Tuesday, November 26, 2024 - Technology is an increasingly important element of everything that colleges do, yet it remains a distinct and separate function at too many schools. Jeff visited the Educause Conference, focused on tech in higher ed, to chat with college leaders about how they are leveraging IT on their campuses. They discuss best practices in bridging the tech-academic divide, the role of data in decision making, how IT departments can support efforts to improve the value proposition of higher ed, and more. This episode is made with support from Ascendium Education Group and the Gates Foundation.
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5:49 - IT Then and Now
9:02 - The Disconnect Between Tech and Academic Teams
11:56 - Using Data Strategically
16:01 - Data-Driven v. Data-Informed Decision Making
24:02 - Public-Private Partnerships
31:50 - Communicating Across the Tech and Academic Sides
34:57 - Getting Started in Online Education
37:16 - Improving Perceptions of Higher Ed
42:31 - The Future of Tech in Higher Ed
Michael Horn:
Technology is infused in so much of what we do these days in higher ed, Jeff, but it’ seen often as such a distinct and separate function at colleges and universities.
Jeff Selingo:
Indeed, Michael, I often describe it as the plumbing and for most people on campus, students, faculty and staff, as long as it's working, we don't worry about it. But recently I had the chance to host Future U Live at Educause, which is the big gather of tech leaders in higher ed. And we discussed how tech, both inside the university but also outside the university with partners, should play a bigger role on the academic side of the house and in the student experience overall. When decisions are being made mostly on campus these days, it's usually the president, provost and CFO, and maybe the board, but why not the chief technology officer? We're going to be tackling that today on Future U.
Sponsor:
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.
We took Future U on the road again, this time to Educause, which is the big edtech conference in higher ed. It was in San Antonio in October. We had a small studio there, but had a live audience as well. And I gathered a mix of people in higher ed to talk about whether IT should play a greater role in how campuses are run and future business models for higher ed. We had a CIO with us, Dave Weil, who's vice President of IT and analytics from my alma mater, Ithaca College. We were also joined by two academic leaders, Nicole Parsons Pollard, who's Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic affairs at Georgia State University, and Evie Cummings, who's Executive DireCTOr of Advanced Academic Programs at Johns Hopkins University and former leader of University of Florida Online.
Michael Horn:
And Jeff, I'm sorry I wasn't able to make the trip, but what were your big takeaways from this that you're hoping our listeners get out of this episode?
Jeff Selingo:
Michael, it was interesting that two nights before we recorded this, I gathered a group of CIOs who were in town for Educause and one of the CIOs asked the others how many times they had presented to their board of trustees when it wasn't about risk, such as cybersecurity, etc. And I think one hand went up. The provost, the CFO, they always get to present to the board, Geez, at several places. So does the VP for Enrollment. Yet technology, which touches every part of campus, rarely gets that seat at the table. Why not? You know, as you'll hear Evie say, this is a two way street, that tech folks are blissfully unaware of the reality of what it's really like to work in an academic department. But this is a dichotomy that we can't afford anymore. So how do we solve for it? Here are my three takeaways from this conversation.
Jeff Selingo:
First, we talked a lot about data to make decisions, get the right people and the right data around the table. Dave Weil talks a lot about how technology is part of faculty governance. Nicole says as provost, she tells the tech folks, here's the outcome we want. How do we get there? Second, technology as a tool and a way towards transformation. What's done in house and what's outsourced. Michael, I know a big interest of yours is what's that rubric for making those decisions? As Dave Weil mentions in the podcast, they move data analytics back in house. What is the role of consortia here? To help institutions with things that are not core to them. But we also got into a discussion, as you'll see with Evie, about what is core. And given her previous government experience, she has a different take on what's core. And finally, I end on one question I didn't ask that they think if we gathered a year or two from now would be first on my agenda to ask, you'll want to stick around to hear what their answer was to that question in particular. And with that, here's Future U live at Educause.
Please join me in welcoming them to Educause. So I want to jump right in. And Dave, first of all, congratulations on being this year's recipient of the Educause Leadership Award. You know, as you know, I got my start as a journalist when I was an undergraduate at Ithaca College in the early 1990s. I was a reporter and editor on the student newspaper. But a little known fact here, I also worked as a computer consultant for none other than Dave Weil. So I'm sure you remember those clunky desktop maps.
Dave Weil:
Oh, absolutely.
Jeff Selingo:
And I also remember the computer lab was across from the PC Lab, and whenever the consultant for the PC Lab wanted to go and break. I said no, because I know nothing about PCs, but so it's really great to be with you here today.
Dave Weil:
Same here. Thank you, Jeff.
Jeff Selingo [00:05:49]:
Yeah. So you're Vice President of IT and Analytics at Ithaca. And in interest of full disclosure, as listeners of the podcast know, I also sit on the board of trustees at Ithaca. And I really wanted you to put on your history hat here for a moment since, you know, you were working in higher ed IT during another really disruptive period in higher ed and actually in the world, the commercialization of the Internet in the early to mid-1990s. And so how does this period compare to that now with AI and higher ed? What's, what's similar, what's different? And probably most important, what did you take away from your experience in the 1990s that you would apply here now?
Dave Weil:
You know, obviously in 90s, you know, the Internet was exploding in terms of on the scene, but it was new. It was all this interconnections that we didn't have before. The world was unfolding before us. We were able to make connections that we hadn't made before. You could almost use that same language today to describe some of what's happening with AI. But one of the differences that I picking up now is there's, there's a fear, there's an apprehension that I don't recall being there as much with the Internet. I think the Internet had, you know, you had to intentionally go out and either go to a university to get on the Internet or you had to subscribe to an ISP or AOL dial up and you know, all those things now. But AI, you just sit in front of your browser and you can start connecting with it. So I think it has permeated much, much faster. But I think there is concern about the impact of AI on the academy and on the jobs and on the environment. In many ways that was not there. There's also a sense of awe and empowerment that I think is similar to what was happening.
Jeff Selingo:
It may also be coming at a time when I think higher ed in general is kind of under a microscope that it may not have been in the past. The value of higher ed being questioned like never before. Enrollment trends not going necessarily in the right direction at a lot of institutions. So maybe just the world of higher ed, the industry of higher ed might be a little different this time around too.
Dave Weil:
Yeah. And the consumerization of things as well. Because with AI, we all are. Can be experts. And so what's the role of higher ed in there? If I can have the information at my fingertips. And then how does higher ed allow or has higher ed value to that equation?
Jeff Selingo:
So, Evie, there was a piece in the Wall Street Journal a couple of years ago headlined, and I cut it out and I kept it on my desk. Get rid of the IT department. That was the headline. I don't write the headlines, and I don't work for the Wall Street Journal. But there's a line from IT Technology is no longer an option, something distinct. It is a competitive necessity. It is deeply fused with the work of staff, a core enabler of business models and a driver of the consumer experience. Now, you're on the academic side of the house, but you're deeply versed in technology and digital learning. You previously were director of the University of Florida Online. Why is there such a disconnect between academic and technology teams? At many colleges, it seems deans treat technology often as plumbing, and tech leaders sometimes think they're, no offense, working in the widget factory. Right. That they're not working at a place of higher education. What's the disconnect that you see?
Evie Cummings:
Thanks, Jeff. Yeah. I'm so glad you sent me that article, because I hadn't seen it yet, and so I was fascinated. It kind of tapped into a broader concern I have for higher ed in general, which is. And the premise of the article, of course, was, should you have a separate tech group? Because then it kind of changes and it's not part of core business, if I can summarize it. And so I'm a relative newcomer to higher ed. I've been in higher ed maybe a decade at the most. And one of the things I've been fascinated by is, yeah, the design of the operational. The administrative infrastructure outside the academy, and to some extent, in service to the academy, but in large part not by panelists, of course, but somewhat blissfully unaware of the reality of what it's really like to work in an academic department. And I'll say that as a general preface, which is, I'm not going to speak to all institutions, but there are quite a few that still have this completely segmented notion of who are the faculty, who are the departments, and who represent the somewhat evil administrative infrastructure. And it is a dichotomy I don't think we can afford any longer. So one of the challenges I see, actually, especially in running an online program and now at Hopkins, is there is this sort of externalization of anything tech from core academic function. And it hurts our faculty and it hurts our students. And I've been Attempting to kind of bridge that. But I'll tell you a quick story. When I first arrived at the University of Florida and I had to launch UF Online and I was fresh from the federal sector as a manager. I was like, all right, I'll go around and I'll talk to all of these phenomenal enabling functions in a good way to help us do this UF Online thing. I immediately went to the CIO and was pretty much told, they're not going to be a partner on strategy, they're an enabling function. I was like, okay. So I went to Student Affairs and was like, all right, we got to build this whole new student experience, yada yada, this is right in your wheelhouse. And they were very much like, no, we focus on the traditional 19 year olds and that's our business. And this is your project. Have a nice day. And so then I went back to my the people who hired me and I was like, I thought you said everyone was on board. And they said, oh, you figured out we lied to you, right? And so it caused me to have to reinvent and somewhat create my own academic enabling infrastructure in UF Online, which I don't think is sustainable either.
Jeff Selingo:
Well, and we see that sometimes happen at universities where kind of people do workarounds, which sounds like what that was like. So, Nicole, Georgia State is very well known for being an early user of data analytics to improve institutional outcomes, especially retention and graduation rates. Today, I think a lot of colleges in this room have caught up to you in data collection. We are awash in data. As I walk around this conference for the last couple of days and hear what universities are able to do today. But many senior leaders I talk with don't know what to do with it. People here do if they're have a role in data analytics, but then the senior leaders don't know what to do with all this data. So you had a head start at Georgia State. So I'm curious how the academic side of the house at Georgia State kind of works with administrators in IT and data analytics. And as provost, is there something you don't know from the data that you really wish you did?
Nicole Parsons Pollard:
So first of all, I think the integration of data and how we operate at Georgia State is sort of part of the culture. I've worked at other institutions that that were exactly as we described earlier, the plumbing and the widget and it's just different here. I wish I could go back in time and figure out which president, which VP who was a part of how that change happened. But one of the things that I've also noticed is that we've been very intentional about it not just being the issue of our IIT area, but also having technological people in a variety of areas that work all together. And so oftentimes what you'll have is the people on the academic side, quote, unquote, talking about what the key metrics are and how do we find define success, and then the technological people figuring out what data did you need to get to that? When I'm having a conversation, I always start with, here's what I'd like to do at the end. And then the technological person says, oh, well, you just need this and you need this. And they then figure out all the pieces and parts because oftentimes I don't even know all of the data points that we have. And so they will share something with me. And I go, oh, I didn't even know we collected that. And so I think that it's really sort of a part of the culture. And I wish I could tell you how you get that at your institution, but I do know that it's about also being really intentional about your collaboration with one another as well, and weekly meetings and being in each other's divisional meetings and all of those kinds of things. What do I wish I knew is we've got lots of data about how well students are doing or not doing, and we have lots of data about who owes what and what semester they left and when they came back. But I'm still trying to get to what exactly is happening in a classroom and what other things are impacting student success. And so we had a recent project where we had some math faculty. And math is always hard because, you know, nobody else says like, oh, there's any kind of other anxiety. But if I say math anxiety, people know exactly what that is. And the math faculty got together and they decided that the rates of progression and completion were not satisfying to them. But in order to do it, we needed the experts in the field, the math faculty, but we also needed all the people in. In our Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, which has a learning and tech side to it, as well as IIT as well as institutional effectiveness. And together they were able to provide data and then come up with solutions in order to implement something in the classroom that worked to help students success. And what we saw is completion rates in one semester or one academic year went up by 10 points.
Jeff Selingo:
Well, I want to stay on data for a second with all of you, because even though we have all this Data. We still face so much uncertainty in higher education. And when I talk to some leaders, they think they should be making decisions the way they've always made decisions. Right. That this idea of data driven decision making. Like if you read HBR, you know, every business sector is using data to drive decisions about what they do, about what they don't do, how they improve, constant improvement and so forth. When I talk to some leaders, they're like, we'll use the data to inform us, but not necessarily drive decisions. So I'm kind of curious, first of all, where you all sit on this. How much should data drive decisions? How much should it just inform it? But your experience really work that way? But more than that, how can we really use data now to figure out what's next for higher ed? Evie, I'll start with you.
Evie Cummings:
It's kind of like exercise. Should I exercise? Of course. Will I? Absolutely not. So it's kind of like, of course we should rely on data for decisions. And I think every manager would say, absolutely. The reality is there's a lot of have and have nots in terms of having the data. So I mean, it's kind of like, you know, even the macro enrollment trends come out of, people are like, oh, I'm like, it's such a large macro data point. I find it completely unhelpful. Like, so I think if you're. I really love Nicole's example. Everyone around a table looking at the right data, but also having the right people there to help us interpret the data, that's utopia. That's where we need to be. And so I think I'm, I'm on the side of most definitely we should be making data informed decisions. And I'm going to put data in quotes because that actually can encapsulate a lot of things. I think too often, and I'll pick on the academy, it's really. Well, I'm just going to make a decision based on my personal experience, based on when I saw Bob in the courtyard. Bob and I go way back. So that's what we're going to do. You have to be in the room where it happens around a table. Who gets invited in the room is who makes the decision. So that has to change. But we need to get a handle on what are the right data.
Dave Weil:
Okay, great.
Jeff Selingo:
Dave, where do you sit on this? And again, how can we really use data to better inform what is next for higher ed?
Dave Weil:
Yeah, it's a great question. And I think that, you know, you absolutely want to use the data to inform your decisions. But sometimes you don't have the right data. And what I mean by that is, you know, we have data in our student information system, in our judicial system, in our housing system, finance system, HR system, but sometimes you don't have data about, well, what do students think or what do they want, or what's the experience that they're having, and where are the friction points that they're experiencing? And that is data you can collect, but it's not stuff that we necessarily have in our systems today there. So I think you have to sometimes go beyond the traditional pool of data that you have, and then we'll probably talk about this a little later. But I think artificial intelligence also, like, sits on top of this, and the data feeds into the AI and that's, I think, opening up much greater possibilities than what we had before in terms.
Jeff Selingo:
Of finding out stuff in almost real time.
Dave Weil:
And making connections that you may not have made before between data points.
Jeff Selingo:
Okay, Nicole, I really want to center this one on you because you also, as your Chief Academic Officer over the faculty, sometimes you know things about things you should be doing, maybe things you should be stopping because of the data. But then you have to go and try to persuade the faculty of that. So where do you sit using data and make decisions? But more so, how do you then take that data and take it to a department or take it to a the faculty counselor, take it to a dean and say, you know what, this is just not working. We're going to have to do something different. Like, how does that happen?
Nicole Parsons Pollard:
Right. I think so. First of all, I sit in both places. Data is absolutely crucial. But I think to Evie's point also, it's having the right data and the right interpretation of the data. And so we were trying to measure student engagement, and one of the things we were looking is the number of activities students went to thinking those students would have high engagement. Well, actually, those students didn't seem to be any more happy with the engagement than other students. They were equally fine. And what we realized is that some students will be happy with the level of engagement, even though it does not demonstrate itself in the way we expected it to show up, which was going to events on campus. That's not what they wanted to do. I think when it comes to talking to the faculty, I first have to start by reminding everybody you're researchers. Right. And I always tell them, I say, you're the researchers that don't like research. And so we have to remember that the data really will help to inform us. And so part of it is also trying to use data not just to do things when we need to go into retrenchment when we need to scale back, but to also use data to help us to be able to say where do we want to invest more. And so then I've had a conversation about how the data does help us to stop doing some of the things so that we can do the things that we really think are the next level things to do. And so I think having sort of an evenness, Right.
Jeff Selingo:
Of course, if you're on the winning side of that, you think it's great. And if you're on the losing side of that, not so great. Right. It's a zero sum game I think often in colleges and universities.
Nicole Parsons Pollard:
It can be. And that's where I think communication comes in. And really a level of transparency that didn't exist when I first started in higher ed. I mean, I was a faculty member who never talked to the dean. Oh my goodness, why would I do that? And now I think some of those lines, we've opened that up. And so to have a level of transparency allows me to talk about certain things with faculty that we didn't in the past. And so, yep, sometimes you'll be on the winning side and sometimes you will feel like you're on the losing side. But trying to also create a culture where you understand it's not I won and you lost. If we're doing the right things that the university needs to, we all win.
Evie Cummings:
Can I interject? I mean, I also want to allow for the instance where you have all the data and it doesn't matter. Which goes back to your point of we're researchers. Right. So I think you culture eats data for breakfast, right? So I think you can have all the data. You can even have the right data. You can even have the right people in the room that could speak to what the data is telling us, are telling us. And then there's still that you're still going to have entrenchment. And I think that is another point of discovery on so which data are we even looking at the right data? Because one of the data we probably need to look at is the completely outdated labor model of higher ed in terms of faculty effort. So like I might have a math department around a table and they might be like, well, yeah, the market says we should do this, but who the heck's going to do that? All of us are researchers, we are paid to do these things. And So I do think we have to get into. To step away from the sexiness of AI and not forget we still need to do the work of the data of how our organizations actually function and roles and labor and effort to make sure we actually have the data on ourselves to deploy all this cool stuff that we could see in the data. In terms of student.
Jeff Selingo:
It's a great point. I mean, that's the hard work that a lot of top leaders don't want to do.
Evie Cummings [00:24:00]:
Right.
Jeff Selingo:
Well, it's not as fun. It requires kind of some tension on campus, especially with faculty. Increasingly, presidents stay for five years and so what do they want to do? They want to do the easy stuff that gets them next job. The president's, I think making the most transformational effort in higher ed have stayed a long time. It's just simple because they're willing to kind of see their presidency over the course of a longer period and they know there will be an evolution in that. I want to talk a little bit about partnerships because we're here at Educause. There's a whole exhibit hall of potential partners down there. I just got back from the P3 conference in Denver where everybody was talking about how to partner with colleges and universities, public private partnerships. But in the world of technology and IT, I think the question is really important about when do you do what you do internally and when do you go out and find a partner? So how do you kind of think about these things? Dave, let me start with you.
Dave Weil:
So I think the rubric in some respects has stayed pretty constant over the years. What services require the deep institutional knowledge or the relationships of the institution? What are unique or offer for us a strategic advantage for outsourcing? Maybe where do we need elastic capacity to gear up for something there and then we can't be experts at everything, but another company might be expert at something. So we outsource our Resnet services, for example. It's just. It's something we have to have. It doesn't necessarily add strategic value to the institution. It allows us. Frees us up to do other things. We had outsourced our analytics for a while and we brought that back in house because we saw that we really needed to own that and really use the data in ways that a third party wasn't as familiar with and couldn't help the institution. So that was where, from a strategic perspective, bringing that back in the house made more sense.
Jeff Selingo:
That's interesting. Evie, we actually got to know each other a little bit online on Twitter and on LinkedIn because of debates that we would have sometimes...
Evie Cummings:
And you were always wrong.
Jeff Selingo:
...about external partners. You had a lot of experience with this, both at the University of Florida and now at Johns Hopkins. What are your thoughts on the rubrics that you use around external partnerships?
Evie Cummings:
I mean, I actually take a page from my federal experience. We had a core sense of what was inherently governmental operations. It was a thing. It was a thing you could never contract out. It was a core identity in terms of policy decision making. It varied by agency. If it was a regulatory agency, you wouldn't outsource the regulating, that kind of stuff. And I was sort of surprised that higher ed is still struggling with this. What is inherently a university function versus where can we get support services. So I think you have to always strike that balance. And Dave had some perfect examples of that. I'm a big fan of bringing a lot of things in house where you can. Not instantaneously, not overnight, but because it defines who you are as a core institution. I think a lot of things, student advising, retention. I don't like the AI Chatbot to all of a sudden keep people enrolled. It's a little creepy. And also soulless. I have a little bit of an opinion on that. But I also think that there should be a healthy type of outsourcing based on your business needs. But the average institution doesn't really know what that means. So you see over outsourcing.
Jeff Selingo:
Or under outsourcing, I guess.
Evie Cummings:
Yeah. Or just total negligence of business matters discussed. But I do think that I'm a huge fan of revisiting, especially if Phil Hill's listening, the entire OPM rev share model. I think it's a dinosaur and we really as an institution should embrace more of these functions ourselves. It ties back for me on institutions actually welcoming different types of students. And I see over outsourcing for different student types that are not considered core. So the adult learner, the part time learner, the online learner, the working adult, let's go and outsource a lot of that because that's not core to who we are. And I think that's a huge problem for some institutions. And I think partnership though is also a fiscal reality for a lot of schools who don't have the cash to build a lot of things in house. So I want to be mindful of that. And that's where I'd go back to a temporal strategy, a phased approach, where over time you might want to bring more things in house.
Jeff Selingo:
As you get to know as you have expertise in money. Nicole, how do you think about this at Georgia State? What stays in house, what doesn't? How do you think about this rubric?
Nicole Parsons Pollard:
So I think our approach is very much what Dave sort of and Evie have focused on also sort of things that are core to our mission. So certainly our data that we use for student success, our data warehouse is on premises and not sort of farmed out to someone. Our student information system also on premises. And so those things that are core and central to us also allows us the flexibility and adaptability to be able to make changes where you might not be able to do that if there's a third party, but then there are other things that we have worked with third parties on. But I think also when you're picking the partner, the partner has to have some alignment with the university's mission and goals as well, because you can always pick wrongly. And so we have a relationship with EAB navigate that we've had for years and have been able to work very closely with them. And in a lot of ways, because GSU, of the size and complexity of it, a lot of what we needed as their client allowed them to build out things that support new clients. And so we were helpful, I think, in them growing that part of the business as well. And we do have a chat bot, our soulless chat bot.
Evie Cummings:
Maybe yours has a soul,.
Nicole Parsons Pollard:
And we've worked very closely with mainstay to be able to help to build that. And so I think it really is about your particular institution and the things that you need. And I'm glad you mentioned the financial ability of the institution, because I've worked at large and small institutions and some smaller institutions are really just a few hundred students away from the budget actually breaking. And so they have to be very cognizant of how they decide whether to do things internally or externally.
Jeff Selingo:
Okay, Dave, you had something. I think one other aspect that I believe you alluded to is consortiums is more higher ed and multiple higher ed institutions getting together to provide the service or a shared service funnel. One of the challenges is each institution is unique. Right? You know, it's like. Right, yeah, exactly. So doing some of the shared services are harder. But there are a number of examples of. I think Consortium Hess Consortium is one that Ithaca is a member of where it's really looking at developing similar ERP models.
Dave Weil:
They're not identical. It's not like one ERP system for all the institutions, but it's using very standardized ways of implementing licenses and all that, that it does result in some cost savings and efficiencies and I think is an option for institutions to look at.
Jeff Selingo:
So, David, Nicole, I do want to talk, given where you sit. So, Dave, how do you educate those on the academic side when you're making these choices and academics are involved? How do you kind of communicate with them the kind of the technology piece of this. Because they're looking at it from their point of view. And how do you kind of educate them? Well, how do you think about this? Like, how does that work so that your viewpoint is seen just as much as their viewpoint?
Dave Weil:
It's a great question. And it's building trust, it's building partnerships. It's working with early adopters on the faculty side to have them experiment, to give them resources and empowerment and then help understand their voices and they understand ours. And then you go out from there with using those early adopters, working with other faculty to. To form a direction for that. We have a very effective. It's one of our more much. One of our more effective governance groups is our Educational Technology Advisory Committee, which is faculty from all the schools and our IT faculty support teams. And they, you know, they are constantly working with the faculty to understand what are their technology needs and having conversations and working with.
Jeff Selingo:
So a lot of that work is done in that committee. And so people feel like they have.
Dave Weil:
There's a voice.
Jeff Selingo:
There's a voice there.
Dave Weil:
That's right.
Jeff Selingo:
And how about a Georgia State? Like, so there's, you have academic needs and then there's the technology needs. So just the opposite of the question I asked Dave, like, how do you make sure that the technology leaders at Georgia State understand the academic needs?
Nicole Parsons Pollard:
So I think very similar to Dave, we recently pulled a guidance document together to determine how we would be more strategic with Tech fee. And so I am very fortunate. Our CIO, Phil and I have a great relationship. And I think it also kind of starts at the top. They know that our expectation is that we collaborate with one another and that we have an open dialogue. And so all of the people who report under us also do that as well. And so part of the committee that we pulled together to be able to strategize included people from deans.
Nicole Parsons Pollard:
It included people from academic units. It included communication with senate committees as well as our Center for Teaching and Excellence. And so when you bring all of those individuals together and it gives you an opportunity to be able to solve for the problems that you have. I think also, again, coming from the academic side allowing us to say, this is where I want to go, and then letting the technology people say, let me show you how we can build a road to get you where you want to be.
Jeff Selingo:
So, Evie, I want to get on talk about online for a minute, online education. Because again, when we look at where the growth is, there's been just tremendous growth in online education over the last decade. Plus obviously during the pandemic, it was almost all online. And then even after the pandemic, you know, the percentage of students now taking at least one course online is now over 50% among undergraduates. When I talk to leaders, they see this potential for growth. A lot of them think they're too late to the game. Are they?
Evie Cummings:
It's never too late.
Jeff Selingo:
Okay.
Evie Cummings:
So I think the demand is such that there's an imperative for universities to step out in an online way. That said, we obviously have huge differences between the emergency response of COVID and really good and engaging remote education. I really would implore universities to think about their online pathways, to expand their online pathways, but to not see them solely as a one way delivery mechanism, which I think is a place we fall into too often. Like, oh, we could put this online, we could do that online. And it's sort of a push out. I really would love to see more schools embracing what can be be these phenomenally divergent, diverse, multifaceted classroom environments. If you can defy space and time and have students gathering remotely, like I think we see online, is this push out? And so I think if you're thinking about it, the short answer is, of course There are what, 40 million adult learners in the US or some college of credit, but no degree. There's an imperative with AI and there's a gazillion other topics where folks like us need to get up to speed.
Evie Cummings:
And so the question is, do I go to LinkedIn Learning? What do I do? Oh, is my institution only two zip codes away going to be relevant for me? But I also think we have to be honest with ourselves. And this is something we're looking at right now at Johns Hopkins. You know, where do we need to do better? Where might we have pushed out programs and we need to kind of pull them back and take a fresh look and be like, is this the content that's relevant in 2024? Is this as engaging as it could be? So I would ask folks to think about absolutely providing more opportunities for engagement with your campus. Online is one of them.
Jeff Selingo:
There's been a lot of talk in the news about the value of higher education. If you look at all surveys, the value is plummeting in many cases. And we could say why. There's a lot of reasons why. But you know, affordability, outcomes. Right. We're still not graduating enough students. Even though Georgia State has done terrific job. I'm sure you're still not satisfied with where you are. We still have debt. A lot of undergraduates coming out with more debt than they need and many of them, by the way, not getting a degree. We have students who can't transfer easily or losing a lot of credits in that transfer. I mean, we could, you know, we could sit here all day and come up with a list about potentially why people have lost value in higher ed. Where do you think we're not thinking enough about in trying to improve this value? It might just be around data that we need to get out to the public and say, hey, we're doing a better job than you think we are type of thing. Nicole, I'm going to start with you on that.
Nicole Parsons Pollard:
Everything in my head is sort of thinking about we have very scarce resources and how do you do the most with what you have. And so one of the things that I think we really do need to think about is some changes in our business processes. We are preparing students for the future. But oftentimes, if you came and looked at how we actually operate, it's like it's 1992. And so, I mean, I am drowning in spreadsheets. And so I think there's an opportunity for us to actually be able to refine some efficiencies there, which will hopefully free up some human resources and allow us to hire people in different roles or give those individuals who are in those roles the opportunity to do different kinds of work. And so I think that's going to be really key for us. And when we continue to talk about making data driven decisions, being able to really get to a point where that becomes sort of our natural inclination. And that requires, as Evie indicated earlier, not only that people have the right kind of data, but people have access to the data that they actually need.
Jeff Selingo:
I've seen play out sometimes where people would come to a meeting and a dean would have one set of numbers, somebody else would have a set, another different set of numbers, somebody else would have a different set of numbers. Numbers. I always wonder, like, do people just bring the numbers they want to bring? Or maybe they don't have access to everything? David, what are any thoughts on this?
Dave Weil:
So I really think that the technology and the data is really going to empower an institution like Ithaca to spend more time on the human to human interactions. And I think, you know, in Ithaca College that's what we're about. The personalized attention, personalized instruction, personalized connections. Nice. We see the technology and the data is allowing that to flourish to reducing, as I mentioned before, the friction to informing. We created an AI tool in our student support services not for the students to interact with, but for the support professionals to interact with to gain additional knowledge about the student before they meet one on one with the student. So the technology is adding, saving the business, saving them time and giving them insights that they may not have been as easily able to collect without that. But we don't want that technology to replace at all that person to person interactions. And I think that there's a very bright future for more of those use cases.
Jeff Selingo:
Evie, where can technology improve the value of higher ed?
Evie Cummings:
There is a overabundance of warring administrators who spend probably unnecessary energy bickering over data and not solving problems. And it is, it's depressing. It takes up a lot of energy I think it but also as Nicole said, it comes from the top. So I do think that there needs to be and I had this experience in the federal government with a couple Senate confirmed CIOs like a from the top we're going to use data as a strategic resource and we're going to align it to the problems that are unique to our campus, to the goals that are unique to our campus and then we're going to get out of each other's way. I think we should adopt more of these multidimensional team strategy approaches where we bring in technology. I love the idea of and you still need, don't shut down the IT department. You still need the experts in IT to help us solve these problems. But I think we have too many data wars. People are often surprised - quick anecdote - how often we were not able to target our advising on our most vulnerable students because financial aid would never share the data with us about who was a Pell recipient out of privacy. So it was like we couldn't even. We were tripping over ourselves. So I think a unification of what we're trying to do top down tech leadership and a sense of a team ethic.
Jeff Selingo:
I also think sometimes it's used as a delay tactic because some people just don't want to do something right. There's a group of individuals on a campus who don't want something done and so they use it as a delay tactic just like at anything with Politics. Okay, we have three minutes left. So a quick question for all of you. If we were to come back and do this again in three or four years, maybe, what didn't I ask you about today that you think I might be asking about you? So it was a little future looking. What didn't I ask you about today that I you think I might be asking about?
Nicole Parsons Pollard:
I think you're definitely going to be asking me something about AI and a combination of how has it changed what we do with students internally, our business practices as well, and then we might even be having a conversation about things like confidentiality and privacy and ethics, because I think the more that we use it, the more we will have to deal with all of those.
Jeff Selingo:
Dave.
Dave Weil:
So, you know, I still think it's about the student experience and the totality of that. And so I think the question might be how has technology and a tech mindset made a positive difference for those experiences and has it really lived up to some of the promise that we saw three or four years ago?
Jeff Selingo:
That's true. I mean, there's so much promise on trying to reduce the friction of that student experience. So hopefully it will come true.
Evie Cummings:
I wonder if you might ask me, gee, why did we spend so much energy and attention on AI and we neglected our core business as a sector in our democracy? And so how easily is higher ed distracted away from doing its core business?
Jeff Selingo:
And we will end on that. Please join me in thanking Evie, Dave and Nicole and thank you all for being here.
