Tuesday, November 19, 2024 - Regional public universities have been hit harder than most colleges by recent enrollment decreases. On this episode, Michael and Jeff sit down with President Jonathan Koppell of Montclair State University, a regional that has bucked this trend, to learn more about their success. They dig in on lessons Koppell learned as a dean at ASU, the college’s programs for underserved students, and how the college is competing for students. This episode is made with support from Ascendium Education Group and the Gates Foundation.
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00:00 - Intro
03:52 - Lessons Learned at ASU
06:52 - Attracting Students to Montclair
12:36 -Supporting Post-Secondary Attainment for Men
18:25 -How Colleges Can Win Back Engagement
24:33 -The Steps to Culture Change
27:40 - How to Fix the College President Job
32:06 - Addressing the Talk by Walking the Walk
33:58 - Aiming Above the Line
37:50 - Shifting Towards User-Centered Language
39:34 - Building Infrastructure around Differentiation
41:02 - Data and Innovation to Support Men in Higher Ed
45:49 - Providing Students with What They Need
48:53 - Coalescing Around the “Why”
Jonathan Koppell:
But where change was viewed as normal and not something that was a sign of instability or weakness or failure, but actually something to be pursued. And I think that's what those of us who spent time at ASU and had the opportunity to contribute as Deans, it's what all of us brought to our campuses, if you look at the records afterwards, it's that we weren't afraid to embrace change. We didn't see that as an indictment of the status quo, more as an opportunity to be responsive to the needs of the world around us, to be cognizant that higher education is changing and that to be static is in some sense to invite failure.
Michael Horn:
That was Jonathan Koppell, President of Montclair State University in New Jersey, and he's our guest today on Future U.
Host:
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, Michael, earlier this year, I connected with Jonathan Koppell, who is someone I've known for a long time through my affiliation with Arizona State University, where he was a Dean. And I kind of watched with interest as he moved to become President of Montclair State in New Jersey. And I was kind of curious because New Jersey is a state that's always been known as a net exporter of students, and now it was kind of facing a double whammy: Not only was it exporting a lot of students, it just didn't have a lot of students to begin with in terms of numbers of high school graduates. And what was interesting to me is that under Koppell's leadership, Montclair has actually grown. It's added 2,000 students just in the last two years, now has overall enrollment at nearly 24,000 students. And so when we reconnected, Jonathan told me about an effort at Montclair that he's trying to scale nationally that's focused mostly on male students of color and we know men in general are opting out of higher ed, a topic we plan to address later this year with the author, Richard Reeves. And that's even more pronounced, of course, among black and Hispanic males, which really has ripple effects, including, by the way, in national politics, where we know the degree divide is widening. Anyway, as he told me about this work, I thought, this is a problem every institution is facing. But Monclair might be doing the first research where it asked high school students, high school counselors, and even recent alum about how to recruit, retain, and graduate more black and Hispanic men.
Michael Horn:
All interesting, Jeff, and I'm really looking forward to getting into this conversation with Jonathan, who started as President at Montclair State University in 2021. And before that, as you mentioned, he served as Dean of Arizona State University's Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions and the Vice Provost for Public Service and Social Impact. So, Jonathan, welcome to Future U.
Jonathan Koppell:
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Jeff Selingo:
Jonathan, it's good to see you again. As listeners of this podcast know, and in interest of full disclosure, you know, one of my roles, of course, is that of a special advisor to the President of Arizona State, where you were before assuming the presidency of Montclair State, you were Dean of the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions. You're not the first ASU Dean or Vice President to ascend to the presidency somewhere else. And so what about your experience at ASU uniquely prepared you for the college presidency?
Jonathan Koppell:
I think probably the most essential thing that you take away from the experience at ASU is that there should be no limits on your imagination as to what is possible, and that universities and the components thereof are more malleable than I think people give credit to. And you mentioned the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions. That wasn't what it was when I got there. It was something called the College of Public Programs, which was as sort of gray and nondescript as that name sounds. And we were able to create a vision of a comprehensive public service college and build around that vision ultimately so successfully that there was an investment from Mike and Cindy Watts, hence the name Watts College, but more importantly, to raise the prominence of public service at the university writ large to a place that it wasn't, quite frankly, imaginable before that. And yeah, it sounds like I'm patting myself on the back when I say that. I understand that. But what it was reflective of was a university where change and innovation, even though it's trite at this point to say ASU is innovative, but where change was viewed as normal and not something that was a sign of instability or weakness or failure, but actually something to be pursued. And I think that's what those of us who spent time at ASU and had the opportunity to contribute as Deans. It's what all of us brought to our campuses, if you look at the records afterwards, it's that we weren't afraid to embrace change. And we didn't. We didn't see that as an indictment of the status quo, more as an opportunity to be responsive to the needs of the world around us, to be cognizant that higher education is changing and that to be static is in some sense to invite failure. That's probably the biggest takeaway from being in a leadership position at Arizona State.
Jeff Selingo:
I like that that change is not a sign of instability. So let's focus on Montclair State for a minute because there's a chapter in my new book about student migration and New Jersey has always had a reputation for sending its students elsewhere. It's actually the highest net outflow of any state by a considerable amount. The migration patterns in American higher ed right now are kind of fascinating because we're seeing some unprecedented shifts, especially with the 18 year old population. Students with the means are going out of state, they're going out of state publics and privates, although the private's not as much as they used to in the past. Majority of students who go to college, you know, they still go to an institution within 50 to 75 miles of home. So the local market is still critical, but demographics are destiny as a result then for many institutions. We also know that the immediate high school to college going rate is falling. So fewer students are going to college, period. Now, you're not the flagship in New Jersey, so how do you think about your student segments and your position? You know that Montclair State fits in right in this mix because regional publics in many states are in a world of hurt right now. How are you thinking about your position in New Jersey in particular, given those trends and given where your institution sits?
Jonathan Koppell:
Yeah, so first I want to tell the audio engineer that that low sound was me grinding my teeth when you said New Jersey is the number one exporter of students. By the way, that's a really obscure Simpsons reference. An additional grind on the we're not the flagship. I'll come back to that. By the way, tell that to your boss at ASU as well. I'd like to hear you. I'd like to hear you mention that to him in Arizona. So look, the reality is that New Jersey does have a problem in terms of the outflow of students. And I'm sick and tired of hearing from other college Presidents. Thank you for giving us your best students. I think that's complicated. It has to do with some of the aspects of New Jersey geography. You've made the point that people tend to go to college relatively near where they live. And New Jersey has the problem of being surrounded very closely by other states that are looking to pick off our students. But as has been covered, a lot of students are headed to southern universities who are very aggressively seeking out our students. And New Jersey high school students are very well educated, and we invest a lot in our K12 education system. So they're very attractive. They're very attractive as targets. We have an issue in our state of not properly valuing the quality of our institutions, including Rutgers, by the way, which is equally, you know, frustrated by this, by this problem and the same balance of trade issue. We need to do a better job in New Jersey. But I think this applies in a lot of places of telling the story to the general public of the quality of these institutions that are seen as less than, based on somewhat arbitrary designations. And I would add to that the arbitrary assignment of the word "flagship," which means very little, and sometimes it means the land grant, sometimes it doesn't. What I would argue is that we have an obligation to better educate those who are going to college of the basis for the decisions that they're making about their future. And we need to catch up. That's part of our obligation.
We need to catch up. However, having said everything I just said, and our need to deal with that issue, and by the way, that's an economic development issue, because only a third of those New Jerseyans that leave ever come back. And so as we're trying to build a workforce to grow the New Jersey economy, we're at a disadvantage when our human capital ups and leaves. So that's not well understood, and we need to make that clear to policymakers as well. But having said that, everything we just said, our enrollment is the highest it's ever been. And our colleagues at other universities, not all of them, but at, say, Rowan University at the southern end of the state, is experiencing their highest enrollment that they ever have, as are several of the other public universities in New Jersey. And so the reason why it's important to talk about both those things simultaneously is that for an institution like Montclair, which is committed to accessibility and inclusion. Part of the answer to that challenge is embedded within our mission, which is pay attention to the students who want to go to college, who are seeking out opportunities, who maybe don't understand all the steps or all of the points on the pathway that get them to college and help them navigate the college journey by making ourselves easier rather than exclusively focusing on the people who know that they want to go to college, who know all the steps. Because if you do that, you're not going to have an enrollment problem. We don't have an enrollment problem.
Michael Horn:
So against that backdrop, I want to focus on one student segment in particular, which is men. It's actually not a topic we've covered a lot on this particular show. But as you know, they make up over half the 18 to 24 year olds in the United States. But they're vastly outnumbered these days in the nation's colleges, representing just around 41% or so of undergraduate students. Big change from historical… College-going rates of men have been declining across all races, socioeconomic groups. But as you're aware, some of the steepest drops nationwide have been among black males, Hispanic males, who are also lagging in college enrollment overall, given their overall growth in the population. So as I understand it, Montclair State has really put a special focus with this on understanding the research and then developing a plan for action that you think has larger applicability, can be scaled right to other institutions. So let's just start with what did you find first? And then we can talk about what are you doing.
Jonathan Koppell:
First of all, I'm sure glad, I'm sure glad we are talking about it because it should be talked about more. This is a phenomenon with broad, broad social implications. The gap between male and female educational attainment is getting wider, by the way, that's across race and ethnicity and it has profound consequences. Even this, it may sound, even in terms of people's ability to find a partner because as a general matter, people marry those who have similar educational levels and they have a hard time pairing up with people. We can have a discussion about whether that makes sense or not. I'm not making normative statement. That's just reality. And I think that the differences in educational attainment is linked to the rising percentages of people who are single. And that has all kinds of consequences. So this needs to be dealt with in a broader framework. And one of the funny things that again, people don't know, it's actually an advantage in college admissions now to be male because this problem isn't only a college problem. It's a problem at the high school level. And educational attainment has different levels at the high school level. And, and going way back, I think that raises all kinds of questions about K12 education and so on and so forth. But we're trying to address it at the college level because not only do men attend college at lower rates, they also have lower success rates once they enroll. And that does, as you, as you said in the question, that does interact with race and ethnicity. So the difference in attainment for men of color is even more dramatic than the difference in attainment for all men versus women overall. So my view about issues like this is don't deny that these problems exist. Don't try and make excuses, address them. And we saw it in the data very early in my time at Montclair and we started something called the Male Enrollment and Graduation Alliance, which is specifically focused on the gender disparities that are visible. And so we're looking at the whole life cycle of a student, so including recruitment, including the onboarding and whether we're doing everything in our power to set the terms of success and improving elements of the campus climate that we think might be responsible for the differential outcomes. Asking questions. We've done a climate survey to try and get at the experience of students and see whether there are differences on a gender basis that explain the outcome. Creating connections between alumni and current students to help model out pathways for our students. Improve our data tracking so that we have good information that can get at the differences in gender. We don't always have the right data necessary to do that. Focus on career exploration earlier in the time when they're in college because the data does show that the more focused students are on what comes next, the easier it is for them to be motivated and applied during college and frankly come up with the resources necessary to give support. So there's a lot of different things that we're trying to do. I think probably the most important thing we're trying to do is acknowledge the problem and ask hard questions about what role we play in producing that outcome.
Michael Horn:
And what are you starting to see from these actions that perhaps other colleges and universities can start to say, hey, those are things maybe we ought to look into doing as well?
Jonathan Koppell:
I think some of the things that apply generally apply particularly to male students. So for example, we're trying to build in hands-on learning opportunities and applied learning opportunities into every academic offering or, you know, degree program. I think that's particularly, I think that's particularly useful for male students because I guess they derive more benefit from seeing early how the things they're doing in the curriculum are going to help them professionally.
Michael Horn:
Beyond black and Hispanic males, Jeff mentioned a bit ago something we've talked a lot about on this podcast, the general disengagement of students with higher ed, right. High school graduates foregoing college altogether, or at least right away, adult students with some college credits who are not returning in the numbers that I think a lot of colleges would like to see. And then obviously the massive reskilling, upskilling demands that we have in today's job market. I'm just curious, like, it seems that a lot of individuals out there are concluding that colleges aren't up to this job and so they aren't going to higher education to get these skills and so forth. Where should colleges in your view more generally? You obviously are having successes here, so where should colleges be focused here? Where can they start to win again to get these folks that are disengaging to come back in to higher education.
Jonathan Koppell:
Yeah. Well, I guess the first thing I'd say before I answer the question is that that outcome can't be treated as some sort of exogenous result. It turns out that when you pound on college as an institution and say, this is stupid, it's not worth it, it's a waste of your time, like, people are going to hear that. I think it's done a number of people a disservice, to be honest. And as you both know, it's become a politicized issue. And that actually is relevant to the gender disparity because of the way it's become politicized. So all of these things are intertwined in a way. Look, I think that some of the reasons why people are wary of college is because some of the criticisms are valid and people say, hey, wait a second, like, why would I go to college if a lot of the people who start never finish, and I'm not even going to get a degree? That's legit. And we need to be accountable for that outcome. Because my view is once we accept somebody, we're saying, you can get a college degree. And if people don't complete at a high rate, of course, they're of course po'ed. Right? And so we're. We're proud of our. We're proud of our success. We think that the reason why our enrollment is very strong, notwithstanding the demographic cliff and all the other scary things out there, is because, and this is a good thing, people are getting more sophisticated about making college choices. And they do look at completion rates and they do look at retention, and they do look at career success post graduation, and we're attentive to those things and do well. So the first thing you can do to be responsive to this is meet expectations, and I think we're doing a good job. I'm not satisfied. I guess that also makes me an ASU person, Jeff, which is, however good we are, I think we can be better. But meet expectations and, and part of that is changing the understanding of what a university does. So, so one thing that's been controversial at a lot of universities, they say, look, we're not technical schools, so don't come to us, expect us to do job training. I don't disagree with that. We're not technical school by the way, not that there's anything wrong with going to a technical school. Like, there are a lot of great pathways that go through technical schools. That's not the same thing as going to a four year college. But it's legitimate to say, are you preparing people for a post-college career? And a point that was made to me several years ago really resonated and stuck with me. Somebody said at a forum "You guys talk about first generation college students and you're all really proud, but you're not grappling with the fact that they're also first generation professionals and nobody's helped those students get ready for a professional career and a resume and an interview." And I always bring up the example of schmoozing. Are you teaching people how to schmooze? Because schmoozing is weird. Like, you go to like you're what? What should I do? Like network? Well, what does that mean? Like, well, go and talk to people about yourself. What? Like, that's just weird. And it makes people feel nervous because they're going to settings where they've never been. I am actually excited. We have a dinner coming up for a group of students where they're going to learn, you know, how to schmooze and how to have dinner at a fancy banquet. And you know, all this stuff about silverware and glasses and napkins. And I literally wrote back. I was like, I'm not sure I'm using my napkin correctly. I need to go. So we can think about all these things that are responsive to many of the criticisms. But then there's a whole other step. And I don't want to filibuster, but there are a whole bunch of those students that you talked about. Let's take one category, returning students. Have we built ourselves for them? I don't think the answer to that is yes. And we say, " Yes, we have, we have online programs." I'm like, yeah, but they don't want just online programs. So our initiative is called Montclair Unbound. And what we, what we mean by that is programs that don't fit into one category or another. So they combine some synchronous and some asynchronous online and some face to face. And we do it with real intentionality. So if you're going to ask somebody who's working full time and taking care of kids and whatever, say, come to campus once a month or once a week, we better be really intentional about designing that experience to be worthwhile. And I think if we get better at that. Those students are going to find us and it will be worth it to them and then they will enroll. I don't think we've spent enough time redesigning ourselves to satisfy the concerns of those constituencies. They're there to be satisfied and we can get it right.
Jeff Selingo:
Okay, Jonathan, because it, a lot of this just requires culture change at institutions. And I've been spending a lot of time with boards and Presidents the last couple of months. And I'm always asked, it's not that we don't know what needs to be changed or even how it needs to be changed, but we just sometimes don't know where to start. We have a culture that is resistant to change. So what do we need to do first, then second, then third? It's kind of like riding a bike, right? Like, how do we do it so that eventually we are, you know, Montclair State, or eventually we're ASU or WGU or Southern New Hampshire or whatever you want to use out there as a, as an innovative place. So you're now at Montclair State for a couple of years. What were those first, first, second, third thing you did when you got there?
Jonathan Koppell:
So my, my initial answer as you were framing the question, Jeff, was that there probably is no first place. That is to say, the most important thing is not to fret about what comes first because there's no really right answer to that.
Jeff Selingo:
Okay.
Jonathan Koppell:
But as I thought about it, but as I thought about it, I actually take that back because the reason I was going to say that is because the first step in my brain is so fundamental that I don't even think of it as the first step. So the first step is articulating the why. That's the first step. Why? Why do you need to change? So I think that if it's framed as well, you need to change because otherwise we're not going to sell enough widgets to keep the lights on. No, that's not going to work. The why has to be something about the mission. And if there's one connective thread to ASU, Montclair and other institutions, it's that they're mission driven institutions. And I came to this university because I found the mission compelling and it was consistent with my own beliefs about what's important in higher education and that we have to solve the question of broadened access without making compromises on quality. I personally am passionate about the role of the university in the community and that we can become a transformational change agent and in so doing become a better research university and a better teaching university. There's not a tension between those objectives, but actually they work together and that, the change that, the change that we're asking of people. And it is a lot, right. And it is challenging. It's in service of these objectives. And if, if you don't have a good answer to the why, if it's just like because I said so or because if we don't do it, we're going to go out of business, you'd think that would be compelling, but that's not enough if you’re going to make a difference.
Jeff Selingo:
So, Jonathan, we're gonna make this last question a speed round because we're running out of time here. So it's a big question, but hopefully you could kind of say, yeah, this is the one thing I'd fix. The job you're in now, the college presidency has been getting a lot of press because most people are not lasting. In fact, you're now a couple of years on the job and your tenure is like, is like a long time compared to a lot of people who entered the same year you did. A lot of people think the job itself is just broken. So how would you fix it? Is there again just a speed round here, one, two or three things that you say, here's what we have to do to kind of fix the college presidency if we want people to do these jobs and do these jobs well and last in them long enough going forward.
Jonathan Koppell:
So, by the way, actually, to your point, I'm in my fourth year and I got an email this fall asking me to be a mentor to a new President. So if you want a data point that shows you everything, like that shows you. I'm like, wow, I'm already on the mentor side of that equation. Like, well, that tells you something. So it's just, it's sort of funny. Hey, first of all, I don't think the job is broken. I think it's a rewarding job. I think it's a way to have a lot of impact. That's why I'm in it and that's why I find it enjoyable. I think it has become a more difficult job because of the competing constituencies that you're trying to satisfy simultaneously. And I suppose that some of those constituencies have been emboldened over the last few years so that it hasn't changed. But the demands have gone up. I think what makes for a more successful presidency? I think a clear governance structure makes sense that you have boards that understand the universities and understand the role of a board compared to the role of management. I'm lucky to have a very good board. And, and I think that's important. And I think some of the struggles for university Presidents have been around governance.
Jeff Selingo:
Let's just take one more then.
Jonathan Koppell:
Okay. So I think that the shifting regulatory environment and the world around higher ed has created a challenge. I mean just this past year, the, the FAFSA debacle, that created a real hardship for universities. And there are all kinds of shifting rules about accreditation, about security, about managing under uncertainty is always difficult. And a good, a good number of the fundamental issues, financial aid that I didn't even mention Title 9,.Title 9 has been like a flag waving back and forth. So I think that as difficult as these jobs are, they'd be a lot easier if there was predictability about what the future would look like a few, a few years from now. So those are, those are a few things that come to mind. But I just want to say people look at me with this sort of look of pity when they say you're a university President these days. I think it's a good job and I'm doing this because I thought it was the best way that I could use my abilities to make a difference in the world.
Jeff Selingo:
Jonathan, thank you so much for joining us on Future U.
Jonathan Koppell:
My pleasure.
Jeff Selingo:
And we'll be right back.
Host:
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 non profit organization committed to helping learners from low income backgrounds reach their education and career goals. For more information, visit ascendiumphilanthropy.org.
Michael Horn:
Welcome back to Future U. A lot of music to my ears, Jeff, in this conversation with Jonathan, I want to get your take in just a moment on a bunch of things, but the thing I wanted to start on was this. I loved how Jonathan owned that one of the reasons people - students - have disengaged so much with higher ed is that because, frankly, some of the criticisms have been valid. And the best way then to combat those criticisms is to actually deliver on prospective student expectations. You know, make sure students get to where they want to go. And if, you know, you retain them, then you graduate them, you get them into great jobs, you're going to be meeting their expectations. And that's not just talking the talk. Sometimes I hear university Presidents think, oh, it's a communications problem. No, this is walking the walk. And when you walk the walk, then words get out around the quality and value that you're delivering. You know, the best advertising, I think, is doing a service well. And that's why I suspect you're seeing rising enrollment at Montclair State. Now, I will say in the other breath, Jeff, he also complained a little bit about people pounding on higher ed and how that degrades its reputation. I think I have a different take on that one. People are pounding on higher ed, I think, because at too many institutions, the outcomes haven't been there for the money that it costs. And so it has become at certain institutions, a risky bet. But again, in my view, the antidote to that is not to ask our politicians or whomever to simply stop. It's just to make sure that the outcomes are there so that they have nothing to talk about. Right? Like, let's take away the lines. So you've heard me of, you know, you've heard of "show me the money," right? From Jeremy McGuire. This is show me the results. And I think Montclair State is getting them, which makes the story easier to tell.
Jeff Selingo:
Yeah, Michael, if I could just jump in there on outcomes because, you know, we get pitched on this show a lot by colleges to have their Presidents on. And perhaps in the early days of the show, maybe we were a little less discerning, right? Because, hey, we launched a show on higher ed and it's great to have Presidents on. I'm a little bit more skeptical now, I'll say before we invite a President on. And you know, I talked with Jonathan around the time that I was working on a section of my new book about outcomes. And there's this Bain report that I'm using in the book which we'll link to in the show notes. And I was looking at its analysis of earnings and graduation rates at about a thousand colleges. So Bain looked at earnings and graduation rates at about 1,000 colleges. But what they did in this analysis was pretty interesting because what they did was in weighing the outcomes of individual colleges, they also took the students' academic and socioeconomic characteristics into account.
So they did that by predicting what a school's graduation rate should be and what graduates should earn in light of the student body's characteristics. You know, things like family income, you know, how many first generation students they had, the academic readiness of those students based on High School GPAs and test scores and things like that. Now when you look at the Bain results, they're not that surprising on the whole they found that there's a strong relationship between predicted and actual incomes, actual outcomes. Right? You know, who comes in the door is essentially who goes out the door. But there were some colleges in that report who kind of punched above their weight. The Bain report titled this Beating the Odds. And it included this interactive graphic with bubbles representing all the schools that were studied.
And there was one chart for graduation rates and another for earnings. And each had a kind of a diagonal line showing what was expected based on the student's academic and financial background. So schools with bubbles above that line outperformed their expectations while those below the line underperformed. And so I started to click around those bubbles with, you know, above the line graduation rates. And one of them that popped out was Montclair State. Its predicted graduation rate was 54% based on the students that it enrolls. Its actual graduation rate 67%. Very few schools in that report had that big of a gap between there. In fact very few, almost none, between their predicted and their actual graduation rate. Now I toggled then over to the earnings to find where Montclair's bubble was there and there the university was actually below the line graduates making about $3,000 less than predicted.
And I will tell you, this is a problem I've been finding in my book in the hunt for good colleges because finding that perfect school sometimes is really a fool's errand. Right? There's no school that's perfect on every measure.
Michael Horn:
Nor is there any job that's perfect on every measure either, Jeff. The argument in my book, so. But when you point to that Bain report, I haven't seen it. I'm going to check it out. Glad it'll be in our show notes because I think it links to what we wanted to do with equals what the Postsecondary Commission wants to do, which is really look at the value added because I don't really care on average that, you know, the Ivy League institution has a positive ROI. I want to know for students like me likely to go to this type of institution, where's, you know, given all the factors, like you said, what's the best bet? And I think a lot of students are doing that. I agree with Jonathan's point. They are becoming more discerning customers, more sophisticated was his word. I think he's right. That's great. They're looking at outcomes. You know, let's take the Bain report, let's take Preston Cooper's work when he was at FrEOP around ROI. Let's start to pull these into ways that people can really digest so that you can make smarter bets. And I think, you know, you'll see nuance around that. Institutions that do well for folks, I think we're going to see more enrollment. Those that don't will see declining enrollment.
Michael Horn:
And, and I think that that's all to the good in my mind over the longer run, even if it means some colleges, frankly, Jeff may not make it because of outcomes and attrition over time. Last thought on this, Jeff. I thought Jonathan was right on the money when he complained about the term "flagship." You know, we'll own that one. Right? But it's a higher ed term to show a ranking, a relative ranking of institutions within a state and what I would call a supply side phrase. It's something that means something in the industry. But for people who are trying to figure out, you know, where do I go? It's not that meaningful to them. And I think that's the big thing.
We have to start using language that's meaningful to students trying to make decisions. Stop the jargon. Show them the outcomes. Show them the value added or circumstance specific outcomes. Share the stories in particular, because stories carry the day, and we'll go from there. What's your take, Jeff?
Jeff Selingo:
Yeah, so I'll definitely agree with you on the jargon, Michael. And it's interesting because that message is clearly reaching throughout Montclair State. I was on a webinar with Bridget Callahan Harrison, who's chair of Political Science and Law at Montclair this Summer and she mentioned this idea of a first gen dictionary that they're putting together at Montclair since nearly half of their students are first generation. So exactly what is a registrar's office like? Nobody tells you that. Or a bursar's office. Right? So much of our language is built by people who went to college for people that they think have been talking about college, by the way, since essentially they could speak. Right?
Jeff Selingo:
They've been talking about college around the, around the dining room table. You know what I liked is how Jonathan is also fighting for New Jersey students. Many Pennsylvania, New York institutions have long counted on New Jersey students. And it seems to me that the state really never did much to try to keep them. So how do we differentiate o they could stay or should stay. Right? That's essentially what Jonathan is saying here. Differentiation, I think, is really the name of the game, of course, these days in higher ed. But then I hear college leaders talking about differentiation and then what happens? You can say we're different, here's how we're different. But the piece that I think is missing at so many institutions that claim they're different is that they fail to actually build their infrastructure around that differentiation. So we want to get more first gen students, right? We want to get more Hispanic students, we want to get more men. Okay, whatever it is to differentiate yourself, but then, you know, what services are you going to offer to put in place to not only recruit them, but also to retain them and engage them, graduate with them? Don't talk about, don't talk to me about how your career service office is different or how you're focused on placing students into jobs. And then I go look at your career service office and you have just a couple of people there and you really haven't changed it. So let's not just talk about differentiation, but let's kind of, you know, walk that walk.
Michael Horn:
Walk that walk, indeed. I, I'll come back to this first gen students point in a minute, Jeff. Although I will say for our listeners, you may be interested. When I was a freshman showing up in college, certainly not a first gen student by any means, I had no idea whether a Dean or President was more important in the college. Richard Broadhead or Richard Levin had no idea. But anyway, I'd love your take on is the men question specifically that you just alluded to. I love how he talked about the applied learning in particular. But I know that this was the topic that, you know, you've been pounding me on that we need to talk more about.
I agree. So I would love to hear what you learned and what you think.
Jeff Selingo:
Yeah. So two points here, Michael. First is just having the data. You know, so many innovative ideas on campuses never make it past the pilot phase. Or they remain boutique programs impacting only small numbers of students because academics really prefer to stay with known approaches rather than move institutions forward without guarantees of success. And largely that's because so many decisions in higher ed are kind of based on the gut instincts of administrators. Now, Jonathan didn't mention this in our interview, but there was a report that I was looking at in preparing for that interview on their Male Enrollment Graduation Alliance. That's what this is called. And in the five years before he got to Montclair, I was looking at the numbers in that report. There was no upward trend in first year retention rates for Hispanic and black males. Let me repeat that. Zero. It didn't move at all. Retention over a five year period for Hispanic and black males. Now, I'm sorry, that's a data point that everyone on campus should know, and I would bet that many didn't even know that. So we really need good data in higher ed so that everyone on campus is starting with a common set of facts. You probably remember what Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, right? "You are entitled to your opinion, but you're not entitled to your own facts." And I think what ends up happening a lot in higher education is that this President, this Dean, this department chair, they all come to a meeting and they're all using a different set of facts that make their case. And it would be nice to know that everyone is operating from the same set of facts. And this is why I think just having the data, having it cleaned up, and having everybody kind of singing from that same songbook is critically important. Because when we operate from a common set of facts, it also means that any incremental improvement on the various metrics is well understood, both to celebrate progress, if you're increasing those metrics, or by the way, we need to make a course correction because we're not moving at all on this number. And so by taking a step back to ensure the robustness of a college's own data, I think really helps colleges focus and campuses focus on the big issues. So just having the data, number one, is what I learned from Jonathan. The second is experimentation. You know, you really need to have a place where you can experiment and iterate. You know, we know this, Michael, from Paul LeBlanc. We know this from Arizona State we know this from Georgetown. These are just some people WGU, right? We know this in so many different places of Presidents that we've had on who are seen as innovative. And when they talk about what they've done, they always talk about that skunkworks, that place off campus, that little entity that they have, whether it's the Red House at Georgetown, whether it's Ed Plus at ASUwhere they're able to experiment and iterate. Second, you need to have a governance structure around that so that all this stuff going off on the side is not foreign to people on the main campus. So you need to plug in your current governance structure into that place where you can experiment so that when things work in that experimental phase and you start to move them into the academic core, it's not going to be rejected, right? It's not going to be an organ that's rejected because the governance structure understands, hey, we've been experimenting with this and it works. And then once it works within one department, then we need to scale it across the campus. And I think this is from what reading about what Jonathan's trying to do and what Montclair State in particular is trying to do on male college enrollment. This is, you know, they're still in the middle of this journey. They still have far to go. But this is how I can see efforts like this really not only starting to take off on individual campuses, but across higher ed.
Michael Horn:
It makes a ton of sense. I'm just going to plus one what you said and move on to another set of thoughts and then I'll ask you a question as we wrap up here. But on mine, I just want to come back to what you talked about. The students that typically have not been served well by higher ed institutions and how Montclair is really making a real effort to do so. I had two insights here. I loved how Jonathan spoke about serving first gen students, but not just in college, but to prepare them for the world of work. Because they're often going to be first gen professionals as well. Right? If you're a first gen student, it's generally the case your parents weren't professionals either. They had other employment. And I loved the example he gave of teaching people how to schmooze. Jeff, it reminds me a lot of the findings that Nitsan Pelman had from her work when she founded Climb Hire, which really takes the insights around how to build, but not just build, then use social capital to prepare and train determined, diverse working adults for entry level jobs. I also love Jeff on the topic of serving populations still, that higher ed hasn't historically served well. How Jonathan's willing to break apart categories and say, let's launch Montclair Unbound. That was his example that he gave. The entities that we create do not have to be fully online nor fully on campus. They don't have to be fully synchronous nor fully asynchronous. Those are categories we've created to try to understand what they are. But what you're really trying to do is just create an entity that works for these students and fits into their lives. And it harkens to an episode we had with Mike Larsson of Duet, you know, we concluded from that conversation, you got to build something that's student ready, and the form factor should mold to the purpose and situation of the student. So that's my piece from the conversation. Last question I have for you, though, as we wrap up, which is we asked about the question, or we asked the question of Jonathan about lessons from Arizona State University and how they port into changing other colleges or universities. What's the recipe, in other words? And Jonathan said, articulating the why has to be the first step. I think it ties into the data, frankly, that you were just talking about as well, so we can have a shared understanding of the problem and the why, what are we trying to accomplish? But it also harkens back to what I always hear about ASU itself, which is you ask anyone on campus, from the janitor to the Dean and from a faculty member to the admin assistant, what's our mission? And they all can say it. So, you know, you've been in and around ASU for about a decade now.You're steeped in the culture. You think a lot about change and leadership. Do you agree with Jonathan? Is that how you see change having to start as well?
Jeff Selingo:
Yeah, I mean, we tend to think these are operational problems, and they are. But as we know, it all starts with culture. And I think the culture on these campuses are just so hard to change, Michael. I just want to bring something in from Educause. I just got back from Educause as we're recording this, and I did a dinner with about a dozen CIOs, and they were talking about talent, for example, within the technology units on campuses. And, you know, and there's so much demand for talent now, tech talent, that they say, well, you know, we could really only pay 80% of, you know, going salaries. And so that other 20%, you know what, it often happens. Well, we give Them flexibility. Or we say, you know, you don't really have to work on those hard projects, or you could take off at 5 or, you know, we'll bring in lunch at noon and you know, you could take off if you have to or whatever. There's a lot of flexibility. And as a result, they believe that you're not necessarily going to have a high performing organization when you can't make the demands on people that you really need to in order to change the culture. So the culture is going to be kind of like, we'll step back, we'll get to that tomorrow, we'll get to that two years from now. Meanwhile, all your competitors are just kind of moving faster and faster. And I think the clock speed at these places where there is a culture change does move faster. Second, what was interesting to me in talking to these CIOs at this dinner is that several of them came from industry and they were talking about the differences, and we hear this all the time, right, between industry and higher education. And as they were talking about some of the differences, I could see, even see the CIOs around the table who didn't come from industry kind of shaking their head in agreement. One of them was the why, right? So One of the CEOs who had come from Amazon talked about from day one, they knew what Amazon was trying to achieve, what they wanted to do. The why was very clear. And I can tell you from spending time on a lot of college campuses, their why is not always known. Second, is overlap. There's so many silos in higher education that it's really hard to change the culture across an organization. One of the CIOs, for example, was talking about when they got there at their institution, they had a dozen different instances, installations of Salesforce, you know, in different schools, different departments. Everybody just went off and bought their own instance. And so I think this gets back to this idea of, well, if we're going to change the culture of an institution, we have to act as one, not 12 different silos, five different schools, 12,000 different departments, whatever it might be. And that's why I think culture change in higher ed is so difficult. And then finally, you know, going back to this why, I also often hear Presidents, for example. You know, we're a student centered institution. And then you look at the incentives for faculty and they're focused on research, you know, so if you're going to say something, put your resources there, put your incentives there. One of the things that I would like Presidents to come up with is a master plan for culture, right? We have strategic plans, we have master plans for buildings. Like, let's come up with a master plan about how we're going to shift to the culture at this institution.
Michael Horn:
Wow. I love it, Jeff. Culture eats strategy for lunch, as they say.
Jeff Selingo:
I'm glad you said it. Sometimes they say breakfast. I always.
Michael Horn:
Yeah.
Jeff Selingo:
What is, Is it breakfast or lunch?
Michael Horn:
I, you know, how about both? But the Edgar Schein, right? The MIT professor, always defined organizational culture as the shared processes and priorities of an organization. And I always say this in K12. I had not thought about it as much in higher ed till you just did that, which is if you look at your average district school building, say, 24 different classrooms in an elementary school, there are 24 different cultures. You cannot create meaningful change with that. And so this idea of a culture master plan, I think, is a great place to wrap this up. And thank you to Jonathan Koppell for joining us from Montclair State University. Thank you to our sponsors, and, of course, thank you to all of you for joining us. We'll see you next time on Future U.
