Wednesday, September 4, 2024 - To kick off Season 8, Michael and Jeff break down the summer’s higher ed headlines. They discuss this year’s FAFSA rollout, recent campus protest fallout, leadership changes, college closures, online program management providers, the presidential election, and high school grading. This episode is made possible with support from Ascendium Education Group, CollegeVine, and the Gates Foundation.
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0:00 - Intro
03:49 - Jeff and Michael’s Summer Updates
09:32 - This Year’s FAFSA Rollout
10:25 - More Campus Protest Fallout
13:07 - Florida A&M’s Gift Controversy
17:28 - College Closures
34:51 - Online Program Management Providers
36:20 - The Presidential Election
38:25 - High School Grading
"Varying Degrees 2024” Survey, New America
“How High School Students Are Thinking About Higher Ed” Survey, Third Way
Michael Horn 00:10
Jeff, it is good to see you. I feel like summer has just whipped by, and there were probably, realistically, only two weeks where you and I did not actually talk with each other, but it's been a while since we've been together with our listeners, so it's good to see you in that venue.
Jeff Selingo 00:25
Yeah, no doubt, Michael, it's also good to see you. And to our listeners, welcome back to Future U as we embark on this our eighth season, as is our custom on this, our Welcome Back Episode will run down some of the things that we've been up to, and take stock of some of the headlines in higher education while we were gone, all with an eye toward what they mean for what's next in higher ed.
Sponsor 00:54
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.
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 01:53
I'm Michael Horn
Jeff Selingo 01:11
And I'm Jeff Selingo, so it feels great to be back, although this summer, we did offer a special bonus episode from the conversation I moderated at the Jobs for the Future, JFF, annual Horizon Summit. And we've also been reissuing some of our top episodes from Season Seven for listeners looking to catch up on anything that they missed. We've also been planning for this season, and like last year, we'll be in your feed about twice a month, sometimes more, sometimes less when we take some of those extended breaks during the holidays and spring break, because, you know, it's still higher ed, Michael and we have a calendar to follow, right?
Michael Horn 02:32
Exactly. We're not going to deviate from our traditions, Jeff and but on those notes and sort of traditional, non traditional, if you will, we actually have one more stop on the Future U campus tour already scheduled. It's coming up this fall in Orlando, and it's going to be an interesting campus stop. And the reason I say traditional, non traditional, is because we're going to be with a university that, Jeff, doesn't really have a campus. That's because it'll be with none other than Western Governors University, the nonprofit that has some 175,000 students enrolled at any given point in time, give or take 10,000, but no physical campus per se.
Jeff Selingo 03:11
Yeah. And speaking of experimenting, Michael, we're also experimenting with video this year. So you might be watching some of these clips on YouTube, not every episode, but for selective episodes, will be on the Future U YouTube channel, so be sure to subscribe there too. Although Michael, as they say, I think I have a face for radio, so I'm probably better to be just on on audio, right?
Michael Horn 03:33
Well, I was gonna say Jeff, that finally they'll be able to tell us apart, because our voices sometimes are so similar that they could just clue in, or I can put on this chief disruption officer hat, and then they'll really know who's who, right?
Jeff Selingo 03:49
I love that. Thankfully it's blue. Speaking of fun, I think both of us have had a little fun away from the podcast. You probably had a little bit more fun than I've had this summer. So tell us a little bit about your summer. What were some of the highlights? And I think you also have some big news that we have talked about on this podcast before.
Michael Horn 04:09
Yeah, well, let's start with personal highlights, and then we'll get to news, if you will. But I was in London with the family. Broke our pledge not to travel away from New England during the summer, but that's because I got Wimbledon tickets, Jeff. And as you know, I'm a tennis nut, so I had to be there. I was at Wimbledon. It was great. Stayed with a classmate. Super fun. Kids had a lot of fun in London. Did not take them to Wimbledon. Definitely the right call. Lot of lines, lot of crowds, lot of rain delays, but it was fun. We came back, and then I got COVID, and frankly, you probably still hear the gravel in my voice four weeks later, I have still not fully kicked all the symptoms. But that was good, because the big news category literally yesterday. So the day before we're recording this, I was recording the introduction for the audiobook of my new book that comes out this fall. It's called Job Moves. We can show the cover. Job Moves: Nine Steps for Making Progress in Your Career. It's out November 19th, and we're feeling really good about the advice that we've come up with, frankly, for both individuals who might be struggling in their current job and looking to get back into the job market or trying to figure out what's next, all those categories, as well as, at the end of the book, some advice for managers, mentors, organizations, employers, about how to help those individuals and retain them in the war for talent that is always taking place. Because Jeff, the reality is it seems like we're not doing either well, particularly, excuse me, either one particularly well right now. Case in point, 1 billion people, Jeff, switch jobs worldwide every single year, and of those hundreds of millions end up disappointed. So we know we can do better, and we've got a process that we've built with my co authors, Ethan Bernstein at the Harvard Business School, Bob Moesta, of jobs to be done fame. We've researched it, we've prototyped it. We've helped real individuals since 2009 with it, over 1,000 individuals. So we're excited to get it out in the broader world to, I'm going to dream, what will hopefully be hundreds of thousands, Jeff.
Jeff Selingo 06:21
Well, Michael, I think if you could convert even a small percentage of those billion job switchers, you'll have such a best seller you might not even do this podcast anymore at that point. I hope that doesn't happen. We've talked about this book a couple of times, and I must say, I always wondered nine steps and not ten, so maybe you could answer that for our for our audience, but, but I'm also hoping that maybe you'll have a president who's going to be out of a job on January 20th want to buy that book. You know, President Biden joked a few weeks ago with content creators at the White House that he'll be looking for a job. So maybe you'll get lucky and he'll pick up the book and put it on social media for you.
Michael Horn 07:01
I'd be honored to be working with him, but nine steps, not ten. It's funny, our agent said she, in the history of representing books, has never had a book with a number in the subtitle, and that was a streak she wanted to keep. And then she was really disappointed when we ended up with nine steps. And the publisher said, not too many steps. We want to make sure it's digestible and doable. So that had something to do with the number nine, where we ended, where we ended up. But Jeff, let's turn to you. It's enough about me. I'd love to hear highlights from your summer. I know you had some pretty neat travels, according to Instagram anyway, and everything on Instagram is obviously true. But I also know you've been on, you know, deep on your own book project of your own, once again, despite your better judgment.
Jeff Selingo 07:49
Yeah, well, again, every time I'm in the midst of one of these books, I'm like, What the heck am I doing? And the summer, and for some reason, I always end up writing these books during the summer. The manuscript is due in November, so that's really what I've been doing mostly most of this summer. It will be out a year from now, so I'll talk more about it as we get closer. But, but here's really the elevator pitch, right? My last book was about how colleges pick students, and this is more about how students pick colleges, with an eye toward broadening that search list, and there will be a reference or two, Michael, in there from what is now, I cannot believe this, two books ago for you in Choosing College, so it means that you're writing a lot faster, at a faster clip than I am. So I have to start catching up. But I did get away this summer as well, we had plans to visit our friends who work for the US government in Switzerland. So once again, I had the chance to see how that country does education. And I must say, I continue to love the idea of apprenticeships beyond the trades. So I know that's going to be an issue that we're going to get back to at some point this year, including on our campus tour at WGU. Now I will tell you the highlight of that trip for my teenage daughters. It just happened, and that one very, very famous artist was on tour in Europe this summer. So I'll let our audience guess who that was, and maybe our producer, Michael will add in a little clip there, if we're allowed to of some music from that very, very famous artist.
Michael Horn 09:24
I’ll send you a picture Jeff, of her house, actually from Rhode Island, where we were vacationing. You could see one of her, I don't know, 19 houses, so, yeah.
Jeff Selingo 09:32
I'm assuming that most of our listeners who have guessed it's Taylor Swift by now, but, but enough about us and Taylor Swift. Although, again, every time we mention Taylor Swift, I think our numbers of listeners go up so, so maybe we do need to mention her more often, but Michael I think there was a lull in the news about higher ed most of the summer, because I think everyone was trying to catch their collective breath after a year of FAFSA and protests, but, but it's started to pick up again in the last couple of weeks, including about those two stories in particular, FAFSA and protests.So on the FAFSA, it seems year two of the simplified version might just be a little less rocky than year one, but maybe not as much as we had hoped. I think there were groans in August when the Education Department announced that FAFSA for next year won't be ready get this until December 1st. That's two months later than usual. The agency will release the form to a limited number of students and institutions for testing on October 1st. So depending on how that goes, I guess, hopefully December 1st still works. But you know, that announcement was met with a lot of groans among higher ed because the FAFSA had real enrollment consequences for this fall, and we won't fully appreciate that, I don't think, until the National Student Clearinghouse comes out with its numbers. But just based on conversations that I've been having with enrollment leaders, the numbers are definitely going to be down, no doubt about it.
Michael Horn 10:25
Yeah, Jeff, I'm hearing the same thing and curious to see where it lands out when it all goes through. I think it's been interesting to see the different coverage, also of FAFSA. The administration put a real positive spin on it, obviously, like we have a real deadline this time. Let's see what actually happens. But Jeff, there was obviously the other big story from last year, which was the campus protests over the war in Israel and Gaza, and the fallout continues, of course, as we're recording this, Columbia's President became the latest to resign after months of pressure over her handling of the pro Palestinian demonstrations on campus. So I'll say, Jeff, I'm not sure I'm surprised when I saw the news, but I didn't see it coming when it did if that makes sense, Jeff, like I had this. Oh, okay, I guess I understand that, but whoa, that just happened?
Jeff Selingo 11:58
Well, President Shafiq made it longer than the other two Ivy League presidents who resigned for similar reasons at Penn and Harvard. So I think that's probably why it was a surprise. Perhaps we thought the initial storm had passed over the summer and that she'd survive, but it may have been the summer that seems to have eventually did her in right. In her statement, she said the summer allowed her to reflect, especially with her family, about how difficult this job has been and until her and unlike her two counterparts at Penn and Harvard, she had a new job lined up outside of the university with the British foreign secretary. So she's going back to the UK, where she had come from before Columbia. I think the other shoe that dropped here, Michael though, over the summer, was the resignation of several deans at Columbia who were caught in late May during a campus forum on anti semitism, sending mocking texts about this panel that they were attending. And I think that really showed us that this was an administration that really lacked the confidence of anyone. And when that happens, ultimately, it's the leadership that needs to go. And of course, those deans also resigned.
We saw something similar in August happen at Florida A&M University. Now, a different issue there than student protest, and there's really a thread here, Michael, I think, to all these leadership changes happening in higher ed that I want to get to in a minute. Now Florida A&M, a public and one of the nation's top HBCUs. The President had resigned, this is kind of a crazy story, abruptly over the summer, after a report revealed the institution had kind of rushed the vetting process of a record gift, $237 million that it had announced during its spring commencement. Well, it turns out that there wasn't really a gift there. And then recently, the interim president asked the entire leadership team to resign. The story, to me, has so much intrigue, Michael, because it even played a small role, according to the publication Puck, in the president of all the way up to ABC News being pushed out. Kim Godwin was an alum of Florida A&M, and she dispatched two camera crews to cover this big gift, which of course, turned out not to be a gift at all. It's just a really crazy story.
Michael Horn 14:13
Really crazy. It was hard to follow as it was breaking, but Jeff, you did tell me that there's a tie between all those resignations. I'm looking for that one.
Jeff Selingo 14:24
Yeah, yeah. So I do finally want to get to that point, right? So in all these cases, right? We have Columbia, we have Harvard, we have Florida, A&M, we have Penn and by the way, let's add the University of Florida to that list where former US Senator Ben Sasse was president there for kind of a hot minute at the University of Florida. He stepped down because of health issues his wife is having. And here's where this story is going, interim presidents and the slow role of searching for a successor. So what's happening in all these cases is that we have interim presidents coming in, and I think what ultimately may be the impact here is what's happening with these presidential searches. You know, academic searches have always taken a long time because of the nuances of the academic calendar, but I'm now starting to wonder if appointing interim chiefs who kind of know the campus, because maybe they're the provost, right, which happened at Harvard, or maybe they're a former president, which is happening at Florida, where the former president's coming back. It really allows this cooling off period, and then the search starts. So what I think we might be seeing in all of these cases, and maybe this is going to be the norm going forward, is just longer transitions. Now, you know, at the presidential level, the US presidential level, right? We're seeing a major presidential campaign right. Might be the shortest in history, by Kamala Harris and in higher ed. It seems like we're going in the opposite direction, right, where the selection of a leader takes a lot longer. Now, I posted about this recently on LinkedIn, and Holden Thorpe, who had been president at UNC Chapel Hill. He piped up in the comments, and he said, you know, a longer period might be good, because the interim comes in, and then when the new person eventually comes in, the new permanent president comes in, it's more about the future than the past. And by the time the interim has been there for a year, maybe even two years, maybe even longer, everybody kind of forgets about the person the interim replaced, and we could really focus on the future. Now, I'm not quite sure what to think of that, Michael, because I do worry already that presidential transitions were slowing down kind of institutional momentum for change and innovation, and that was a problem even before the last four years, and I think the last four years in higher ed has proven that we need more change and innovation and at a much faster clip. And if that's going to slow down because of these presidential transitions, I do worry about that a little bit.
Michael Horn 16:53
Yeah, that's sort of my instinct as well, Jeff, and it's probably a question of continuity. Do you have momentum towards something a transition probably not great. You know, if you're trying to make that break from the past, resettle things, maybe it makes more sense. I don't know, but from my vantage point at Harvard, where we now have a declared three year presidency for President Garber, this is this dynamic seems unlikely to settle down, Jeff, and the churn just sort of continues, which brings us to our next story, which is something everyone in higher ed has been talking about and worrying about.
Jeff Selingo 17:28
And it's finally here. It's finally hare, Michael. We've been talking about this enrollment cliff, it seems forever. And the peak class of 2025, so this year's high school seniors. They are the peak class. The number of high school graduates is going to is projected to peak this year at 3.9 million, with that class of 2025 and after 2025 the US will expect, successfully, fewer annual numbers of graduates, and in virtually every graduating class get this all the way at least through 2037 and 2037 is projected to be about the same number as the class of 2014 with 3.5 so, you know, kids, and having kids is getting a lot of attention right now, and at least among the vice presidents, or, I guess, in the presidential election overall. And I think colleges are probably cheering that on because they need people to have kids.
Michael Horn 18:22
Yeah, no question. And, you know, I think to some extent, Jeff, maybe this all wouldn't have been as big a deal as I think it's shaking out to be if you know, our colleges were breaking at the seams with students, right? And the numbers going to college and they were over capacity, you know, or excuse me, right, like just turning away students at their doors. But instead, that's not the picture. As you know, better than I do, students graduating from high school going directly to college had dropped from the high of 69% to 62% at the most recent checkpoint from the data there, which has left the opposite picture on college campuses, a whole lot of empty classrooms, a lot of spare capacity, and that's before the numbers, as you said, start to drive back down again.
Jeff Selingo 19:10
Yeah, Michael, I think that's a real key number that we don't talk about. We tend to talk about this high school graduating class instead of, okay, what is the percentage of that high school graduating class going right on to college. And as you said, right it's dropped from 69% to 62% so even if we were able to just keep it at 69% we'd have hundreds of more thousands of students and that pipeline, and I think the question really should be like, what's happening there? Why has that dropped off? I really do think this is worthy of more research. But in between trying to keep my bun in chair to write this book, this summer, I have spent some time with boards and senior leaders at DePaul and Penn State. I'm also spending some time with folks up in Canada, with college leaders up in Canada, because this isn't just a US issue, and there's a few things I'm seeing here about why this direct high school to college pipeline is leaking so much. One is, you know, this is largely a community college problem. We had the episode where we talked about the value of community colleges with Dave Clayton of Strada last year, and I encourage people to go back to that because he talked a lot about how we could increase the value, or at least the perceived value, of community colleges. This is a big issue among men. And again, if I highly recommend Richard Reeves book on on what's happening with boys and men, and particularly in higher education. Again, if we could just get some of those numbers up, we would improve on this college going rate. I think many of us are also skeptical. You know, both of us, I think, are skeptical on the whole dual enrollment thing. We did a whole episode on that last year, but there's growth there, right? We know there's growth among dual enrolled students. How can we get more of those students in and through the college pipeline so that they are getting that degree? But you know, at the end of the day, Michael, perhaps we go to a place that we always do, that maybe there's just too much capacity in higher ed. Maybe there are just too many institutions with too many seats. And I think that brings us to the prediction you made with Clay Christensen years ago, that 25% of colleges, you know, we'll close, merge or go bankrupt by the end of the ‘28/’29 academic year. That was the original prediction, anyway, and you updated that on Forbes recently. It's a topic I know we've addressed several times. So what did you learn when you you dug into the numbers?
Michael Horn 21:37
Yeah, absolutely, Jeff. But one thing first, I want to go back to something you said on a previous episode last year, which was, there's no question like we have too much capacity for the high school going to college student. But if we looked at the adult learners, millions and millions, you know, 40 million with some college, no degree. Another, I'm blanking on the number of millions, right? With no college period, there's a lot of green space there for higher ed, if they could figure out, you know, how to shift their models, maybe an apprenticeship, job-embedded learning in some meaningful way. There's some opportunity there. But just to go to your question, first, I confess I was surprised when I looked into this for the article. I was thinking, you know, I should probably update the prediction. We're probably still far off, even though all the headlines talk about a college closing every week. But what I found was that over 15% of degree granting institutions, Jeff, have already closed since we made that prediction. Now most of those are for profits, about 80% but if you look at the nonprofit private colleges, just a hair under 10% have now closed their doors. And frankly, you know, sometime by December, I think it'll be 10% of private nonprofit close colleges have either closed or announced that they will close. So that's roughly 160 private nonprofit colleges since we made that prediction. If, look Jeff, another 250 consolidate over the next nine years, and that's just a rate of 27 to 28 a year, well then that's a quarter of private nonprofit schools right there. And let's put that 28 number into context. That's just roughly two a month, which is what we were doing a couple years ago. And as you know, in the spring, we were averaging one every week, and we haven't even hit the demographic decline that you're talking about. And actually, in the article, it occurs to me, I sort of misstated it, because I said we're a year away. I was thinking a year away right from the peak class coming in. But really it's two years away, when you think about it, and it's also before we even get into the conversation of mergers. Jeff and as I looked at mergers, I was specifically looking at public institutions, because it's sort of this truism that public colleges really never close. I think the maximum I saw in a given year was like four in the data set. But by my unscientific count, as I went through some of the data, we now have at least 60 fewer public institutions thanks to mergers. You know, since we made that prediction, that's a lot fewer institutions. So I guess I left all this Jeff thinking, wow, the prediction actually is coming truer than perhaps I had come to expect because of all the skepticism on LinkedIn and elsewhere that you and I see from traditional higher ed media. And as you know, I'd been sort of revising and saying, Well, it's probably 20 years, not 15, but I think there's a chance that the original prediction actually comes true. Jeff. Now, I think the final thought though I have on this is it kind of doesn't matter if the prediction materializes precisely. Because, to me, one point to take from all this is just simply there are a lot of colleges in a world of hurt right now with business models and capacity that are not working for the current moment. They have instructional models geared around a certain demographic that are not working right now, and that is also leaving a lot of students enrolling in those schools that are very vulnerable, and those students, in turn, are very vulnerable when those places close, a lot of them we know, do not go on to higher ed, and if they do, fewer than half will actually graduate with a degree. That's no good for anyone, Jeff, and so that's sort of where I how I digest, you know, the so what of all this?
Jeff Selingo 25:26
Yeah, and I think, Michael, I think, you know, maybe some of your critics and Clay's critics around this always thought that maybe you were kind of celebrating this as a good thing, right? Like that, that the market was consolidating and changing, and that that would bring innovation, right? You know, old players going out, new players potentially coming in and and I'm glad that you ended on that point, because I don't think you're trying to do that right. You're just pointing out the inefficiencies in this market and that that this is what's happening in terms of especially these smaller institutions. And I think that continues to be the problem here is that I pointed out on LinkedIn recently, in some ways, higher ed is almost like your local dry cleaner, right? It's like there's a lot of really small institutions out there that have, like, you know, one shop, essentially, you know, trying to compete with all these other players out there on so many fronts, and I think size and scale, and I'm not talking somebody has to be the size and scale of Ohio State or Arizona State or WGU, but operating a college or university at 800, 900, 1,000 students, I think is just going to become incredibly difficult if it's not already, and I think it is already, unless you have, essentially, you know, billions of dollars in the bank. And besides a Grinnell, I can't think of a lot of colleges that have that much money, and are that small, that are out there?
Michael Horn 26:54
Yeah, I agree, Jeff. And I was listening recently to Apprenticeship 2.0 which is a podcast that Reach University puts out Joe Ross and Mallory Dwinal-Palisch, who, of course, has been on Future U were talking about some of this, and they made the observation that, you know, higher ed is is resilient, but it changes over time, right? Like the, you know, first century higher ed in America, you're learning Latin and Greek. That's not the case anymore, right? It's evolved, it's changed. And their hypothesis was like, Look, some subset of these institutions are going to figure out how to serve students with apprenticeship-based models as their particular argument. But I think the bigger point is with business model, learning model innovations that really make this a more accessible, more affordable, better value proposition for many more individuals, that'll be a good thing. I think when that happens. Just the challenge I think we're facing right now is a lot of colleges and universities either don't believe that this is coming or don't have the capacity, frankly, right, to do the innovations that they need to do.
Jeff Selingo 27:56
Well, and speaking of that, you're, you know, the institutions I think meet the market are going to be the ones that succeed. And so something that caught my eye Michael was something that happens kind of every year around this time, and that is surveys about what Americans think about higher education, not only what they think about it, but what they want out of it. Two in particular I want to point out. First is New America's annual survey on higher education called Varying Degrees. And then Third Way, as well, has done a survey of high school students about what they think about higher ed and what they want out of it. Three things I took away from these two surveys. Michael, one is in the third way poll, which was for high school students. Not surprising. What do students want? They want Career Services and need based financial aid. That's, you know, it's affordability and outcomes. They want that a lot more than the bells and whistles, particularly, by the way, athletics. So I find it interesting, by the way, what are struggling colleges leaning into right now? Ding, ding, athletics. You know, Michael, I teased on social media recently about a source from my new book who I have dubbed the college closer. This is a guy who goes in to close colleges for creditors, and hopefully one day we'll get him on this podcast. You're going to read about him a little bit in my book. And he told me, one sign of a struggling college is that in their last years, right before they close, they usually add athletic teams in an effort to boost enrollment. So I think again, we're going to come back to that on another episode, when, again, I hope you could join us. You know, in the meantime, two other things from these surveys. One is on the New America survey, we're going into an election this fall. What's fascinating to me is there's bipartisan dislike of higher ed, and that's pretty hard to do right to have both sides of the aisle kind of hate you. You know, both groups similar, they do not think that higher education is doing fine right now, 36% and 39% of Democrats and Republicans. I mean, we're pretty close on that, and it's pretty low, and they agree that cost is the biggest barrier to enrollment for most individuals, 87% of Democrats and 78% of Republicans. And also, in that new America survey, two thirds don't think of four year degrees affordable for middle income Americans, you know. And again, since we're in election season, to quote James Carville, you know, as he said, it's, you know, it's about the economy, stupid. Well, for higher education, as we've said multiple times, it's about the job and affordability. And the other interesting thing, Michael, is when you look at the breakdowns by income in that New America survey, half of Americans with incomes over $100,000 don't think that Americans can get a high quality education after high school that is also affordable. Now, why is that income level important? Because, according to research from Phil Levine that I've been working with for my new book, He's an economist at Wellesley. The median income in the US for someone with kids approaching college age is around 75,000 so at 100,000 half of Americans don't think college is affordable.
Michael Horn 30:59
Wow. Well, and look, Jeff, obviously these numbers, this discomfort with higher ed on both sides of the political aisle, that's been trending in that direction for a while. But I will say I was impressed, as I often am, frankly, with actually how informed Americans are. Because the survey, the New America survey, you pointed out, also showed that Americans really do get the value of the degree when you earn it in most cases. But my take is that they think the path to getting there is risky. And frankly, they're not wrong about either of those. Right, if you look at the stats, if you don't complete and a lot don't, the downsides of student debt with no degree, and frankly, underemployment are real. You know, those are real weights on you, and Americans seem to know that. So I think that's very interesting. Secondly, I will say I always like to tell people far more valuable than doing a survey is watching what people actually do, not what they say. Actions speak louder than words. And look, we're seeing the trend lines, right? We talked about the decline from 69% of high school graduates immediately enrolling in college to 62%. That's really, you know, that's not just saying we're upset with higher ed. That's actually acting it as well, Jeff
Jeff Selingo 32:10
Yeah and again, I think, “what do people do” is important to watch. What do consumers want? And I think higher ed needs to react to what consumers want a lot more. So let’s leave it there, Michael, and take a quick break. And we’ll be right back on Future U to talk about a few more headlines.
Michael Horn 32:15
This episode Future U is sponsored by Ascendium Education Group, a nonprofit organization 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 postsecondary 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 33:03
This episode of Future U is sponsored by the Gates Foundation. Students need support at every stage of their education, to career pathway and colleges and universities need to evolve to meet their changing needs. Learn more about the Foundation's efforts to transform post secondary institutions to be more student centered at usprogram.gatesfoundation.org.
Michael Horn 34:41
Welcome back to Future U, Jeff. Let's go to a lightning round on a few things after we went deep on a bunch of issues there. Where do you want to start?
Jeff Selingo 34:51
Well, I think we talked a lot about OPMs online program managers last year, and 2U being one of the biggest, ending up on the front page of The Wall Street Journal probably way more often than they wanted to to be on that front page, and they declared bankruptcy. So what do you make of this?
Michael Horn 35:10
Well, I think we both said it: no surprise that they declared bankruptcy. I think we said on the show last year that we thought that they would do so. What I think was surprising, Jeff was how quickly they had worked out all of the restructuring of contracts with their debtors, so they basically declared bankruptcy, and immediately were out of bankruptcy. I don't know that I had seen anything like that in education before. I thought it was impressive. And so, you know, will it herald a return to growth? Let's see. They obviously need capital with that business model, so let's see how that shakes out.
Jeff Selingo 35:43
Yeah, and two quick thoughts, Michael, on this. We know that online education is only going to continue to grow. We've seen that in the numbers, particularly post COVID. We know that institutions are going to need that revenue source. We also have an election going on, of course, which I want to get to in a minute, and the regulatory environment around online education and OPMs in particular is still kind of up in the air. So I think those two things kind of are clashing right now, and I think that we're going to have a lot more visibility into what's going to happen in 2025. So speaking of that, we have an election going on. Any thoughts on this?
Michael Horn 36:20
Yeah, yeah, we do have election going on, Jeff, and at least one of the VPs has called Higher Ed, I think the enemy, if I'm not mistaken, Jeff. So there's a lot of swirl. What's catching your eye, though, in particular?
Jeff Selingo 36:33
Yeah, well, the VPs, I think, are also kind of interesting to me, because you have undergraduates from publics, which often doesn't happen. A lot of them, as we've talked about, in the past, hail from your undergraduate alma mater. And your graduate alma mater, I guess, too, right? But here we have VPs who are from publics, and in the case of Walz from a regional public. Maybe it's another sign of the declines of the Ivies. Michael, because I know people love to tell that story, even if JD Vance went to Yale Law School. I must say Michael, I think I sent this to you when it came out, The Washington Post wrote this great story about JD Vance's travels and journey through higher education, and they had this great anecdote when JD Vance ended up at Yale Law School, and there was a party, and they were having trouble tapping the keg, and somebody yelled out, we need the kids from public colleges. Where's the kid from public college to help us out? And JD Vance was able to raise his hand and help out. So I just thought that was a really funny anecdote about kind of a serious subject here, about how people think about higher education, where they went, you know, historically in the US, of course, we've had most of our presidents and vice presidential candidates come through, you know, the most selective institutions. So it's kind of a breath of fresh air, to be honest with you, especially with these two VP candidates, and obviously Harris coming through Howard as well, an HBCU, something just different, finally, so happy that that's that's happening. Another story that caught my eye, Michael, was about report cards that don't line up with actual performance. There was this research that was written up by Jill Barshay at Hechinger. Just wanted to kind of get your thoughts on this study.
Michael Horn 38:25
Yeah, I thought it was interesting. Basically the study, right, they saw that grades, as you said, don't line up with actual performance based on objective test based measures. When they trained people in mastery grading, right? They saw like a slight change from like 36% to, you know, like a couple percentage points, or something like that, of alignment, but nothing really meaningful. To me. look, we obsess over grades. One, I think it's got to be mastery based learning. Put that first, and then we'll figure out the gradings second. And I know you had a great newsletter, sort of skeptical of these schemes to change grading systems. I totally agree, like it's the end of the process, right? But number two, I think, at the end of the day, even in mastery based learning, the person grading can't be your own teacher, because they have a biased view of you, they have their own things. They're, frankly trying to coach you and help you, and then they're judging you. That's completely awkward, and I've seen it up close, Jeff, my kids, as you know, are both in Montessori school. That is a mastery-based or competency-based school, at least for English Language Arts and Mathematics. And I know they're relative strengths. They're in two different classrooms, so they have different groups of teachers, and it was fascinating to see the grading of one one of my kids, where she was getting mastery on certain skills that I knew my other kid, frankly, was stronger at. And then I looked at her report card, and she was not getting mastered in those same skill sets, even though I know she's stronger. So I was sitting there seeing it play out right in front of me of these inconsistencies when you have teachers grading their own students. Jeff,
Jeff Selingo 40:09
Yeah, and so, Michael, one other story I want to get to, because I think it represents a big shift in where the puck is going in higher ed. And I call this the rise of the public universities.
Michael Horn 40:22
All right, that's a teaser, so you're gonna need to say a little bit more.
Jeff Selingo 40:26
Okay, well, it is a tease because I'm gonna have a chapter in my book. And as you know, we don't like to talk too much about what is in a book until it actually comes out. But I just got back recently from the University of Alabama, and you probably have seen in recent weeks, because it's rush season down there for the fraternities and sororities and at ‘Bama rush is a big thing on Tiktok and elsewhere on social media. And I did get to see some of that. But I also was able to see the brand new admissions Welcome Center for the University of Alabama. And let me tell you, Michael, I was blown away. It is housed in a former state mental hospital. It's a very old building in Alabama, in fact, on the historical registry. And they redid the building. They put a lot of money into it. It's a very immersive experience. A lot of video, a lot of things to kind of touch and feel. It feels like you're almost in a museum. What a modern museum in terms of the experience, and again, because about 60% of students at the University of Alabama are from out of state that like visit experience is absolutely critical. But what I'm finding from my book is that everybody is trying to copy the University of Alabama playbook, meaning big public flagships trying to attract more out of state students to the public flagships. And the University of Alabama kind of was at the vanguard of this 2020, years ago, where they started to offer a lot of financial aid to out of state students. And now basically what's happening is that other flagships kind of got smart to this, and have started to do the same thing. And so the interesting thing that when I was down in Alabama, and one of the things I was reporting on is, how do they stay a step ahead? Because they're now thinking, especially with the demographic cliff, we're kind of going into a new era of higher education, and their visit experience particularly has to be so engaging in order to get those students to consider coming to Alabama. So the money helps. They have a big Honors College that helps, obviously, Bama rush and football and all that stuff helps, but, but it also helps to have this kind of great experience when you're down there to try to lure them in. And that's, I think this kind of rise of the publics is going to be something that we'll be talking a little bit more about this year. But again, as I said, I'm really focused on it in the in the new book, because I think people are starting to think about the cost and value of higher education, as we mentioned earlier, and publics are being considered now by, I would say, parents and students who might not have looked at public universities, even public flagships in the past and again, beyond the public flagships that we talk about often, whether that's Berkeley or Michigan or Chapel Hill, we're talking about public flagships in a lot more states now that have copied this playbook.
Michael Horn 43:16
Well, now that explains the text message I got from you with this time lapse video that looked like a stunning museum thing. It was like no admissions office I ever was in when I was looking at colleges. But I guess my big conclusion out of that Jeff is Roll Tide.
Jeff Selingo 43:32
Well, thank you everybody for joining us on this. The start of another season of Future U. We will be back with our kind of usual format, with a guest in our next episode. But you know, Michael, we did this survey of our listeners, and if you haven't taken that survey, it's still open, and we'll make sure that there's a link to it in the show notes. But in the survey, people told us that they kind of like the mix of different types of episodes. Sometimes just me and you, sometimes having a guest our higher ed 101, where we dive deep into a particular subject. We'll bring back those this year as well. And so we'll be bringing back these episodes, which is Michael and I a couple of times throughout the throughout the year. Be sure to follow us on social media so that you know when new episodes drop. Also subscribe to our newsletter, our newsletters, the ones that both Michael and I put together, as well as the Future U newsletter. And you can find all of that on the Future U podcast.com so Future U podcast.com our website. So until next time, take care of yourself and always keep learning.
