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Everybody,

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welcome back to Futo Teachers and Mike, where

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we remix the conversation about race power in

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education

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like always.

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Today, we're getting into something that touches every

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family,

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every classroom,

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and honestly, every dream that involves opportunity,

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this idea of higher education.

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I taught mostly high school during my time

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as a classroom teacher, and this was always

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the conversation.

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We fumbled around with ideas of college level,

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and college ready, and post secondary options, and

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post secondary readiness, and college and career, and

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college and career readiness.

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We were as a system

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woefully undereducated

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and ignorant about higher education, which is concerning.

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Right?

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We couldn't figure out a way

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to name a future for kids

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that would align with their hopes and dreams,

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that would align to what we perceived as

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their abilities and talents,

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and that aligned with data, frankly, that we

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needed to to provide about our impact.

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And everyone had some kind of an agenda.

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Schools wanted to be able to boast that

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their grads went to D1 school for sports,

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highly selective colleges for academics.

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Parents wanna be able to one up each

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other, and 17 and 18 year olds were

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left to struggle with the dueling factors of

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peer pressure,

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social status,

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and their true hopes,

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dreams,

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ambitions,

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and uncertainty.

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The way the system talks about higher education

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is

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broken, y'all.

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It is cooked.

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It's cooked like any center trying to defend

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Nikola Jokic.

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Had to put my nuggets,

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information in there.

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Some of us look to college rankings,

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like the ones from US News and World

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Report

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in those lists that crown Harvard,

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Princeton,

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Stanford

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as higher education

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royalty.

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Right? And those are great schools. Go there

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if you can,

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but most kids ain't going to those schools.

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And this is why I'm so hyped to

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bring you today's guest, Paul Glastres,

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who wants to flip that whole conversation on

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its head.

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Paul's been editor in chief of the Washington

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Monthly for a good minute.

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It's a small but mighty magazine out of

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DC that has fought the good fight for

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the democratic ideal in politics and beyond.

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Before that, he was a speechwriter for president

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Clinton, and way back he worked at US

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News, the same place that built the college

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ranking

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empire. So he saw from the inside

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how those numbers get made

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and how they get cooked.

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So Paul and his team decided to remix

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it. Every year, the Washington Monthly releases their

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own college rankings,

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ones that don't measure prestige

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or exclusivity,

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but instead ask,

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does this college help students move up in

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life?

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Does it create knowledge that benefits all of

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us?

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And does it produce citizens who strengthen

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democracy?

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So in other words,

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instead of who's the fanciest,

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they're asking

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who's doing the real work

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for the biggest number of kids who need

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them to?

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K. I'm gonna be real with you.

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This is a long interview.

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Paul's voice, man I love Paul's voice. There's

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something about

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gravelly,

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smart

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dudes

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that just appeals to me on the deepest

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level. His voice is gravelly. It's real. It's

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lived in, and he's got stories.

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He reminds me of my favorite professor in

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undergrad who knew his stuff and was passionate

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about it. That's why I really enjoyed this

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conversation. And he made me wanna ask more

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questions.

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So I will say to you right now

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that your habitual disruptor, me, myself, and I,

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definitely dragged out this interview a little bit

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because he would say something, and I'd be

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like, yo. Tell me more about that. I'm

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super curious about what you were saying to

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me right now.

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One of my favorite things about this interview

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is that you'll get to hear about what

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happened when US News got caught using whack

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and deceptive metrics,

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and then how universities

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like Fresno State and like Berea College

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are quietly outperforming the Ivies

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and what it actually means to say higher

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ed is part of a functioning

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democracy. Like, no wonder the Trump administration is

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attacking it because they don't actually want

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democracy to function in a way that benefits

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most people, but that's another podcast.

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So this episode isn't just about tuition or

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rankings, and their work at the Washington Monthly

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isn't just about tuition or rankings.

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It's about how we as a country decide

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whose education matters, and that's

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where

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this work aligns so tightly to what we're

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doing here at TudoTeachers and a Mic. So

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lean in.

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I would say take a walk.

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I would say let this one roll on

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your commute.

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I would

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say run this one while you're doing things

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around the house

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because what Paul shares here

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about accountability,

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equity, the purpose of higher education

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is the kind of truth we need

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to remix

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into our understanding of education.

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Alright, y'all. Let's get it.

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Alright. What's up, everybody? It is really awesome

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for me to welcome my guest, mister Paul

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Glastres.

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Paul,

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so in the intro, we were talking a

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little bit about what we're gonna be doing

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today,

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which is kind of a remix of higher

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education. So I wanna start with a question

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that I am asking everyone this season.

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Looking at race, power, and education today,

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what is the piece that you think

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most

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needs a remix?

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That's a easy one for me. Well, first

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of all, Geraldo, thank you for having me

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on the show. Really appreciate Absolutely. Had a

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chance to talk with you and and,

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chat with your audience.

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It's a easy answer for for us. The

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Washington

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Monthly ranks colleges

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once a year as a kind of alternative

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to US news.

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And what we're trying to do

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in answer your question

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is shift to the gaze

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of

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public

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policy, of the national conversation,

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of politicians,

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of people in charge, of the media,

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of the public at large,

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away from

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the handful of elite schools

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that educate

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very few people

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and take 90%

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of the

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attention

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and to the other 90%

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of the schools

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that

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provide

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college educations

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to the vast majority of ordinary Americans

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and get a sliver of attention

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and a sliver of the money.

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I love that. That is a huge remix.

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And

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as you, as you kind of explain that,

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and we'll get into some of the details,

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with this. It takes me back to,

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a graduate course I took in the history

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of higher education

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where, the professor, shout out doctor Malaika McKee

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Culpepper,

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amazing, amazing scholar and teacher,

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named that The United States

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by far has more institutions of higher education

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than any other country, and so the fact

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that we focus on this very small number,

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that does seem to be remixed. So, Paul,

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before we kinda hop into it, tell us

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a little bit about, the Washington Monthly. Tell

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us a little bit about yourself

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and,

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and what is it that kind of brought

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you into this work that you're doing?

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Well, the Washington Monthly is a small magazine

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of reportage and opinion

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published out of Washington, DC. We're, I think,

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56 years old.

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In the fifties, anyway. I've been editing it

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for twenty four years.

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So older than both of us is what

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you're saying. Yeah. Well, not older than I.

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Absolutely. Considerably older than that. I was trying

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to give you one there. I was trying

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to get I know. I know. I cannot

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even know. And,

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if you know magazines like The Nation, Mother

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Jones,

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The New Republic on the left or, you

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know, Commentary

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or American Compass on the right, it it's

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similar. You'll find essays, reporting

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on government.

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We go heavy into public policy at the

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Washington Monthly, but there's a lot of politics,

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book reviews, history, things like that. And

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every year, we do an annual

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alternative

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college ranking,

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and it is the I say alternative. It's

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the alternative to US News, the big guy

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in the in that space of publishing ranking

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colleges.

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And my story is I used to work

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for US News.

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Not for the college rankings, but the college

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rankings

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paid my mortgage, and everyone the mortgage of

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everybody who was there is a big moneymaker.

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And around

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1997,

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we got a new editor who was a

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friend of mine, James Fallows, famous journalist.

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And everybody at the at the at US

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News kind of had a suspicion that the

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metrics of our college ranking was a little

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hanky. And Jim kinda got wind of that

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and

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went out and hired

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a very,

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well known organization, the National Organization for Opinion

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Research, NORC, out of the University of Chicago,

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to look at our rankings, to look at

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our metrics. And they came back and said

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that the way that the magazine weights its

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different metrics

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makes no

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logical

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or scientific sense. Jim reported that to the

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owner of the magazine, Mort Zuckerman.

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And some short time after that, Jim was

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fired. Yes. Well then. So when Jim was

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fired,

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I quit

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and in protest as did a few of

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us.

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And I went to work for president Clinton.

284
00:10:36,914 --> 00:10:39,334
This was 1998,

285
00:10:40,514 --> 00:10:41,414
as a speechwriter.

286
00:10:42,514 --> 00:10:43,014
And,

287
00:10:44,115 --> 00:10:46,595
you know, back then, the education beat

288
00:10:46,995 --> 00:10:49,714
you know, you you know, each speechwriter would

289
00:10:49,714 --> 00:10:51,654
write on different policy areas,

290
00:10:52,259 --> 00:10:53,960
and, the new guy

291
00:10:54,340 --> 00:10:56,420
got the short straw and had had to

292
00:10:56,420 --> 00:10:57,480
write about education.

293
00:10:59,540 --> 00:11:01,540
And that turned out to be a a

294
00:11:01,540 --> 00:11:03,000
lucky break for me because

295
00:11:03,300 --> 00:11:04,679
that's when the whole

296
00:11:05,379 --> 00:11:07,399
education accountability movement

297
00:11:07,924 --> 00:11:09,065
really got started,

298
00:11:09,764 --> 00:11:12,404
was on Bill Clinton. And A lot to

299
00:11:12,404 --> 00:11:14,424
talk about in that one. Yeah.

300
00:11:15,365 --> 00:11:16,824
And so that,

301
00:11:17,204 --> 00:11:19,384
allowed me to really go deep into

302
00:11:19,845 --> 00:11:20,584
the subject.

303
00:11:21,559 --> 00:11:24,120
I had reported on education, k 12, a

304
00:11:24,120 --> 00:11:26,200
little bit of higher ed before that, but

305
00:11:26,200 --> 00:11:27,879
suddenly I had to become an expert pretty

306
00:11:27,879 --> 00:11:28,379
fast.

307
00:11:28,840 --> 00:11:31,399
Mhmm. Then at the when the administration was

308
00:11:31,399 --> 00:11:31,799
over,

309
00:11:32,519 --> 00:11:34,700
I wound up going back to the magazine

310
00:11:34,759 --> 00:11:36,975
that I had first got my first job,

311
00:11:37,134 --> 00:11:38,754
and that was the Washington Monthly.

312
00:11:39,214 --> 00:11:40,815
And we did a we did a couple

313
00:11:40,815 --> 00:11:43,694
of big investigations of US news. One of

314
00:11:43,694 --> 00:11:44,194
which,

315
00:11:44,574 --> 00:11:47,534
we got a hold of that report that

316
00:11:47,534 --> 00:11:48,995
Jim Fallows had produced

317
00:11:49,694 --> 00:11:50,514
out of Newark.

318
00:11:50,949 --> 00:11:53,029
Who knows how how it fell into our

319
00:11:53,029 --> 00:11:53,529
hands?

320
00:11:54,949 --> 00:11:56,709
And we did some critiques of the of

321
00:11:56,709 --> 00:11:57,370
the magazine's,

322
00:11:58,389 --> 00:11:58,889
metrics.

323
00:11:59,429 --> 00:12:01,690
And finally, one day, we said, you know,

324
00:12:01,990 --> 00:12:03,750
if we're so smart, can we come up

325
00:12:03,750 --> 00:12:05,884
with a better one? So I hired the

326
00:12:05,884 --> 00:12:07,345
woman who did the report

327
00:12:08,125 --> 00:12:08,784
to create

328
00:12:09,164 --> 00:12:10,764
a different set of metrics, and we you

329
00:12:10,764 --> 00:12:12,784
know, the whole game worked on it.

330
00:12:13,404 --> 00:12:15,184
And the basic idea is

331
00:12:15,804 --> 00:12:18,625
US News and its dozen or so imitators,

332
00:12:19,250 --> 00:12:20,709
in a general sense,

333
00:12:21,889 --> 00:12:22,950
measure colleges

334
00:12:23,809 --> 00:12:27,429
in ways that the most elite schools

335
00:12:28,370 --> 00:12:30,789
almost always dominate the top 10 or 20.

336
00:12:31,250 --> 00:12:31,990
That's right.

337
00:12:32,705 --> 00:12:34,165
And why is that?

338
00:12:34,705 --> 00:12:36,804
Well, because they define

339
00:12:37,665 --> 00:12:38,404
the best

340
00:12:38,865 --> 00:12:42,544
in ways to ensure that result. That that's

341
00:12:42,544 --> 00:12:44,544
right. Yeah. Right? Some on the scale. How

342
00:12:44,544 --> 00:12:47,524
does USU define the best? Number one,

343
00:12:47,840 --> 00:12:50,500
how many students does it not let in?

344
00:12:51,279 --> 00:12:53,779
Right? How exclusive is the school?

345
00:12:54,399 --> 00:12:54,899
Right.

346
00:12:55,279 --> 00:12:57,759
Right? Kind of a weird thing, but, you

347
00:12:57,759 --> 00:12:59,840
know, it's like it's like the you know,

348
00:12:59,840 --> 00:13:01,139
you're too young to remember,

349
00:13:01,919 --> 00:13:05,014
Studio fifty one, like, these New York clubs

350
00:13:05,014 --> 00:13:07,495
that get hot because they don't let people

351
00:13:07,495 --> 00:13:09,495
in. Because they don't let people in. It's

352
00:13:09,495 --> 00:13:11,815
not the difference between a three, but but

353
00:13:11,815 --> 00:13:14,134
it's hot by definite. And that that's the

354
00:13:14,134 --> 00:13:16,075
second thing they measure. They measure

355
00:13:16,455 --> 00:13:16,955
prestige.

356
00:13:17,929 --> 00:13:19,070
They literally send

357
00:13:19,450 --> 00:13:21,870
a a survey to college leaders and say,

358
00:13:22,089 --> 00:13:24,829
what are the most prestigious schools in the

359
00:13:25,129 --> 00:13:26,350
I don't know why the

360
00:13:27,129 --> 00:13:29,629
president of University of Mississippi

361
00:13:30,375 --> 00:13:33,014
happens would know that, but they presume that

362
00:13:33,014 --> 00:13:34,695
he doesn't. Oh, it's Harvard. It's, you know,

363
00:13:34,695 --> 00:13:36,774
whatever. So it's Probably Harvard. It's probably Yale

364
00:13:36,774 --> 00:13:39,654
College in Dartmouth. Yeah. Dartmouth. Right? And then

365
00:13:39,654 --> 00:13:41,595
the third thing is they measure his wealth.

366
00:13:42,339 --> 00:13:44,339
Like, how much money do you spend per

367
00:13:44,339 --> 00:13:46,419
student? Well, we all would love to have

368
00:13:46,419 --> 00:13:48,820
maximum money per student, and I suppose you'd

369
00:13:48,820 --> 00:13:50,740
you'd rather go to a college that spends

370
00:13:50,740 --> 00:13:53,299
more rather than less. But Right. Why do

371
00:13:53,299 --> 00:13:54,519
they have all this money?

372
00:13:55,105 --> 00:13:56,804
Right. Because they're exclusive.

373
00:13:57,585 --> 00:14:00,144
Right? They only let kids in with these

374
00:14:00,144 --> 00:14:01,605
enormous SAT scores.

375
00:14:02,144 --> 00:14:04,465
People with high SAT scores tend to be

376
00:14:04,465 --> 00:14:06,945
people from wealthy families who go to the

377
00:14:06,945 --> 00:14:08,865
best high schools. Right? So it's all very,

378
00:14:08,865 --> 00:14:09,764
very referential.

379
00:14:10,620 --> 00:14:13,100
And I'm I'm not knocking elite schools. I

380
00:14:13,100 --> 00:14:15,179
went to one. I At all. If, you

381
00:14:15,179 --> 00:14:16,620
know, if you have kids and you can

382
00:14:16,620 --> 00:14:17,600
get into one,

383
00:14:17,899 --> 00:14:19,500
good for you. There there's a there's a

384
00:14:19,500 --> 00:14:20,960
good education to be had there.

385
00:14:22,059 --> 00:14:24,215
But let's face it. You know,

386
00:14:24,754 --> 00:14:26,615
almost nobody can get in those schools.

387
00:14:26,995 --> 00:14:29,235
Right. Right? They're very, very hard to get

388
00:14:29,235 --> 00:14:29,735
into,

389
00:14:30,274 --> 00:14:30,774
and,

390
00:14:32,195 --> 00:14:33,414
it's not hard

391
00:14:34,674 --> 00:14:36,134
to educate and graduate

392
00:14:37,169 --> 00:14:39,570
a student who spent his whole life preparing

393
00:14:39,570 --> 00:14:41,250
to get into that school, who comes from

394
00:14:41,250 --> 00:14:43,570
an educated family and a wealthy family. That's

395
00:14:43,570 --> 00:14:45,730
not really very hard. Right? In a family

396
00:14:45,730 --> 00:14:47,029
of alums oftentimes.

397
00:14:47,330 --> 00:14:48,690
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So they know all the

398
00:14:48,850 --> 00:14:51,704
no. What's hard is educating somebody who has

399
00:14:51,704 --> 00:14:54,284
no background in college, who doesn't come from,

400
00:14:54,745 --> 00:14:57,404
you know, the best high school. That's hard.

401
00:14:57,544 --> 00:14:58,444
Right? Yeah.

402
00:14:58,824 --> 00:15:01,964
That that's the tough job. And so so

403
00:15:02,345 --> 00:15:04,059
instead of exclusivity, privilege,

404
00:15:04,600 --> 00:15:06,459
and wealth, we designed our rankings

405
00:15:07,320 --> 00:15:10,139
to reward schools for three things. Number one,

406
00:15:10,360 --> 00:15:11,259
upward mobility.

407
00:15:12,279 --> 00:15:13,179
Does a college

408
00:15:13,799 --> 00:15:14,299
recruit

409
00:15:14,839 --> 00:15:15,659
and graduate

410
00:15:16,254 --> 00:15:18,894
students of modest means with degrees that pay

411
00:15:18,894 --> 00:15:20,115
something in the marketplace

412
00:15:20,814 --> 00:15:22,174
and don't load them up with too much

413
00:15:22,174 --> 00:15:22,995
debt? Yeah.

414
00:15:23,375 --> 00:15:24,194
Number two,

415
00:15:24,654 --> 00:15:28,355
research. Are colleges producing the the new ideas,

416
00:15:28,414 --> 00:15:30,034
the scholarship, the scholars

417
00:15:30,590 --> 00:15:31,970
who drive technology,

418
00:15:32,590 --> 00:15:36,129
economic growth, and the solution of global problems.

419
00:15:36,830 --> 00:15:40,190
And number three, we call service. Almost every

420
00:15:40,190 --> 00:15:42,370
college, if you look at its founding documents,

421
00:15:42,934 --> 00:15:44,695
says that one of its purposes is to

422
00:15:44,695 --> 00:15:45,195
produce

423
00:15:45,815 --> 00:15:48,695
active citizens who take part in their in

424
00:15:48,695 --> 00:15:50,315
their nation and their community.

425
00:15:50,774 --> 00:15:51,514
They don't

426
00:15:51,975 --> 00:15:52,475
operationalize

427
00:15:52,855 --> 00:15:54,774
that as much as they should, but it's

428
00:15:54,774 --> 00:15:56,454
it's part of it. Right? So those are

429
00:15:56,454 --> 00:15:58,074
the three things. This is aimed

430
00:15:58,740 --> 00:15:59,240
not

431
00:15:59,779 --> 00:16:02,659
just at students. This is a list of

432
00:16:02,659 --> 00:16:04,919
ranking not just for students,

433
00:16:05,779 --> 00:16:06,919
although it is that.

434
00:16:07,379 --> 00:16:10,179
You know? It's where the best place for

435
00:16:10,179 --> 00:16:13,774
the ordinary student, not the wealthy student, the

436
00:16:13,774 --> 00:16:16,434
nonwealthy student, to invest their tuition dollars.

437
00:16:16,975 --> 00:16:17,955
But it's also

438
00:16:18,654 --> 00:16:19,794
for the citizen

439
00:16:20,174 --> 00:16:22,975
to invest his or her tax dollars. Yeah.

440
00:16:22,975 --> 00:16:25,215
You and I, my friend, the and your

441
00:16:25,215 --> 00:16:28,309
average listener out there, the average taxpayer spends

442
00:16:28,309 --> 00:16:29,509
$1,700

443
00:16:29,509 --> 00:16:32,709
of your money every year supporting higher education

444
00:16:32,709 --> 00:16:34,950
because higher education gets about a half a

445
00:16:34,950 --> 00:16:37,830
trillion dollars in government financing at the federal,

446
00:16:37,830 --> 00:16:39,990
state, and local level. So you and I

447
00:16:39,990 --> 00:16:41,589
have skin in the game even if we're

448
00:16:41,589 --> 00:16:43,485
not in college or we don't have kids

449
00:16:43,485 --> 00:16:44,304
who are in college.

450
00:16:44,684 --> 00:16:45,664
We have an interest

451
00:16:46,365 --> 00:16:49,644
in whether colleges are performing. Right? And we

452
00:16:49,644 --> 00:16:51,804
have this magnificent system. As you said, no

453
00:16:51,804 --> 00:16:54,144
other country comes close to the geographic

454
00:16:54,524 --> 00:16:57,199
diversity, the diversity of types of colleges,

455
00:16:57,579 --> 00:17:00,699
the number. We are blessed with, you know,

456
00:17:00,699 --> 00:17:01,439
an unbelievable

457
00:17:01,740 --> 00:17:04,299
system. It's got some big problems, but it's

458
00:17:04,299 --> 00:17:06,059
it's still one of the crown jewels of

459
00:17:06,059 --> 00:17:07,759
of the country, one of our great legacies.

460
00:17:08,474 --> 00:17:11,375
So we're trying to hold those colleges accountable

461
00:17:12,075 --> 00:17:13,694
for what students and taxpayers,

462
00:17:13,994 --> 00:17:16,554
average students and average taxpayers want for their

463
00:17:16,554 --> 00:17:17,054
money.

464
00:17:17,515 --> 00:17:20,234
I love that. And it's, it's such it's

465
00:17:20,234 --> 00:17:22,670
such an important thing to think about, this

466
00:17:22,670 --> 00:17:25,549
this critical lens on college rankings. I wanna

467
00:17:25,549 --> 00:17:26,769
get into so

468
00:17:27,309 --> 00:17:28,609
one of the things that

469
00:17:28,990 --> 00:17:30,849
makes this such a pertinent

470
00:17:31,630 --> 00:17:34,109
topic, and the rankings that Washington Monthly has

471
00:17:34,109 --> 00:17:35,734
come out with that makes it so pertinent,

472
00:17:36,355 --> 00:17:37,335
is knowing

473
00:17:38,275 --> 00:17:38,775
that

474
00:17:39,234 --> 00:17:41,795
so many families and students dream of college.

475
00:17:41,795 --> 00:17:42,535
I remember

476
00:17:42,914 --> 00:17:44,134
the two years before

477
00:17:44,515 --> 00:17:45,154
my kid,

478
00:17:45,555 --> 00:17:47,575
applied and was accepted to school,

479
00:17:48,035 --> 00:17:50,569
it was like that drive. It's kind of

480
00:17:50,569 --> 00:17:52,410
at a manic pace and there's a lot

481
00:17:52,410 --> 00:17:54,890
of emotionality that comes with it. It's not

482
00:17:54,890 --> 00:17:57,130
just about what's a good school, but it's

483
00:17:57,130 --> 00:17:59,390
so hard to find that information. And now,

484
00:17:59,609 --> 00:18:00,910
we're seeing this struggle

485
00:18:01,289 --> 00:18:04,170
that seems to be escalating with cost, access,

486
00:18:04,170 --> 00:18:04,914
and debt.

487
00:18:05,694 --> 00:18:08,494
And so I really hope people are tapping

488
00:18:08,494 --> 00:18:09,634
in for this conversation.

489
00:18:10,414 --> 00:18:12,575
Let's kinda get into let's zoom back and

490
00:18:12,575 --> 00:18:15,054
look at kinda the big picture around, higher

491
00:18:15,054 --> 00:18:15,554
ed.

492
00:18:16,630 --> 00:18:18,549
Higher ed carries this, like, this kind of

493
00:18:18,549 --> 00:18:19,529
weird double identity

494
00:18:19,909 --> 00:18:22,230
that I think you and the folks at,

495
00:18:22,549 --> 00:18:24,490
watching the monthly, you know, cover

496
00:18:24,869 --> 00:18:27,690
this idea of private aspiration and public ridicule.

497
00:18:27,990 --> 00:18:30,549
Can you speak to that concept for just

498
00:18:30,549 --> 00:18:31,130
a moment?

499
00:18:31,595 --> 00:18:33,455
You know, you can look at higher ed

500
00:18:33,755 --> 00:18:34,255
as

501
00:18:34,714 --> 00:18:36,654
like shopping for a car.

502
00:18:37,434 --> 00:18:41,134
It's totally a personal thing. Right? What car

503
00:18:41,355 --> 00:18:43,835
do I want? What car feels best to

504
00:18:43,835 --> 00:18:45,914
me? What car will get the job done?

505
00:18:45,914 --> 00:18:48,450
And a lot of of the rankings kind

506
00:18:48,450 --> 00:18:50,130
of look at higher ed like that, like

507
00:18:50,130 --> 00:18:51,509
it's a consumer purchase.

508
00:18:51,809 --> 00:18:53,329
Right. And I get it. And part of

509
00:18:53,329 --> 00:18:54,930
what we do is is it's kind of

510
00:18:54,930 --> 00:18:57,990
a a a service journalism. Here's a way

511
00:18:58,289 --> 00:19:00,609
to judge how to spend your tuition and

512
00:19:00,609 --> 00:19:02,069
what's gonna be best for me.

513
00:19:02,894 --> 00:19:05,615
But as I said, higher education is not

514
00:19:05,615 --> 00:19:06,115
just

515
00:19:06,414 --> 00:19:06,914
personal.

516
00:19:07,615 --> 00:19:08,115
Right?

517
00:19:08,414 --> 00:19:10,275
It is a national asset that

518
00:19:10,734 --> 00:19:11,234
government

519
00:19:11,775 --> 00:19:14,894
arranges and pays for, and so it can't

520
00:19:14,894 --> 00:19:16,980
just be what's in it for me. It's

521
00:19:16,980 --> 00:19:18,840
gotta be what's in it for us.

522
00:19:19,299 --> 00:19:21,940
And right you know, for for the longest

523
00:19:21,940 --> 00:19:24,180
time, the conventional wisdom of higher education, go

524
00:19:24,180 --> 00:19:25,160
back twenty years,

525
00:19:25,460 --> 00:19:27,460
was we have the best higher education system

526
00:19:27,460 --> 00:19:29,880
in the world. There's a college for everybody.

527
00:19:30,484 --> 00:19:32,404
Right. It might be a little pricey, but,

528
00:19:32,404 --> 00:19:33,545
boy, is it worth it.

529
00:19:34,244 --> 00:19:34,744
Right.

530
00:19:35,125 --> 00:19:38,164
And this magazine, but also lots of other

531
00:19:38,164 --> 00:19:41,125
publications, lots of other scholars' think tanks have

532
00:19:41,125 --> 00:19:41,945
really taken,

533
00:19:43,525 --> 00:19:44,904
that myth to task.

534
00:19:47,259 --> 00:19:48,160
First of all,

535
00:19:49,019 --> 00:19:50,880
college really is expensive now.

536
00:19:51,340 --> 00:19:52,859
Since 1994,

537
00:19:52,859 --> 00:19:54,220
between 1994

538
00:19:54,220 --> 00:19:56,640
and '19 and 2024,

539
00:19:57,019 --> 00:20:00,539
the price of a community college education per

540
00:20:00,539 --> 00:20:01,035
year

541
00:20:01,355 --> 00:20:03,914
has almost doubled, and the price of a

542
00:20:03,914 --> 00:20:06,095
four year and I'm talking public. Right?

543
00:20:06,555 --> 00:20:09,134
The price of a four year public college

544
00:20:09,275 --> 00:20:10,015
per year

545
00:20:10,315 --> 00:20:12,335
has more than doubled. So

546
00:20:13,035 --> 00:20:13,775
the public,

547
00:20:14,380 --> 00:20:16,799
in its management of those colleges,

548
00:20:17,500 --> 00:20:19,200
getting them to manage their costs

549
00:20:19,740 --> 00:20:21,980
and providing them the money that they need

550
00:20:21,980 --> 00:20:22,559
to operate,

551
00:20:23,179 --> 00:20:25,500
has fallen out on the job. So college

552
00:20:25,500 --> 00:20:26,240
has become

553
00:20:27,795 --> 00:20:28,615
more costly.

554
00:20:29,475 --> 00:20:31,555
There are a lot of students going to

555
00:20:31,555 --> 00:20:32,455
college now

556
00:20:32,835 --> 00:20:33,654
from families

557
00:20:33,955 --> 00:20:36,195
who didn't send their students to college back

558
00:20:36,195 --> 00:20:39,955
then. Right? Working class families, minority families. Those

559
00:20:39,955 --> 00:20:41,414
students come in

560
00:20:42,019 --> 00:20:43,000
less prepared.

561
00:20:43,460 --> 00:20:46,019
They're no less smart. They're just less prepared.

562
00:20:46,019 --> 00:20:48,259
Their families Yeah. Nobody in the family went

563
00:20:48,259 --> 00:20:50,339
to college or maybe uncle uncle, you know,

564
00:20:50,339 --> 00:20:52,659
Jose did, but nobody else did. Yeah. And

565
00:20:52,659 --> 00:20:55,380
they don't really know what college is about.

566
00:20:55,380 --> 00:20:56,759
They don't have the stories.

567
00:20:57,315 --> 00:20:59,714
Maybe they didn't, you know, take honors courses

568
00:20:59,714 --> 00:21:02,355
or they weren't there any available. So they're

569
00:21:02,355 --> 00:21:04,454
getting into college, and they need more help,

570
00:21:04,835 --> 00:21:05,974
and they're getting less

571
00:21:06,755 --> 00:21:09,554
because we're investing less in it. Another thing

572
00:21:09,554 --> 00:21:10,294
that's happening

573
00:21:10,914 --> 00:21:11,414
is

574
00:21:12,329 --> 00:21:13,630
because of politics,

575
00:21:14,009 --> 00:21:15,549
right, the great

576
00:21:15,849 --> 00:21:16,349
movement,

577
00:21:17,210 --> 00:21:19,069
it used to be that both parties

578
00:21:19,690 --> 00:21:21,069
had more or less

579
00:21:21,369 --> 00:21:22,429
similar percentages

580
00:21:23,130 --> 00:21:26,750
of college educated voters and noncollege educated voters.

581
00:21:27,585 --> 00:21:28,804
Now it's quite lopsided.

582
00:21:29,184 --> 00:21:29,924
The Democrats

583
00:21:30,944 --> 00:21:33,365
have the lion's share of the college educated

584
00:21:33,424 --> 00:21:33,924
voter,

585
00:21:34,224 --> 00:21:36,144
and the Republicans have the lion's share of

586
00:21:36,144 --> 00:21:37,845
the noncollege educated voter.

587
00:21:38,224 --> 00:21:40,005
So what used to be a bipartisan

588
00:21:40,869 --> 00:21:42,869
thing, it was really not political. People didn't

589
00:21:43,029 --> 00:21:45,609
there wasn't a real politics to higher ed.

590
00:21:45,669 --> 00:21:46,809
You couldn't say,

591
00:21:47,190 --> 00:21:49,190
that guy's Republican. I know what his position

592
00:21:49,190 --> 00:21:50,329
is on higher ed.

593
00:21:50,630 --> 00:21:51,929
You know, nobody knew that.

594
00:21:52,230 --> 00:21:53,609
Now because of politics,

595
00:21:54,335 --> 00:21:56,515
you have a Republican party and a Republican

596
00:21:56,654 --> 00:21:58,515
base that is increasingly

597
00:21:58,974 --> 00:21:59,954
seeing colleges,

598
00:22:00,734 --> 00:22:02,355
un American, a threat,

599
00:22:02,654 --> 00:22:04,115
not holding up its bargain.

600
00:22:04,494 --> 00:22:04,994
So

601
00:22:05,375 --> 00:22:06,755
if you look at the data,

602
00:22:07,214 --> 00:22:09,234
faith in all institutions has plummeted

603
00:22:09,730 --> 00:22:12,130
over the last 20 faith in higher ed

604
00:22:12,130 --> 00:22:13,190
has also plummeted.

605
00:22:13,730 --> 00:22:16,309
Yeah. And yet and yet and yet,

606
00:22:16,929 --> 00:22:19,329
higher ed is one of the top four

607
00:22:19,329 --> 00:22:21,909
or five out of 20 or 30 institutions

608
00:22:22,049 --> 00:22:23,669
that people do have faith in.

609
00:22:24,115 --> 00:22:25,654
Yeah. It's higher than

610
00:22:25,954 --> 00:22:27,174
any branch of government.

611
00:22:27,794 --> 00:22:29,335
It's higher than organized religion.

612
00:22:30,194 --> 00:22:31,255
So it's down,

613
00:22:31,634 --> 00:22:34,434
but relative to other institutions, it's still doing

614
00:22:34,434 --> 00:22:37,075
pretty well. And why is that? Because even

615
00:22:37,075 --> 00:22:38,914
people who bad mouth higher education want their

616
00:22:38,914 --> 00:22:40,750
kids to go to college. Yeah.

617
00:22:41,210 --> 00:22:43,130
So when you actually look at the polling,

618
00:22:43,130 --> 00:22:43,950
the faith

619
00:22:44,570 --> 00:22:45,789
that college

620
00:22:46,090 --> 00:22:48,970
is worth it and helpful for me and

621
00:22:48,970 --> 00:22:51,850
for the country is actually quite high. But

622
00:22:51,850 --> 00:22:52,910
people are genuinely

623
00:22:53,210 --> 00:22:54,830
upset at the costs,

624
00:22:56,184 --> 00:22:58,265
and there is reason to be upset about

625
00:22:58,265 --> 00:22:58,845
the quality.

626
00:22:59,785 --> 00:23:01,884
Yeah. Absolutely. Like, that's something,

627
00:23:02,505 --> 00:23:04,184
that's something I hear a lot just in

628
00:23:04,184 --> 00:23:05,005
my own household,

629
00:23:05,945 --> 00:23:07,164
about, you know,

630
00:23:07,465 --> 00:23:09,539
our kid was raised by two teachers, and

631
00:23:09,539 --> 00:23:10,279
so their

632
00:23:10,820 --> 00:23:11,320
expectation

633
00:23:11,700 --> 00:23:13,240
of quality instruction

634
00:23:14,259 --> 00:23:17,059
is understandably higher, right? And so I think

635
00:23:17,059 --> 00:23:19,640
some of that is kind of happening there.

636
00:23:19,700 --> 00:23:21,940
I mean, we'll kinda get into the the

637
00:23:21,940 --> 00:23:22,440
politics

638
00:23:23,140 --> 00:23:23,539
of,

639
00:23:24,100 --> 00:23:25,865
of education right now. I think to your

640
00:23:25,865 --> 00:23:27,404
point, that undermining

641
00:23:28,105 --> 00:23:31,325
of public institutions has been by design largely,

642
00:23:31,704 --> 00:23:33,865
and it and it's come for the colleges

643
00:23:33,865 --> 00:23:34,524
and university.

644
00:23:34,825 --> 00:23:37,565
Just a quick follow-up on on this question.

645
00:23:39,450 --> 00:23:40,909
To what extent do you think

646
00:23:41,369 --> 00:23:43,210
higher education has kind of fallen down on

647
00:23:43,210 --> 00:23:43,869
the job?

648
00:23:44,329 --> 00:23:45,950
It it seems that there's

649
00:23:46,250 --> 00:23:47,950
just like with so many of

650
00:23:48,329 --> 00:23:49,069
of these

651
00:23:49,690 --> 00:23:51,789
efforts to undermine these institutions,

652
00:23:52,294 --> 00:23:54,134
a lot of times they are sort of

653
00:23:54,134 --> 00:23:56,554
rooted in a grain of truth. Right?

654
00:23:56,855 --> 00:23:58,875
Where do you see the accountability

655
00:23:59,255 --> 00:23:59,755
for,

656
00:24:00,375 --> 00:24:03,115
higher education as a whole? In the current

657
00:24:03,494 --> 00:24:03,994
environment,

658
00:24:05,190 --> 00:24:06,809
the debate is all about

659
00:24:07,190 --> 00:24:07,690
wokeness

660
00:24:08,309 --> 00:24:09,450
at elite institutions.

661
00:24:09,750 --> 00:24:11,669
Right. And we can have that debate. You

662
00:24:11,669 --> 00:24:13,909
know? We can have that debate. I I'm

663
00:24:13,909 --> 00:24:15,210
not gonna defend it.

664
00:24:15,669 --> 00:24:16,169
Right.

665
00:24:16,869 --> 00:24:18,889
I'm not a huge fan of

666
00:24:19,244 --> 00:24:22,045
a lot of the academic trends in higher

667
00:24:22,045 --> 00:24:24,125
education having to do with some of these

668
00:24:24,125 --> 00:24:24,625
issues.

669
00:24:25,005 --> 00:24:25,505
But,

670
00:24:25,964 --> 00:24:29,805
again, you're talking about colleges that educate 5%

671
00:24:29,805 --> 00:24:31,964
of the public. That's right. What is the

672
00:24:31,964 --> 00:24:32,464
typical

673
00:24:32,830 --> 00:24:34,990
college student? There is no typical college student.

674
00:24:34,990 --> 00:24:37,309
But the typical college student is taking a

675
00:24:37,309 --> 00:24:41,309
marketing course at a public regional public university

676
00:24:41,549 --> 00:24:44,070
Right. That has that has never been in

677
00:24:44,109 --> 00:24:45,549
mentioned in the New York Times in ten

678
00:24:45,549 --> 00:24:46,615
years. Right.

679
00:24:47,075 --> 00:24:49,494
Right? Taught by an adjunct professor,

680
00:24:50,115 --> 00:24:52,595
making very little money, who's never heard of

681
00:24:52,595 --> 00:24:53,414
Herbert Marcuse,

682
00:24:53,875 --> 00:24:55,875
not political one way or another more than

683
00:24:55,875 --> 00:24:56,855
the average person.

684
00:24:57,154 --> 00:25:01,539
Right? Yeah. That's college. Right. And for years,

685
00:25:02,000 --> 00:25:03,539
liberals have overemphasized

686
00:25:04,640 --> 00:25:07,940
the elite colleges. I think Republicans and conservatives

687
00:25:08,160 --> 00:25:10,640
now are jumping on the same bandwagon, and

688
00:25:10,640 --> 00:25:13,220
we're all debating what's happening at Columbia. Yeah.

689
00:25:13,519 --> 00:25:14,740
You know, we did a

690
00:25:15,164 --> 00:25:18,305
a story last year where we got some

691
00:25:18,605 --> 00:25:21,725
very good data from a organization that kept

692
00:25:21,725 --> 00:25:24,924
track of all the Gaza encampments and protests,

693
00:25:24,924 --> 00:25:27,005
and then we mapped that onto the data

694
00:25:27,005 --> 00:25:29,005
that we use to do our ranking. And

695
00:25:29,005 --> 00:25:30,305
you just look at the scatterplot

696
00:25:30,990 --> 00:25:32,750
and look at the graphs, and it you

697
00:25:32,750 --> 00:25:34,750
can find it at washingtonmonthly.com.

698
00:25:34,750 --> 00:25:36,750
And what it shows is what you kind

699
00:25:36,750 --> 00:25:39,569
of would guess, which is at most colleges

700
00:25:39,710 --> 00:25:41,869
where most people go, there weren't very many

701
00:25:41,869 --> 00:25:42,369
protests.

702
00:25:43,184 --> 00:25:45,524
Maybe there were none. Right? Yeah.

703
00:25:45,984 --> 00:25:48,544
Not because students didn't have a political view,

704
00:25:48,544 --> 00:25:49,184
not because

705
00:25:49,664 --> 00:25:51,764
Right. Their political views necessarily

706
00:25:52,065 --> 00:25:54,855
differed all that much from the students. Maybe

707
00:25:54,855 --> 00:25:57,299
they did, but there's not great data on

708
00:25:57,299 --> 00:25:59,539
that, and what data we have suggests, nah.

709
00:25:59,539 --> 00:26:00,920
Not it's not that different.

710
00:26:01,460 --> 00:26:04,119
It's that they were probably five years older.

711
00:26:04,259 --> 00:26:05,240
They had jobs.

712
00:26:05,700 --> 00:26:07,640
You know, they were working class people.

713
00:26:08,179 --> 00:26:10,839
You know? They didn't have the free time.

714
00:26:11,355 --> 00:26:14,315
You know, there were commuter schools. Like, nah.

715
00:26:14,315 --> 00:26:16,554
You know? Yeah. I got other things. I

716
00:26:16,554 --> 00:26:17,454
got other priorities.

717
00:26:17,755 --> 00:26:20,554
Right? Yeah. My big beef with the whole

718
00:26:20,554 --> 00:26:21,054
discourse

719
00:26:21,355 --> 00:26:21,855
is

720
00:26:22,154 --> 00:26:25,194
that we bend toward the world of the

721
00:26:25,194 --> 00:26:25,694
elite

722
00:26:26,149 --> 00:26:27,990
and ignore the world of everybody else. That's

723
00:26:27,990 --> 00:26:29,750
so that's so deep. And I I appreciate

724
00:26:29,750 --> 00:26:31,429
you re remixing that,

725
00:26:31,750 --> 00:26:34,230
thought process for me because I think we

726
00:26:34,230 --> 00:26:36,149
do tend to focus on those things. Whatever

727
00:26:36,149 --> 00:26:37,049
the whatever

728
00:26:37,589 --> 00:26:39,529
wherever there's a little flash point,

729
00:26:40,424 --> 00:26:43,784
and then then mainstream media is drawn to

730
00:26:43,784 --> 00:26:46,284
that like moths to a flame. Right? Like

731
00:26:46,424 --> 00:26:48,424
you're going in there and all of a

732
00:26:48,424 --> 00:26:50,505
sudden there's outrage that Cornell West made a

733
00:26:50,505 --> 00:26:51,964
hip hop album. Right?

734
00:26:52,265 --> 00:26:55,440
Most people are not missing their professors

735
00:26:55,980 --> 00:26:58,059
for weeks at a time because they're making

736
00:26:58,059 --> 00:26:59,359
a rap album. Like,

737
00:26:59,660 --> 00:27:01,519
it's not representative of

738
00:27:02,059 --> 00:27:04,000
Oh. No. It's not the typical university

739
00:27:04,299 --> 00:27:06,480
college experience. We did a quick little,

740
00:27:07,234 --> 00:27:08,055
bit of research.

741
00:27:08,515 --> 00:27:09,335
We googled

742
00:27:09,875 --> 00:27:11,815
all the mentions of Harvard

743
00:27:12,275 --> 00:27:13,815
for a twelve month period

744
00:27:14,275 --> 00:27:16,035
in The New York Times, and then we

745
00:27:16,035 --> 00:27:16,535
googled

746
00:27:16,914 --> 00:27:17,815
all the mentions

747
00:27:18,515 --> 00:27:19,654
of the 10 universities

748
00:27:20,035 --> 00:27:23,009
with the biggest student bodies, Florida State or

749
00:27:23,009 --> 00:27:24,890
whatever. Oh, man. I don't wanna I don't

750
00:27:24,890 --> 00:27:27,170
know. I've been to brace myself. The the

751
00:27:27,170 --> 00:27:30,450
the campuses with fifty, sixty, 70,000 students. Yeah.

752
00:27:30,450 --> 00:27:33,970
Yeah. Right? Harvard's got 5,000 undergrad. Like, kind

753
00:27:33,970 --> 00:27:34,549
of dinky.

754
00:27:35,255 --> 00:27:36,855
There were more mentions of Harvard in the

755
00:27:36,855 --> 00:27:38,215
New York Times over the course of the

756
00:27:38,215 --> 00:27:40,455
year than there were of all the other

757
00:27:40,455 --> 00:27:42,855
colleges combined. Wow. And then you take those

758
00:27:42,855 --> 00:27:45,035
big universities if you take out sports,

759
00:27:46,055 --> 00:27:47,894
references. Well, that's what we did. We took

760
00:27:47,894 --> 00:27:49,174
out the the the what you'll Oh, you

761
00:27:49,174 --> 00:27:50,565
did. Okay. Sports.

762
00:27:51,019 --> 00:27:53,419
You know? Because and and and but, yeah,

763
00:27:53,419 --> 00:27:54,799
that so the media

764
00:27:55,339 --> 00:27:57,980
focuses on the elites because the elites are

765
00:27:57,980 --> 00:28:00,559
who reads the media. What's the good news?

766
00:28:00,859 --> 00:28:02,139
The good news is if you go into

767
00:28:02,139 --> 00:28:03,019
washingtonmonthly.com

768
00:28:03,019 --> 00:28:04,994
and you look at our rankings, you're gonna

769
00:28:04,994 --> 00:28:06,515
find a whole bunch of colleges that are

770
00:28:06,515 --> 00:28:08,515
doing it right. Let's segue into that topic

771
00:28:08,515 --> 00:28:10,994
because I think what what you've really done

772
00:28:10,994 --> 00:28:12,994
and what Washington Monthly has really done is

773
00:28:12,994 --> 00:28:15,095
to remix these rankings and reimagine

774
00:28:15,955 --> 00:28:18,220
the rankings for, I think what folks would

775
00:28:18,220 --> 00:28:20,059
refer to as like the 99%.

776
00:28:20,059 --> 00:28:23,500
Like the the those folks and communities that

777
00:28:23,500 --> 00:28:26,079
constitute the vast majority of people

778
00:28:26,539 --> 00:28:30,000
seeking or participating in a higher education experience.

779
00:28:30,299 --> 00:28:32,355
So you started to talk a little bit

780
00:28:32,595 --> 00:28:33,095
about

781
00:28:33,474 --> 00:28:36,674
what drove Washington Monthly's rankings, right? It was

782
00:28:36,674 --> 00:28:39,234
this report that you had a data scientist

783
00:28:39,234 --> 00:28:41,394
kinda put together and they sort of showed

784
00:28:41,394 --> 00:28:41,894
that

785
00:28:42,434 --> 00:28:44,835
what was actually being measured in The US

786
00:28:44,835 --> 00:28:45,575
News rankings.

787
00:28:46,009 --> 00:28:48,089
What's the philosophy? Could you expand a little

788
00:28:48,089 --> 00:28:51,609
bit about that behind Washington Monthly's rankings? What's

789
00:28:51,609 --> 00:28:54,589
the belief driving that? I guess the belief

790
00:28:54,889 --> 00:28:55,389
is

791
00:28:55,769 --> 00:28:57,230
this country only works

792
00:28:57,609 --> 00:29:00,329
when the government is focused on the needs

793
00:29:00,329 --> 00:29:02,265
of the voters, the real needs of the

794
00:29:02,265 --> 00:29:02,765
voters.

795
00:29:04,025 --> 00:29:05,865
You know, you look at the the era

796
00:29:05,865 --> 00:29:08,105
where America was at at its best. It

797
00:29:08,105 --> 00:29:10,664
was when that was the case. And there

798
00:29:10,664 --> 00:29:13,144
are always elites. There will always be elite.

799
00:29:13,144 --> 00:29:16,445
But when the elite people and elite institutions

800
00:29:17,190 --> 00:29:18,569
are focused on themselves

801
00:29:18,869 --> 00:29:19,769
and ignoring

802
00:29:20,389 --> 00:29:22,549
the needs of the average person, the working

803
00:29:22,549 --> 00:29:24,630
class per that's when things go awry. You

804
00:29:24,630 --> 00:29:26,789
know, at the at our best, when we

805
00:29:26,789 --> 00:29:29,990
created during the civil war under Abraham Lincoln,

806
00:29:29,990 --> 00:29:32,265
we had the Morrill Act, which created the

807
00:29:32,265 --> 00:29:35,005
land grant college system, which brought higher education

808
00:29:35,464 --> 00:29:38,024
down from the elite to the average farmer

809
00:29:38,024 --> 00:29:41,224
and mechanic. The federal government gave land to

810
00:29:41,224 --> 00:29:44,024
states to use to fund the creation of

811
00:29:44,024 --> 00:29:46,210
college, And that's how you got this system

812
00:29:46,210 --> 00:29:48,309
in The United States that is quite unique,

813
00:29:48,769 --> 00:29:49,829
where you have

814
00:29:50,130 --> 00:29:50,630
excellent

815
00:29:51,329 --> 00:29:52,789
institutions of higher education

816
00:29:53,329 --> 00:29:56,369
in every state, scattered in every region. Hardly

817
00:29:56,369 --> 00:29:57,589
a place in the country

818
00:29:57,994 --> 00:29:59,674
that is, you know, more than an hour's

819
00:29:59,674 --> 00:30:01,595
drive from some kind of college. And it's

820
00:30:01,595 --> 00:30:03,775
a big country. You know? And then again,

821
00:30:03,914 --> 00:30:06,095
with the GI Bill in World War two,

822
00:30:06,634 --> 00:30:08,255
where the returning GIs

823
00:30:09,115 --> 00:30:12,250
were allowed to, you know, given essentially free

824
00:30:12,250 --> 00:30:14,170
college tuition. Yeah. That turned out to be

825
00:30:14,170 --> 00:30:16,090
one of the greatest investments in the history

826
00:30:16,090 --> 00:30:17,930
of the country. Yeah. And then again in

827
00:30:17,930 --> 00:30:18,910
the nineteen sixties

828
00:30:19,369 --> 00:30:21,609
with the passage of the Higher Education Act,

829
00:30:21,609 --> 00:30:23,950
which said that cost

830
00:30:24,285 --> 00:30:25,664
shouldn't be a factor

831
00:30:26,125 --> 00:30:26,865
in getting,

832
00:30:27,565 --> 00:30:28,865
getting a a

833
00:30:29,164 --> 00:30:31,184
a college degree. It basically opened

834
00:30:31,565 --> 00:30:33,904
the doors of colleges not just to

835
00:30:34,525 --> 00:30:35,984
working class GIs,

836
00:30:36,285 --> 00:30:37,744
but working class everybody.

837
00:30:38,045 --> 00:30:39,329
So we've had these moments

838
00:30:39,809 --> 00:30:42,049
where we've opened the doors of college and

839
00:30:42,049 --> 00:30:42,549
invested.

840
00:30:43,169 --> 00:30:45,349
The creation of community college is another example.

841
00:30:45,569 --> 00:30:47,429
Yeah. We've gotten away from that

842
00:30:47,890 --> 00:30:49,970
over the last twenty, thirty years. Yeah. And

843
00:30:49,970 --> 00:30:53,024
now we have a a system much more

844
00:30:53,024 --> 00:30:55,764
rigged toward the benefit of these universities that

845
00:30:55,825 --> 00:30:58,644
cater to people of means. And it's

846
00:30:59,504 --> 00:31:02,144
the same way in other aspects of our

847
00:31:02,144 --> 00:31:04,565
country. Right? Yeah. You know, we abandoned

848
00:31:05,859 --> 00:31:08,099
laws that are on the books that used

849
00:31:08,099 --> 00:31:08,839
to regulate

850
00:31:09,539 --> 00:31:11,799
everything from airlines to monopoly

851
00:31:12,819 --> 00:31:15,000
Yeah. In ways that have benefited

852
00:31:16,099 --> 00:31:18,599
the upper 20%, really the upper 1%,

853
00:31:19,115 --> 00:31:21,035
to the detriment of everybody else. And that's

854
00:31:21,035 --> 00:31:23,195
what the Washington Monthly has been involved in

855
00:31:23,195 --> 00:31:25,855
is looking at how to make government

856
00:31:26,154 --> 00:31:29,115
work better for everybody. Yeah. I think that's

857
00:31:29,115 --> 00:31:31,035
so important because it occurred to me a

858
00:31:31,035 --> 00:31:32,309
few weeks ago. I was just kind of

859
00:31:32,309 --> 00:31:34,329
doing some reading and realizing

860
00:31:34,710 --> 00:31:35,529
that when

861
00:31:36,069 --> 00:31:38,950
the 1% talk about a good economy, they're

862
00:31:38,950 --> 00:31:40,549
not talking about the same economy that I'm

863
00:31:40,549 --> 00:31:43,669
talking about. And, and so I think so

864
00:31:43,669 --> 00:31:46,015
that that's a really important sort of a

865
00:31:46,015 --> 00:31:46,515
foundational,

866
00:31:47,375 --> 00:31:49,714
piece of these rankings is that

867
00:31:50,174 --> 00:31:50,914
the idea

868
00:31:51,615 --> 00:31:52,994
is that the more

869
00:31:53,295 --> 00:31:53,795
access

870
00:31:54,335 --> 00:31:56,275
all people have to upward mobility,

871
00:31:56,654 --> 00:31:59,609
the better it is for our society. So

872
00:31:59,609 --> 00:32:00,830
the rankings are out,

873
00:32:02,009 --> 00:32:02,509
and

874
00:32:03,130 --> 00:32:05,690
curious, I have some of my own surprises

875
00:32:05,690 --> 00:32:07,630
around the rankings, but I actually wanna hear

876
00:32:07,850 --> 00:32:10,330
what surprised you the most this year. Like

877
00:32:10,330 --> 00:32:12,855
there's a couple of, pieces that jumped out

878
00:32:12,934 --> 00:32:14,855
at me, but I wanna I wanna ask

879
00:32:14,855 --> 00:32:16,615
you to talk a little bit about the

880
00:32:16,615 --> 00:32:17,115
rankings

881
00:32:17,414 --> 00:32:19,275
and what maybe surprised you,

882
00:32:19,815 --> 00:32:22,154
what you maybe think is notable

883
00:32:22,694 --> 00:32:24,794
and that might surprise our audience.

884
00:32:25,174 --> 00:32:27,630
Well, I wasn't too surprised. I've been doing

885
00:32:27,630 --> 00:32:29,309
this for twenty years. I kind of think

886
00:32:29,309 --> 00:32:31,569
all these things work. That makes sense.

887
00:32:32,190 --> 00:32:32,690
But,

888
00:32:33,390 --> 00:32:34,909
I think it will I think it has

889
00:32:34,909 --> 00:32:36,049
been a big surprise.

890
00:32:36,589 --> 00:32:38,369
And I I I will say this year,

891
00:32:38,414 --> 00:32:39,934
we did a little we did we did

892
00:32:39,934 --> 00:32:41,315
some changes to our methodology,

893
00:32:41,934 --> 00:32:43,535
which I'm happy to explain to you, but

894
00:32:43,535 --> 00:32:45,234
it's it's a little bit boring. But,

895
00:32:46,255 --> 00:32:48,575
I'm into it. Aspiring researcher checking in. I'm

896
00:32:48,575 --> 00:32:50,195
into it. Yeah. So so

897
00:32:50,910 --> 00:32:52,850
the thing that I think is gonna surprise

898
00:32:52,910 --> 00:32:53,410
your,

899
00:32:54,350 --> 00:32:55,330
viewers and listeners

900
00:32:56,590 --> 00:32:58,690
is if you look at the top 30

901
00:32:58,990 --> 00:32:59,490
schools

902
00:32:59,950 --> 00:33:03,549
on our signature ranking best colleges for your

903
00:33:03,549 --> 00:33:06,945
tuition and tax dollar, Half of them are

904
00:33:06,945 --> 00:33:08,785
the kind of schools you would expect that

905
00:33:08,785 --> 00:33:11,105
would be on US News. It's it's it's

906
00:33:11,105 --> 00:33:14,644
Stanford. It's Harvard. It's Princeton, etcetera. Yep. MIT.

907
00:33:14,865 --> 00:33:17,345
On US News, almost all of them are

908
00:33:17,345 --> 00:33:18,965
that. Right. Of ours,

909
00:33:19,319 --> 00:33:20,059
half of

910
00:33:20,440 --> 00:33:21,980
them are colleges, again,

911
00:33:22,440 --> 00:33:25,740
that are probably well known in their communities,

912
00:33:26,359 --> 00:33:29,579
but almost completely unknown outside of that. And

913
00:33:29,720 --> 00:33:32,599
University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, I'm gonna

914
00:33:32,599 --> 00:33:35,555
guess very few of your readers will audience

915
00:33:35,695 --> 00:33:37,695
know anything about that. And, you know, it's

916
00:33:37,695 --> 00:33:39,714
a it's a relatively new

917
00:33:40,015 --> 00:33:42,575
regional public university. It's a merger, I don't

918
00:33:42,575 --> 00:33:44,195
know, maybe twenty years ago,

919
00:33:44,575 --> 00:33:47,059
of a couple of colleges down there in

920
00:33:47,059 --> 00:33:48,359
the heavily Hispanic

921
00:33:48,740 --> 00:33:52,359
border regions of Texas. They came in seventh

922
00:33:52,660 --> 00:33:55,059
out of more than 1,400

923
00:33:55,059 --> 00:33:57,779
schools. Oh. You know, like, eight places above

924
00:33:57,779 --> 00:33:58,279
Duke,

925
00:33:58,660 --> 00:34:00,200
20 places above Harvard.

926
00:34:00,505 --> 00:34:02,265
Harvard. That's what I was gonna say. They

927
00:34:02,265 --> 00:34:05,704
outrank Harvard. They outrank Harvard. The highest ranked

928
00:34:05,704 --> 00:34:06,204
school

929
00:34:06,664 --> 00:34:08,824
out of in our in our list is

930
00:34:08,824 --> 00:34:11,784
Princeton. It came in at number five. That

931
00:34:11,784 --> 00:34:14,184
means the four schools above it are not

932
00:34:14,184 --> 00:34:17,130
elite. Three of them are campuses of the

933
00:34:17,130 --> 00:34:17,630
California

934
00:34:18,250 --> 00:34:21,869
State University system, including the number two university

935
00:34:21,929 --> 00:34:24,730
on our list, Cal State Fresno, which is

936
00:34:24,730 --> 00:34:27,069
a fantastic school. And and I had a

937
00:34:27,130 --> 00:34:29,690
wonderful opportunity to do a a podcast with

938
00:34:29,690 --> 00:34:32,164
the president who I've met before. And this

939
00:34:32,164 --> 00:34:32,824
is a college

940
00:34:33,284 --> 00:34:36,244
smack in the middle of the, Central Valley

941
00:34:36,244 --> 00:34:38,324
Of California in Fresno. And I I don't

942
00:34:38,324 --> 00:34:39,844
know if you know Fresno or you know

943
00:34:39,844 --> 00:34:42,244
the the Central Valley, but it's it's,

944
00:34:42,885 --> 00:34:46,180
pockmarked by pretty serious poverty. And the president

945
00:34:46,180 --> 00:34:48,900
himself grew up on a farm, and the

946
00:34:48,900 --> 00:34:51,219
students are not imported from all over the

947
00:34:51,219 --> 00:34:53,699
country. You know, they're they're not students with

948
00:34:53,699 --> 00:34:55,780
the the best SAT scores from the best

949
00:34:55,780 --> 00:34:58,755
high schools. There's average students from around the

950
00:34:59,074 --> 00:35:01,954
California, but especially the Central Valley. Yeah. And

951
00:35:01,954 --> 00:35:03,734
what they do very well

952
00:35:04,034 --> 00:35:05,014
is they provide

953
00:35:05,714 --> 00:35:06,214
a

954
00:35:06,514 --> 00:35:08,835
low cost tuition, one of the lowest prices

955
00:35:08,835 --> 00:35:10,775
in the country. They graduate students

956
00:35:11,074 --> 00:35:13,394
at higher rates than you would expect given

957
00:35:13,394 --> 00:35:14,054
their demographics.

958
00:35:14,579 --> 00:35:16,579
They load them up with less debt at

959
00:35:16,579 --> 00:35:18,739
the end. The students go on to make

960
00:35:18,739 --> 00:35:21,460
more money nine years after starting college than

961
00:35:21,460 --> 00:35:23,860
you would expect from their demographics. So they

962
00:35:23,940 --> 00:35:25,480
it's the whole thing. And

963
00:35:25,780 --> 00:35:27,700
they do a very good job on the

964
00:35:27,700 --> 00:35:30,275
service part of our rankings. They students vote

965
00:35:30,275 --> 00:35:31,175
at high rates.

966
00:35:31,474 --> 00:35:32,695
They join the military.

967
00:35:33,315 --> 00:35:35,655
They join they do community service.

968
00:35:35,954 --> 00:35:38,215
The school allows work study students

969
00:35:38,755 --> 00:35:41,075
to do community service rather than just, you

970
00:35:41,075 --> 00:35:43,230
know, have a job in the in the

971
00:35:43,230 --> 00:35:44,910
in the gym or something. Right. So that's

972
00:35:44,910 --> 00:35:46,670
a whole package. Wow. And then the number

973
00:35:46,670 --> 00:35:48,510
one school, I'll bet you've never heard of

974
00:35:48,510 --> 00:35:50,829
it. I had never heard of it.

975
00:35:51,150 --> 00:35:53,650
Talk about number one, Berea College.

976
00:35:54,195 --> 00:35:56,355
Berea College. Berea College. See, I didn't even

977
00:35:56,355 --> 00:35:57,655
say it. I got I I mispronounced

978
00:35:59,315 --> 00:36:02,515
it. Berea College is a small liberal arts

979
00:36:02,515 --> 00:36:05,795
school in Kentucky, maybe. I think it's maybe

980
00:36:05,795 --> 00:36:08,114
an hour from Lexington, if you kinda know

981
00:36:08,114 --> 00:36:09,820
where that is. Is. And it was started

982
00:36:09,820 --> 00:36:12,960
in in the mid eighteen hundreds by abolitionists

983
00:36:13,339 --> 00:36:16,619
as a school that would educate both blacks

984
00:36:16,619 --> 00:36:18,780
and whites and was one of the first

985
00:36:18,780 --> 00:36:20,539
schools in the the only school in the

986
00:36:20,539 --> 00:36:22,139
South to do both, and the only school

987
00:36:22,139 --> 00:36:24,625
in the South to educate women also. Yeah.

988
00:36:25,085 --> 00:36:27,724
At the end of the nineteenth century, they

989
00:36:27,724 --> 00:36:29,344
made a a new

990
00:36:29,724 --> 00:36:32,125
plan that they would charge no tuition. And

991
00:36:32,125 --> 00:36:32,864
it Wow.

992
00:36:33,244 --> 00:36:33,744
And

993
00:36:34,045 --> 00:36:36,045
that's been tough, but they've managed to come

994
00:36:36,045 --> 00:36:38,909
very close. Wow. Yeah. The net price is

995
00:36:38,909 --> 00:36:40,769
under $3,400.

996
00:36:40,989 --> 00:36:43,469
Yeah. And a lot of students are are

997
00:36:43,710 --> 00:36:45,710
it's almost nothing. And the way they do

998
00:36:45,710 --> 00:36:47,569
that and by the way, these are not

999
00:36:47,630 --> 00:36:49,889
students from wealthy families. These are

1000
00:36:50,429 --> 00:36:52,690
moderate income families, poor families

1001
00:36:53,324 --> 00:36:54,065
from Appalachia.

1002
00:36:54,445 --> 00:36:56,844
Some 80% of their students are from the

1003
00:36:56,844 --> 00:36:57,344
nearby

1004
00:36:58,204 --> 00:37:02,125
counties, the nearby states. Yeah. And like Fresno

1005
00:37:02,125 --> 00:37:04,704
State, these students go on to get jobs

1006
00:37:05,260 --> 00:37:06,940
that pay $5,000

1007
00:37:06,940 --> 00:37:09,200
more than you would expect given their background.

1008
00:37:09,340 --> 00:37:11,340
And they managed to do this in three

1009
00:37:11,340 --> 00:37:13,660
ways. Number 99%

1010
00:37:13,660 --> 00:37:16,220
of the students are on Pell Grants. Right?

1011
00:37:16,220 --> 00:37:19,034
Pell Grants are grants for students who come

1012
00:37:19,034 --> 00:37:21,034
from moderate to low income families. So that's

1013
00:37:21,034 --> 00:37:22,414
part of it. Part of it is

1014
00:37:22,715 --> 00:37:25,994
it's a work college. Every student has a

1015
00:37:25,994 --> 00:37:27,994
job, not just you know what work study

1016
00:37:27,994 --> 00:37:31,070
is, but this is work study on steroids.

1017
00:37:31,070 --> 00:37:33,570
Every student works. And part of their pay

1018
00:37:33,630 --> 00:37:35,329
goes to pay for their tuition.

1019
00:37:35,710 --> 00:37:38,510
And the federal government has a handful of

1020
00:37:38,510 --> 00:37:41,150
colleges that are considered work colleges, and they

1021
00:37:41,150 --> 00:37:42,764
get funding for that. And then the third

1022
00:37:42,764 --> 00:37:44,605
thing, probably the biggest thing is, for a

1023
00:37:44,605 --> 00:37:47,005
hundred years, they've been building up their endowment

1024
00:37:47,005 --> 00:37:48,844
with small donations, and now they have a

1025
00:37:48,844 --> 00:37:51,405
billion and a half dollars. Wow. And instead

1026
00:37:51,405 --> 00:37:54,045
of using that money to build libraries in

1027
00:37:54,045 --> 00:37:55,724
the name of this or that person, they

1028
00:37:55,724 --> 00:37:57,940
use it to make college inexpensive for their

1029
00:37:57,940 --> 00:37:58,920
students. That's incredible.

1030
00:37:59,539 --> 00:38:02,099
I'm getting really excited, like, kinda learning about

1031
00:38:02,099 --> 00:38:04,340
these. I think there's a couple of pieces

1032
00:38:04,340 --> 00:38:06,900
that really stand out to me particularly, and

1033
00:38:06,900 --> 00:38:09,219
you mentioned it before, the median earnings nine

1034
00:38:09,219 --> 00:38:11,664
years after entering college. So what that sort

1035
00:38:11,664 --> 00:38:13,585
of says to me is that what you're

1036
00:38:13,585 --> 00:38:16,724
tracking isn't trying to be cute or contrarian

1037
00:38:17,105 --> 00:38:20,085
or academic in nature. It's more

1038
00:38:20,385 --> 00:38:22,324
that, no, these are the things that people

1039
00:38:22,545 --> 00:38:24,724
want from their higher ed experience.

1040
00:38:25,105 --> 00:38:27,339
I think there's another piece of this that

1041
00:38:27,339 --> 00:38:28,859
that stands out to me, and that is

1042
00:38:28,859 --> 00:38:29,519
the way,

1043
00:38:29,900 --> 00:38:32,619
as you're explaining it, the way these rankings

1044
00:38:32,619 --> 00:38:36,139
honor institutions that really center and serve folks

1045
00:38:36,139 --> 00:38:38,380
who are first gen, folks who are working

1046
00:38:38,380 --> 00:38:41,195
class, and folks of color. So can you

1047
00:38:41,195 --> 00:38:43,135
talk a little bit about how those rankings

1048
00:38:43,195 --> 00:38:44,335
honor those institutions?

1049
00:38:44,875 --> 00:38:46,735
Yeah. Look. These institutions,

1050
00:38:47,275 --> 00:38:50,414
some of them are really large. They're educating

1051
00:38:51,035 --> 00:38:54,250
vastly more people than the elite schools, and

1052
00:38:54,250 --> 00:38:57,210
they're relatively unknown. We're the first ranking that

1053
00:38:57,210 --> 00:38:58,809
comes in and say, you know what? By

1054
00:38:58,809 --> 00:39:00,410
our measure, you're the best in the business,

1055
00:39:00,410 --> 00:39:02,410
or you're in the top 5%. Nobody's ever

1056
00:39:02,410 --> 00:39:04,329
told them that before. Nope. And this is

1057
00:39:04,329 --> 00:39:06,344
very empowering. And I I don't mean just

1058
00:39:06,344 --> 00:39:07,005
in a psychological

1059
00:39:07,864 --> 00:39:09,945
sense of feeling good about it. I mean,

1060
00:39:09,945 --> 00:39:12,364
in a power sense. When college

1061
00:39:12,664 --> 00:39:15,484
presidents are hired, the boards, the trustees,

1062
00:39:16,264 --> 00:39:18,045
and the legislatures that oversee

1063
00:39:18,585 --> 00:39:20,410
those colleges are pretty

1064
00:39:20,789 --> 00:39:22,710
clear. We'd like to rise up in The

1065
00:39:22,710 --> 00:39:24,469
US news ranking. Do what you need to

1066
00:39:24,469 --> 00:39:27,430
do. There's even occasions where college presidents got

1067
00:39:27,430 --> 00:39:29,910
bonuses for rising up the ranking. Right? And,

1068
00:39:29,910 --> 00:39:31,989
you know, what that does is it creates

1069
00:39:31,989 --> 00:39:34,469
a terrible cycle where colleges spend more money,

1070
00:39:34,469 --> 00:39:35,210
exclude more people,

1071
00:39:35,565 --> 00:39:36,065
exclude

1072
00:39:36,764 --> 00:39:39,125
more people, build their brands rather than, you

1073
00:39:39,125 --> 00:39:40,605
know, doing right by the the the average

1074
00:39:40,605 --> 00:39:43,484
person. But you can colleges have are learning

1075
00:39:43,484 --> 00:39:45,324
to use our rankings to do the same

1076
00:39:45,324 --> 00:39:47,724
thing. Right? Oh, Washington Monthly says we're the

1077
00:39:47,724 --> 00:39:50,070
fourth best college in California. This was the

1078
00:39:50,150 --> 00:39:51,910
case some years ago with Fresno State, and

1079
00:39:51,910 --> 00:39:54,309
the president told me they use that ranking

1080
00:39:54,309 --> 00:39:56,070
in all of their literature, all of their

1081
00:39:56,070 --> 00:39:58,789
marketing. They go to the legislature. They go

1082
00:39:58,789 --> 00:40:00,630
to the system, and they say, look how

1083
00:40:00,630 --> 00:40:02,949
well we're doing. Right. Give us bigger budget

1084
00:40:02,949 --> 00:40:04,914
or at least don't cut our budget. Right?

1085
00:40:05,295 --> 00:40:06,894
Yeah. And the other thing that he told

1086
00:40:06,894 --> 00:40:09,234
me is they are using their ranking

1087
00:40:09,614 --> 00:40:12,734
to successfully get corporate research dollar into their

1088
00:40:12,734 --> 00:40:14,114
university to successfully

1089
00:40:14,494 --> 00:40:14,994
increase

1090
00:40:15,295 --> 00:40:16,349
corporate recruiting

1091
00:40:16,670 --> 00:40:19,470
for their graduate. Yeah. So, you know, we

1092
00:40:19,470 --> 00:40:21,650
don't have a study. We it's more anecdotal.

1093
00:40:22,349 --> 00:40:24,670
But I think over the years, the brand

1094
00:40:24,670 --> 00:40:28,050
of the Washington Monthly ranking has become one

1095
00:40:28,110 --> 00:40:28,849
that universities

1096
00:40:29,150 --> 00:40:31,664
can use. The universities that are doing right

1097
00:40:31,905 --> 00:40:34,864
by our metrics to advantage themselves, to pull

1098
00:40:34,864 --> 00:40:36,945
ahead, to not have to go do the

1099
00:40:36,945 --> 00:40:39,344
things that get them, you know, higher ranking

1100
00:40:39,344 --> 00:40:41,684
on on The US News ranking. But instead,

1101
00:40:42,304 --> 00:40:44,224
follow a different path and be told that

1102
00:40:44,224 --> 00:40:45,985
path is good and noble and you're a

1103
00:40:45,985 --> 00:40:48,739
success. Absolutely. So my mind goes to a

1104
00:40:48,739 --> 00:40:51,300
bunch of different places. Like, there there seems

1105
00:40:51,300 --> 00:40:52,840
to be a very pragmatic

1106
00:40:53,380 --> 00:40:53,880
application

1107
00:40:54,260 --> 00:40:56,039
to these things, not just

1108
00:40:56,500 --> 00:40:58,360
for students and families, but also

1109
00:40:58,994 --> 00:41:01,494
because we know that we hear about education

1110
00:41:01,554 --> 00:41:02,054
budgets

1111
00:41:02,434 --> 00:41:04,914
all the time. They at the institution where

1112
00:41:04,914 --> 00:41:06,214
I'm doing my PhD,

1113
00:41:06,594 --> 00:41:09,074
tuition is through the roof. It's out of

1114
00:41:09,074 --> 00:41:11,795
control. And, you know, we always hear about

1115
00:41:11,795 --> 00:41:14,319
these larger budget shortfalls, but what you're saying

1116
00:41:14,319 --> 00:41:15,460
is that there's a pragmatic

1117
00:41:16,000 --> 00:41:18,960
understanding that can be gleaned from this work.

1118
00:41:19,280 --> 00:41:21,920
So really quick, elevator pitch. What should families,

1119
00:41:21,920 --> 00:41:23,139
educators, and communities

1120
00:41:23,599 --> 00:41:27,280
take from these rankings? So how would you

1121
00:41:27,280 --> 00:41:28,179
say to somebody

1122
00:41:28,799 --> 00:41:31,094
that says, okay. Okay. I mean, Washington Monthly

1123
00:41:31,094 --> 00:41:33,735
has its rankings and Newsweek has its rankings

1124
00:41:33,735 --> 00:41:35,655
and US News and World Report has its

1125
00:41:35,655 --> 00:41:38,295
ring. They're just like rankings. What should people

1126
00:41:38,295 --> 00:41:40,775
take specifically away from the framework you all

1127
00:41:40,775 --> 00:41:43,369
use? Number one, I don't wanna bad mouth

1128
00:41:43,369 --> 00:41:44,030
all rankings.

1129
00:41:44,410 --> 00:41:47,469
They measure things. Right? They measure real things.

1130
00:41:47,930 --> 00:41:49,710
Look at a bunch of different rankings.

1131
00:41:50,090 --> 00:41:52,410
Inform yourself. It's not gonna hurt. Yeah. And

1132
00:41:52,410 --> 00:41:54,250
I don't I'm I'm, in a sense, not

1133
00:41:54,250 --> 00:41:56,030
bad mouthing elite institutions.

1134
00:41:56,410 --> 00:41:57,789
There's things to criticize,

1135
00:41:58,295 --> 00:41:59,914
but it's our overemphasis,

1136
00:42:00,695 --> 00:42:01,434
our fetishization

1137
00:42:02,535 --> 00:42:03,195
of these

1138
00:42:03,494 --> 00:42:05,575
institutions that's the problem, not the institutions of

1139
00:42:05,575 --> 00:42:07,575
health or less so. Yeah. What they should

1140
00:42:07,575 --> 00:42:09,175
take away is, look, there are great colleges

1141
00:42:09,175 --> 00:42:10,934
all over this country where you can get

1142
00:42:10,934 --> 00:42:13,195
a great education at a reasonable price

1143
00:42:13,519 --> 00:42:15,519
and enter or stay in the middle class

1144
00:42:15,519 --> 00:42:18,179
and maybe even better. You don't have to

1145
00:42:18,719 --> 00:42:21,599
mortgage your soul and move a thousand miles

1146
00:42:21,599 --> 00:42:23,940
away to to get that if you're lucky

1147
00:42:24,480 --> 00:42:25,780
to be near a school

1148
00:42:26,105 --> 00:42:27,784
or in a state that has such schools

1149
00:42:27,944 --> 00:42:30,264
Yeah. There are 1,400 plus colleges on this

1150
00:42:30,264 --> 00:42:32,424
list, and a lot of them are not

1151
00:42:32,424 --> 00:42:34,505
good. So look at the bottom of the

1152
00:42:34,505 --> 00:42:37,625
list and avoid those schools. Pick the ones,

1153
00:42:37,625 --> 00:42:38,904
you know, that are in the on the

1154
00:42:38,904 --> 00:42:41,005
upper half, the upper third, the upper quarter.

1155
00:42:41,090 --> 00:42:43,010
You do that, and you're gonna be fine.

1156
00:42:43,010 --> 00:42:45,570
But also, as you're voting, as you're thinking

1157
00:42:45,570 --> 00:42:48,210
about politics, as you're listening to your, you

1158
00:42:48,210 --> 00:42:49,889
know, elected officials and,

1159
00:42:51,090 --> 00:42:53,409
you know, smart writers and the people talking

1160
00:42:53,409 --> 00:42:55,775
about the future of the country, Think if

1161
00:42:55,775 --> 00:42:57,635
we're gonna right the ship of this country,

1162
00:42:57,695 --> 00:42:59,215
part of it has to be riding the

1163
00:42:59,215 --> 00:43:01,215
ship of higher ed. What is your agenda?

1164
00:43:01,215 --> 00:43:03,555
Because ultimately, we're doing we're a political magazine.

1165
00:43:03,775 --> 00:43:04,275
Ultimately,

1166
00:43:04,655 --> 00:43:08,015
we publish this for a political agenda or

1167
00:43:08,015 --> 00:43:09,394
at least a policy agenda.

1168
00:43:10,089 --> 00:43:13,210
And the policy agenda is more attention, more

1169
00:43:13,210 --> 00:43:13,710
resources,

1170
00:43:14,250 --> 00:43:15,069
more support

1171
00:43:15,690 --> 00:43:16,829
for the schools

1172
00:43:17,609 --> 00:43:19,849
that do the best job with the students

1173
00:43:19,849 --> 00:43:22,329
who need it the most. The average medium,

1174
00:43:22,329 --> 00:43:25,385
middle class, working class, poor student. The rich

1175
00:43:25,385 --> 00:43:26,424
will take care of themselves. You don't have

1176
00:43:26,424 --> 00:43:28,025
to worry about those people. They they're they're

1177
00:43:28,025 --> 00:43:29,164
all locked and loaded.

1178
00:43:29,625 --> 00:43:32,764
Yeah. Stop stop obsessing with them and start

1179
00:43:33,065 --> 00:43:33,565
focusing

1180
00:43:34,184 --> 00:43:36,184
on what matters. I think it's so powerful.

1181
00:43:36,184 --> 00:43:38,139
And what I kinda hear you saying is

1182
00:43:38,139 --> 00:43:41,000
that, you know, rankings rank things. Have your

1183
00:43:41,139 --> 00:43:43,719
eyes open to what is being ranked.

1184
00:43:44,179 --> 00:43:45,159
Do the things

1185
00:43:46,019 --> 00:43:47,559
that this set of rankings

1186
00:43:48,500 --> 00:43:49,000
rank

1187
00:43:49,380 --> 00:43:52,019
align with what you want for yourself or

1188
00:43:52,019 --> 00:43:53,385
for your family? Or

1189
00:43:53,684 --> 00:43:55,765
I'm thinking as a teacher too, for your

1190
00:43:55,765 --> 00:43:56,265
students.

1191
00:43:57,045 --> 00:43:59,204
Yeah. Absolutely. And do they align with I

1192
00:43:59,204 --> 00:44:01,864
hope teachers are gonna use our rankings

1193
00:44:02,244 --> 00:44:04,005
because in a lot of schools, they don't

1194
00:44:04,005 --> 00:44:06,005
have guidance counselors who have a lot of

1195
00:44:06,005 --> 00:44:08,184
time to spend on College Choice.

1196
00:44:08,589 --> 00:44:10,429
A lot of, you know, you the students

1197
00:44:10,429 --> 00:44:11,809
probably where you teach.

1198
00:44:12,109 --> 00:44:13,889
They're not looking at rankings and

1199
00:44:14,589 --> 00:44:15,869
have to do all over the country. They're

1200
00:44:15,869 --> 00:44:17,469
gonna go Or or if they are, they're

1201
00:44:17,469 --> 00:44:19,829
looking at it as a cover story on,

1202
00:44:20,269 --> 00:44:22,964
on a major mainstream publication and not

1203
00:44:23,264 --> 00:44:25,905
really they don't have any idea what what

1204
00:44:25,905 --> 00:44:28,704
goes into those rankings. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And

1205
00:44:28,704 --> 00:44:31,025
so I know Yeah. Yeah. Good consumer. You

1206
00:44:31,025 --> 00:44:33,505
know, if you're gonna, you know, buy a

1207
00:44:33,505 --> 00:44:36,079
a car, you're gonna look at different rankings,

1208
00:44:36,139 --> 00:44:38,319
different reports. Some of them are

1209
00:44:38,699 --> 00:44:40,779
are you know, if if you're clever and

1210
00:44:40,779 --> 00:44:42,539
you look at how they do it, you

1211
00:44:42,539 --> 00:44:45,279
could see that they're tilting toward the manufacturer

1212
00:44:45,500 --> 00:44:48,299
that's paying them. Right. These are these things

1213
00:44:48,299 --> 00:44:49,900
are all worth looking at, but you have

1214
00:44:49,900 --> 00:44:51,094
to have a jeweler's

1215
00:44:51,474 --> 00:44:53,494
eye for the methodology. And,

1216
00:44:54,514 --> 00:44:56,454
you know, I think you can trust ours

1217
00:44:56,675 --> 00:44:58,434
if you're the average person. One of my

1218
00:44:58,434 --> 00:45:00,114
favorite things to think about right now is

1219
00:45:00,114 --> 00:45:02,755
you're saying this is that you all are

1220
00:45:02,755 --> 00:45:04,260
accepting that there's an industry

1221
00:45:04,900 --> 00:45:07,699
around college rankings. But rather than be the

1222
00:45:07,699 --> 00:45:10,340
industry artists, you're operating as artists within the

1223
00:45:10,340 --> 00:45:12,900
industry. And I really love that. In this

1224
00:45:12,900 --> 00:45:15,079
third segment, I wanna kinda transition

1225
00:45:15,539 --> 00:45:17,300
into some things that you've touched on a

1226
00:45:17,300 --> 00:45:20,135
little bit, particularly around politics policy and the

1227
00:45:20,135 --> 00:45:23,175
future of higher education. And by extension, as

1228
00:45:23,175 --> 00:45:25,094
you kinda teased us in the last set

1229
00:45:25,094 --> 00:45:26,235
of, questions,

1230
00:45:26,614 --> 00:45:27,114
democracy.

1231
00:45:27,414 --> 00:45:29,114
There are a lot of us in education

1232
00:45:29,175 --> 00:45:29,914
and who

1233
00:45:30,289 --> 00:45:32,389
have been in policy circles and

1234
00:45:32,690 --> 00:45:33,190
national,

1235
00:45:34,050 --> 00:45:34,550
discussions.

1236
00:45:35,010 --> 00:45:37,170
A lot of conversation around the current sitting

1237
00:45:37,170 --> 00:45:40,050
president, governor DeSantis in Florida with a lot

1238
00:45:40,050 --> 00:45:40,869
of the

1239
00:45:41,170 --> 00:45:44,530
curricular sanctions that have been implemented over the

1240
00:45:44,530 --> 00:45:47,144
last few years, and just a general sort

1241
00:45:47,144 --> 00:45:48,364
of political interference,

1242
00:45:49,144 --> 00:45:51,325
in education. I've seen a lot of it,

1243
00:45:51,864 --> 00:45:53,724
firsthand with colleagues

1244
00:45:54,025 --> 00:45:55,164
trying to navigate

1245
00:45:55,625 --> 00:45:58,679
stuff that might be stigmatized as woke. What's

1246
00:45:58,679 --> 00:46:01,659
the real threat to higher ed by

1247
00:46:01,960 --> 00:46:05,179
this level and this brand of political interference?

1248
00:46:05,800 --> 00:46:08,219
Number one, it diverts attention

1249
00:46:08,519 --> 00:46:10,965
from the real problems in higher education. We

1250
00:46:10,965 --> 00:46:13,765
can have a good battle over whether the

1251
00:46:13,765 --> 00:46:15,224
curricula and the viewpoints

1252
00:46:15,605 --> 00:46:16,505
of the professors

1253
00:46:16,805 --> 00:46:18,805
at this or that college could be better

1254
00:46:18,805 --> 00:46:21,125
or worse. I might have you my view,

1255
00:46:21,125 --> 00:46:22,724
you might have your view. But for the

1256
00:46:22,724 --> 00:46:25,139
history of the country, we've more or less

1257
00:46:25,460 --> 00:46:28,500
let the faculty figure that out. Right? We

1258
00:46:28,500 --> 00:46:30,440
we don't dictate to doctors

1259
00:46:30,900 --> 00:46:33,460
whether that person should have a gallbladder operation

1260
00:46:33,460 --> 00:46:35,779
or not. Right? The government is not in

1261
00:46:35,779 --> 00:46:38,359
the business of doing that. It sets standards.

1262
00:46:38,420 --> 00:46:39,079
It provides

1263
00:46:39,460 --> 00:46:39,960
support.

1264
00:46:40,505 --> 00:46:41,804
It provides tools.

1265
00:46:42,265 --> 00:46:44,344
It doesn't tell doctors how to do their

1266
00:46:44,344 --> 00:46:45,224
jobs. Right.

1267
00:46:45,545 --> 00:46:48,344
You know, one of my favorite examples is

1268
00:46:48,344 --> 00:46:50,344
New College down in Florida. This is the

1269
00:46:50,344 --> 00:46:52,445
first college that governor DeSantis

1270
00:46:52,905 --> 00:46:55,400
took over, cleaned out the board, got rid

1271
00:46:55,400 --> 00:46:56,779
of a bunch of the professors,

1272
00:46:57,319 --> 00:46:59,559
said it was a horrible school, and they

1273
00:46:59,559 --> 00:47:02,059
were gonna make it into a conservative bastion.

1274
00:47:02,679 --> 00:47:04,599
Well, New College is a very progressive place.

1275
00:47:04,599 --> 00:47:06,734
It's like one of these places where everybody's

1276
00:47:06,734 --> 00:47:09,214
got tats and, you know Mhmm. Studs in

1277
00:47:09,214 --> 00:47:12,255
their eyebrows, long hair. Just like Yeah. You

1278
00:47:12,255 --> 00:47:13,454
you know, is that is that kind of

1279
00:47:13,454 --> 00:47:15,855
school? On the beach? Sneakers, T shirts, all

1280
00:47:15,855 --> 00:47:18,494
that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a professors are

1281
00:47:18,494 --> 00:47:21,134
lefties. They are. Yeah. New College produces more

1282
00:47:21,134 --> 00:47:21,634
PhDs

1283
00:47:22,174 --> 00:47:23,829
out of its graduates in just about any

1284
00:47:23,829 --> 00:47:25,829
school in the country. Oh, wow. Their correct

1285
00:47:25,989 --> 00:47:26,730
their curricula

1286
00:47:27,109 --> 00:47:30,010
is actually quite serious. They're studying Machiavelli

1287
00:47:30,309 --> 00:47:33,109
and all the classics as well as global

1288
00:47:33,109 --> 00:47:35,349
warming and other things. The students go on

1289
00:47:35,349 --> 00:47:36,730
and, you know, become

1290
00:47:37,030 --> 00:47:40,394
very successful. It ranked quite highly in our

1291
00:47:40,394 --> 00:47:42,494
ranking. Florida schools do pretty well,

1292
00:47:42,795 --> 00:47:44,414
and it doesn't charge a lot,

1293
00:47:44,795 --> 00:47:46,014
and it has good outcomes.

1294
00:47:46,714 --> 00:47:47,214
So

1295
00:47:47,514 --> 00:47:48,335
governor DeSantis,

1296
00:47:48,714 --> 00:47:50,714
what's your beef? Right. Right? You don't like

1297
00:47:50,714 --> 00:47:52,929
the politics of the professors. That's none of

1298
00:47:52,929 --> 00:47:54,849
your damn business. I mean, you can make

1299
00:47:54,849 --> 00:47:56,449
it your business a free country. I suppose

1300
00:47:56,449 --> 00:47:59,090
you can break all norms and decide that

1301
00:47:59,090 --> 00:48:01,410
what professors teach in the classroom should be

1302
00:48:01,410 --> 00:48:04,710
decided by elected officials. But by the measures

1303
00:48:04,849 --> 00:48:07,014
that matter, New College is doing great. Yeah.

1304
00:48:07,014 --> 00:48:07,514
But,

1305
00:48:07,894 --> 00:48:09,414
you know, Florida is an unusual

1306
00:48:09,894 --> 00:48:12,795
most people don't think Florida great higher education.

1307
00:48:12,855 --> 00:48:13,994
Right? They think Florida

1308
00:48:14,454 --> 00:48:17,335
great spring break. Florida doesn't have any hoity

1309
00:48:17,335 --> 00:48:18,234
toity colleges.

1310
00:48:18,534 --> 00:48:20,695
Right? Doesn't have a Ivy League or Ivy

1311
00:48:20,695 --> 00:48:23,570
League kind of college. What Florida has is

1312
00:48:23,570 --> 00:48:25,090
a whole lot of colleges that don't charge

1313
00:48:25,090 --> 00:48:26,530
a lot of money, don't load up students

1314
00:48:26,530 --> 00:48:28,530
with debt, and that the students go on

1315
00:48:28,530 --> 00:48:30,610
and make decent income. They're really good at

1316
00:48:30,610 --> 00:48:32,210
that. And they're good at that not because

1317
00:48:32,210 --> 00:48:34,050
of Ron DeSantis. They're good at that because

1318
00:48:34,050 --> 00:48:35,670
for about a century,

1319
00:48:35,994 --> 00:48:38,394
but especially over the last fifty years, they've

1320
00:48:38,394 --> 00:48:40,474
put in place public policies to make sure

1321
00:48:40,474 --> 00:48:42,315
that's the case. We have a story by

1322
00:48:42,315 --> 00:48:43,054
an authority,

1323
00:48:43,755 --> 00:48:45,514
who has been part of the Florida higher

1324
00:48:45,514 --> 00:48:48,315
education governance system, Chris Mullen, that walks you

1325
00:48:48,315 --> 00:48:49,534
through how it is Florida

1326
00:48:50,099 --> 00:48:52,180
happens to have so many schools at the

1327
00:48:52,180 --> 00:48:54,180
top of the Washington Monthly ranking, including New

1328
00:48:54,180 --> 00:48:56,260
College. And it's because of they they made

1329
00:48:56,260 --> 00:48:58,180
policy choices. Let me give you an example

1330
00:48:58,180 --> 00:49:00,500
of just one small thing that nobody thinks.

1331
00:49:00,500 --> 00:49:02,519
Thirty, forty years ago, the governing

1332
00:49:03,125 --> 00:49:06,425
system of Florida passed a resolution that said

1333
00:49:06,484 --> 00:49:08,344
every college course

1334
00:49:08,644 --> 00:49:11,864
will have a number, and that college course

1335
00:49:12,005 --> 00:49:14,964
will be the same in every public school

1336
00:49:14,964 --> 00:49:17,010
in Florida. So if you take Oh, wow.

1337
00:49:17,170 --> 00:49:20,210
English one zero one at Miami Dade Community

1338
00:49:20,210 --> 00:49:22,309
College, when you go to University of Florida,

1339
00:49:22,690 --> 00:49:24,690
they're gonna say, oh, you've taken English one

1340
00:49:24,690 --> 00:49:26,449
zero one. It's not gonna stay as a

1341
00:49:26,449 --> 00:49:29,025
lot of universities do. Well, we don't really

1342
00:49:29,025 --> 00:49:30,804
trust that you got the right education.

1343
00:49:31,105 --> 00:49:33,425
Pay us more money to take to retake

1344
00:49:33,425 --> 00:49:35,585
the class. So we can set it right.

1345
00:49:35,585 --> 00:49:38,065
So we can make it right. Yeah. Right?

1346
00:49:38,065 --> 00:49:39,505
Yeah. But and and the board and and

1347
00:49:39,505 --> 00:49:40,644
this very strong

1348
00:49:41,025 --> 00:49:41,525
centralized

1349
00:49:42,420 --> 00:49:45,139
system said no. Universities can't rip students off

1350
00:49:45,139 --> 00:49:47,539
that. Wow. Hundreds of decisions like that so

1351
00:49:47,539 --> 00:49:48,359
that Florida

1352
00:49:48,659 --> 00:49:51,380
doesn't overspend on its education, but it over

1353
00:49:51,380 --> 00:49:53,954
performs. Yeah. Well, it is that centralized system

1354
00:49:54,035 --> 00:49:56,594
that Ron DeSantis is using to change the

1355
00:49:56,594 --> 00:49:58,835
curriculum in the classroom to conform with his

1356
00:49:58,835 --> 00:50:00,835
politics. Right? So it's a double edged sword.

1357
00:50:00,835 --> 00:50:03,235
You need a centralized system, and I believe

1358
00:50:03,235 --> 00:50:05,555
by the state that you wanna keep tuition

1359
00:50:05,555 --> 00:50:08,269
low and quality high, but then a governor

1360
00:50:08,269 --> 00:50:09,550
comes in and can take that system over,

1361
00:50:09,550 --> 00:50:11,409
and that's what's happened in Florida. That's incredible.

1362
00:50:12,030 --> 00:50:13,170
And and so

1363
00:50:13,630 --> 00:50:15,469
so it's it's funny. I it I was

1364
00:50:15,469 --> 00:50:18,030
just thinking about all of these questions that

1365
00:50:18,030 --> 00:50:19,789
need to be asked on a deeper level,

1366
00:50:19,789 --> 00:50:21,550
on an on a more earnest level, in

1367
00:50:21,550 --> 00:50:23,485
my opinion. One of those has to do

1368
00:50:23,485 --> 00:50:26,525
with these radical left politics of professors, and

1369
00:50:26,525 --> 00:50:29,824
people talk about this as if every professor,

1370
00:50:30,204 --> 00:50:32,065
every university is that way.

1371
00:50:32,364 --> 00:50:33,025
As a

1372
00:50:33,565 --> 00:50:35,025
sort of first gen

1373
00:50:35,485 --> 00:50:38,619
Mexican Mexican American student at a major research

1374
00:50:38,619 --> 00:50:39,119
institution,

1375
00:50:39,660 --> 00:50:41,599
that was not my experience of professors.

1376
00:50:41,980 --> 00:50:44,539
There were so many. Even in the liberal

1377
00:50:44,539 --> 00:50:46,380
arts, like people will talk about how well,

1378
00:50:46,380 --> 00:50:48,059
you know, if you're in engineering and business,

1379
00:50:48,059 --> 00:50:50,460
then you get might get more moderate views,

1380
00:50:50,460 --> 00:50:52,244
but if you're in the liberal arts, it's

1381
00:50:52,244 --> 00:50:54,244
just a bunch of radicals and that kind

1382
00:50:54,244 --> 00:50:56,324
of thing. Wasn't my experience in the history

1383
00:50:56,324 --> 00:50:58,644
department at the University of Colorado. It was

1384
00:50:58,644 --> 00:51:01,045
not my experience in some of these other

1385
00:51:01,045 --> 00:51:03,364
areas. And so what that sort of says

1386
00:51:03,364 --> 00:51:06,579
to me is the desperate need we have

1387
00:51:06,579 --> 00:51:08,360
to have a genuine

1388
00:51:08,739 --> 00:51:09,239
conversation

1389
00:51:09,940 --> 00:51:10,440
around

1390
00:51:10,739 --> 00:51:11,960
what people are experiencing

1391
00:51:12,980 --> 00:51:14,199
around higher education

1392
00:51:14,659 --> 00:51:15,719
and how it aligns

1393
00:51:16,260 --> 00:51:18,974
with data. Because what happens to your point

1394
00:51:19,295 --> 00:51:20,755
is any of these institutions

1395
00:51:21,055 --> 00:51:22,035
can be appropriated

1396
00:51:22,575 --> 00:51:24,575
by folks who wanna act in their own,

1397
00:51:24,894 --> 00:51:27,375
political or self interest. One of the other

1398
00:51:27,375 --> 00:51:28,815
things that comes up and by the way,

1399
00:51:28,815 --> 00:51:29,295
everybody,

1400
00:51:30,095 --> 00:51:32,515
the we'll have a link to the Washington

1401
00:51:32,575 --> 00:51:33,075
Monthly

1402
00:51:33,480 --> 00:51:35,320
generally, and then we'll have a link to

1403
00:51:35,320 --> 00:51:37,880
the rankings in the show notes. I will

1404
00:51:37,880 --> 00:51:39,639
also put it on our socials, so you

1405
00:51:39,639 --> 00:51:41,980
gotta check this stuff out, especially

1406
00:51:42,920 --> 00:51:45,559
if you have any connection to higher education.

1407
00:51:45,559 --> 00:51:47,400
And what I hear Paul saying is that

1408
00:51:47,400 --> 00:51:49,114
all of us have a connection to higher

1409
00:51:49,114 --> 00:51:50,574
education because our democracy

1410
00:51:51,114 --> 00:51:53,034
depends on it. One of the things that

1411
00:51:53,034 --> 00:51:54,335
pops up in in,

1412
00:51:54,714 --> 00:51:55,994
some of the work you all have done

1413
00:51:55,994 --> 00:51:57,775
has been around vocational education.

1414
00:51:58,155 --> 00:51:59,375
There are

1415
00:51:59,755 --> 00:52:00,255
truths

1416
00:52:01,019 --> 00:52:03,840
that not every 18 year old is ready

1417
00:52:03,900 --> 00:52:04,640
or wants

1418
00:52:05,099 --> 00:52:07,199
to go to a four year university

1419
00:52:07,500 --> 00:52:08,719
right after graduation.

1420
00:52:09,340 --> 00:52:10,860
And then there are things that kind of

1421
00:52:11,019 --> 00:52:12,960
that have that you all have kind of

1422
00:52:13,194 --> 00:52:14,734
named as political theater.

1423
00:52:15,034 --> 00:52:16,655
Can you help us unpack

1424
00:52:17,034 --> 00:52:19,034
truth versus political theater when it comes to

1425
00:52:19,034 --> 00:52:21,835
vocational education? Sure. It is absolutely the case

1426
00:52:21,835 --> 00:52:23,454
that most people

1427
00:52:23,755 --> 00:52:26,554
don't have or need a four year degree.

1428
00:52:26,554 --> 00:52:27,534
Now most,

1429
00:52:27,835 --> 00:52:30,349
at this point, is not the vast majority.

1430
00:52:30,409 --> 00:52:31,230
Most is

1431
00:52:31,849 --> 00:52:33,449
55, 60%.

1432
00:52:33,449 --> 00:52:36,089
The percentage of people who have four year

1433
00:52:36,089 --> 00:52:38,809
degrees is increasing. Yeah. And it's increasing for

1434
00:52:38,809 --> 00:52:41,069
a reason because the vast majority

1435
00:52:41,369 --> 00:52:43,974
of jobs that pay middle class and above

1436
00:52:43,974 --> 00:52:46,375
wages require a four year degree. We just

1437
00:52:46,454 --> 00:52:48,855
they just that's just the hard facts. But

1438
00:52:48,855 --> 00:52:50,534
we couldn't we won't have we don't have

1439
00:52:50,534 --> 00:52:53,094
places in the economy for everybody to have

1440
00:52:53,094 --> 00:52:55,195
a four year degree, and nor does everybody

1441
00:52:55,414 --> 00:52:57,489
in a position or have the getting degrees

1442
00:52:57,489 --> 00:52:58,530
is a lot of lot of work. A

1443
00:52:58,530 --> 00:52:59,730
lot of people can't do it. Yeah. Don't

1444
00:52:59,730 --> 00:53:02,130
wanna do it. We don't have a very

1445
00:53:02,130 --> 00:53:04,050
good system for that for those folks. In

1446
00:53:04,050 --> 00:53:06,930
other countries, they have much more built out

1447
00:53:06,930 --> 00:53:09,410
apprenticeship program. Mhmm. You know, we we have

1448
00:53:09,410 --> 00:53:11,474
apprenticeship programs in sort of the building trades.

1449
00:53:11,474 --> 00:53:12,994
Right? If you wanna be a carpenter, you

1450
00:53:12,994 --> 00:53:14,375
get selected for an apprenticeship.

1451
00:53:14,835 --> 00:53:16,695
They pay you decent amount,

1452
00:53:17,075 --> 00:53:19,155
but, you know, you start you start sorting

1453
00:53:19,155 --> 00:53:19,894
the nails,

1454
00:53:20,355 --> 00:53:22,994
and five years later, you're a master carpenter.

1455
00:53:22,994 --> 00:53:26,050
It takes a while. Yeah. Big investment. But

1456
00:53:26,110 --> 00:53:28,909
it's college of a sort. Right? Mhmm. There's

1457
00:53:28,909 --> 00:53:30,429
a lot of brains. You gotta be able

1458
00:53:30,429 --> 00:53:32,590
to read a blue blueprint. There's it's not

1459
00:53:32,590 --> 00:53:36,130
like it's pure manual labor to master

1460
00:53:36,534 --> 00:53:39,594
plumbing or electric or HVAC. That stuff's tough,

1461
00:53:39,735 --> 00:53:41,594
and it requires training.

1462
00:53:41,974 --> 00:53:43,894
People say, I don't believe in college. I

1463
00:53:43,894 --> 00:53:46,215
believe in vocational education. Where do you think

1464
00:53:46,215 --> 00:53:48,315
most vocational training happens?

1465
00:53:48,980 --> 00:53:52,519
In college. In colleges. Right? In community colleges.

1466
00:53:52,819 --> 00:53:53,880
Yeah. That's right.

1467
00:53:54,179 --> 00:53:56,599
It's either that or it's for profit colleges.

1468
00:53:56,980 --> 00:53:58,519
For profit vocational colleges.

1469
00:53:58,980 --> 00:54:01,219
So we have done rankings of the best

1470
00:54:01,219 --> 00:54:03,704
and worst vocational programs. And you can go

1471
00:54:03,704 --> 00:54:05,824
to our website, you can Google it. There

1472
00:54:05,824 --> 00:54:08,465
are some very good ones where, you know,

1473
00:54:08,465 --> 00:54:11,284
you know, welding, HVAC, certain,

1474
00:54:11,824 --> 00:54:12,804
medical fields,

1475
00:54:13,184 --> 00:54:14,244
but they require

1476
00:54:15,279 --> 00:54:17,940
a year, two years, sometimes more

1477
00:54:18,319 --> 00:54:18,980
of training.

1478
00:54:19,599 --> 00:54:21,359
They're trying to open that up in Washington

1479
00:54:21,359 --> 00:54:23,599
for short term stuff. Maybe we'll see how

1480
00:54:23,599 --> 00:54:25,279
that works, but but a lot of it

1481
00:54:25,279 --> 00:54:26,099
is terrible.

1482
00:54:26,400 --> 00:54:28,559
A lot of it is just ripping people

1483
00:54:28,559 --> 00:54:30,275
off. They take their money and they give

1484
00:54:30,275 --> 00:54:32,595
them no marketable skills. These people go through

1485
00:54:32,595 --> 00:54:35,795
these programs. They spend $5.10, $15,000

1486
00:54:35,795 --> 00:54:37,555
that are in debt, and they make less

1487
00:54:37,555 --> 00:54:39,155
money at the end of it than they

1488
00:54:39,155 --> 00:54:40,835
have they now gone at all. So we

1489
00:54:40,835 --> 00:54:42,215
have a terrible system.

1490
00:54:43,010 --> 00:54:45,030
You asked about Donald Trump. The Trump administration

1491
00:54:45,170 --> 00:54:47,570
talks a good game about improving the vocational

1492
00:54:47,570 --> 00:54:49,489
system. But if you look at their the

1493
00:54:49,489 --> 00:54:51,889
administration's budget and the big budget bill that

1494
00:54:51,889 --> 00:54:53,809
just passed, the big people, they're cutting that

1495
00:54:53,809 --> 00:54:55,409
stuff. So, you know, it's it's kind of

1496
00:54:55,409 --> 00:54:57,289
a shell game that's going on. On. Does

1497
00:54:57,289 --> 00:55:00,067
it feel like, and I you've done the

1498
00:55:00,067 --> 00:55:02,846
research, I have done less research around this

1499
00:55:02,846 --> 00:55:05,624
area, but sometimes it feels like there's also

1500
00:55:05,624 --> 00:55:08,402
an agenda at work there to sort of

1501
00:55:08,402 --> 00:55:11,181
deploy vocational education as a way of undermining,

1502
00:55:11,528 --> 00:55:13,530
that four year education. I think that I

1503
00:55:13,530 --> 00:55:15,150
think that's fair. And the test

1504
00:55:16,170 --> 00:55:17,390
is if the person

1505
00:55:17,849 --> 00:55:20,650
has power, you know, can vote in the,

1506
00:55:20,650 --> 00:55:21,930
you know, congress as the president of The

1507
00:55:21,930 --> 00:55:23,930
United States, and they say we don't think

1508
00:55:23,930 --> 00:55:26,184
so much about four year degrees. We believe

1509
00:55:26,184 --> 00:55:27,085
vocational education.

1510
00:55:27,464 --> 00:55:30,045
Where's the money? Show me the support. Yeah.

1511
00:55:30,505 --> 00:55:31,005
Yeah.

1512
00:55:31,304 --> 00:55:32,824
I I have some I I would have

1513
00:55:32,824 --> 00:55:35,144
some respect for that position if they back

1514
00:55:35,144 --> 00:55:37,784
it up with real public capital, but they're

1515
00:55:37,784 --> 00:55:39,750
not. They're cutting it. So to me, it

1516
00:55:39,750 --> 00:55:41,510
gives away the game. Right? They're just using

1517
00:55:41,510 --> 00:55:42,809
it as a struggle. Disingenuous.

1518
00:55:43,190 --> 00:55:44,650
Yeah. Because it's politically

1519
00:55:45,190 --> 00:55:48,230
useful because their base is increasingly noncollege educated

1520
00:55:48,230 --> 00:55:49,910
people, who, by the way, want their kids

1521
00:55:49,910 --> 00:55:52,070
to go to college. Right? That's right. That's

1522
00:55:52,070 --> 00:55:54,675
right. Educational training. Right? They're they're not talking

1523
00:55:54,675 --> 00:55:56,675
to their kids. They're screwing their own people.

1524
00:55:56,675 --> 00:55:58,215
They're screwing their own people.

1525
00:55:58,594 --> 00:56:00,994
That's right. That's it's it feels good to

1526
00:56:00,994 --> 00:56:02,215
have that somewhat validated.

1527
00:56:02,594 --> 00:56:04,434
We got a couple more topics I wanna

1528
00:56:04,434 --> 00:56:06,934
get to that you all have covered.

1529
00:56:07,309 --> 00:56:09,550
Student debt. We hear these horror stories all

1530
00:56:09,550 --> 00:56:11,869
over the place. The Biden administration had tried

1531
00:56:11,869 --> 00:56:13,630
a couple of different methods to try to,

1532
00:56:14,109 --> 00:56:16,349
forgive student debt, and we're and there's a

1533
00:56:16,349 --> 00:56:17,710
lot of folks I know who are kind

1534
00:56:17,710 --> 00:56:19,789
of living in this gray area, this kind

1535
00:56:19,789 --> 00:56:20,289
of,

1536
00:56:21,070 --> 00:56:21,570
purgatory

1537
00:56:21,949 --> 00:56:22,449
of,

1538
00:56:22,750 --> 00:56:24,405
am I paying this back? Am I not

1539
00:56:24,405 --> 00:56:26,805
paying it back? How do we get into

1540
00:56:26,805 --> 00:56:28,105
this student

1541
00:56:28,405 --> 00:56:29,224
debt crisis?

1542
00:56:30,085 --> 00:56:30,585
And

1543
00:56:31,125 --> 00:56:31,785
are there

1544
00:56:32,485 --> 00:56:34,105
fixes that are viable

1545
00:56:34,485 --> 00:56:36,664
and that we may see in our lifetime?

1546
00:56:36,965 --> 00:56:38,344
Where I told you earlier

1547
00:56:38,829 --> 00:56:41,069
that the cost of a year at community

1548
00:56:41,069 --> 00:56:42,510
college has nearly doubled and the cost of

1549
00:56:42,510 --> 00:56:44,349
four eighty degrees more than doubled, that's a

1550
00:56:44,349 --> 00:56:46,190
big part of the answer. When I went

1551
00:56:46,190 --> 00:56:48,429
to college back a long time ago, you

1552
00:56:48,429 --> 00:56:50,049
were a little kid if at best,

1553
00:56:50,349 --> 00:56:52,824
in the late seventies, early eighties, College didn't

1554
00:56:52,824 --> 00:56:54,125
cost that much.

1555
00:56:54,425 --> 00:56:57,305
With Pell Grants and some work study and

1556
00:56:57,305 --> 00:56:59,144
some modest loans, you can go to a

1557
00:56:59,144 --> 00:57:01,324
good school. That is not the case.

1558
00:57:01,864 --> 00:57:04,105
Well, for me, even, like, we you you

1559
00:57:04,105 --> 00:57:06,549
mentioned something about starting in the nineties. For

1560
00:57:06,549 --> 00:57:08,230
me, I was in I was doing my

1561
00:57:08,230 --> 00:57:09,750
undergrad in the nineties, and I paid out

1562
00:57:09,750 --> 00:57:10,409
of pocket

1563
00:57:10,789 --> 00:57:13,769
at a four year Research one institution.

1564
00:57:14,389 --> 00:57:15,989
It was 1,500

1565
00:57:15,989 --> 00:57:17,029
to $2,000

1566
00:57:17,029 --> 00:57:17,690
a semester.

1567
00:57:18,150 --> 00:57:18,650
Yep.

1568
00:57:18,984 --> 00:57:20,364
Now it's 15,000

1569
00:57:20,984 --> 00:57:23,244
Yep. You know, on average at a public

1570
00:57:23,385 --> 00:57:25,864
four year school. So that's the big that's

1571
00:57:25,864 --> 00:57:27,545
the big so we we if you're talking

1572
00:57:27,545 --> 00:57:30,764
about state public colleges, right, state governments

1573
00:57:31,289 --> 00:57:33,070
cut funding for higher education

1574
00:57:33,449 --> 00:57:34,750
in times of recession

1575
00:57:35,210 --> 00:57:37,849
and then ratchet it back up in good

1576
00:57:37,849 --> 00:57:38,750
economic times.

1577
00:57:39,449 --> 00:57:41,130
They don't do that to other parts of

1578
00:57:41,130 --> 00:57:43,065
the government. They can't do that to pensions

1579
00:57:43,385 --> 00:57:45,545
or roads. Right? But they can always do

1580
00:57:45,545 --> 00:57:47,385
it to higher ed because higher ed can

1581
00:57:47,385 --> 00:57:49,545
always raise tuition, and students can always go

1582
00:57:49,545 --> 00:57:51,784
out and borrow. Seems to function. But you

1583
00:57:51,784 --> 00:57:53,724
do that over the course of thirty years,

1584
00:57:54,105 --> 00:57:55,545
you get to the situation where we are

1585
00:57:55,545 --> 00:57:57,625
now. And it's punishing. You have students with

1586
00:57:57,625 --> 00:57:59,429
debt that they can't pay back because they

1587
00:57:59,429 --> 00:58:01,750
didn't finish college, or they're paying off their

1588
00:58:01,750 --> 00:58:04,309
debt and not getting married, not buying houses

1589
00:58:04,309 --> 00:58:06,469
because they you know, it's terrible. Power raising

1590
00:58:06,469 --> 00:58:06,969
families,

1591
00:58:07,510 --> 00:58:09,670
all those things. But, you know, I am

1592
00:58:09,670 --> 00:58:11,030
not a fan of the way the Biden

1593
00:58:11,030 --> 00:58:13,445
administration went about doing debt. I think they

1594
00:58:13,445 --> 00:58:15,445
had some good ideas. You know, we've written

1595
00:58:15,445 --> 00:58:17,445
about the one that I thought was actually

1596
00:58:17,445 --> 00:58:19,765
excellent, but they also did some, you know,

1597
00:58:19,765 --> 00:58:21,465
very Rube Goldberg

1598
00:58:21,765 --> 00:58:24,405
schemes that the court said we're gonna not

1599
00:58:24,405 --> 00:58:26,244
gonna accept, and they did them anyway, and

1600
00:58:26,244 --> 00:58:28,289
then the courts knocked them down. And that's

1601
00:58:28,289 --> 00:58:30,469
why people are confused because

1602
00:58:31,090 --> 00:58:32,970
eight different plans, and I don't know Yeah.

1603
00:58:33,090 --> 00:58:34,769
Whether we'll pay this back or not. So

1604
00:58:34,769 --> 00:58:36,289
I think it was very poorly handled. Now

1605
00:58:36,289 --> 00:58:37,670
to kind of the big question,

1606
00:58:38,530 --> 00:58:40,230
what role should colleges play

1607
00:58:40,610 --> 00:58:41,110
in

1608
00:58:41,545 --> 00:58:44,105
democracy building and in civic life? This was

1609
00:58:44,105 --> 00:58:46,445
something you touched on early in our conversation.

1610
00:58:46,744 --> 00:58:48,585
Would love to have you kind of take

1611
00:58:48,585 --> 00:58:49,485
us into

1612
00:58:50,105 --> 00:58:50,605
that.

1613
00:58:51,465 --> 00:58:53,885
I think colleges have to

1614
00:58:55,849 --> 00:58:56,829
be institutions

1615
00:58:58,090 --> 00:58:58,590
that

1616
00:58:59,130 --> 00:59:02,329
are educating students not just for careers, but

1617
00:59:02,329 --> 00:59:03,070
for life,

1618
00:59:03,690 --> 00:59:04,829
life in a democracy.

1619
00:59:06,170 --> 00:59:08,909
Where else are you gonna learn those habits

1620
00:59:10,065 --> 00:59:10,885
of cooperating,

1621
00:59:11,505 --> 00:59:13,684
of serving, of giving back,

1622
00:59:14,144 --> 00:59:15,204
of of

1623
00:59:15,664 --> 00:59:16,164
assessing,

1624
00:59:16,625 --> 00:59:17,844
of being informed?

1625
00:59:18,704 --> 00:59:21,744
Right? Problem solving. Of problem solving. Like, we

1626
00:59:21,744 --> 00:59:24,005
we have lost our ability to solve problems

1627
00:59:24,065 --> 00:59:25,280
in this society

1628
00:59:25,900 --> 00:59:28,059
because what we do is we run to

1629
00:59:28,059 --> 00:59:30,800
our binary corners. We don't have a conversation,

1630
00:59:31,500 --> 00:59:33,519
and we think that pointing out problems

1631
00:59:33,820 --> 00:59:34,320
is

1632
00:59:34,780 --> 00:59:37,440
solving them. Correct. And so we

1633
00:59:38,054 --> 00:59:39,195
encourage colleges

1634
00:59:39,655 --> 00:59:40,155
to

1635
00:59:40,614 --> 00:59:41,835
enhance their roles

1636
00:59:42,214 --> 00:59:42,714
as

1637
00:59:43,094 --> 00:59:44,554
nurturers of democratic

1638
00:59:44,855 --> 00:59:45,355
practice.

1639
00:59:45,655 --> 00:59:48,875
So you get extra points if your college

1640
00:59:49,494 --> 00:59:51,894
makes it easier for students to vote. You

1641
00:59:51,894 --> 00:59:53,034
get extra points

1642
00:59:53,579 --> 00:59:54,480
if your college

1643
00:59:55,500 --> 00:59:56,000
has

1644
00:59:56,380 --> 00:59:58,880
large numbers of students who are on ROTC.

1645
00:59:59,739 --> 01:00:01,680
Right? They're given back to their country.

1646
01:00:02,059 --> 01:00:05,200
If their the college matches the grant

1647
01:00:05,945 --> 01:00:08,184
that AmeriCorps members get when they do their

1648
01:00:08,184 --> 01:00:10,045
civil their public service.

1649
01:00:10,824 --> 01:00:11,885
You get points

1650
01:00:12,585 --> 01:00:14,844
if you are a college that

1651
01:00:15,224 --> 01:00:16,364
students go into

1652
01:00:16,824 --> 01:00:18,204
socially useful fields,

1653
01:00:18,819 --> 01:00:21,079
like teaching, like health care. Universities

1654
01:00:21,699 --> 01:00:24,339
are doing things for the whole country. There

1655
01:00:24,339 --> 01:00:25,239
is a patriotic

1656
01:00:26,260 --> 01:00:27,719
role to the university

1657
01:00:28,579 --> 01:00:29,079
and

1658
01:00:29,380 --> 01:00:29,880
saying,

1659
01:00:30,594 --> 01:00:32,755
here's our you you got a different measure

1660
01:00:32,755 --> 01:00:33,574
of that patriotism?

1661
01:00:33,875 --> 01:00:36,035
I'm I'm all ears. This is our this

1662
01:00:36,035 --> 01:00:37,255
is our combined measure.

1663
01:00:37,795 --> 01:00:38,755
Yeah. It's,

1664
01:00:39,954 --> 01:00:41,795
it's so important. It's so affirming because I

1665
01:00:41,795 --> 01:00:44,090
think what we've seen you know, you you

1666
01:00:44,090 --> 01:00:46,430
keep mentioning this thirty year period

1667
01:00:47,130 --> 01:00:47,630
and

1668
01:00:48,090 --> 01:00:50,250
what it looks like. And I've I've I've

1669
01:00:50,250 --> 01:00:52,489
only ever worked in education. I think working

1670
01:00:52,489 --> 01:00:55,210
in a central office space feels a lot

1671
01:00:55,210 --> 01:00:58,045
more corporate than being in, in a school.

1672
01:00:58,045 --> 01:01:00,285
But one thing I've I've observed is we've

1673
01:01:00,285 --> 01:01:01,265
got this notion

1674
01:01:01,885 --> 01:01:02,385
of

1675
01:01:02,684 --> 01:01:03,184
operational

1676
01:01:04,204 --> 01:01:06,704
skills, right, technical skills.

1677
01:01:07,005 --> 01:01:09,105
But what tends to get lost

1678
01:01:09,485 --> 01:01:11,505
is this, and I wrote this phrase down,

1679
01:01:11,885 --> 01:01:12,385
is

1680
01:01:13,219 --> 01:01:15,880
nurturers of democratic practice. Like, are we producing

1681
01:01:15,940 --> 01:01:16,440
people

1682
01:01:16,739 --> 01:01:18,920
who can be nurturers of democratic

1683
01:01:19,219 --> 01:01:21,460
practice? Like, we have folks who are really

1684
01:01:21,460 --> 01:01:23,400
good at bringing other people together

1685
01:01:23,699 --> 01:01:24,359
and facilitating

1686
01:01:24,819 --> 01:01:25,319
dialogue

1687
01:01:25,619 --> 01:01:27,239
and asking questions,

1688
01:01:27,875 --> 01:01:30,375
but those are never listed in the competencies

1689
01:01:31,074 --> 01:01:31,974
in the workplace.

1690
01:01:32,275 --> 01:01:34,355
And it makes me wonder yeah. You know

1691
01:01:34,355 --> 01:01:36,835
what got us started with these rankings? It's

1692
01:01:36,835 --> 01:01:38,914
because a friend of mine who was involved

1693
01:01:38,914 --> 01:01:40,694
in the national service world

1694
01:01:41,039 --> 01:01:43,440
suggested that we look into work study. Work

1695
01:01:43,440 --> 01:01:45,760
study is a federal program. It's screwed up

1696
01:01:45,760 --> 01:01:46,980
a bunch of different ways.

1697
01:01:47,280 --> 01:01:49,280
Yeah. But it it's got a noble object.

1698
01:01:49,280 --> 01:01:51,679
And in the legislation that was passed in

1699
01:01:51,679 --> 01:01:52,900
the sixties, it said,

1700
01:01:54,135 --> 01:01:54,635
colleges

1701
01:01:54,934 --> 01:01:55,835
are obliged

1702
01:01:56,454 --> 01:01:59,414
without ever giving a number to use this

1703
01:01:59,414 --> 01:01:59,914
money

1704
01:02:00,855 --> 01:02:02,795
in part to provide students

1705
01:02:03,255 --> 01:02:05,675
with chances to do community service, to tutor,

1706
01:02:05,974 --> 01:02:08,239
work at a food kitchen, help build whatever

1707
01:02:08,300 --> 01:02:09,679
whatever community service,

1708
01:02:10,219 --> 01:02:11,360
the problem solving

1709
01:02:11,739 --> 01:02:12,239
democratic

1710
01:02:13,260 --> 01:02:13,760
service

1711
01:02:14,539 --> 01:02:17,360
right? We want this money to help students

1712
01:02:18,300 --> 01:02:19,119
have experience

1713
01:02:20,065 --> 01:02:20,804
in that.

1714
01:02:21,344 --> 01:02:21,844
And

1715
01:02:22,224 --> 01:02:24,304
we we looked, and it's like very few

1716
01:02:24,304 --> 01:02:25,364
colleges put

1717
01:02:25,664 --> 01:02:28,724
much of that federal money into community service.

1718
01:02:28,784 --> 01:02:30,945
Some did a lot. Wow. And so we

1719
01:02:30,945 --> 01:02:31,925
ranked colleges

1720
01:02:32,465 --> 01:02:34,940
based on how what percentage of their work

1721
01:02:34,940 --> 01:02:37,579
study money went to community service jobs. That's

1722
01:02:37,579 --> 01:02:38,940
what gave me the idea. Oh, we could

1723
01:02:38,940 --> 01:02:41,599
do this. That is the nurturing of democratic

1724
01:02:41,739 --> 01:02:42,639
practice. Right?

1725
01:02:42,940 --> 01:02:45,260
I I am gonna devote some of my

1726
01:02:45,260 --> 01:02:48,115
time to helping my this community where I

1727
01:02:48,115 --> 01:02:50,135
happen to be solve some of its problems.

1728
01:02:50,755 --> 01:02:52,135
Yep. And it's compensated,

1729
01:02:52,755 --> 01:02:54,355
and it's so you don't have to, like,

1730
01:02:54,355 --> 01:02:55,954
carve out your It's not just volunteer. Have

1731
01:02:55,954 --> 01:02:57,795
you ever been takes your time. I think

1732
01:02:57,795 --> 01:03:00,130
of these kids who get stuck in a

1733
01:03:00,130 --> 01:03:02,070
file room with no windows

1734
01:03:02,449 --> 01:03:05,190
getting together, like, filing things for the university's

1735
01:03:05,250 --> 01:03:08,050
collections department, and that doesn't sound like it's

1736
01:03:08,050 --> 01:03:09,670
in the spirit of what you're describing.

1737
01:03:10,050 --> 01:03:11,570
Yeah. But it might be it might be

1738
01:03:11,570 --> 01:03:14,095
honest work, but, you know, it's neither giving

1739
01:03:14,095 --> 01:03:17,315
them skills nor doing much for their community.

1740
01:03:17,375 --> 01:03:19,155
That's right. So I wanna kinda

1741
01:03:19,454 --> 01:03:21,295
take us away with with this kind of

1742
01:03:21,375 --> 01:03:22,735
and I had two questions, but I think

1743
01:03:22,735 --> 01:03:24,595
I'm gonna combine them into one.

1744
01:03:25,055 --> 01:03:25,555
So

1745
01:03:25,934 --> 01:03:27,635
folks who are

1746
01:03:28,789 --> 01:03:31,769
facing down this challenge of finding the right

1747
01:03:32,150 --> 01:03:33,609
higher education experience

1748
01:03:34,309 --> 01:03:35,289
after graduation,

1749
01:03:36,550 --> 01:03:39,050
how do you recommend folks start framing

1750
01:03:39,590 --> 01:03:41,449
that conversation with their kids,

1751
01:03:41,829 --> 01:03:45,175
with each other, with the schools, particularly the

1752
01:03:45,175 --> 01:03:47,414
high schools. How do you recommend that that

1753
01:03:47,414 --> 01:03:49,815
process be framed? And if there's any advice

1754
01:03:49,815 --> 01:03:51,255
you would give. So you're you're a you're

1755
01:03:51,255 --> 01:03:52,954
a high school student or you're

1756
01:03:53,335 --> 01:03:55,014
post high school. You're out working and you

1757
01:03:55,014 --> 01:03:56,454
didn't go to college or you took a

1758
01:03:56,454 --> 01:03:58,500
couple of, you know, community college courses, but

1759
01:03:58,500 --> 01:04:01,219
you haven't advanced too much. You're thinking about,

1760
01:04:01,219 --> 01:04:02,840
alright. What's my next step?

1761
01:04:04,019 --> 01:04:05,559
Look. If you've got

1762
01:04:06,500 --> 01:04:07,719
top 5%

1763
01:04:07,860 --> 01:04:10,195
SAT scores, try to get in the most

1764
01:04:10,195 --> 01:04:12,275
selective college you can get into. Sure. That's

1765
01:04:12,275 --> 01:04:13,474
that's good for you. If you can do

1766
01:04:13,474 --> 01:04:15,434
that, you're gonna earn more. You're gonna get

1767
01:04:15,554 --> 01:04:17,315
build a good network. You're gonna get a

1768
01:04:17,315 --> 01:04:19,394
good education. But if you're not that, you

1769
01:04:19,394 --> 01:04:21,155
need to go to college. You wanna go

1770
01:04:21,155 --> 01:04:22,454
to college. You want the education.

1771
01:04:23,000 --> 01:04:24,059
You want the credential.

1772
01:04:24,440 --> 01:04:25,739
You want the entree

1773
01:04:26,280 --> 01:04:28,599
into the career that you're interested in or

1774
01:04:28,599 --> 01:04:30,519
some career that pays well. The good news

1775
01:04:30,519 --> 01:04:32,539
is there are a lot of colleges

1776
01:04:33,000 --> 01:04:34,859
that can deliver that for you

1777
01:04:35,319 --> 01:04:36,940
at a price you can afford

1778
01:04:37,565 --> 01:04:39,905
with a quality you can count, and

1779
01:04:40,204 --> 01:04:43,325
open your eyes to the wide selection that

1780
01:04:43,325 --> 01:04:45,085
we have in this country. And I think

1781
01:04:45,085 --> 01:04:46,925
if you go to our website and you

1782
01:04:46,925 --> 01:04:49,244
look at our rankings, you're gonna see probably

1783
01:04:49,244 --> 01:04:51,325
there's one not too far from you. And

1784
01:04:51,325 --> 01:04:52,684
if you happen to be in a few

1785
01:04:52,684 --> 01:04:55,039
states that do a good job, Florida, California,

1786
01:04:55,099 --> 01:04:56,160
New York, Texas,

1787
01:04:56,539 --> 01:04:59,340
North Carolina, there's a lot of them. And,

1788
01:04:59,820 --> 01:05:01,420
don't look down your nose at them. They

1789
01:05:01,420 --> 01:05:02,559
they they could be

1790
01:05:02,860 --> 01:05:05,180
exactly the right choice for you. That's beautiful.

1791
01:05:05,180 --> 01:05:06,700
And it makes me think of the way

1792
01:05:06,700 --> 01:05:07,440
that we

1793
01:05:07,755 --> 01:05:08,255
define

1794
01:05:08,554 --> 01:05:09,295
a successful

1795
01:05:09,994 --> 01:05:13,994
application process and admissions process into university is

1796
01:05:13,994 --> 01:05:14,734
very much

1797
01:05:15,034 --> 01:05:17,135
colored. I would say it's disproportionately

1798
01:05:17,594 --> 01:05:20,154
colored by this thing that you referred to,

1799
01:05:20,154 --> 01:05:22,699
which is that public ridicule. Like, you're just

1800
01:05:22,699 --> 01:05:23,599
afraid, oh,

1801
01:05:24,139 --> 01:05:26,619
they're going to a community college. Like, if

1802
01:05:26,619 --> 01:05:28,940
we can break that cycle of thought and

1803
01:05:28,940 --> 01:05:30,940
that cycle of dialogue, then the world is

1804
01:05:30,940 --> 01:05:33,039
wide open in terms of your higher education.

1805
01:05:33,234 --> 01:05:35,175
And there's a lot of assumptions that are

1806
01:05:35,315 --> 01:05:35,815
widely

1807
01:05:36,114 --> 01:05:38,534
held, but assumptions are upheld by individuals.

1808
01:05:38,835 --> 01:05:41,714
And how do we kinda critique those? I'll

1809
01:05:41,714 --> 01:05:43,394
ask you one last thing. There have been

1810
01:05:43,394 --> 01:05:45,780
a lot of really powerful critical points made

1811
01:05:45,780 --> 01:05:46,679
in this conversation

1812
01:05:47,059 --> 01:05:49,219
couched within a really nice context of, no,

1813
01:05:49,219 --> 01:05:51,140
there is something there for you. Like, you

1814
01:05:51,140 --> 01:05:53,860
don't have to just take what everybody's telling

1815
01:05:53,860 --> 01:05:55,380
you you have to take. What is it

1816
01:05:55,380 --> 01:05:57,539
that gives you hope about higher ed right

1817
01:05:57,539 --> 01:05:59,000
now? I see some resistance.

1818
01:05:59,385 --> 01:06:02,284
More resistance than the papers are giving credit.

1819
01:06:03,065 --> 01:06:05,385
I think if you get past the politicians

1820
01:06:05,625 --> 01:06:07,945
Yep. Average voters, if they can put their

1821
01:06:07,945 --> 01:06:09,804
politics aside, there's wide

1822
01:06:10,105 --> 01:06:12,425
agreement on the role of colleges, on the

1823
01:06:12,425 --> 01:06:14,605
usefulness of colleges, the desire.

1824
01:06:14,980 --> 01:06:17,079
I think we are moving

1825
01:06:17,460 --> 01:06:17,960
toward

1826
01:06:18,500 --> 01:06:20,820
balancing the ship. We've put a lot of

1827
01:06:20,820 --> 01:06:23,300
money into four year colleges, some money into

1828
01:06:23,300 --> 01:06:26,500
community colleges, very little into vocational. And what

1829
01:06:26,500 --> 01:06:28,340
we have put in has gone to really

1830
01:06:28,340 --> 01:06:30,184
bad colleges, a lot of it. Yeah. I

1831
01:06:30,184 --> 01:06:32,284
think we're moving to a more

1832
01:06:32,585 --> 01:06:33,405
fair system,

1833
01:06:33,784 --> 01:06:35,704
and it's gonna take a lot of time.

1834
01:06:35,704 --> 01:06:37,704
Yeah. It'd be great if both parties could

1835
01:06:37,704 --> 01:06:40,025
agree on it, where regardless of whether you

1836
01:06:40,025 --> 01:06:42,344
go to a four year elite college or

1837
01:06:42,344 --> 01:06:44,500
a six month, two year

1838
01:06:44,880 --> 01:06:46,099
vocational program,

1839
01:06:46,880 --> 01:06:48,659
there's money there for you

1840
01:06:49,280 --> 01:06:52,239
for a quality education that's gonna help you

1841
01:06:52,239 --> 01:06:54,400
get ahead. We are perfectly capable of doing

1842
01:06:54,400 --> 01:06:56,159
that as a country. We're about the only

1843
01:06:56,159 --> 01:06:58,545
country that was doing it for a hundred

1844
01:06:58,545 --> 01:07:00,065
and fifty years. We know how to do

1845
01:07:00,065 --> 01:07:02,065
this. We can do it again, but we

1846
01:07:02,065 --> 01:07:03,264
have to agree on it. We have to

1847
01:07:03,264 --> 01:07:05,025
know what the goal is. And the more

1848
01:07:05,025 --> 01:07:07,184
we focus on Harvard, the more we take

1849
01:07:07,184 --> 01:07:08,625
our eye off the goal. I think it's

1850
01:07:08,625 --> 01:07:10,000
so powerful. It makes me think of the

1851
01:07:10,000 --> 01:07:11,840
data. One of part of my job that

1852
01:07:11,840 --> 01:07:13,300
I was in until very recently

1853
01:07:13,599 --> 01:07:17,039
was to manage federal grants for teacher pathway

1854
01:07:17,039 --> 01:07:19,440
programs that we had. And as we've kinda

1855
01:07:19,440 --> 01:07:21,280
tracked some of the federal grants and some

1856
01:07:21,280 --> 01:07:23,925
of the policy discourse around them, I learned

1857
01:07:23,925 --> 01:07:26,164
that the administration wants to do away with

1858
01:07:26,164 --> 01:07:28,244
everything. Right? They just wanna, like, slam the

1859
01:07:28,244 --> 01:07:30,505
door on all of it. But Congress,

1860
01:07:31,204 --> 01:07:33,125
that's a non starter for Congress. Yeah. That's

1861
01:07:33,125 --> 01:07:33,785
a bipartisan

1862
01:07:34,164 --> 01:07:36,585
set of beliefs. And so as skeptical

1863
01:07:37,125 --> 01:07:37,625
slash

1864
01:07:37,929 --> 01:07:40,010
cynical as I can be at times, that

1865
01:07:40,010 --> 01:07:42,010
is sort of encouraging saying that at the

1866
01:07:42,010 --> 01:07:42,989
end of the day,

1867
01:07:43,449 --> 01:07:44,429
if your constituents

1868
01:07:44,969 --> 01:07:47,070
are not receiving the opportunities

1869
01:07:48,250 --> 01:07:48,750
that

1870
01:07:49,050 --> 01:07:52,010
they need in order to advance and and

1871
01:07:52,010 --> 01:07:53,070
live a good life,

1872
01:07:53,610 --> 01:07:55,825
you're you're gonna pay the price. Yes, sir.

1873
01:07:56,224 --> 01:07:58,065
This is not gonna end well for those

1874
01:07:58,065 --> 01:07:58,724
who are,

1875
01:07:59,265 --> 01:08:01,345
trashing higher ed. It's just not. If they

1876
01:08:01,345 --> 01:08:02,085
cut budgets

1877
01:08:02,945 --> 01:08:05,905
for research as they have for research, for

1878
01:08:05,905 --> 01:08:06,405
training,

1879
01:08:06,704 --> 01:08:08,625
people are gonna feel it. And it they're

1880
01:08:08,625 --> 01:08:08,945
cutting

1881
01:08:09,500 --> 01:08:10,559
obviously, their focus

1882
01:08:11,260 --> 01:08:13,599
is elite schools in blue cities.

1883
01:08:13,980 --> 01:08:14,480
Right.

1884
01:08:14,859 --> 01:08:16,560
Of course. Cutting in Tennessee

1885
01:08:17,260 --> 01:08:18,159
and in Louisiana

1886
01:08:18,699 --> 01:08:19,600
and in Wyoming

1887
01:08:20,219 --> 01:08:21,920
where those grants are

1888
01:08:22,574 --> 01:08:24,354
keeping those places alive

1889
01:08:24,895 --> 01:08:25,395
economically.

1890
01:08:25,774 --> 01:08:28,255
It's life and death in those places. People

1891
01:08:28,255 --> 01:08:30,594
are not gonna react well over time.

1892
01:08:31,135 --> 01:08:32,194
No. At all.

1893
01:08:32,654 --> 01:08:34,594
Paul Glasseris, this has been

1894
01:08:35,000 --> 01:08:38,119
an illuminating conversation for me. I have so

1895
01:08:38,199 --> 01:08:40,520
I've learned so much, and I'm so deeply

1896
01:08:40,520 --> 01:08:42,520
appreciative that you took the time today to

1897
01:08:42,520 --> 01:08:45,560
talk with the audience about higher education, about

1898
01:08:45,560 --> 01:08:46,939
the future of democracy,

1899
01:08:47,984 --> 01:08:50,885
and all of the things. Where can listeners

1900
01:08:51,104 --> 01:08:52,625
find your work? I know we've got, like,

1901
01:08:52,625 --> 01:08:53,764
so we'll have the link

1902
01:08:54,064 --> 01:08:56,944
to Washington Monthly and to the report. Are

1903
01:08:56,944 --> 01:08:58,704
there other places where they can follow the

1904
01:08:58,704 --> 01:09:00,864
work that you and folks like you have

1905
01:09:00,864 --> 01:09:02,960
been doing? Yeah. We're on I still call

1906
01:09:02,960 --> 01:09:03,680
it Twitter.

1907
01:09:04,000 --> 01:09:06,560
We're on Twitter. We're on on Blue Sky.

1908
01:09:06,560 --> 01:09:09,760
We're we've got a YouTube channel with great

1909
01:09:09,760 --> 01:09:10,260
podcasts

1910
01:09:10,560 --> 01:09:12,100
Oh, heck yes. Monthly podcast.

1911
01:09:12,560 --> 01:09:14,659
You can follow me at at Glassgris,

1912
01:09:15,095 --> 01:09:18,074
Twitter and bluesky,washingtonmonthly.com.

1913
01:09:18,135 --> 01:09:19,994
We're all over the place. Just Google us.

1914
01:09:20,614 --> 01:09:22,715
Alright. Well, thank you. Incredible.

1915
01:09:23,814 --> 01:09:24,215
Thank you,

1916
01:09:25,095 --> 01:09:27,914
incredible conversation. Great job of asking questions, and,

1917
01:09:28,570 --> 01:09:30,489
I I don't normally get this kind of

1918
01:09:30,489 --> 01:09:30,989
time

1919
01:09:31,530 --> 01:09:33,610
to really get the full story, and I

1920
01:09:33,610 --> 01:09:35,770
appreciate you giving me this time. No. I

1921
01:09:35,770 --> 01:09:37,449
appreciate it. I'm I'm here for all of

1922
01:09:37,449 --> 01:09:39,369
it. I know my audience really loves to

1923
01:09:39,369 --> 01:09:39,869
hear

1924
01:09:40,275 --> 01:09:42,515
the depth and the research and the the

1925
01:09:42,515 --> 01:09:44,354
details around these things because I think it's

1926
01:09:44,354 --> 01:09:46,914
easy to feel really hopeless in these times.

1927
01:09:46,914 --> 01:09:49,175
And Yes. You know, what you have given

1928
01:09:49,314 --> 01:09:51,574
me and I believe our audience

1929
01:09:51,954 --> 01:09:53,395
is a lot of things to be hopeful

1930
01:09:53,395 --> 01:09:55,939
and not not naive hope. Like, oh, it's

1931
01:09:55,939 --> 01:09:57,860
all gonna be okay, but concrete things that

1932
01:09:57,860 --> 01:10:00,020
we can work towards. And I find that

1933
01:10:00,020 --> 01:10:02,820
really inspirational. So I apologize, Lana. Thank you

1934
01:10:02,820 --> 01:10:04,680
for, remixing this conversation,

1935
01:10:05,060 --> 01:10:06,360
Andre's Power and Education.

1936
01:10:07,220 --> 01:10:09,525
The layer that you have added here is

1937
01:10:09,525 --> 01:10:10,025
something

1938
01:10:10,565 --> 01:10:12,485
that that I think is just gonna be

1939
01:10:12,485 --> 01:10:13,145
so powerful.

1940
01:10:13,685 --> 01:10:15,765
We'll get this out and spread it more,

1941
01:10:15,765 --> 01:10:18,164
like, as as wide as we can. And,

1942
01:10:18,645 --> 01:10:20,085
we'll just have a for taking a call

1943
01:10:20,085 --> 01:10:22,380
with us today. Okay. Thank you, buddy.

1944
01:10:23,260 --> 01:10:24,319
Stay dope, y'all.