, which people always say is impossible because we've got 85% Pell Grant eligible students. But you know, look, if you're going to admit students, you should graduate them. Yep.

So, Michael, what does this then national model of the, of the urban work college look like? Who does it include and how do you build this out? And what's the reaction you've been getting from your colleagues, from your counterparts?

So the reaction has been amazing. Right. We view it as having literally three different opportunities for expansion. Opportunity number one is building a network of Paul Quinn colleges and other Cities around the country. Right. So we'll go into, you know, the largest metropolitan statistical areas and, you know, create schools there. Then the second piece of it is building a consortium of schools that are, you know, already in existence, already have a brand, already have a history, but want to adopt the model. And we'll coach them and help, you know, work with them and build it out that way. And then the third is creating a version of this that can be embedded in, you know, large institutions. But, you know, when I designed the model, like, I wrote my dissertation on this effectively, right. Like it was done so with the idea that it would be expanded and replicated and that this would offer a path forward in higher education that didn't exist.

Michael, just tremendous success that you've had building it and excited to see what a national model looks like. This as you, as you take it to scale what you've built in Texas. So they say Texas is big, but it looks like you're going to get even bigger. So appreciate you joining us on this episode.

No, thank you for the opportunity. And you guys, good luck with this. I hope you have tremendous success.

Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Thanks for being here.

Yeah. We'll be back on Future you.

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.

And welcome back to this episode of Future youe. We're live at ASU gsv. The conference is just beginning to wake up, so you're going to hear a lot of background noise here in the GSV marketplace in San Diego. That was a fascinating conversation, Michael, with Michael Sorrell, the first president of Paul Quinn College outside of Dallas. I didn't realize just how bad things were, right. He talked about what, 30 days of cash. He talked about all these people were carrying cell phones around who no longer worked for the college, talked about a 1% graduation rate, didn't have a commencement speaker when he, even though graduation was only weeks away, I mean, things sounded pretty desperate.

It reminded me the opposite of the story that I think it was Conan o', Brien, when he gave the Harvard graduation address or class day address, and he said, the undergrads, some of you were C, or maybe it was Al Franken, said, some of you were C students. And then he just started applauding. Congratulations, that's hard work. And Michael said, you know, it's hard work to have a 1% graduation.

That is hard work. Right. So. But you've seen this over and over again throughout higher education, right? Institutions that have, you know, people, some people think they're in trouble, but that's really rock bottom. Like, what do you do in that situation? I mean, he obviously didn't run away from it, but what do you do in these situations? Situations in higher education?

Yeah. I mean, look, from my perspective, I thought of two totally different things, right, Jeff? One was there are a lot of institutions in this position right now or entering this position over the next five, ten years, and a lot of them are going to merge or be acquired or close their doors and so forth. And then here's Paul Quinn College. That shows a very different narrative as possible. And when he was talking, I was reminded of Southern New Hampshire University, Bellevue University out of Omaha, Nebraska, not one we've talked about, but these institutions that were similarly almost at or at rock bottom. Bellevue, I think, went bankrupt in the 1980s and reinvented itself as an adult college, in effect, for lifelong learners. Southern New Hampshire University, the brick and mortar campus dwindling and dying with assets that were totally not useful anymore. And Paul LeBlanc, of course, said, we're going to reinvent ourselves and create Southern New Hampshire online. And now 100,000 students per year, later on their way to 150,000 students or whatever. So in that sense, you know, necessity is the mother of innovation. And I think Paul Quinn College and what Michael has done there espouses that. He said, you know, we're at rock bottom. We have a basic of a plan from bcg. So they didn't have nothing, and they must have had cash to be able to pay for BCG's services. But they totally then reinvented themselves. And he said, even in his first year, I think they shed 400 students from a base of 550. It's just astounding. And that led to, I think, you know, when he was having that conversation around the. What became, I guess, the fertile football field, but was the. Was the vacant football Field really just an opportunity. And he seized it and ran with it and then invented this urban work college model that he's now trying to scale nationally.

Well, and I think that's the thing here is the seizing of a gem somewhere on campus. Sometimes you see it. You know, Paul LeBlanc talks about online education. He always saw there was something that was working on a corner of campus, and then he went and got it and expanded it. And in this case, this kind of fell in the lap as Michael Sorrell was describing this idea. But then it now has become the narrative. And I think this, to me, a lot of what's happening now in higher education, people are always asking me, like, how do I sell these ideas not only to my campus, but to outsiders, Right. How do I break through the noise, the literal noise of. Of today's kind of media landscape? And I always tell them, this is like a campaign, right? This is like a political campaign. And you're trying to build over time, repeating it over and over again what you're trying to do. And, you know, we had Michael Crowe recently on Future youe, and I think that's what he's done over 15 years. Right. You know, people could almost memorize what he talks about, whether it's this now Fifth Wave University, but the charter of asu. You know, people know this, but it's because it's been incredibly repetitive. Right. Georgia State the same way. And Tim Renick talking about student success. Right. People complain, I guess, sometimes that they're everywhere, like Michael Crowe is everywhere. But that's what this is about. This is in some ways, running for political office. And I think what Michael Sorrell is beginning to do is that where he creates this narrative around Paul Quinn College, and now he wants to create this national urban work college.

Yeah, I totally agree with that, Jeff. And obviously you're an expert at crafting stories yourself, but the storyline and the power of the story. I'm always reminded David Gergen, my former boss and the political analyst, he always says that he who controls the metaphor or the story controls the debate. And I think that's right. If you can create a compelling story and people resonate with that. And one of our friends and colleagues, Paul Friedman, at his. His former company, they were building a way of learning through stories, designing all courses through stories, just because that's the way through human history, we have communicated lessons, passed down lessons from generation to generation, and created new things. And I think it's a good point.

Well, and I think part of the problem now in higher Education is. There's a lot of me too. Right. You know, and I see this as a journalist. Right. I'll write an article and then the next day I'll get five pitches. Hey, we're doing this as well. And I think what Michael Serrac shows, what Paul LeBlanc shows, what all these innovative presidents show, is that we need to create our own narratives, right. What's happening at our institutions and we can't give up on them.

Right.

These are not something that you do over a month or six months. These are multi year ideas. You know, Bridget Burns even talking about from the University Innovation Alliance. These are things that happen over a long period of time.

Yeah, I think that's right. And so the last thought I have on it though is so they've built their story and now they're trying to scale it.

This urban work college idea.

Yeah, this urban work college idea. And I think it's going to be, I mean, so it brings together two themes that we've been talking about. One around scale and then the second one around what's this future of learning and work and how do they intersect and interoperate with each other. And I think the innovation on both of those degrees is really interesting. I love the idea of graduating with a work true transcript and an academic transcript. And it does two things. One, it helps pay for the college, quite literally for the students. But two, it leaves them with not just work experience, which you've talked about being incredibly important to job prospects, but also increased social capital from the working world of people you know how to talk to to go get a actual job when you leave.

Well, and I think part of the issue here is, and we didn't get chance to really get into this with him is that is how scalable is this idea?

Right.

Work colleges are not a new idea. We have a few of them, but most of them are pretty small and they're not in urban areas. So I think those are the two big differences with his idea. But the question is how much can you scale this? And then what is student. One of the things we didn't get into this with him is how much are students interested in this? Right. They're clearly, they're clearly worried about debt and this is a way to reduce debt. But is this really the way they want to reduce debt?

Yeah, I do.

And do they see the benefits of it?

Yeah. And so this, what form this scale is going to take I think is going to be interesting. He described three pathways. One, them doing it themselves. I wonder whether that'll take on the form of acquisitions because I just some of these urban places where you would want to scale into, they're crowded. And so I think it's difficult to imagine what that might look like if, if they're not able to work directly with or take over, in some cases, institutions. And then secondly, he talked about helping institutions innovate. And then third, basically, it sounded like creating a codified model that anyone could just take off the shelf and put into place. I confess to being a little bit more skeptical of the latter one, and I think the first and second will be really interesting. And I wonder if they merge themselves over time and become one strand rather than two.

Yeah. And so we'll be exploring, I think, these issues on future episodes of Future youe. It was great to have Michael Sorrell with us today. And for Michael Horne and I, thanks for joining us on this episode of Future youe. Please rate us or comment on any of the venues where you listen to us, and we look forward to having you with us next.