Season 8 Wrap Up: Looking Back and Ahead

Chapters

0:00 - Intro

1:39 - Jeff’s Next Book

5:17 - Trump’s Effect on the Year of Reckoning

15:20 - The Shifting Power Balance

20:13 - Demonstrating Value

25:27 - Colleges’ Core Competencies

38:11 - Who’s Looking Forward?

42:19 - Saying Goodbye for Summer

Transcript

Jeff Selingo

So, Michael, we've arrived. This is the last episode of season eight before we head off on our traditional summer break to kind of refresh, and boy, do we need that after this year.

Michael Horn

I was about to say, Jeff, we need more than, I think the summer will allow us to reenergize and refresh, but I'm not sure we should be singing schools out for summer, quite yet because I'd love to do a deep dive, into a couple recurring themes on this season's shows and think about what our listeners should keep an eye on during their own summer breaks. That's what's ahead on this episode of Future U.

Sponsor

This episode of Future U is sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, working to eliminate race, ethnicity, and income as predictors of student educational success. This episode of Future U is sponsored by Ascendium Education Group, a nonprofit organization committed to helping learners from low income backgrounds reach their education and career goals. For more information, visit AscendiumPhilanthropy.org. Subscribe to Future U wherever you get your podcasts. And if you enjoy the show, send it along to a friend so others can discover the conversations we're having about higher education.

Michael Horn

I'm Michael Horn.

Jeff Selingo

And I'm Jeff Selingo.

Michael Horn

Jeff, as I look back at our season, we have covered a ton of ground. But I think there are two big themes that we hit several times that I would love to revisit as we wrap up here and think ahead to what's to come for the future of higher ed. So if you are okay with it, I would love to dive in before I let you go for your summer to focus on your next book launch. I think it's number, four for you in terms of books.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah, Michael. And and we're gonna be talking more details in the fall about the book. But, you know, why have a podcast if you're not gonna hawk a book? Right? So let's could I do a, like, a five second commercial here? I really want our, listeners to preorder the book now from anywhere, as you know. And as any author knows, preorder is incredibly important. And when you do so, when you preorder the book, head over to my website, jeffselingo.com/dreamschool, and you'll get some bonuses that were given away to those who preorder, especially this guide to the college search that is something we're only giving away, during the preorder period. So important. And if you're on YouTube, you could see the cover of the book.

Michael Horn

Looking good. It's looking good, Jeff.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. That's it. Commercial done, Michael.

Michael Horn

Commercial done. Commercial done. Alright. I'm I'm gonna give you a little bit more plug first. You got a star from Publishers Weekly, I think. Yep. So that's that that's gotta feel pretty good, so congrats. But, yes, check out the book. I can't wait to read the whole thing. I've read a chapter, and the person you focused on in that chapter is now the dean at Harvard, I believe.

Jeff Selingo

That's true. David Deming. So we're gonna be talking a lot more about that chapter and other chapters in in the fall, when we hopefully do a whole episode on the book if we could ever get past all the news that keeps rushing at us. So so what are your two big themes?

Michael Horn

Alright. So maybe that's where our launch point into this. The first is what you called, a year of reckoning for higher ed. And under this, there's obviously the predictions that you had done at the January around this being a very consequential year for higher ed. And and if you're game, I would love to revisit those. But I would include everything in this category from apprenticeships to mergers to the lost boys of higher ed to the new Carnegie classifications to what we have been covering almost obsessively the past several episodes, Jeff, and frankly, of Higher Ed is talking about, which is the rapid fire orders and actions and questions and challenges coming at colleges and universities from the federal government ever since, president Trump's inauguration. And then the second big theme I see from our year is the conversation around AI and its impact in higher ed. We had Cal Newport. We had Lev Gonick, Ashley Budd, Anne Kirschner, Marvin Krislov, Chris Hein from Google. But you also hosted a very interesting conversation at Educause back in the fall that I think speaks to how colleges and universities interact with and leverage AI. You had on on that episode, you had Dave Weil, Nicole Parsons Pollard, and Evie Cummings. And so I I would love to unpack that in maybe the second half of the show, but but maybe we start with the year of reckoning for higher ed first, if that's okay for you.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. That works for me. And and by the way, just as you were reviewing all those episodes, I feel like we're kind of at a time warp here. I'm like, well, that was this season? It's kinda like pre pandemic, post pandemic. It feels like, you know, pre January 20, like, post January 20. I mean, not to laugh about this, but it is like I mean, it's so hard to kind of figure out what was last month as opposed to even last fall, so.

Michael Horn

Yeah. I mean, the whirlwind is part of the strategy, I think. Right? And and so we're all caught in it right now, and it's exhausting. But you had written in January before the inauguration that 2025 will be the year when higher ed really does start to face the consequences of its past missteps. I'm pretty sure you had not imagined, that all this would have transpired to the point we just made. And I think you were also hopeful at the time that it would allow colleges to break free of their legacy models. And I'm curious, like, are you still optimistic given everything that's gone on?

Jeff Selingo

Ugh, Michael, that's all I have to say. You know, this is the problem with making any sort of predictions at the beginning of the year, which by the way, I didn't quite call them predictions. I called them storylines because I try to get around that a little bit because you eventually have to account for them at some point. So I went back to listen to that episode, which dropped on my birthday, by the way, January 28, about a week into the Trump administration. I wrote that in my newsletter, of course, right before the Trump administration. And I think I got definitely got one thing wrong up front, and I probably got one thing right up front as well. So first on the the wrong thing. I I was pretty hopeful in that episode and in that newsletter that institutions would feel that the financial, the demographic, the political trends that were taking shape, you know, well before this year, and they would finally break free of those legacy models. And I guess what I didn't take into account is, you know, campuses needed some runway to do that. They and and we suddenly got into, you know, the the depths of the Trump administration pretty quickly. We saw all these executive orders come one after another, most of which affected the very elites, which weren't gonna be touched by this reckoning anyway, for the most part, but it also started to touch institutions further downstream. Then we saw the Big Beautiful Bill that they're still debating and will be debating probably for a couple more weeks at least. And and that really impacts student aid, and other things that will have a much wider impact on on higher ed. And I think that colleges and universities to make these changes, they are slow moving ships. I didn't expect it to happen so quickly, and I thought they would have, you know, the spring, the summer, perhaps even the fall of 2025 to start to turn the ship around, and particularly around something that we have talked about and something we just wrote together around culture. The culture change required in higher ed just takes a little bit longer, And I felt, again, they just needed that time. So that's the thing I think I got wrong. And I'm just feeling a little less hopeful. I think that the cliff is gonna come pretty quickly for some colleges and universities because they didn't have that runway, kinda mixing metaphors probably there, didn't have that runway that they that they needed. But what I think I got right was the trifecta in Washington. I I think that higher ed was caught so flat footed. And while everybody in, you know, in America is, you know, in in American higher ed is wringing their hands about it, I'm still struck by how when I go to conferences. Right? We've talked about this at GSV, for example, Or I'm out and about that the majority of the public just doesn't quite understand or maybe they just don't care about what's happening in higher ed. And maybe that's both sad and worrisome. And, Michael, we haven't talked about this, but, you know, I'm kind of in the bubble of government here, and so I hear it all the time. You're kind of in the bubble of elite higher ed up there in in Boston. Like, do people are people talking about what's happening with higher ed and all the changes and everything that's coming down from Washington, or do you feel like there's this disconnect once you walk off campus that, you know, for the majority of people in Boston, it's like, eh.

Michael Horn

That's a good question, Jeff. I get a lot of WhatsApp messages, people saying, oh my gosh. What's happening in Cambridge? Are you guys alright? You know, stuff like that. I in terms of the dialogue more broadly, I I do think it's crossing. Right? I do think higher ed is the big employer. The town where I live, Lexington, a lot of, you know, MIT and Harvard professors, part of the culture. I do think it's crossing into the day to day here and people observing it much more than you know, certainly four years ago, we weren't right at the end of the last administration with Trump, I don't think we were hearing it nearly as much. I think it I think it has jumped into it, Jeff.

Jeff Selingo

That's pretty interesting because, you know, I was just at the Milken Global Institute, which probably had more elite degrees per capita than your hometown or my hometown in one room. And, you know, when we started to plan those sessions back in December, we had these great panels put together. Little did I know that, you know, all this would happen, in this in the spring, and they were simulcast on on Future U and highly recommend to our listeners if you haven't listened to those two episodes from Milken. I think it they're they're really good in terms of helping to understand kind of the big messages right now around around higher ed. And, Michael, we we haven't had a chance to really deconstruct those a little bit. And so there were two things that came out of those conversations with me. One was, Sian Beilock, the president of of Dartmouth. And let me just say, Michael, super impressed. Really call me super impressed. Incredibly young by presidential standards president, still in her late forties. Could have a very long career as a president, I think. And, you know, she had this statement, which you again, you'll if you listen to the episode, you'll hear, you know, you as she said, you can't have free expression that robs someone else of free expression. That means not shouting down speakers, not setting up encampments that don't let other people walk across campus. And, you know, every statement that she said that day at Milken, I just juxtapose with the picture that was in the New York Times recently from Columbia's graduation. I don't know if you saw it. Yep. Pouring rain. Unfortunate. I hate when it rains on graduation. But, you know, the entire platform crew, which is probably the entire senior administration of Columbia, all up there with their big Columbia umbrellas. They were obscured. You couldn't even see their their faces. You have Claire Shipman who's speaking, who's the acting president. They can't even call her the interim president of Columbia. She's wearing a baseball hat of all things. You know, it's pouring rain, and people are booing. And, you know, if I'm a parent, if I'm a family member, you know, the most joyous occasion of your kind of your life is college graduation. And it's raining. I get it. That kinda sucks. Right? But, you know, on top of that, Columbia, two canceled graduations in the last five years, if you go back to 2020 and then last year because of all the protests. And now you have this, and your your remembrance of college graduation is people booing the acting president of Columbia. I mean, it just gets it just shows you just how bad things have gotten. And and, again, going back to when I think of who can start to change these things. Right? I just think that, you know, when I go back to what Sian was saying at, at Milken, it's how higher ed is as you always say, Michael, how is it playing in Peoria? And it ain't good. Right? What's happening in Columbia right now is not good. And so we really do need to change that narrative, and I think she and Dartmouth in general are among those who can do it, which brings us to the second person that I spoke to at at Dartmouth I mean, at Milken, which was Bill Ackman, right, who mentioned specifically, by the way, institutions doing it right.

Michael Horn

Dartmouth was one of them, right?

Jeff Selingo

Dartmouth was one of them on his list as well as the University at Austin as well as Vanderbilt, where three that he mentioned from the stage. Now you you might have some sensed some nervousness in my voice, in talking to him. It was it was probably a most nerve wracking interview I've ever done in my life. It was twenty minutes live on stage under the hot lights. I was trying to fact check him in real time, which is really hard. And and listen. I don't agree with his tactics, and I find myself disagreeing with him on a lot of things, but there were two things in general I found myself agreeing with him on. One, Harvard isn't entitled to this money. I thought that was a really good statement. Right? We think Harvard is one of the best institutions in the world. I think we all agree with that. We all think they do great things for humanity, but he is right. They're not entitled to this money. There is a little bit of give and take with the federal government, and I think that's a discussion that needs to be had. Second, as he pointed out, it's the researchers and not the institutions that get the money, and they could move. Now I don't think it's as easy as he thinks it is, but I do think that there's something that's happening here that the power center of higher ed. You know, I wrote this piece, you know, probably twenty years for the Chronicle about, New England, you know, no longer the center of higher ed. Maybe we were twenty years too early. But maybe it's moving. Maybe it is starting to move. And maybe it's not just New England, but maybe it's, you know, institutions like we haven't talked about. We haven't downloaded about Santa Ono moving from Michigan to Florida. And and Santa would tell us that, hey Florida's on the rise. Right? There's a lot of money being put on. Yes. Perhaps there's a crazy state government, but there's a lot of money being being put into there as well. And so maybe what we're seeing is something new happening, a big shift in higher education that we probably didn't see coming, I will tell you, at the beginning of the season, but that might be happening here. And there there was this statement that Ackman says. I'm not quite sure I agree with him, but I'm kinda curious what you think. He said this is the best time to start a university. Again, I'm not quite sure start is the right word, but this may be the best time to think, where do we fit in? Where do we fit in with this, with what's happening right now with elite higher ed in particular?

Michael Horn

Yeah. I you know, it's interesting you hear you say that, Jeff. A reporter called me up. She was researching a piece. Not sure what I should say or shouldn't say depending on when it's gonna come out. So I'll keep it somewhat vague, but she's the question, her premise was essentially this, which was which universities are benefiting from the Trump actions? And I said, excuse me? That was my reaction because I'm look. I'm at Harvard. I'm I'm not seeing the benefit right now. And she sort of played out the storyline a little bit for me. And what I left with was if you're in the SEC, for example, you named you you name checked Vanderbilt. You just named University of Florida. Right? University of Texas, Texas A and M. These are major research institutions. Top 25, over a billion dollars of research. They're not caught up in the craziness that you just talked about at Columbia. Right? And, or or frankly, you know, at Harvard, etcetera. And, you know, maybe this is what it is. It's a a shifting gravity, the the the focus, the locus of our obsession. You've noted that students have been maybe not, you know, quite in the numbers that some people portray, but somewhat have been shifting their preferences to the South for some time. The reason for that isn't like, oh, they're, you know, aligning themselves with Southern beliefs or something. They're they're just happy to be at a campus where it's not politics all the time, and they can just have a student experience. Research, maybe it starts to follow there. You know, the all the stories in the New York Times right now are about researchers who are leaving for Europe or Canada. It's, like, pretty small numbers, though, as far as I can tell.

Jeff Selingo

Same thing with students, by the way, Michael. We keep hearing these stories about students leaving for institutions elsewhere. I think those are small numbers as well. Right? More are gonna kind of move within The US.

Michael Horn

Yeah. Move right. And so that's the thing. Right? Can we capture that migration? Because it's a lot easier. To your point, it's still hard. Like, picking up your lab from one university, moving it to another, no small endeavor. But if more money starts to flow to these places that, you know, have lower overheads and so forth. Let's see what happens, I guess, Jeff. And and, you know, is it the best time to start a university? I guess in the sense that we think, and maybe this will be true by the time we come back in the fall, that there are new accreditors even approved. I don't know how fast this is gonna move. But, you know, that will create a pathway to starting new colleges and universities that is presumably easier than it has been. I think it's still gonna take a lot of money upfront to start a new college or university. Like, I don't know that I would say it's the best time to start a university, but it's probably better than it has been with all the shuffle and so forth. And and look, you've noted it to me, which is I mean, traditional college towns have been going bust. There was an article about that in The Wall Street Journal. You wrote something in New York Magazine, I think, about poaching students to try to make classes. You name checked a university in that story, Syracuse, throwing out some significant money to woo someone. I I thought Syracuse was not on the, like, desperate for students list. You can tell me where they were in the buyers, sellers, I guess, of your of your of of your categorization. But I like, these are pretty big well known institutions that maybe are not doing as well as we thought.

Jeff Selingo

Well, Michael, it may be it may not be the right time to start a university. Again, I I don't really kind of agree with Ackman on that, but it may be the right time to restart a university, to write to rethink what we wanna be. And we've talked all so much about that on this show, and this may be the moment where I say, I'm gonna reset, restart where I am. And I think that's where you know, I I always think Dartmouth in the Ivy and you in the Ivy League, and you could correct me if I'm wrong, and this always had a kind of a reputation for being more conservative. And so I think that, you know, what, you know, president Beilock has done there is not you know, I don't think it's off brand necessarily, but I think she has the right voice. Right?

Michael Horn

But it is interesting, Jeff, that at least as I can tell, she is getting some pushback from the campus, and from alums. And what I think is so in or maybe faculty. What I think is so interesting is she is reading the room exactly right in the nation. I I don't see her as pro Trump, to be clear, but I think she's reading that side correctly, but staying balanced to principles that she could be just as well, you know, if it had been a Harris administration. Like, I think they would be very well positioned in either of those extremes, Dartmouth, at the moment because I think she's reading the larger room correctly, I guess, is what I would say.

Jeff Selingo

Well, there's no doubt about it, the larger room. Right? Because as I pointed out when you you just mentioned that Wall Street Journal article, America's College Counts Go From Boom to Bust, it was focused on, I think, Western Illinois where it's where it's housed. Right? Western Illinois has gone from something like 15,000 students to under well under 10,000 students now, and the town is essentially going out of business from what I could tell in that story. You know, as I pointed out to you, I rarely read comments on stories, but sometimes I like to go into comments to see what people are saying about things, and that was one of the stories I did. And what was interesting to me is that, it was the debate was really around higher education in 2025. And we think about, you know, it costs too much, takes too long, too many students who leave without a degree, too many students who leave with a degree and don't have the right job. It was all around that. The the article was less about, hey are we worried about our college towns? We're more worried about our colleges. And it was really I think it really, to me, encapsulated what the American narrative is right now, the American public narrative around higher education. And if I'm sitting in an institution right now, we're not really loved at all. And I think people in higher ed need to get that. Like, we can't fighting back on this is important, but you need to fight back with some allies, and you don't have a lot of allies right now. I mean, look at Michael, you know, I texted you when the numbers came out from the National Student Clearing House recently. Right? And you think about it. Like, all these numbers are starting to come back for higher ed in terms of, you know, two year two year trade programs at community colleges, certificate programs. Graduate programs are coming back. I think it's less about those international graduate programs, but more about programs that are very technical that where people need a graduate degree. But you know what's not coming back? Four year bachelor's degree. Right? We are still below, you know, pre pandemic numbers, and I think that speaks to what I saw in the that article in that, you know, in those comments, and you mentioned this article I just did for New York Magazine on poaching students. You know, there's just, like, all this competition now for students because what's happening is, you know, international students aren't coming to the US, so institutions further upstream in the rankings are grabbing students wherever they can. And as they do, students you know, institutions downstream lower in the rankings have to make up for their classes because now those students are going upstream. I mean, it's a complex system as we know. And, no one there's not enough peep a lot of people feeling sorry for higher ed right now. And and if I'm sitting in a higher institution and I'm thinking about how to change the narrative, you have to start to gain allies somewhere in this fight.

Michael Horn

Yeah. I think you're right, and you have to build a base locally, I think. Right? You have to build a base where you are showing your value to your stakeholders. If you're a public institution, this is how we contribute to our community. This is what you know, because we're here, jobs, research force, you know, solving intractable problems in our city, rural area, whatever it might be, contributing economic growth in the state. If you're a private institution, I think you have to be very clear about the value to, frankly, the country, because that's what they're looking for, America First. Right? That's that that's what the the the theme is right now. And I don't think it's just the administration. I think it is wider than that as well. And to your point, if you are not finding very clear ways to not just talk about it, but show it and act in it, I I think you gotta be do like, it's it's an all hands on deck thing at the moment, I think, Jeff. But I'll leave it there, and let's take a break. Because when we come back, I wanna talk about the other story that's gonna be longer term implications, I think, than the next four years, but a really important conversation around AI and higher ed. So we'll be right back on Future 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.

Jeff Selingo

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

Jeff, we did a number of episodes on AI this year, and I I I know we've both been thinking about what will its ultimate impact be on higher ed. We haven't talked at all about Matter and Space, for example, which is Paul LeBlanc's Southern New Hampshire University, owned and funded, startup in the space that's trying to create what I think he would call the first AI natively powered university. But the conversation I wanted to go back to was the one you had at Educause with a bunch of CTOs, and it was around this. How do we decide what we do in house versus outsource? When is it something that, you know, the technology is something that we need to do versus when is it something that we partner with others to do, be that frankly other colleges and universities and consortia or say with, you know, for profit companies with OPMs, online program managers. We did that one zero one a while back. What's the rubric though for how we decide, Jeff?

Jeff Selingo

Yeah. And I think the problem right now, Michael, is that institutions are dealing with pennies in many cases and not dollars to try to figure these things out. So they don't even they have very little investment dollars because and they they are unwilling to make the cuts necessary, I think, to the legacy business. This reminds me, yeah, this is the innovator's dilemma. Right? Yep. Right? You know that. Right? Very well. And this is something I've seen in my own industry in newspapers. This is exactly what they went through, where they wanted to keep the dollars from print and were unwilling to invest any money in digital. And so they ended up investing pennies in digital to keep the dollars flowing in print. And what happened? They had fewer dollars in print, and people ate their lunch on digital. And the same thing I feel is happening in higher ed because we're not moving fast enough. And so and they're unwilling to make outside investments, or they're willing to out do outside partnerships, I should say. Right? Where newspapers and many other industries are saying, yeah. Whatever. We don't have to build everything. We will partner with others, but they're more worried about their profit margins. Where in higher ed, it's less about the margins, and I think it's more about, well, we could own this. We wanna own this. It's important for us to own this, and they're unwilling to go out for for that.

Michael Horn

Yeah. No. I think that's right, Jeff. And and I I thought I mean, I I'm glad you said the innovator's dilemma, and I'll I'll I'll talk on that in a second specifically. But one of the things that struck me was, Evie, who was at University of Florida, had helped start that online program. You referenced you you and she had gotten in some Twitter fights or fights, and she she has a funny line in the podcast where she says she was always right. Then now she's at Johns Hopkins. I I thought she made some really important points on the show about having a sense of what is valuable to a university and how that might change over time. Right? Like, what what's valuable at one point or not valuable at one point, certain expertise or core competency could change over time. I think that's a really important point because a lot of places when they you know, if like, take newspapers. They're like, well, digital's not our core competency, so we we we won't do that. We'll let, you know, the bloggers and whatever else figure that out.

Jeff Selingo

Or Facebook or Google or Craigslist, which is exactly what they did. Right?

Michael Horn

Exactly. Craigslist is the great example. Right? Because it, you know, classifieds and stuff like that supported the business model of print, newspapers. They said, well, we'll let those guys do that thing. That's not our core competency. Then you wake up and you realize, oh, that's where the puck went. Should have been. Right? And so I think it's dynamic in the university space as well was Evie's point, I thought. And I I thought it was a good one, is that a university perhaps should be thinking about not where the puck is, but let's put ourselves in the business of being able to skate to where the puck is and not outsource that. And the story that I always think of from the innovator's dilemma, if you will, is the story of Dell's disruption by, ASUS, which was, you know, ASUS originally just manufactured the circuits inside of Dell computers for them, at a 20% cost advantage, you know, relative to Dell. And a few years into the relationship, they came to them and said, you know, manufacturing is not really your core competency. We could do the motherboards for you as well for 20% lower cost. Great for Dell. They got the assets off their balance sheet. You know, great for ASUS. They get to do more things, more volume. Dell's profit margins go up. It's 20% lower cost. Everyone's feeling good. Few years later, they come back to them and say, you know, assembly is not your really really your thing. We could do that at 20% lower cost. Great. Story repeats itself. They come back and say, managing the supply chain is not really your thing. We'll do that, 20% lower cost. Come back again, we'll do design. That's not really your thing. You're like a marketing and branding company. We'll do that. And then the next time ASUS comes back, they go to, like, Best Buy and the retailers directly and say, like, hey. We build computers for 20% lower cost than Dell. Right? And so, you know, I I think the headline from the conversation might be that core competency is sort of a fallacy because what you you have to be thinking about the future. I thought Dave brought up a really good point as well on the show.

Dave Weil

You know, what services require the deep institutional knowledge or the relationships of the institution?

Michael Horn

And I love that Dave said that because to me, what he's basically saying is, like, some things are really interdependent. You can't just throw them over the wall, and some outside company or university without the expertise and knowledge of your internal workings is gonna be able to run with it, because there's not, like, clean interfaces to easily outsource. And and and some things like you're gonna have to wrestle through the the the culture and the politics of your particular institution to make it really work and to do the core thing you're trying to do, you are gonna have to wrap your, hands around more than maybe a core competency minded person would tell to do.

Jeff Selingo

Right. Michael, I think that's the challenge here. Right? is keyword there at your particular institution. Right? This is not the same answer across higher ed, although there's probably a lot of more similarities than we tend to think around higher ed. But it's going to be a wrestling match, and the question is who's in that match? Because I will guarantee we will go to a campus, if me and you went to a campus, and we say, okay. What is your core competency? What requires the deep institutional knowledge or the relationships of the university? And I go to the president's cabinet. Maybe there's some agreement there, but there could be some disagreement. Then I'm gonna go to the English department. I'm gonna go the engineering dean. I'm gonna go the students. I'm gonna go the alumni. I'm gonna go you know, I you get the idea. Right? We Yeah. You're right. We are not gonna get the same answer. And it's it's a wrestling match that higher ed has been unwilling to have. Like, what is our core and what isn't our core? Now I think, you know, over the last fifty years, we've thrown a lot over the wall. You know, our core competency is not running residence halls. Our core competency is not running dining halls. Increasingly, our core competency is not running IT. Right? But I will argue, is our core competency really running career centers? Is our core competency really running finance? Is our core competency really running you know, like, they keep going down. To me, the real core is the is the is the true academic teaching function, the true academic research function. And, boy, could we create a pretty skinny institution if that's really what we focused on? Maybe the and if it's a residential campus, then the student experience. We probably have to throw that in. But I'm telling you, as soon as we throw that student experience piece in, you are gonna have everybody raising their hand and saying, but wait. This Yeah. Was gonna Right? Like, it's like at some point, it's like it's an exercise that is truly I love that word you used. It's truly gonna be a wrestling match.

Michael Horn

Yeah. Yeah, and and I think that's the challenge. Right? It's like skating to where it is going to be is also the important thing, and it's gonna require real trade offs from institutions, think, is what I take from your comment. Right? Like, they can't be all things to all people. They can't say we're gonna have outstanding research in every single discipline. Like, there's gonna have to be a sense of reckoning of this is who we actually are. Right, Jeff?

Jeff Selingo

Well, and I think the big piece this whole thing up, is AI. One is it can do a lot of these activities and could potentially be a AI agents could potentially do them better or at least reduce the the, you know, the piece of the university that they're doing. And the second big one, Michael, is I think something we're gonna be wrestling with over the coming seasons of of Future U is something that I talk about in my house all the time now as my, you know, ninth grader about is about to become a tenth grader. I feel like her whole life has been Future U.

Michael Horn

That's scary. Yeah.

Jeff Selingo

Is what's college for? And I think that's continuing to be those are the two things that I think higher ed's gonna have to wrestle with is, like, what does AI do that people used to do on campus, and then what are we here for?

Michael Horn

Yeah. I think that's right. And and so were looking for me to join your side and disagree with Evie on some things. So so I I I will here, And in particular, where you just went with AI, which is, I I think there's a university, I can't remember which, that is building its own AI infrastructure and model, if I'm if I'm remembering correctly. And there's the reality that, you know, Google's Chris Hein told us live on the show that Google sponsored.

Chris Hein

You're not going to keep up with us. Google's gonna spend $75 billion building better AI infrastructure this year. Right? That's an insane amount of money and technology that is going to go into the ecosystem.

Michael Horn

$75 billion, Jeff.

Jeff Selingo

With a b.

Michael Horn

With a b. Harvard's annual operating Budget. Harvard's annual operating budget, $6.4 billion. And probably what — 70, 80% of that is to people? So, you know, look, I I thought Evie acknowledged this as well, but the thing is money is not just the money. It also buys talent, expertise. AI is a big thing. Like, if you're a university thinking you're gonna do this all yourself, can you really keep up? Like, where is your niche in there, and where can you out, work with others? Because the talent, the money, the expertise required to do this well is gonna be really difficult. Plus, we were talking about the wrestling match before. Universities in many cases are not built for this because of the existing competing silos and a culture that's averse to sort of this, you know, making a choice, right, to make that switch that you just talked about in newspapers. And Evie herself said this on the show.

Evie Cummings

But I'll tell you a quick story. When I first arrived at the University of Florida and I had to launch UF online and I was fresh from the federal sector as a manager, I was like, alright. I'll go around and I'll talk to all of these phenomenal enabling functions in a good way to help us do this UF Online thing. Immediately went to the CIO and was pretty much told, they're not gonna be a partner on strategy, they're gonna they're an enabling function. I was like, okay. So I went to student affairs and was like, alright, we gotta build this whole new student experience, yada yada, this is running your wheelhouse. And they were very much like, no, we focus on the traditional 19 year olds and that's our business and this is your project, have a nice day. And so then I went back to my the people who hired me and I was like, I thought you said everyone was on board. And they said, oh, you figured out we lied to you. Right?

Michael Horn

So, Jeff, that's a huge issue. Right? Like, the fact that her own experience suggests that the institution couldn't get out of its own way. Now now look, it's not an excuse, I guess. Right? Universities need to get their houses in order. We need some leadership to move culture as we've written about and and actually make some changes to get them structured properly in terms of their organizations and business models and processes. But, Jeff, this just strikes me as like, they are not gonna be able to own the AI infrastructure. It's just not gonna happen, I think, based on the scale of the investment at this moment.

Jeff Selingo

And I agree with you, Michael. And I just think that the the issue right now is just the issues are just too complex for any one of these organizations. I think they're especially, you know, smaller, even medium sized institutions, but even large institutions. I mean, the thing that worries me about what's happening right now with the Trump administration and elite colleges is that they do have to lead on some of these other things, and they are so distracted now by these daily executive orders, by these other, you know, edicts coming down from Washington, by all the legislation happening that they are so heads down in their day to day job that they are forgetting about what's next. And if they're not thinking about what's next, I will tell you that, you know, most medium and small sized institutions, are under existential threat, you know, just around, you know, the their budgets and and and and the demographic cliff and all the other issues that we're talking about. They're not really thinking about what's next because they have to think about what's next for tomorrow or next year. They're definitely not thinking five years out. And all of this then is a recipe for who is thinking about this in higher ed. Right? So who's really thinking about that?

Michael Horn

Maybe this is where Ackman's right, right, which If you can get the money up front, if there's an accreditation pathway that I suspect will appear over the Trump administration, Maybe that's where you can actually do something different. Right? Like Matter and Space. We'll see who else comes into, into higher ed. Maybe that's the argument. And then frankly, Jeff, you know, something that I think we both have observed is higher ed does tend to figure it out over time, but they often like, that could be through mergers. Right? Like, that could be through combinations. MIT, Johns Hopkins, those were the, right, the re applied research institutions that changed the face of the higher of higher ed. Best as I can tell, Yale and Harvard acquired their way into that world. Sterling Strathcona Sheffield School right at Yale and so forth, might we see a similar give and take with the the haves using their resources to sorta buy their way into that future? I I don't know because that future with AI is still somewhat cloudy to me.

Jeff Selingo

Well, and as we know, because this is another this year was around mergers and acquisitions, which seem to be really not going where any of us thought. They're just so slow. They're not happening. I wonder if it's gonna be the opposite, and we're gonna start to see spin offs. Right? New co ideas. Right? Where we're gonna start to see institutions spin off things that they can no longer support. Maybe you then combine some of those pieces. Maybe that's the merger and acquisition that's happening. I'm gonna spin off you know, couple colleges spin off their English departments, comes together under a new institution, things like that. I don't I don't this is really worries me because I think going back to where this episode started, Michael, when you were talking about my year of reckoning, you know, the thing that I did not foresee was the time. I felt like these institutions had a little bit more time, not a ton, but at least 2025, and that has definitely shortened. But they also had the attention, right, that they had they could focus on this, and what's coming down from Washington doesn't allow that focus.

Michael Horn

Well, and that's because I think we both thought it would be congressional action in concert with the White House driving it, which would have been a deliberative process with time to see what's coming down, and that's not what's occurred. Right?

Jeff Selingo

I think that, you know, how a bill becomes a law, we thought would actually be followed. And instead, it's, you know, how law how we think law happens, which is by, you know, one person.

Michael Horn

Joke's on us, I guess. Yeah. I guess. May maybe we'll leave it there, Jeff. I will tell you the one place that I would look to the future also, the Northeasterns, Drexels of the world that have co op prop programs and strong relationships with employers. I think the more you pull that into higher ed and students are doing real work with AI as part of their curriculum experience, I think that will be a big advantage going forward.

Jeff Selingo

Yeah, Michael. And and as we wrap up here, kinda curious to maybe what you might be doing this summer, but, you know, I I think there's a lot of exhaustion right now on college campuses. I know it's hard to kind of relax when the whole world is burning down around you and when your own institution might have to do layoffs and and make big changes. I get all that. I I hope for our listeners if they work in and around higher ed that they will get some downtime to recharge and kind of rethink, restart as we talked about, their institution when they come back, in the fall or when they really you know, many of them don't take off time. I realize that in the summer, but when they at least come back and and are focused on this. The other thing that I hope happens this summer, this is, I think, a personal request for us as a show, we'd love to hear from our listeners about what they want on the show next year. What do they wanna hear more about? We we hear from our listeners. We get a ton of pitches for guests. We love those. We actually look at those, believe it or not. But what I don't hear enough from our listeners about, what I would like to hear from our listeners more about is, like, what do you want us to talk more about? Michael went through all the issues earlier that we did our 26, 20 seven episodes on this year. You know, I I think there's a wide variety of things. We probably tended to over index on AI, which I think is critical. We always over index on M&A, which we also think is critical. We we explained why we didn't over index on on what's happening in Washington until the very end of the year, and, obviously, that's gonna be an issue that keeps coming back. But I would love personally, Michael, to hear more from our listeners about, okay. What do you wanna hear from us in in season nine now of of of Future U, which will be 2025-26

Michael Horn

Yeah. Build out our lists of topics and, and and get us thinking. Tell us what we've missed, what is moving. Where are the bright spots. Right? That that's something I'd love to profile. Like, nothing made me more excited, Jeff, than the the interview you did, around what's happening in Indiana, for example, and the alignment there. Like, those are exciting, I think, things that we would love to highlight more of also, not just frankly, the challenges, which are many, but to your point, who are the leaders that are gonna help shine a way that we can see institutions reestablish trust, show value, and and march into this extremely uncertain world at the moment?

Jeff Selingo

Yeah, not to geek out, Michael, and the other thing is our higher ed 101 episodes. We had the one on college budgets, which I think, you know, incredibly important if you are coming into an institution, coming into higher ed, if you're a trustee. We wanna do more of those higher ed 101s. We've done them on accreditation. We've done them on budgets. We've done them on graduate degrees and online education. What are the other big topics that you if you were to come from outside of higher ed, if you were to land on Mars and land on a college campus that you would want to understand, we wanna take a few more of those deep dives next year. So we'd love to hear from our listeners this summer on those topics.

Michael Horn

Yeah, that's a great one. You're onboarding a about that there is not a great one zero one out there? We'd love to do it. So that's a good place to end it. Jeff, huge thanks to you for the partnership we continue to have.

Jeff Selingo

A lot of fun once again, Michael. I can't believe it's been eight seasons now.

Michael Horn

Yeah. A Lot of lot of lot of text messages, over that time. Thank you, of course, to Danny Curtis who supported us all year's production and, Michael Peloquin and the group at Borderline, for who's who's been super helpful once again, in making the show come into your feeds, in the ways that it's, done to pushing Jeff and me to add video. So apologies again, for that, but, there it is. So huge thank yous all around, and we're gonna stay close because I know we're gonna try to unplug. We're gonna try to plug Jeff's new book. Super excited about that to hit the stores in September. But, I I you know, we're gonna be following the headlines. We can't wait to hear from all of you, and we'll see you next year on Future U.

Jeff Selingo

And, Michael, we will be tan, rested, and ready for the fall on YouTube as well. See everybody after the summer.

Season 8 Wrap Up: Looking Back and Ahead

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