Reporters Roundtable: Colleges Must Face Hard Truths

Chapters

0:00 - Introduction
2:19 - What Insiders Miss About the Moment in Higher Ed
5:25 - Higher Ed Stories That Spark the Most Feedback
11:18 - Will College Continue to Be Worth It?
14:20 - Are Co-ops a Fad or a Lasting Trend?
17:53 - A ‘Flashing Red Light’ for Higher Ed
21:04 - ‘These Towns Would Be Really Boring’
22:12 - The State of Higher Ed in New England
24:06 - The Continuing Lure of College
38.12 - What’s Coming for Higher Ed?
31:00 - A Looming Reckoning for Boston Colleges?
32:56 - What’s Happening With International Students?
34:09 - How Research Cuts Will Impact Colleges
34:53 - Is the Era of Colleges for Exploration and Ideas Over?

Relevant Links:

College Town newsletter, from The Boston Globe.

“The Reason Dozens of Mass. Colleges Could Close (Hint: It's Not Trump),” by Hilary Burns, in The Boston Globe.

“The Despair of the Professor in the Age of AI,” by Jay Caspian Kang in The New Yorker.

“Higher Ed Leaders Fear International Students Will Stop Coming Amid Research Cuts,” by Hilary Burns, in The Boston Globe.

“Will A.I. Make College Obsolete? / Eight Predictions,” by Jay Caspian Kang, in The New Yorker

Transcript

Hilary Burns

I think one thing I hear often is it's not just, you know, the Republicans on Capitol Hill who are upset with higher education. It's your neighbor. It's your cousin. It's your grandson who's thinking about going to college.

Jeff Selingo

Michael, we got two reporters in the room, and we asked them what the rest of us are all missing.

Michael Horn

Hilary Burns covers higher ed for the Boston Globe, and Jay Caspian Kang writes for The New Yorker.

Jeff Selingo

So we asked them both the same question. What's the biggest story of the last eighteen months that this sector is underreacting to?

Michael Horn

They gave the same answer, and it wasn't the culture war.

Jay Caspian Kang

I just think that when, like, the University of Oregon stops building dorms that are halfway done because they can't fill them and they're worried about how many students they're gonna have — and this is exactly the profile of school that was supposed to be okay — I think is a huge flashing red sign that maybe some of these problems that were theoretical, gonna happen in ten years, are happening right now.

Jeff Selingo

You know, Jay wrote a piece on the enrollment cliff. He now thinks he undersold it.

Jay Caspian Kang

If you're a small liberal arts school, for example, and youcan't fill your seats, it's over. You have ten years left and you should probably close sooner rather than later.

Michael Horn

And Hilary is hearing the other end of it, from parents who haven't even gotten their kids out of daycare yet.

Hilary Burns

You expect me to pay what? $150,000, $200,000 a year by the time these kids are in college? Like, I don't think so. They're going to UMass.

Jeff Selingo

Plus the despair of the professor, why co-ops are suddenly spreading, and whether college just for reading and thinking survives it all.

Jay Caspian Kang

My sense is that it will continue and, but it'll be much more the provenance of the wealthy.

Michael Horn

Two reporters, no script. Let's go.

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Jeff Selingo

Hilary and Jay, welcome to Future U.

Hilary Burns

Thanks for having us.

Jay Caspian Kang

Thanks for having us.

Michael Horn

Terrific.

Well, Hilary, let's start with you.

You've covered the higher ed beat for The Boston Globe for several years, but you left, recently, the reporter side of things, shall we say, and went to the opinion side of the paper.

And you've helped launch this new weekly email newsletter called College Town. And in our conversations, you've described this as a section that's aimed at one of New England's biggest sectors in effect, but it's not just for the insiders. Right? It's also for students, parents, employers, anyone interested in this topic.

And that's where I wanna start.

When you zoom out to the bigger audience interested in higher ed that isn't on the inside right now, what is it that us insiders, people like me and Jeff and others, what are we not getting about higher ed right now? What do insiders struggle to see about this moment that we're in?

Hilary Burns

Yeah, that's a great question.

And I think it's obvious that higher ed has a lot of critics. There's a lot of skepticism in the air right now.

But I think one thing I hear often is it's not just, you know, the Republicans on Capitol Hill who are upset with higher education. It's your neighbor. It's your cousin. It's your grandson who's thinking about going to college. We hear all the time just people saying, ‘How much is it really going to cost? What is the purpose? Why are we doing this when AI is going to do all these jobs for us?’

So I think there's just so much confusion, uncertainty, and skepticism about the industry right now and not just from the loudest critics.

So that's what I would tell the folks inside these schools.

Michael Horn

Jay, similar question to you. I mean, you kind of, as I understand it, grew up in higher ed in some ways, I suppose you could say. But you write for The New Yorker now from a much broader vantage point on big cultural economic issues impacting our society, which of course includes the future of college and work.

What in your view are college leaders and those who work at colleges really missing about this moment and the industry as a whole?

Jay Caspian Kang

Well, I think they had fifty years of basically unprecedented and unstopped growth. And so I think that a lot of the people who are running these organizations or these universities just assume that it's gonna keep happening and that basically everything from, you know, demographic changes, enrollment cliff, and then also, as Hilary alluded to, really just a bipartisan shift in the attitudes towards going to college. Not to mention, you know, what's gonna happen with AI is really going to radically change a lot of things that the era of unprecedented growth is certainly not a given.

You just look at something like what happened at the University of Oregon or something like that or University of Vermont where they have these enrollment problems that five years ago even, like nobody would have ever thought that would be a thing. And so it's happening very quickly and I think that it is really a bit of an emergency situation in a lot of these schools right now, and they should be prepared for it.

Michael Horn

I'm also curious for both of you since you both write for publications that are much broader than higher ed. Hilary, like when you write about higher ed in college, what gets the most traction among readers?

Like, what inflames them? Gets you hate mail? Gets them excited?

Which storylines really attract the most attention?

Hilary Burns

It's so interesting. People here, even when they're mad at higher ed, they really want to know what's going on and they want to read about it.

It's like every topic. My colleague wrote a piece about the dorm room decorating that's gone to an extreme level. That did really well. Our stories about the broken business model do well. People are really interested in what's going on and they do want to understand it.

And it's not intuitive. It's very different from the businesses they work at or they run. And they people don't understand the peculiarities and the differences between a for-profit business and higher ed.

So I think the more higher ed can do to help the public understand what it is they're doing, where they're going, I really feel like there's been a huge void in leadership in higher ed the last few years and everyone's kind of just ducking and hoping someone else will step up and say where they're going, and it's created this huge void that Republicans have been happy to fill.

So I'm hoping that we'll see more leaders step up and tell us where higher ed's moving.

Michael Horn

What about you, Jay? What gets the most attention from readers when you choose to write about higher ed?

Jay Caspian Kang

Oh, I don't know any story about Harvard or Yale, I guess. Princeton, sometimes Stanford.

I'm sure as Hilary knows, the concentration of stories in higher ed that go to the 1% of schools is a real failing that we have as a media industry. But it does reflect somewhat what our readership is interested in. Right?

And so people have tried in the past to do work on schools that are not the top, top schools like here, I don't know, in California where I live in the Bay Area. You know, it'd be great to do stories about Cal State schools and not just have every story be about Berkeley and Stanford, maybe sometimes Pomona.

But, like, it's very hard to sell those stories to the readership. And I think they're just very, very used to just reading about the elite schools. And it just creates a self-fulfilling prophecy in a lot of ways where the public is already interested in this.

I actually think what Hilary said is really true, which is that part of the interest is that people don't really understand the ways in which these schools function a lot like their businesses. And so they fill in all this stuff and they're like, ‘Oh, there must be this like magic group of people that make all these decisions on woke or not woke.’ Right?

And they have like these scales and they like add on each side. Is it more woke or not? Like and, you know, they or like, the these professors are being told by these people to put this ideology out?

All these sorts of questions that are out there about the university that are culture war issues, I think, come from a very fundamental misunderstanding of how these universities function.

Jeff Selingo

Well, Jay, know, one of the big strands shaping, of course, the view of higher ed right now is AI. You know, we keep reading about it over and over again.

And there are a few aspects of how this plays out that we wanna talk about. But one was featured in an article that you wrote, that headlined “The Despair of the Professor.” And I'm just kinda curious, is this despair among faculty members, is it just about students cheating? Because I feel like students have been cheating since the dawn of learning. Right? Or is it something deeper that there's this sense of loss that the professor isn't as central to learning as they used to be.

They're not this sage on the stage as they used to be.

What have you found in your interviews?

Jay Caspian Kang

Well, I think that some of it is just straight about cheating, and I don't know how to teach my classes anymore.

But I do think that there's a deeper thing which is just, you know, I remember I talked to a theater professor who was at an HBCU and he was telling me about how he had a hard time getting the kids to read any part of August Wilson's “Fences.” And that this hurt his soul. Like, where it's just like, just put in 45 minutes to read.

You don't have to read the whole thing. Just read a little part of it and tell me what it means. You've decided to take this class, you know. Like, let's just get this much out of it where you have an emotional or spiritual or intellectual interaction with one of the great works of the thing that you decided to take the class in. And that it was just so hard for him to get even that. Right?

Or even there's a religion professor who would tell me that like just these important passages from religious texts that have influenced all of history. Right? Can you just do something that's not ChatGPT?

I don't just like, tell me. You don't have to write it down. You don't have to put it in a five paragraph. Just tell me.

And even that, she would get like things that were clearly just written by ChatGPT.

And I think like putting myself in their shoes, that would hurt my soul too. Like I would like it would hurt that the next generation that you're trying to help is just not gonna care about these things.

And I think that that's also just part of it at this point which is there's this almost spiritual element of it that everything that I care about, that's why I'm in this field teaching it, doesn't matter to these kids because they're just gonna cheat their way through. And if they don't engage with it, then they're not gonna get what I got out of it and I want that for them. Which I think is a very, you know and as anybody who is now older just dealing with young people, that's what you want. You want them to go through these experiences and understand it.

But if they're just gonna shortcut it every time, then you worry about society at large, which is I think as part of this despair.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. Well, let's stay on AI for a moment, Jay, because you've written about your own musings about, like, the big question about whether to save for college for your own children. And I love when you write about your kids because, you know, one of the questions, I think, around AI is what will it mean for college and will it be relevant?

You know, this is some something that Michael and I talk a lot about, especially the entry-level job market, of course. Right? Right. And what are kids going to end up doing?

So I'd like your verdict on it. Like, will college continue to be worth it? And if so, will the public kind of get that value out of it?

Jay Caspian Kang

Well, if it's still just the main way in which we sort different classes into different groups and say this is the upper middle class and this is how they retain their signal by going to these schools and this is how the people in those networks will hire them into certain jobs and sure. Right?

That's a very cynical but I think mostly realistic way to think about the function of college or at least the top 10% of colleges or so.

I think that otherwise, I do think that it will be under a little bit of assault but I don't think it'll be fully killed off by what's happening. I think there'll be massive changes.

So for example, I live in the Bay Area, like I said, and there's been a massive expansion of the computer science department at UC Berkeley over the past twenty years. And that coincides with all the cultural and political economic directives — learn to code or whatever. Right?

And these kids who are very hardworking, mostly middle class, you know, some rich kids and then some working class kids who go to UC Berkeley, they all heard that and said, I don't wanna be economically like predisposed when I'm 24 years old, 26 years old, 30 years old. And so I will do what everyone's telling me and I'll go into computer science.

And those fields more than any other field in terms of software engineering and tech, like those ones actually are starting to see some entry-level job disappear because of AI. Right?

Like, the law stuff like that, consulting not really so much. Right? We haven't seen it.

But in tech, there are real rumblings that something is happening.

And so then what happens at UC Berkeley? You have this massive overproduction of computer science majors who are highly qualified. Right? And highly capable if they're if they went through UC Berkeley. And they're all just realizing that their degree didn't mean anything, and that they're gonna have to, I don't know, become like philosophy professors or something like that.

Jeff Selingo

After, by the way, going back to school to get another degree.

Jay Caspian Kang

Right. And that leads to … that type of dissatisfaction or that type of disappointment obviously has some effect, right, on the public's understanding of the value of a college education.

And I just can't imagine that type of seismic change, if it takes place at places like UC Berkeley, would not have a larger effect on how the university functions and how people think about the university, if that makes sense.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. It does. And one of the things, Hilary, that, you know, Michael and I hear often is, well, in the age of AI, we need people who can actually, you know, apply their learning, right? This idea of experiential learning has really taken hold at a lot of universities.

It's interesting. MIT's ad hoc committee on AI use really put out its report on the impact of AI on MIT and in higher education.

There's a ton we could just talk about that report, but there was one piece that was referenced in it. It's something that you reported as well is that MIT is exploring taking this page from Northeastern and introducing co-ops.

You've also reported that the UMass system is also embarking on a series of co-op pilots.

You know, why are these other institutions in Massachusetts trying to take a page from Northeastern? Maybe it's because Northeastern has become super popular, probably because of the co-ops.

But do you think this is gonna be just a fad, or do you think this is a real serious effort that has legs?

Hilary Burns

Yeah, I see it as a real trend that's going to be even … we're going to see even more of it in this interim period as companies are figuring out which roles will be replaced by AI, what entry level jobs will we be hiring for.

I think co-ops, internships, experiential learning will be even more important because it's just you're that much more in lockstep with the workforce. And you know that, okay, well, if I have a job, if I have an internship doing this, I know what the employer needs right now. Maybe ten years, that will be different, or even in two years, that will be different. But right now, I know what they need from me.

So the schools, a lot of schools across the board, are trying to get as close as they can to the employers that they work with most regularly to say, ‘Okay, what do you need from us? Let's online these short term credentials and pivot as much as we can to meet your needs right now because we don't really know long term what you need, and you don't either. So let's think shorter term and quicker.’ Which is hard for higher ed. That's not in their DNA to move like that, but they need to. And we're starting to see even smaller schools like Endicott and some of the other smaller regional liberal arts colleges around here doing the same thing, especially in health care fields.

Some of them are even rolling out AI majors, which at first was counterintuitive because everyone's saying the arts and the humanities are the future in the era of AI. But in the short term, companies need people that really know these tools and can weave them in to help them figure out where it's going.

So it's really interesting to watch.

Michael Horn

Alright. Let's take a quick pause there.

And when we come back, we're gonna talk about the state of higher ed more generally, the future of international students on campuses, and we'll zoom back to some of the big questions about the future of AI as well.

Will colleges continue to be seen as places for reading, writing, and thinking for their own sake?

Stay with us right after the break.

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This episode of Future U is sponsored by Ascendium, a mission-driven nonprofit committed to improving learning and training systems to better serve learners from low income backgrounds.

Ascendium envisions a world where low income learners succeed in post secondary education and workforce training as paths to upward mobility.

Ascendium's grantees are removing systemic barriers and helping to build evidence about what works so learners can achieve their career goals.

For more information, visit ascendiumphilanthropy.org.

Michael Horn

Welcome back to Future U.

Jeff and I are with Hilary Burns of the Boston Globe and College Town and Jay Caspian Kang of The New Yorker.

Jay, I wanna turn to you as we kick off this second half, which is in your view, what's the biggest story of the last eighteen months that the higher ed sector perhaps is underreacting to?

We've talked about some of these, like, broad currents. But as you think about the one or two stories maybe that in your opinion is a bellwether, maybe they've missed or they've just sort of underreacted to.

What would be on your list?

Jay Caspian Kang

Well, I'm not sure underreacted is within the industry is the right way.

But I can say that I do think that some of these big state schools being in trouble unexpectedly is probably much bigger than any of the cultural stuff. Right?

I do a podcast with Tyler Austin Harper at The Atlantic. And I think Tyler probably has a very we've actually banned talking about college from our podcast because I can't talk about it anymore.

I'm happy to be here with you two.

Michael Horn

We've given you an outlet.

Jay Caspian Kang

Yeah. I was like, I can't talk about professors anymore, man.

Sso I think that that's the big frontline conversation that is happening about universities. Right? Which is a cultural and political argument.

But for me at least, I just think that when, the University of Oregon stops building dorms that are halfway done because they can't fill them and they're worried about how many students they're gonna have and this is exactly the profile school that was supposed to be okay. Big football school, right? Kids go there for lifestyle. All these kids from California who are just like I don't wanna go to UC Irvine and like have to struggle. Or maybe I didn't even get into UC Irvine so what do I do now? I'll just go to University of Oregon, it's a good school and I'll have a great time. I'll go to football games and I'll join a fraternity.

Whatever the idea was that type of school is in trouble I think is a huge flashing red sign that maybe some of these problems that were theoretical are gonna happen in ten years are happening right now.

And I don't know what colleges are supposed to do about it because I think that once it happens then it's over, right? Like the second … and this is obviously University of Oregon … a huge school, a lot of support. But at the smaller schools, once this signal goes out, like you're basically done. The second a news story goes out that if you're a small liberal arts school for example and you have you can't fill your seats, it's over. You have ten years left and you should probably close sooner rather than later.

And I just think that … even when I wrote my article about the enrollment cliff, all the news that has happened since then has made me think that maybe I undersold the alarm of it at this point just in terms of a lot of these schools.

Michael Horn

There's echoes of the gradually then all at once, right, of bankruptcy.

Hilary, what about you?

What do you think is the story of the last eighteen months most underreacted to?

Hilary Burns

Actually completely agree with Jay.

That's the politics and the culture that dominate the discussion and dominate so much of our social media feeds and the media.

But it's the fundamental business questions that are so urgent and I don't see schools acting and that we have so many of the small vulnerable schools here in New England that are so important to the economy and to the culture here. I mean, many of these towns would be really boring without their little colleges. So it's really sad to think about.

But these schools are in trouble and all the warning signs are flashing and you just hear this optimism and this hope that isn't based on reality, isn't based on the numbers or the predictions that are there. So it's really concerning.

I don't know what could be done. I have a piece coming out with my own idea of what could be done in a few weeks.

But right now, it's just a lot of hoping that an enrollment enrollment's just around the corner, this new program where there's big donations right down the road.

So we'll see. I hope they can figure it out.

Michael Horn

So let's zoom out a bit more, but I think it's related to where you just both went around sustainability and the fiscal situation impacting colleges.

As we're recording this, Hilary, at the beginning of the 2026-27 school year. How would you characterize the state of higher ed across New England in those different segments? Right?

It's obviously not a monolith. So we've got our highly selective institutions, research, regional publics, community colleges, those tuition dependent privates that you just referenced. You can go one by one if that helps.

But what's the state of higher ed in New England right now?

Hilary Burns

I mean, everyone's pretty fragile right now. Even the highly selective schools with huge endowments are facing challenges that they never could have imagined a few years ago.

It's not that they're at risk of closing, but they might need to change greatly in the next few years.

I mean, there are even calls for people to say, ‘Well, should we have research and teaching in the same institutions?’ I think that would be a seismic shift. So everyone's fragile.

But then there are tiers of how existential are the problems.

And it's the regional publics and the tuition-dependent privates that are most at risk because it just doesn't take much for those schools to run out of cash to pay their bills, honestly. So many schools are just running right on the edge, and the publics have the support of the state, but their enrollments at a lot of the regional schools around New England are just have been plummeting.

And the schools themselves when you're on those campuses are a little sad, a little … they feel like forgotten, ignored.

So I think that's a conversation that New England needs to be having. These schools are there, we have the infrastructure, what are we doing? What's the plan for them down the road?

And it seems like they could be a great value. They are a great value for the public, but they just need some life pumped into them again.

Jeff Selingo

So Jay, help me square two things here because I've been out on the road a lot talking to high school parents and students in cities and towns all across the U.S.

And I will admit, mostly upper middle income, middle income, you know, even wealthier affluent areas. And Michael and I debate this a lot because when I go to these places, people are still clamoring to go to college. Right? And again, maybe it's just in the neighborhoods many of us live in and maybe many of the reporters who write for national publications live in.

But there's all this negativity about the future of higher ed, but yet everyone is clamoring to get into college.

So what are we missing there?

Jay Caspian Kang

Well, I think that people right now are still gonna really, really want their kids to go to college. And if they're negatively polarized about it, part of it is, and maybe they will not admit this, but part of it is because of the extreme competition around it. Right?

And if their kid could easily go to the school that their kid wanted to go to, they would have a more positive feeling about it. Maybe they wouldn't worry so much about what's happening in the sociology department at that school. You know, like …

And so I think the extreme competition in those types of neighborhoods is probably driving some of that, but that doesn't obviously mean that those people are going to drop out of going to those schools because they're competing for it. Right? So like if they weren't, then it wouldn't be as competitive.

But I think that across the board what you're seeing is that because of the high cost and because of the extreme competition that there is a beginning of a real questioning of it that is more sincere than it might have been in the past, right? Where …

I remember even in 1998 when I was grad when I was applying to college, it was much more of a thing that I had to go to college. But I myself was like, ‘Oh, why do I have to go to college?’ Right?

But it wasn't really my parents just picked because you are going to college. And I think now if I was that might that type of person where I was quite rebellious and didn't wanna go to college at all.

Jeff Selingo

It actually might happen now.

Jay Caspian Kang

Yeah, it would be more of a conversation, right? Like if my goal is to be like a writer and a journalist and I think now one of the thing and I was very motivated about it at the age of 18. I think one of the things that might have been discussed is why don't you take a couple years and see if you can be a YouTuber or something like that. Right? Like that there would be other opportunities that would be possibly available to me.

But that's so much on the fringes. Right? Like that's not the majority of kids.

The majority of kids I still think want to go to these colleges.

But I just think that the biggest problem not to just beat the dead horse is that there's just less of them, right? Because of demographic problems and everything like that.

I do think that the larger cultural issue though is probably much, it is like, it's not something to just hand wave away at this point because I do think that people do kinda wonder, well, if I'm gonna pay this much money for this school, what am I gonna get out of it?

And that wasn't really so much the question when I was going to school. Like, I went to Bowdoin in Maine and it became after I left, it became the center of many different culture war things. But when I went there, it was like the idea that it was some woke school that was like doing ideology and breeding the next communist mayor of New York City or whatever was like not really a thing. But it wasn't it didn't enter the calculus at all.

And now I think maybe it does a little bit for even some of these, you know, I don't know. Let's say you're like parent x in Lexington, Massachusetts. You probably think about it a little more and it probably does weigh in your head a little bit more than it used to. Right?

But I don't know, are you not going to send your kid to Bowdoin and you're going to send them to UMass instead? Or are you going to send them to … I don't think so.

Jeff Selingo

But ultimately and by the way, parent X might be Michael in Lexington, Mass. That's where he lives. But

Jay Caspian Kang

I didn't know that. I just came.

Michael Horn

Well played.

Jeff Selingo

That's a good guess.

So ultimately, are you bullish or bearish on higher ed?

You know, you predicted, which I think is a good prediction because it may actually come true that, like, there's a whole selection of institutions, big publics that have a lot of money, you know, in the privates that also have a lot of money and that are, you know, incredibly popular around the world. They're gonna be fine and everyone else not so much.

Is that really the … is that what the future of higher ed looks like in ten years?

And ultimately, if somebody asked you, you know, cornered you in an elevator and said, you know, up or down on higher ed, where do you stand today?

Jay Caspian Kang

Yeah. I think that I would probably say down.

I think that consolidation is gonna be pretty intense. I think that Kevin Carey, he's at New America, said to me is, like, he just called it winners win. I think that's right. I think that effect will be pretty far spread.

One of the questions that I just use in my head as a way to think about these things and obviously self centered or whatever, but I just think, ‘Is Bowdoin going to be okay?’ Right?

Here's this like school that has a very good academic reputation that's still quite selective that I believe at some point in the last three years was the most expensive school in America in terms of all it, which is crazy because you're living in Maine. It's like rent in Maine, in Brunswick, Maine, I guess, is super high right now.

But it was the most expensive school. And I just think, ‘Oh, where is the line going to be on these small private schools where you're going to be okay and start consolidate? Is it Williams? Is it Bowdoin? Is it Connecticut College? Is it Hamilton College? Or is it somewhere below all that?’

And I just think for these small private schools, it's going to be way higher than you thought.

And so it could be that Bowdoin is the only school out of the three private schools in Maine that ends up okay. Right? Like, it could be that Colby, despite the fact that I believe they just, like, built, like, a $600 million athletic facility.

Jeff Selingo

It is amazing, by the way. I just saw it a couple months ago.

You really do have to go visit it. Blows your mind.

Jay Caspian Kang

Where did they get this money from?

But it could be that Bates and Colby are not okay and Bowdoin is okay. Right?

Or it could be all three are not okay.

Or all three could be okay.

But I just think that line is going be much higher.

And on the public side, I think that what Hilary was alluding to is very real, that these regional public schools are going to have to start to consolidate very, very quickly.

And so is that good or worse for the state of higher education?

I think it just depends what you think.

I don't think it's good to have a bunch of people paying for degrees that aren't worth anything to them and then getting frustrated at the end. So I would say, societally, that it might be a net plus.

In terms of the higher education market where you have people who have jobs and that you have a lot of different schools that provide jobs for people, I guess, probably gonna be, you know, like a significant net negative.

Jeff Selingo

So, Hilary, let's focus with you on that last piece. Right?

Because Boston and Massachusetts and New England as a whole was always known as the epicenter of higher ed in The U.S. When you look at it, it's amazing when you look at a map of The U.S. and look at the dots of where all the colleges in The U.S. are. I mean, it is so concentrated in New England and the Boston area in particular, right?

You know, your new section called College Town. Right? It is what it is. Right?

So what does this mean? What does this mean for Boston in your view?

Hilary Burns

It's a huge concern. I mean, it's so many of the schools, and I'm just walking around the city, I say, ‘Oh, are you like, are you guys okay? Are you okay?’

I don't think so. Looking at your numbers.

It's hard times. I think there's gonna be a lot of pain, a lot of consolidation. Maybe it will be a stronger system at the end of this period of turbulence. I'm hopeful that that's the case. I believe in higher ed. I want my four-year old to go to college one day.

But it is amazing the conversations I hear among parents with kids in daycare now like paying exorbitant daycare prices and then they say, you expect me to pay what? $150,000, $200,000 a year by the time these kids are in college? Like, I don't think so. They're going to UMass.

So these conversations are happening, and it's really these schools that have always just they've never had to advertise. People just come to them. They are — especially if they have trouble getting the international students they've always relied on — they are going to have to think hard about how they're gonna get these millennial, like, debt-strapped millennial parents to come to these schools. Like, I love my alma mater. I had a great experience. I met my husband there, and we both love it. But I don't know. What's the limit? Am I going to pay $200,000 a year? I don't think so.

So we're going to have … there's going to be a lot of hard conversations in the years to come.

Michael Horn

All right. As we wrap up here, I'd love to do a bit of a lightning round with you both.

And let's start with international students.

What do we know about what's happening with international enrollments? And are America's days of being the place to go in global higher ed coming to a close? Hilary, why don't you go first with what the landscape looks like in New England?

Hilary Burns

It doesn't look great, especially at the graduate level.

That's really concerning for the future of research and science. Leaders, the college presidents I speak to are really worried about that.

So far, the undergraduate level, it's interesting. The big, you know, it's early days. We won't know for a few weeks how the numbers really shake up.

But I'm hearing so far that a few of the big schools that enroll a lot of international students are holding steady at the undergrad level.

Michael Horn

Jay, what's your take on that?

Jay Caspian Kang

Yeah. I think that you just have to think whether it's like, do you want the next brilliant researchers that are going to devote their life to research in the United States at those universities? And that's probably in some real trouble right now.

But I think that as politics change, then more students will probably come in and out. We're not going to have Trump in office forever. And so I imagine that these things will fluctuate in and out.

Jeff Selingo

Let's turn to research.

Hilary, just how bad are the cuts in research dollars in especially to the New England schools that you cover?

And what's the lasting impact do you think going to be in the Boston area, which, again, much like Silicon Valley near where Jay lives, right, has just been so closely tied with higher ed?

Hilary Burns

Yeah. It's a huge concern.

I mean, I've talked to the former president of MIT, Rafael Reif, about this recently. And he says, are we forgetting what basic research has done for our economy? And it's really that fundamental basic research that the current administration seems to be walking away from. And they're investing in applied research and AI instead.

So that's the biggest concern I'm hearing here.

Jeff Selingo

And Jay, last lightning round question for you. There's a world in which colleges survive but and even thrive perhaps, but maybe students really are less focused on classes and they're more focused on jobs and co-ops and internships.

Do you think college, we kind of touched on this earlier, but do you think college for reading, writing, just thinking, exploring, just for their own sake for a couple of years early in your life, probably what you did at Bowdoin and probably what all of us did in college, do you think that era has passed, and should we mourn it?

Jay Caspian Kang

I hope not.

My sense is that it will continue and but it'll be much more the provenance of the wealthy, you know.

It's like let a thousand Deep Springs bloom, and there'll probably be a few more of those. Hopefully my kid will go to it. Because it seems for me that was a very important part of my life. And even though I wasn't a great student, there are classes that I would take that were very meaningful to me and I still think about all the time in the books that I read.

And I think that when part of the cultural explosion over the past few months about college is really just sort of subconsciously about that, right? People are just like, ‘Well, why can't we just have like what I had,’ right? And that's it's like a nostalgia thing amongst older millennials and Gen Z. They're just like, why can't college be like it was for me? I read this book and it meant something to me.

And so I really hope that we can return to all of that.

But I do think it'll just be for people who are just paying for that exact experience, which, of course, is always gonna be expensive.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. And unfortunately I think the reason why we can't have that anymore is because it's just become too expensive and people just don't think it's worth paying $100,000 plus a year for that.

Well, Jay, Hilary, thank you so much for being with me and Michael on Future U. this week.

We really appreciate your time and look forward to continuing to read your great work in the months ahead.