Tuesday, October 22, 2024 - On this episode, Michael and Jeff riff through a range of topics. Among them: how no constituency is actually in favor of cost cutting on college campuses; whether consultants can play any productive role in higher ed; and how Disney’s succession drama holds many lessons for boards of trustees at colleges and universities. This episode is made with support from Ascendium Education Philanthropy and the Gates Foundation.
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On this episode, Michael and Jeff riff through a range of topics. Among them: how no constituency is actually in favor of cost cutting on college campuses; whether consultants can play any productive role in higher ed; and how Disney’s succession drama holds many lessons for boards of trustees at colleges and universities. This episode is made with support from Ascendium Education Philanthropy and the Gates Foundation.
0:00 - Introduction
3:37 - Lessons for Higher Ed from Disney Succession Drama
08:12 - Boards of Trustees and College Rankings
13:57 - Cutting into the Cost of College
19:18 - Consultants in Higher Ed
23:51 - Professional Networks Built On-Campus
31:30 - The Leaky K-12 to College Pipeline
Jeff Selingo:
So we talk a lot about college in the US on the show, Michael. And I think when we say that word, it probably conjures up this image or probably a few in your mind and that of our audience, because I think that you, me, all of us, we kind of struggle with exactly what this term means.
Michael Horn:
And Jeff, this, of course, isn't a new problem on how to define college, how to define this thing, higher education, which we often call a "system of higher education," but by any reasonable definition of system, it's anything but one. And so in today's show, we're going to go through several stories. It's a one-on-one episode with you and me, but the stories that we've chosen to focus on have some connective tissue, and that is that they all are in the process of redefining how we think about higher ed or how perhaps we should think about higher ed going forward. That's all today on Future U.
Announcer:
This episode of Future U is sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, working to eliminate race, ethnicity, and income as predictors of student educational success.
This episode of Future U is sponsored by Ascendium Education Group, a nonprofit organization committed to helping learners from low income backgrounds reach their education and career goals. For more information, visit ascendiumphilanthropy.org.
Subscribe to Future U 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.
Michael Horn:
I'm Michael Horn.
Jeff Selingo:
And I'm Jeff Selingo.
So hi there, Michael. It's good to see you in person.
Michael Horn:
Yeah, we don't get to do this that often. I'm glad we're doing this.
Jeff Selingo:
Yeah. So we're in the same city, and so we like to take advantage when we have time together.
Michael Horn:
Yeah. Yeah. It's good to plop down, pull out the old mics, not be on YouTube. For our audience, maybe that's a relief for them. But we have a lot to get to today, Jeff, because when either of us, and I'm going to give the audience a little bit of a sneak sort of preview, if you will, about how we plan this show, other shows, when either of us are reading an article or you're doing research for your new book, we have this flurry of texts between us about how does this apply in higher ed? Or here's a nugget of an idea that we should probably talk about on the show. They're often at like six or seven in the morning.
Jeff Selingo:
Yeah, we're often eating breakfast when we're doing it.
Michael Horn:
So that's what our breakfast is, filled with, higher ed and texts. But on the list of things that we want to talk on this podcast, for better or worse, that list just keeps growing. Maybe you could even say exponentially. And then we try to cut ourselves back just a little bit here and there.
Jeff Selingo:
Yeah. So before we get started, Michael, a little bit of housekeeping. If you're just tuning in or you're a loyal listener, a couple of things you can do to really help the show. Like us on whatever platform you're listening to us on, subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, all that. It's a real big help to the show. And if you have a minute, leave us a review. You can also email the show. You know, we get a lot of pitches for guests, so keep those coming. But we'd also love to hear what's on your mind and questions you might have for us.
You can just go to futureupodcast.com and hit "contact" there.
Michael Horn:
Yeah. And with that as prelude, let's get started. I know you have more than a few items on your list, but what's the top one?
Jeff Selingo:
Yeah. So, Michael, there was a very long read in the Sunday New York Times a couple of weeks ago, and I want to warn you, it's a long read, and if you've read it, you might still be reading it. And it was about the succession drama at Disney, and it was an incredibly well researched and written piece. The co-author was James B. Stewart, who is one of the best in the business at writing about corporate dramas. He's the author of several books, really the author of the original business drama book in my mind, which was Den of Thieves, which was about Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken. Now, I'm not here to talk about too many of the particulars of this New York Times piece, the succession battle between Bob Iger and then Bob Chapek, and then back to Bob Iger at Disney. And partially that's because I met Iger back in the early 1990s as a student at Ithaca when he came to speak in the communications school.He's an Ithaca alum. He's been really kind to students and alums alike, as well as to the institution. You know, I met him a few times since then at alumni events he's hosted for Ithaca and for the board as a whole. And I will tell you, he's been nothing but incredibly nice and down to earth when we've met him at those events. What I really wanted to focus on is what I saw as the through line in that New York Times piece. And that's about the board itself, right? In this case, the Disney board and the lessons it can provide to governance right now in higher ed. And there's three in particular that I think are important. One is succession planning. I think perhaps the most important thing a board does beyond hiring the CEO initially is really thinking about succession planning, not only at the CEO level, but at that senior leadership c-suite level. It's really an enterprise risk. And what happens when the president leaves, the CFO, or the VP for research? The board should be really asking those questions. And it was clear that in the Disney case that it might have been asking those questions, but it wasn't leaning enough into it as much as it should have. Second, boards really need to show clear direction when it comes to leadership teams. Like what do they really want? There was a little drama in the Disney story about Chapek wanting to do a management restructure. It seemed that a lot of people were unhappy with it and the board didn't weigh in because they thought it was a management issue, and it clearly was. But what does the board want the new CEO to really focus on? And it wasn't clear that, for example, in this story that Chapek knew, and I don't think it's clear that most presidents know, what are the two or three things the board wants you to focus on? Everybody has goals, but they don't really have these really clear focus areas.And I'm probably going to add a fourth one here, too, is to really understand the budget and ask the right questions, so nobody is surprised. There was this anecdote in the Disney story about a trip to a shareholders meeting in Raleigh on the private jet in Disney, and people keep asking Bob Chapek, do you want to go over the numbers? Do you want to go over the numbers? He's like, no, they're all in the briefing book. I think sometimes what happens is because there's so much work of committees in higher ed, on the higher ed boards, we don't necessarily think about how does that rise up to the level of the board? Well, the committee is going to take care of that. Or sometimes the committee does take care of something and we end up relitigating it at the full board level. And so we really need to think about our committee structure in these board meetings, and also what is the responsibility of those committees and what is the responsibility of the full board. Also, I often hear from trustees' dashboards right. So we know what's going on. So that there's less time hearing presentations and more and more time reading in advance and then more time discussing in person. And then finally, I just want to throw a fourth one in here as I was reading the story is really having board expertise in different areas. There's a lot of stuff in the Disney story about the battle over DeSantis and how poorly it was handled, and it was shocking to me that no one on the board could potentially see that coming,right? So if they had somebody who was on the political side or in government affairs who might have seen that stuff coming. And in higher ed, we think of people on the board, you know, treasure, time and talent, and we often over index, I think, on the treasure part,right? Because they're going to give money. But what are the real talents of the boards? And I think this is an area that I always thought corporate boards were supposed to be better in because they specifically recruit for expertise. But it was clear in reading the story that that's not the case.
Michael Horn:
Yeah. And Jeff, I will say once you've been on a corporate board, one thing you realize, I think, is that while they're perhaps more strategically put together in composition, there can be a snowball effect of sort of going along with something just because you don't want to be the one person asking what you feel is the naive question. Everyone else must understand it and I don't. Even if, frankly, others are also asking it, you know, in their mind or behind closed doors. It's kind of like any team, right? There needs to be real psychological safety, as Amy Edmondson has helped us understand. And at least from my observation, I think during the pandemic in particular, that was sometimes hard to create because board members didn't necessarily have time together outside of the board meetings or formal Zoom calls. So reading the article, you're reading it, it's like watching an incredible train wreck, and you're sitting there, how could they not have known what was going to happen? This would never have happened on my board. And yet, I think if you step back from it, a lot of folks in higher ed will realize actually it could happen here. And it's not hard to construct that story ahead of time. But let's stay with boards, Jeff, because there's one topic that boards, I think might be thinking a lot about these days, and that is rankings. Fall is college ranking season, and we know that there are more than a few colleges that quietly or not so quietly, sometimes chase those rankings. But I suspect that board members right now are actually kind of confused. They're probably simply trying to make sense of what seems literally to be a new ranking come out maybe every week at this point, each one has wildly different methodologies and results. We can take Babson near me as an example. Jeff, there's this picture of Steve Spinelli, the president of Babson on social media, holding up the front page of the Wall Street Journal, where Babson was ranked number two between Princeton and Stanford. But just one week earlier, Babson was number 96 on Forbes. And look, I love Steve. If you're listening, hello. But I suspect he wasn't holding that one up on social media.
Jeff Selingo:
Exactly. And Michael, given that I'll be releasing my book in September as well, next September, September 25. I get why all these rankings are typically released in September, right, at the beginning of the academic year. But it also creates a really crowded marketplace for rankings, and I think a lot of confusion and questions among them. And so if I was probably editor of one of these rankings, I might suggest maybe we do something different and we come out in January or March instead. I think most of these rankings really want to ride the wave of the admission season. And there's something to be said for late spring after one admission cycle is done and a new one is about to start. So if anyone out there is thinking about starting a new rankings, maybe think about not September, when everyone is coming out with their own rankings.
But to get back to your question about boards in particular and what should boards be paying attention to? And I really do think there needs to be an education about the rankings before they come out. You know, what is the methodology? You know, at US News, for example, you know, 20% is still that peer assessment where they send out that survey to presidents and admissions deans, which, by the way, only get about a 30% response rate. You know, Forbes, there are seven categories, including its own American Leaders List, which Forbes claims sets its rankings apart from the rest of the rankings and how it measures, quote, I'm going to read here the leadership and entrepreneurial success of a college's graduates,ight? That is a big thumb on the scale for the Forbes rankings. I also think that we need for boards to put rankings in context.
You know, one worry that I have is that if you're chasing a better ranking, and I will tell you, maybe senior leaders don't think that happens, maybe faculty don't think that happens, but board members do pay attention to these rankings. It means that if you're chasing a higher ranking or in your mind, you're a board member chasing a higher ranking, you're probably going to have to spend more money to do that. And while some of these things might be spent on things that matter, like student retention and graduation rates, for example, it also includes things like faculty salaries and student-faculty ratio because they want those low, right, or full time faculty. Now, maybe that has an impact on quality in the long run, but in the short run, it's going to cost you more money. And again, going back to those priorities for the board that I talked about earlier, is that a priority for the board? Should rankings be a priority for the board? And that brings me to my last point here, is to remember that "not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." That quote is attributed to Albert Einstein sometimes, but in fact, it was originated with the sociologist William Bruce Cameron. And I'm going to have more to say about that in the new book about these information marketplace and higher education that just loves to scoop up this data. We have so much data now about the performance of higher education institutions.
And what that has encouraged, in my opinion, is this information marketplace like US News and Forbes and Wall Street Journal and everybody else out there to just start to scoop this data up and say, okay, this school is the best, or that school is the best. And I think if you're a trustee, you're like, okay, well, what should we be worried about here? What really matters for our institution? What are the data points we should care about? Goes back, by the way, to that dashboard. Those are the things that boards, I think when they think about our college, should be worried about.
Michael Horn:
Yeah, no, no question about it, Jeff. And I know you have a connection from the rankings, and you said it causes often boards, colleges spend more money on different areas. You also had a LinkedIn post recently that got a lot of comments. I was following along, lurking. I posted a little bit in there. You quoted Larry Bacow, of course, most recently the former president of Harvard. And he said that a few years back that there's no constituency in higher ed that actually wants lower costs. Can you share more on that? Because everything we hear right now in the news is parents want to pay less, ideally. So what did you mean by that?
Jeff Selingo:
Yeah, of course they want to pay less. But then you ask parents and students, do you want to have nice dorms? Right? Do you want to have the best faculty? Professors want time to do their research, so they favor fewer classes. Alumni want great sports teams and to spend more money on the rankings. Right? To just what we were talking about to prove the value of their degree long after they graduate. You know, graduate. You know, everyone favors spending more money on something different. So, sure, parents want lower prices, students want lower prices, the trustees want lower prices.
Maybe faculty don't, unless they're paying the bill in some way. Right? But they all want you to cut spending on someone else's pet issue. And no president or board is really willing or able to say no to anyone. And it's not only pet issues, but prominent issues. Take this as an example, Michael. There's this growing backlog of deferred maintenance at colleges and universities. According to Moody's, it equals somewhere between 750 billion and 50 billion over the next decade. And that's just at schools that Moody's rates, by the way, which tends to be the better run colleges and universities.
And I'll tell you, fixing the sidewalks or the boilers, it's not sexy, but it's necessary. And the building…About 20 years ago, there was this building boom on campuses, right when the millennials were coming to campus. So the early two thousands. Well, you know what happens with any building after 20 years, things start to go, and boards are simply not putting enough money away for this stuff. Now, some colleges and universities would spend their margin every year, a little bit of their margin at the end of the year, on capital expenses, on deferred maintenance. But with enrollment shortfalls, there are fewer margins. In fact, a lot of colleges are in deficit spending right now, and no donor wants to give to deferred maintenance.
So you need to cut somewhere in order to have deferred maintenance to be a strategic priority for the institution.
Michael Horn:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that was one of the big lessons of Yale pulling itself out of the doldrums, right? In the late eighties, early nineties, was, you got to factor in deferred maintenance, and this is a part of the budget now. I think everything you just said is correct, and I think the only thing, Jeff, that's causing a change here is, you know what? You acknowledge that parents and students are increasingly becoming more price sensitive. That is, there is supply and demand for value, and students are voting with their feet. That's why, fewer enrolling out of high school, more looking for college alternatives. Preston Cooper just had an article about how college admissions is becoming a little bit less competitive, which could be a downward pressure on prices. Fundamentally, I think people are saying, baseline, we want a place that doesn't cost so much and gives us a good chance to have a positive ROI.
Michael Horn:
And so whether that puts pressure at last on institutions to cut costs, and we should acknowledge some have done some serious slashing, maybe not the way we would have done it, but of faculty and departments. There are a lot of mixed reviews from those same stakeholders you just cited, or frankly, whether it means new institutions or other institutions that are lower priced rise up in prominence. You know, I think there is a fix there that's starting to come in, but we'll leave it with that and we'll be right back on this episode of Future U.
Announcer:
This episode of Future U 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 post secondary institutions to be more student centered at usprogram.gatesfoundation.org.
Announcer:
This episode of Future U is sponsored by Ascendium Education Group, a nonprofit 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 postsecondary education and workforce training opportunities. That's why their philanthropy aims to move systemic barriers faced by these learners, specifically first generation students, incarcerated adults, veterans, students of color, adult learners, and rural community members. For more information, visit ascendiumphilanthropy.org.
Jeff Selingo:
Welcome back. And Michael and I are still here in person seeing each other, which we don't do as often now as we did before the pandemic, when we used to get together a lot more. The benefits of technology that improved during the pandemic even helped podcasts out. Michael, now, there's been a lot of stories in recent weeks, from Florida to UNC Greensboro, West Virginia, again about the role of consultants in higher ed. And Michael, as I read all these stories, they seem to have a common theme: consultants are bad. Now, you and I both do consulting, so maybe we're a bit biased here in seeing their value. But what's missing here in these stories about consultants just being bad? Is it that the role of consultants are not well explained to the campus community, usually in advance? Is it that the work between the consultancy and the college is just not well defined? Or is this just inevitable, given that this is a time of shrinking budgets and enrollment? So there are going to be winners and losers in higher ed, and when that happens, if you perceive you're going to be on the losing side on some consultant's report down the road, you're going to try to make them the enemy from the start. I would imagine.
Michael Horn:
Well, there's certainly a logic to that, Jeff. I mean, you've played this role, I suspect, as reporter and editor. You know, when a source doesn't like how a headline turns out in an article you wrote, I suspect, well, maybe I should ask, what did you do as a reporter when that happened?
Jeff Selingo:
I always blame the copy editor who put the headline on the piece.
Michael Horn:
Of course you did. Right. So, and look, I did it as well. And I also, frankly, told my reporters to blame me. And I think there's some of that here as well. Consultants are there to sometimes deliver news that maybe a president or board, frankly, already knows or is decided upon, but they need a third party to help them build the case and deliver it. It's hard to be a prophet right in your own land, and then you can blame the messenger for the bad news. Or frankly, sometimes something I would do when we were at Entangled, I'd say let's take a slightly more extreme position so that you, as the president, can say, well, we're not going to do that.
We're going to do this thing that's slightly more moderate. But frankly, it changes the expectations of where we are. So it makes your idea, that kind of looked radical before, now it looks moderate in comparison.
Jeff Selingo:
A little bit of psychology there.
Michael Horn:
Yep. Working a little bit on anchoring. Now, there's the caveat that these consultants, I don't think they always want the blame to be pinned on them so publicly, as we've seen. Although here's where you might easily retort, there's no such thing as bad publicity, and it's better to be known that you have big clients in higher ed who trust you,right? We have a good, thriving practice with experts. It's free PR about the work you do. But I think the other thing going on is what I'd call a solution shop business, which is what I think a lot of kinds of consulting are.
And a solution shop business, it's not focused on operations and actually doing the work itself. It's basically taking unstructured problems and trying to come up with recommendations to them, which you can't guarantee in advance the results for because it's sort of bespoke. We don't know how it's going to work as a result for these non-operational consultants. We're not talking about the folks implementing iT systems. For example, it's awfully hard to demonstrate direct results from the work being done, which means it's very hard to give the ROI when someone says, oh, you just spent $7 million just to take a not so random number on these consultants. I think what you said is right, which is having a clear and transparent rationale upfront around why you're bringing in the consultants is important. Being transparent about that and not hiding about that what you wanted from them, even if it's around upstream processor ideas.
And frankly, why you thought that you needed that outside voice and that it, you know, it's crucial that it was outside as opposed to the counterfactual of you building up an internal team and actually putting a price tag. You know, if we did it ourselves, this is what it would cost and it's an ongoing cost because we're not going to lay them off. I think that can help you make the case better. This is why we wanted to get out of our insular world and take that bigger picture. The other thing is we know that it can do is by bringing in outside talent, it can connect you to other folks that create other opportunities you might not know about. But I think we have to just make all of that much more explicit on the front end of these processes.
Jeff Selingo:
Yeah, I want to get to that network piece in a second. But I like this idea of the internal teams and not, you know, not only do we may not have the talent inside the university to do this, but people are already doing a million things on the side of their desk and now we want to add something else to them. There is this. Not only is there the talent from the outside that you're bringing in, but it's the time that they have that you may not have yourself. Now you mentioned the idea of networks and I want to take a slight turn here because we've talked a lot about networks in general in higher ad and social capital in particular last year in relation to legacy admissions and whether to ban them. And we had this interview with Anna Hamayyan on connections that students make in college. And you and I were texting recently on Raj Chetty's research because we're really hoping to get Raj on the show here.
So if you're listening, Raj, get back to us or I think he's got back to us. We're just hoping to get him on the show. Anyway, there was this one piece of his research that I don't think has received as much, much attention in higher ed as other work because it comes from his massive data set that his group Opportunity Insights got from Facebook. Right? So it's less about the tax records that he uses, which is a lot about for his higher ed research. But the bottom line from this Facebook research that he did is that for people who do go to college, social capital is essentially built on campus. In other words, that's where we make our friends, at least students from upper middle class and wealthier families. And that's largely because fewer low-income students go to college in the first place.
They tend to make, low income students, tend to make their friends in their neighborhoods. But even when low income individuals go to college, there's not as much mixing on campus, he mentioned. You know, you don't get these lifelong friendships because, you know, with people in upper quintiles of income, between those in the upper income quintiles and those in the lower income quintiles. And I want to bring this back to something in your current work because as we mentioned, you have a new book coming out in November called Job Moves. And I was lucky to get an advanced manuscript, which, I'll be honest, Michael, since I'm writing my own book, I haven't been diligent about quite finishing the book yet.
Michael Horn:
So maybe we should rephrase. You weren't lucky to get it, Jeff, because I was just secretly piling up more things to distract you from book writing.
Jeff Selingo:
And I get distracted very easily. But there was something that, in the part that I did read that you and your co authors talk about networks as an asset. You have this framework around the back balance sheet for Job Moves, asset liabilities and equity. And connections in our networks are an asset. Of course, we're going to be talking more about your book later on in the season, but you wrote in there, assets are not strengths. And I think that's a key phrase. And again, we'll talk more about your book later on in the season. Michael, my takeaway from Chetty's research was that connections in college are critical for life success, but maybe they're more about deep friendships in that life success than they are for getting the job right.
Clearly, connections in college help you get that first job after college. But the question I always have is, well, how about after that? Do we place too much emphasis on networks built in college? Whereas you say in the book, assets could lose value over time. So maybe we should start really thinking about college connections in a different way. Maybe they're less about jobs, which we know is so clearly central now to the college experience. And maybe that's why we keep talking about networking in college and focus less on that kind of transactional aspect of the connections in college and maybe make it more about solving what the US Surgeon General has called the loneliness epidemic, and just making about helping people make friends in college, lifelong friends, and less about the network of the job.
Michael Horn:
So first, Jeff, I love this question. I feel like it's one of the more geeky questions that I'll probably get about the book. So I appreciate you doing that as well. But the first take I have around what you said, that connections aren't just about their utility to us in the job market, but also because of their value to our health and wellness and happiness. That is absolutely true. True. And I think it's one of the reasons why that at this point, it's older Gallup research, but you loved to cite it all the time back when we first started this podcast. It's maybe interesting as well. And that research was that one of the biggest predictors of students success was their relationships with faculty, staff, and so forth. Deep relationships, just one or two people. And that's because, you know, perhaps it really just binds someone to a community in a really authentic, genuine, purposeful way. It's nothing utilitarian, as you were saying, but I also think that what you're saying gets into the notion that there are different kinds of connections or ties in our lives. There are what researchers call strong ties, close connections with people that, frankly, are sources of strength for our interpersonal lives and increase our sense of trust and attachment and so forth. And then there are weak ties. And that's the sort of, these are also important, but these are folks that you are less well connected to. They aren't your great friends or family that you talk to all the time. But weak ties are incredibly valuable because they give you access to opportunities that you wouldn't otherwise know about. They are a little bit more utilitarian in that regard. And so with that entry point, I guess I want to take you up on the geeking out part of your question as it pertains to the framework in the book. The framework is a balance sheet exercise around someone’s career assets. And we took it from Boris Groysberg, a brilliant professor at HBS. And one of the important things to understand is that your balance sheet and that line that you quoted from the book is that assets are not strengths on a financial balance sheet, and on a personal one. Assets are resources that someone has that will confer future benefit. So, you know, on a balance sheet, financial balance sheet, right. That could be cash for you as a person. It could be skills, it can be credentials, it can be connections. You get the idea. It confers future benefit. But here's the thing. Assets have useful lives to them. That is, if they aren't continually cultivated or built or kept intact, they depreciate. And that ties back to all the deferred maintenance on campus buildings we were talking about much earlier in the show. And so relationships can frankly depreciate as well if they're not cultivated and ended to, and they have a cost to maintaining them. And that's the liability side of the balance sheet in the case of careers, it's your investment of time and money and so forth to build those assets. And I guess I'd say, I think it's a both and thing, right? Networks are things you need to continually cultivate, and of course, because they erode in value over time, but you need to continually cultivate them for their career value. But the strong ties in your networks are things that have personal value as well, and they're important for your health and wellness and happiness, and they are also important to continue to cultivate and tend to.
Jeff Selingo:
So finally, Michael, there was this story in the New Yorker that prompted me to send you a note. Are we seeing the end of the linear pathway from K-12 to college to work? And the piece was from Alec McGillis, and it outlined the fracture in schooling between public K-12 schools, private K-12 schools, charters, but also homeschooling and simply students who have just disappeared from the system. And as Alec wrote in that New Yorker quote, "since the start of the Coronavirus pandemic, public school enrollment has declined by about a million students, and researchers attribute the drop to families switching to private schools, aided by an expansion of voucher programs in many red and purple states, and to homeschooling, which has seen especially strong growth. In addition, as of last year, an estimated 50,000 students are unaccounted for, many of them simply not in school," he wrote. Now, I read this piece the same week I hosted a webinar on college enrollment, and one of the questions that just kept coming up in the Q and A was about homeschooling kids making the transition back to traditional education by enrolling in a traditional four-year public or private university. We also see on the other end of the spectrum here, as young adults enter the workforce, we're seeing more and more come directly from high school. They're looking for alternative pathways through technical colleges or community colleges, or they're going right to work, where they're going to get education benefits through the likes of Guild and inStride. You know, in all what I think seems to be happening is that that pathway that was easily understood from the age of five, when you entered kindergarten through high school, through college, through the early twenties, it really seems to be fracturing and, and maybe it always has, but it just seems to be moving so much more quickly now.
So what are the implications for public schools, for communities, for colleges and universities and employers? Any thought on how different this pathway, this linear pathway from K-12 to college to employment is changing?
Michael Horn:
Yeah. Let me try to give you a quicker answer on this one, Jeff, than my last answer, which is, I think we can bemoan this fact, but the reality is what you just said is becoming a fact. It is happening. People are taking stock of quote unquote, traditional options. And a line I said earlier, they are voting with their feet. They are opting out. And this, interestingly, is not just the case in urban areas. There was an article literally a few days before we recorded this in the Boston Globe about how enrollment in public schools in the tiny suburbs of places like Newton, Massachusetts near me are also dropping.
I confess it made me feel a little bit better about my own choices for my daughters. And so people are making choices that are better for them and their individual circumstances. And I think that's ultimately to the good. Right? If people are finding better matches, being forced into a one size fits all pathway, that does not work well for you? I don't see much value in that. And sometimes we get in this conversation, well, but maybe it's good for the public, even if it's bad for the private. But I don't actually think it's that great for the public and society at large either, if we're suboptimizing talent and connections and support.
And so I just think we need to think about how do we make it so that those options are open to many more people, not just, frankly, those like me who can afford it. That's on the demand side. I think you asked about the supply side. The net result for the supply side is this: Things are a lot messier. They're a lot less linear. They're a lot less predictable. And it calls for adapting.
Because you're right, we have to account for this messiness. And I think part of the challenge is from a policy perspective or from a tracking perspective, it's just harder to account for. You talked earlier about what we measure and stuff like that. You measure what you treasure, is another saying you often hear. We don't know how to measure or account for this in a way that really understands individual and societal success. We measure it from the point of view of institutions and I think we really need to rethink that. But candidly, as I do so, I always think back, frankly, to one of your books here that really opened my eyes, which was there's life after college. And you had this great set early in the book.
It's this great set of insights about how before the late 1970s, early eighties, there were many, many more pathways into the middle class and a good livelihood that didn't all run through college. And I guess I just hope whatever comes out on the other side of this, that we can get back to constructing a world where we do, in fact have many more pathways that are spaghetti like, less linear to match the reality of what students and families are actually doing, but also end them in a good place when they come out on the other side. And I think the juice will be worth that squeeze.
Jeff Selingo:
Yeah, Michael. And it may just be nostalgia for us. I think that we tend to think of education through our own lives. And I think in many communities, the public K through twelve school was kind of so central to so many communities for so long. And now we're seeing this fracturing of that which is not only fracturing among communities, neighborhoods, even along political lines in a way, and maybe that's why we're so worried about this, but it may just be an evolution. When we had David Leonhardt on the show last year, he talked a lot about the high school movement of the early 1900's and how it led to the college movement of the 1960s and seventies, which of course fueled the entire 20th century. For us, it may just be that this is a new movement, that there is not this linear pathway anymore. And that's okay. It might give us hope that in a world where we don't know what the future jobs are going to be like, that people are going to have multiple careers and multiple jobs because of advancing technology, that maybe that linear pathway was great for the 20th century, it may just not work for the 21st century. And that's okay.
Michael Horn:
Yeah. And hearing you say that about the role that those public schools had in the community makes me think about a conversation you and I have also been having over text around Montgomery County Public Schools. I'm a product of Montgomery County Public Schools. You live in Montgomery County.
Jeff Selingo:
This is in Maryland.
Michael Horn:
Yes, in Maryland for those that don't know. Sorry. And we just talk a lot about how just big that county has gotten, how unmanageable and ungovernable from our perspectives it is. And to some extent, I think this trend toward microschools, less linear, so forth, is kind of like a return to trying to make things smaller and more different kinds of community. And we know from Bob Putnam's work and a whole host of others and Raj Chetty's as well, we need more community in all of our lives right now, I think.
Jeff Selingo:
Yeah. And that was the bottom line of that Facebook research we were talking about with Chetty, is that there's so much work to be done in communities to help friendships. And I think that we've depended too much on higher education to build these networks that, quite frankly, work for the wealthiest and the upper middle class but don't work for most students. And with that, Michael, I think we give our audience a little bit of hope that there is this evolution to a new model of higher education and work in the future. Love to hear your thoughts on this. Please reach out to us at both FutureUpodcast.com as well as on our socials. Jeff Selingo, Michael B. Horne, where you can find us on most social networks. And we'll see you next time on Future U.
