A Normal Year Ahead? Campus Life, Sports, and Online Ed

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Transcript

Jeff Selingo:

Students are back on campus and we're back in the studio.

Michael Horn:

Yes, we are Jeff. It's hard to believe that what started as a side project for both of us is now entering its sixth season and we haven't even grown sick of each other yet.

Jeff Selingo:

It's certainly not a side project anymore Michael. We've met some great people in and around higher ed along the way. I can't wait to meet some of the guests we already have lined up for this season of Future U.

Sponsor:

This episode is brought to you by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation working to eliminate race, ethnicity, and income as predictors of student success through innovation, data and information, policy, and institutional transformation. 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 follow us on Twitter at the handle FutureUPodcast. If you enjoy the show please give us a five-star rating 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.

Michael Horn:

Jeff, it is good to see you. I've missed our frequent chats over the summer. Although, I will let folks in on a secret, which is that we've still managed to talk almost weekly, but I'm also excited to let our listeners know that we have some fun plans for this, our sixth season. Among them, in just over a month we have our next stop on our Future U campus tour when we'll visit Bowie State University, a historically black college and university in your state of Maryland. Before we get into some of the topics we're going to discover this year and break down some of the big headlines from higher ed that took place while we were on hiatus. I think people are going to want to know Jeff, how was your summer?

Jeff Selingo:

Well, Michael, after two summers of COVID, it was much busier than I expected. I released another chapter in my series on digital transformation in higher education. I also took on a big freelance piece for New York Magazine, which will be coming out this month. I can't say much more than it's focused on something that is a rite of passage for teenagers so maybe guess that and a certain prestigious higher education institution in your neck of the woods in Boston. Put those two things together and you probably could guess what it's about, but when it does come out, I love to dissect it on here. I also made up for a lack of travel the last two summers because of COVID. I gave a couple of talks to trustees at colleges who were on their annual retreats, as well as spoke at a few small conferences. Then we took a nice long vacation with family in July. Michael, how was yours? I know you had this pretty significant event in the middle of the summer, a new book.

Michael Horn:

Yeah, that is true. Jeff. I have a new book out called From Reopen to Reinvent that hit the proverbial bookshelves in July or whatever we call them these days when you order online. It's been fairly time-consuming because as you know when a new book comes out, it's not like the work stops. In fact, it really just begins, especially if you want it to have some impact and start to change the field. Plus, I confess I've been working on my next book as well and doing a lot of drafts with my co-authors. I confess I was happy for a bit of the recording break from the podcast over the summer, just so I could also get a little bit of vacation, but the book's been good.

Michael Horn:

It's focused on helping K-12 schools get past just being glad that they've reopened to really move the conversation to how do they reinvent themselves into a system that can serve each and every student well, which they weren't doing pre-pandemic let alone during the pandemic. I guess the other part of this Jeff is I think there are some themes that can help higher ed institutions as well. I'm hoping that we get a chance to talk about some of those at some point this season.

Jeff Selingo:

For sure and why have a podcast if you can't promote your own work? I also think we're starting to show our age on this podcast or the difference in our age. You play tennis and I started pickleball this summer, but in all seriousness, there's a lot of fodder in the daily headlines for all the shows we're going to do this fall. We're going to look at how the current state of the economy is impacting the outlook for higher ed. That topic relates to both of our predictions from the last show of last season, of course, as well as the massive realignment of NCAA athletic conferences that got announced over the summer, the great resignation in higher ed, and how to reengage students in their learning after the last academic year that was like no other.

Michael Horn:

All things Jeff of consequence for the future of higher ed and learning. We haven't even scratched the surface of what we have lined up. Jeff, I'm going to give ourselves a pat on the back this year thanks to our producer, Jen.

Jeff Selingo:

Yes. A shout out to Jen Hitchcock who joined us midway through last season as our producer and also to Michael Peloquin, who is once again with us as our audio producer.

Michael Horn:

Thanks to them and Jen specifically, we've already got a ton lined up and in the hopper that's going to make for some great conversations this fall with some great and thoughtful personalities that our listeners are not going to want to miss.

Jeff Selingo:

After we recorded this episode, something happened that doesn't often happen in higher ed, breaking news.

Michael Horn:

Yes indeed, Jeff. The Biden administration, well, they canceled a whole lot of student debt as listeners no doubt know. Namely, President Biden announced that he will cancel up to $10,000 in student debt for Americans earning less than $125,000 per year or $250,000 for couples filing taxes jointly with additional relief to the tune of the cancellation of up to $20,000 for borrowers from low-income backgrounds who received Pell grants. It's interesting. How will they means test it? Well, you actually have to apply to get your debt canceled and show tax returns from prior years in essence.

Michael Horn:

Now, there's a lot to unpack here, Jeff, but we're obviously not the first out with this news. Most people will have read about this already as I mentioned. What I think we want to do here is have a show later this year about how this decision actually impacts presidents and trustees as they make strategic decisions about colleges and universities and what the impact really will be on the future of you, if you will, that is future of universities, but also future of you, our listeners, as you learn, but let's do some rapid reaction now because why not?

Michael Horn:

Jeff, I want to start with you because you've said this before in the show that you weren't in favor of this for a number of reasons, but one of them was you felt like you paid your debt and by golly, these borrowers ought to pay theirs too. Only fair, right?

Jeff Selingo:

Well, Michael, my thinking has actually evolved on this point since I probably first said that because I must admit that like many gen Xers, I had a lot less debt than today's graduates have. College tuition, frankly, was proportionally less of my family's income back in the early 1990s than it is for most middle-income families today. Now, I have other concerns about this plan, but the concern that I had to pay and so should everyone else really isn't one of them anymore.

Michael Horn:

Yeah. My quick reaction to that is I confess I never loved the sort of, it sucked for me so it should suck for you take. My younger brother when he was in college had this reaction of the future freshmen should continue to live in the same dorm I did because it was terrible for me and so should they. I don't love that sort of vengeful take, but I do think that there's something to the, "Hey, you made an agreement when you borrowed this money and there are some natural consequences to that and responsibility, and that's actually important to learn to fulfill and live up to these. I get that that's going to sound callous to some folks listening, but most economists agree. This is a pretty highly regressive action that even with the income cap of 125K it's still disproportionately serving people with means, so it doesn't feel out of line to me, Jeff.

Jeff Selingo:

Yeah. Michael, on that, I think the administration really frankly designed the best plan that they could putting an income cap on it, adding that additional $10,000 in debt reduction for Pell Grant recipients really focuses this on low and middle-income borrowers and I think makes it less regressive in the mind of at least this non-economist on this podcast. Plus I think that our public policies, to be honest, are riddled with things like disaster relief and even the PPP loans that were forgiven, which go to people with some means. I know listeners might say, but yes, that's disaster relief.

Jeff Selingo:

To be honest, I think how we have put the cost of education on the backs of students and parents, especially with loans, to be honest, really might qualify as a disaster in and of itself. Where is the problem with this policy? I think it comes from a quote that I posted on Twitter in the hours after the Biden announcement where a college president equipped to me at the end of a conversation. I think it probably was partially said in jest, which is why I won't identify this person for what was really a casual conversation anyway, but that president said to me, "this may now take the pressure off colleges to hold down cost and prove their ROI."

Michael Horn:

I'll say, Jeff, I think this is what really worries me is that that disaster situation you just reference, that we can frame it as a disaster. It's because colleges don't have that skin in the game, that accountability mechanism, and I've always said charging education isn't changing it. This move, while I get how it can be the answer to a disaster, it's not addressing the real issues here, which is around value and affordability, making higher ed lower cost so that more people can afford it, not just allowing people to afford what's an increasingly expensive higher education and has a bunch of moral hazards to it, it seems.

Michael Horn:

In my mind, this is going to crowd out innovation. It sends the bad incentives that you just referenced to universities, but also future borrowers because it honestly encourages the rising cost of higher ed, poor value for far too many students, and it says, "Hey, you might not have to eventually pay this." By the way, we haven't even talked about, and I don't think it's going to happen in November, but eventually, the Republicans will be back in power. I have a sense that they might try to significantly curb the issuing of loans period, Jeff.

Jeff Selingo:

Yeah and Michael, Beth Akers who we've had on the podcast before made one of those points in a great Q and A she did with Ed Dive, that we will link to in the show notes, that this might increase demand for higher education and thus reduce pressure on costs. Now, I don't think we're really going to know if that's going to happen for a few years or maybe even longer. I do think that this is probably a one-time thing. Of course, probably we should never say that in politics, but I don't think this is going to happen every couple of years. Now, there is the politics of this all.

Jeff Selingo:

We're recording this a couple of days after the announcement by the Biden administration and it seems that now the news has taken it over already. There's the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago. There's Jay Powell's thoughts on inflation. There's the continuing fallout over the Supreme Court's abortion ruling. All those things just continue to take over the daily news. The question is beyond those who will benefit from this, will anybody remember this come November? For those who do benefit, will they vote on it or not vote at all? I'm going to be really interested in seeing the exit polls on this because while it somewhat fulfills a campaign pledge by Biden, I'm not quite sure that it really moves the needles on the midterms the way the Democrats think it might.

Michael Horn:

Yeah. Jeff, I want to come back to that politics piece in a moment, but just actually staying on the Beth Akers piece of this, she's actually been a two-time guest on our show it occurs to me.

Jeff Selingo:

Kind of forgot about that. Yeah.

Michael Horn:

She put out what she sees as a better set of solutions as well, that I was thinking was an interesting list around student loans being to start dischargeable and bankruptcy of students who are truly unable to pay, addressing circumstances where students are in repayment for many years, but hardly making a dent in their loan balance. She said that some of the actions the Biden administration is considering could help here. Third, she listed set reasonable limits on borrowing, especially for graduate students and parents so that these loans don't get so out of control. I think that would go some ways to putting the pressure on the question of public funding also, Jeff, to your point around who is paying for this a little bit more in the spotlight. She mentioned ensuring colleges and universities have a direct financial stake in the repayment. I think that makes sense. She talked about fundamentally reexamining college degree requirements so that more jobs are accessible to more qualified individuals regardless of the educational path they take.

Michael Horn:

I'll just note state governors can take action on this now. They can drop the degree requirements on all the jobs they have open and move to a much more multifaceted way to get jobs. That's a way to make a dent in this as well. Then she had just a couple of others, which is providing more short-term training programs and other accessible pathways. I confess, I wonder if this is going to continue be in play if Republicans get powered because I think they're just going to want to pull back a lot of public support for all sorts of higher ed programs, but we'll see. Lastly, she listed empowering employers to direct more funds to the education and training that they value sort of like we've had Rachel Romer Carlson, Guild Education. They sort of take advantage of this where employers are paying for this and employees are not taxed on the initial 5,600 or whatever it is $5,200 that are invested by employers.

Jeff Selingo:

Michael, then there's this whole question of whether what the Biden administration did is even legal and what the courts will do with this. Boy, that's really going to be a mess for those who thought their loans would get forgiven.

Michael Horn:

Yeah, no kidding, Jeff. If you thought that you got your loans forgiven and then all of a sudden the Supreme Court reverses that, well, that's going to be something to reckon with. Last part of this, I want to come back to the politics, Jeff, because the Biden administration also said that this will be the last pause that they do on student loan repayment. As Robert Kelchen pointed out in a great piece for the Chronicle of Higher Education, the timing is such that if we're talking about starting to resume payments in January, you've got to actually resume contact with borrowers in October, which is right before the election. He thinks that there's actually going to be another extension, which gets into the, are borrowers is actually making decisions at the voting booth based on this? Your thoughts because I confess, I just don't have a read on this one.

Jeff Selingo:

Well, Michael, there are the tactics of actually doing this forgiveness at the scale that needs to be done by an education department that is really understaffed and overextended and doesn't really know as you pointed out who's really qualified. I think we're either going to hear in a few months that the action was struck down in the courts or that when student loan payments restart in January that there are all these borrowers out there who are still waiting for their relief. If there are that many still waiting, will there be another extension? Maybe. Now, of course, by then we can also have a split Congress who I'm sure will really want to weigh in on this issue as well. Let's stay tuned and speaking of stay tuned, let's now go back to our regularly scheduled programming. Michael, maybe the hottest topic is one that hasn't garnered a lot of headlines and that's the fall semester on brick-and-mortar campuses is looking pretty normal after two falls of anything but. Students are returning to school.

Jeff Selingo:

While there are still communities that have reinstated face mask mandates based on current conditions, they're kind of more the exception I think rather than the rule at this point. I think the bigger picture is that students are back to living on campus, going to classes in person if that's what they want. Many, as we know, want online or hybrid classes, but still in person is an option. They aren't having the restrictions around parties or athletics or activities for the most part. Michael, as we come into this fall, there are kind of three things that I'm really watching for. The first is the changing dynamics of student housing and student work post-pandemic. Before COVID students couldn't wait to live off campus. Now. In many parts of the country, housing is so tight and expensive that students are clamoring to get back on campus.

Jeff Selingo:

It's everywhere, even at non-residential campuses. The California community colleges, for example, just got $375 million from the state for the next two years to build dorms. Dorms at community colleges. Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton has 800 students on its waiting list for campus housing because rents have roughly doubled in the area over the past 15 months. Then there's student work at a time that colleges are struggling to hire full-timers and we're going to be talking about that this season. They don't even have work-study students to fall back on because those students now could go down the street and double their hourly wage at McDonald's. Of course, they might not get the experiential learning that colleges claim come from work study, but it has left institutions in a real bind.

Jeff Selingo:

The second thing I'm watching is that the COVID generation is now really fully established on college campuses. Think about it. This year's seniors were freshmen when COVID hit the spring of their first year. Now, campuses will be dealing with a full range of issues, whether that's learning loss or wellbeing, or re-engagement in learning that come with this COVID generation. Finally, what I'm really watching is whether students really demand that optionality we've been talking about in how courses are delivered and if so, how campuses will handle that. There's this statement I'll never forget from our campus tour last spring at UCLA and it's this one from Chancellor Gene Block.

Chancellor Gene Block:

There are students who believe very strongly that every class should have dual mode instruction. That I should be able to look through the course catalog and decide which ones I take remotely and which ones I take in person. It turns out to be difficult to provide really high quality, real truly dual mode, where students who are remote are getting the exact same attention as students in a classroom. Faculty will tell you, it is extraordinarily difficult to do that without a lot of infrastructures.

Jeff Selingo:

As students settle in for what we hope is a normal post pandemic year, the question is, will that really happen?

Michael Horn:

Jeff, you've outlined three interesting areas to watch. I confess I'm still getting over all that money for new dorms, but I'm sure we're going to return to all of this in our last episode this season to see what in fact happened. Before we settle in with some more headlines, let's first take a short break and we'll be right back on Future U.

Jeff Selingo:

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 post-secondary education and workforce training opportunities. That's why their philanthropy aims to remove 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.

Michael Horn:

This episode is being brought to you by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Today's college students are more than just students. They are workers, parents, and caregivers and neighbors and colleges and universities need to change to meet their changing needs. Learn more about the foundation's efforts to transform institutions to be more student centered at usprogram.gatesfoundation.org.

Michael Horn:

Welcome back to Future U where we're talking about the higher ed headlines of this past summer. Jeff, we just talked about how "normal" many campuses will look this fall, but you also did say that a lot of students are excited to continue to take some of their classes online. We both believe that technology is going to continue to play a larger and larger role in higher ed in the years to come. I think that is a critical question then. What does this mean for the future of online program managers or OPMs that partner with colleges to help them get online and for ed tech more broadly, and interestingly enough, chief online officers at colleges anticipate that the majority of learners will have some online component to their learning by 2025. That's according to the recently released survey conducted by Quality Matters, which is a non-profit group focused on ensuring quality online education and Edge Ventures, a research and advisory group.

Michael Horn:

We'll be sure to put that in the show notes, but they said that only 4%, this is what the chief online officers think, only 4% of traditional aged undergrad learners will study exclusively face-to-face and just 2% will study exclusively online. Now, I have some of my own doubts about the precision of those predictions, but I think it's an instructive and important data point.

Jeff Selingo:

Yeah, those numbers are a little crazy in some ways, but it will be interesting to dive a little bit deeper into those. Let's bring into this conversation also ,the OPM conversation, Michael, which we featured last season in a higher ed 101 episode with Phil Hill and Phil recently wrote a really telling post in which he documented just how bad the spring and summer has been for OPMs. From Arizona State, where of course I'm a special advisor and pressor of practice. They announced they were pulling out of their relationship with Pearson. Wiley, Coursera, and 2U all seen declining year over year revenue in their online degree businesses in partnership with universities. What's kind of going on with OPMs right now?

Michael Horn:

Yeah, it's a good question, Jeff. Personally, I don't think it's a regulatory pressure thing in nature or something like that, but I kind of think we're seeing the disruption of the degree or at least the decline in interest in it gain greater steam in the form of various short form learning opportunities gaining more traction. We know that degrees are declining across all of higher ed and maybe that's even catching up to the one part of the market that's consistently grown over the last decade, which has been the online market of disruptive offerings in terms of convenience, but not price or time to completion per se. I think it's instructive that 2U and Coursera still reported growth in other segments of their business, for example. Although obviously, the degrees bring in higher revenue than short form programs, it makes up for an interesting dynamic to see if they can manage this internal challenge or even cannibalization.

Michael Horn:

I also want to say the news sure has gotten interesting around 2U, Jeff. There have been persistent rumors over the summer that BYJU's, the Indian mega ed tech company it's privately held, but was last valued at some $23 billion, I believe. That they want to buy 2U, which I think is stunning because that would be a big move out of the K12 market for BYJU's and into higher ed in a very regulated, very scrutinized U.S. Market. Then, simultaneously 2U also announced new pricing to try and encourage their partner institutions to lower their tuition prices. In essence, now they're going to have different tiers of revenue share for services that start at 35% and goes up from there and they'll give universities greater discounts if they lower tuition. I think that's promising for learners probably promising for the OPMs and the regulatory front.

Michael Horn:

Frankly, I think it's smart business for 2U because as David Sutphen, their former chief strategy and engagement officer at 2U, told me it's way easier for 2U to recruit students to lower priced programs than higher priced ones, as in it costs them way less money in marketing dollars. Their incentives to increase enrollment and profit are actually to see the institutions they work with lower their tuition prices. Jeff, how does that all land with your perspective?

Jeff Selingo:

Yeah, so Michael, I'm just wondering if this just might be the maturing of the original business model and the original business, just like we're seeing in the streaming business with Disney now lowering expectations for subscribers and Netflix moving to an ad supported model. The streaming business is changing as well, is evolving as well. Over time, I think the OPM model will need to evolve too. Some institutions like ASU will develop their own internal capacity so they won't need partners anymore and that's what happened at ASU. As more institutions add online programs, the market is becoming so saturated that there just isn't enough demand, I think, to support the constant growth that I think 2U, especially as a public company is looking for. Now, I'm not a wall street analyst here, but the best thing that probably could happen to 2U right now is for someone to buy them and take them private so they can work through this evolution in the model without the pressures of Wall Street.

Michael Horn:

Yeah, that's a good point, Jeff. We can't forget about that piece of this, which is that the tanking of the public financial markets it's hit EdTech really hard. First, it hit the public companies 2U, Coursera, and so forth, but it's actually bled into the rest of the market as well. Private financing for EdTech is somewhat down this year compared to if I can say it this way, the heady days of the pandemic. I think the sector's on pace for some 17 billion in financing for the year compared to nearly 21 billion last year. The slowdown has sort of trickled through, and the venture capital firms that I talked to are playing things way closer to the vest in terms of what they're willing to invest in. Consequently, the EdTech firms, the startup firms, they're doing much more in terms of layoffs and cost restructurings to try and make sure they have enough runway to get through the next two years of what could be choppy waters, Jeff.

Jeff Selingo:

Yeah. Okay. That OPM and the broader marketing conditions conversation also relates to the finances of colleges and universities themselves. We talked about this at the end of last year. It was part of your season end prediction, but colleges are raising prices faster than they were. Endowments took a big hit. They were down just over 10% for the fiscal year ending in June. It looks like inflation will stay with us for at least another several months. Is there a path, Michael, to costs coming down in higher ed?

Michael Horn:

Jeff, count me as skeptical, but I guess I do wonder if with all the tuition discounting that's gone on and increased, do you think more schools might do pricing resets or reconsider how they covered their fixed costs? What are your thoughts?

Jeff Selingo:

Well, I think the research on the tuition resets is that they might work for a year or two, but don't in the long run. Count that as a gimmick where colleges essentially change their sticker price that they advertise to parents and families all the way down to what their net price is after tuition discounts. That's I think a gimmick that really has seen its better days. The bottom line is the underlying financial conditions of institutions, in my opinion. A couple months ago, Michael, I started working with Bain & Company to update an analysis I worked on with them a decade ago on the financially sustainable university. We're going to have further analysis to do this fall when new data comes out from the federal government.

Jeff Selingo:

The headline for now is that only one fifth of the entire higher education sector, we're talking thousands of institutions here, is considered to be in a strong financial position and what's interesting is the reason we're waiting for new data is because the data we have is actually based on time before the pandemic. Only one fifth were considered to be in strong financial condition before the pandemic and strong financial position for those who might wonder, it really means three things: That they have adequate reserves, that they're margin, meaning that they're in the black on a yearly basis, that they have a healthy margin, and that they have healthy three-year enrollment trends.

Jeff Selingo:

It doesn't mean they necessarily need to grow every year, but they do need to be stable. I think what we're seeing in the enrollment data, the national enrollment data, for example, we're down 1.4 million students in the pandemic. What we're seeing in surveys from places like New America, where public confidence in higher ed just fell 14 percentage points just since 2022 and even anecdotal Jon Marcus at Hechinger, as you pointed out to me, had this great piece recently about growing skepticism to the whole higher ed thing among this generation of students.

Jeff Selingo:

I think all of this points to at the most basic level, how COVID really upended our lives, our habits, and our traditions, including college as the default after high school. We know this in other parts of our life, that's such a shock to the system, really encourages us to reevaluate what we're doing and try new things. I don't think it's that people think education after high school isn't necessary. I don't think that's what's really happening here. Rather, I think the question they're increasingly asking is whether a traditional residential college is the right path after high school or is it taking time off or earning a two year degree first or getting a technical education or getting a job that trains you, is that a better route?

Michael Horn:

Jeff, this all feels like these themes sort of tie together. I think there's some big themes for us to continue to unpack and explore over the year ahead. Of course, we should say it doesn't seem that a lot of these trends are hitting the exclusive or selective colleges, namely those that also sport big time athletic programs and Jeff, there was big news on that front, of course. USC and UCLA, yep, where we were live in the spring, they are switching from the Pac-12 to the Big Ten in 2024 and more realignment I'm sure is going to continue. Now, our listeners might be saying, well, what does this have to do with anything around the future of higher ed, but Jeff, it's actually quite significant, right?

Jeff Selingo:

It sure does. Michael. I can't help to think about all that time we spent with Gene Block in April, just as he was negotiating all this. I'm telling you, he will make for a very good poker player because he never led on that anything was this big in the works because trust me, we would've talked to him about it on stage. I think athletics, especially at D-1 is a real big driver of institutional finance and prestige. Thus, it has a huge role in the future of higher ed. You know, UCLA was facing a big deficit, something like a hundred million dollars in athletics alone, and they were never going to dig out of that by remaining in the Pac-12 with its more limited TV rights, largely because their games starts so damn late for those of us on the East Coast.

Michael Horn:

Well, to be fair, Jeff, for old people, I mean, you said you were old playing pickleball, but for old people like me, all of the games from any of the conferences seem to start late these days.

Jeff Selingo:

Fair enough. Right off the bat, the Big Ten gives USC and UCLA access to so much more money. Also, UCLA and USC now are part of the athletic conference that is also well known as an amazing academic powerhouse. The Big Ten is really the only one of the major conferences that has really organized it's academic alliance as well. It's called the Big Ten Academic Alliance. There's an amazing amount of sharing. We talk a lot about alliances on the show and that's a great example of a consortium that does a lot of sharing and it's really old.

Jeff Selingo:

Let me just give you a quick history lesson or give our listeners a quick history lesson because the Big Ten Academic Alliance started way back in the late 1950s. That's when the presidents of the Big Ten gathered at THE Ohio State University and we're not even going to talk about that headline, Michael, from this summer because it still sounds like an onion headline to me. Anyway, they gathered at THE Ohio state university for the inauguration of THE Ohio State's new president and a year earlier they had this impromptu meeting between the chancellor of Indiana University and somebody from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Carnegie basically said, "we'll give you $40,000 to regularly convene the presidents of the Big Ten around academic matters."

Jeff Selingo:

Now, they formalize that agreement in the late 1950s as a result and thus, they have this board with representatives from each of the campuses that was really the beginning of this academic alliance that has only gotten bigger. Now, fast forward to today, there's no doubt that UCLA and USC jumped ship for athletic matters first and foremost, but being in the company of Michigan and Penn State and Purdue and Northwestern, it ain't bad academically either. There's so much more to talk about here, Michael, the impact on the rest of college athletics, on other athletes, besides those in revenue, generating sports that I think we're going to need to really dedicate an entire show to this.

Michael Horn:

Which we plan to very soon so stay tuned for those listening, but you know what I say, Jeff, it's kind of like Watergate, follow the money. Revenue in short supply right now, what do you do to pay for expenses? Well, you go get more money and yes, most varsity athletics are money losers for their schools, but they are great marketing dollars and they're great pieces of campus life and the sports motivating this change football, basketball can mean big TV contracts still even if ESPN pulled out of the Big Ten negotiations over TV rights. It's a bit kind of like how the selective colleges steer the conversation at least around the college market. In this case, it's just a small part of the overall varsity athletes have a disproportionate impact on the athletic conferences.

Michael Horn:

Frankly, the other part that I'm interested in is the spillover effect of as these teams start to travel much further how does that change the online market, which frankly, outside of the players like Southern New Hampshire and Western Governors that are national has actually largely been regional in nature. Get your popcorn folks. I will say I, for one, am glad we're starting to pay athletes. There was an amazing story, Jeff, in The Athletic recently about Kentucky's Congolese national player of the year in basketball, Oscar Tshiebwe, who is making a ton off his appearance in The Bahamas because he can't make money in the U.S. because of his visa status and the story, get this, it said he stands to make about a half a million dollars in just seven days, which will bring his NIL total earnings to about $2.75 million.

Jeff Selingo:

I think we're going to have to take Future U to The Bahamas, don't you think?

Michael Horn:

I think that's the conclusion and this is why. Bigger besides my desire to go to The Bahamas and broadcast from there, this is why I just wish colleges, frankly, would spin out their big time varsity sports programs as wholly owned or affiliated for profit enterprises, but all stuff we're going to have to dig into much more later this year.

Jeff Selingo:

Yes, indeed, we're going to have to, and that really concludes a pretty meaty first episode back on this sixth season of Future U.

Michael Horn:

I'd have to agree, Jeff. We had a lot that we wanted to talk about, but it's wet my appetite for a lot more to come.

Jeff Selingo:

Stay tuned for our next episode. A lot to dig in on a variety of topics and we'll be taking your questions again this season and sending you themed Future U. swag if your question gets asked. Just go to our website, futureupodcast.com and leave us a comment or better yet, we have a new feature this year. You've got the ability to ask your question directly on air by leaving us a voicemail. There's a tab on the right side of the website and you can also sign up for our newsletter. Of course, don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast player and leave a five star review for us there. We're really looking forward to this next season of Future U, our sixth season, and spending it with all of you out there. Thank you again for listening and we'll see you next time on Future U.

A Normal Year Ahead? Campus Life, Sports, and Online Ed

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