Read the full transcript here
Erin Hennesy:
Hello and welcome to the Trusted Voices Podcast. I’m Erin Hennessy alongside Teresa Valerio Parrot and in each episode we discuss the latest news and biggest issues facing higher ed leaders through a communications lens. For these conversations, we’ll be joined by a guest who will share their own experiences and perspectives.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Trusted Voices Podcast. This is one that I think is going to be chock full of really interesting points. Teresa, I forgot to tell you, I was talking to a mutual friend of ours the other day, and they told me they were going to listen to the podcast episode that we most recently dropped a second time because there was just so much good stuff in it. So I’m not going to shout that person out, but she knows who she is, and we appreciate her very, very much.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
And on that, yeah, on that appreciation front, I just want to also thank those who have been sharing because we’ve had some really good tags on social media and people who have been putting this into their own feeds just to say how much they appreciate the conversations that we’re having. So thank you to all of those people. We’re doing our best to make sure that we respond to those. So please feel free, tag us, and let us know what you think.
Erin Hennessy:
Yes, and thank you as always for spending a little bit of time, particularly at this time of the semester, decompressing or doing some professional development or some commiseration with us here.
With all of that said, let’s jump into the many things we have to talk about this week. I wanted to share a clip. And Teresa, I think I told you this story. I talked last week with a guy I have been friends with since admitted student days, the senior year of high school, when I was just about to finalize my decision on where I was going to go to college. And we sat across the table from one another and went through college together and are still friends 33 years later. And he has a daughter who is just coming around the final bend of her college search. And I know you get calls like this too, but he reached out and said, my wife and I would love if we could just get on the phone and ask you some questions. So we scheduled a Zoom and really what he wanted to ask was about a specific school. He had done some Googling and some reading and saw that perhaps there were some challenges in this school’s path and there were maybe some potholes and some bumps and he wanted…
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
What kind of challenges, Erin?
Erin Hennessy:
Financial. Financial challenges, although you know, some leadership issues. But often as we know, these things are two ways of saying the same thing. And so I, being the person that I am, went instantly to the Department of Ed website and looked at the college navigator. And then I did myself even further and pulled up the financial responsibility score for this institution and took a very deep breath and a very long exhale.
And got on the phone and had a conversation and said, here’s what I think and all the caveats and I don’t know what’s going on, but. This is sort of my take on whether or not, in short, the question is whether or not this institution will be around in four years. And I said, you know, I can send you all these spreadsheets. I downloaded them. And he said, no, thank you very much. I just, I wanted the high level. And so I was thrilled to see this piece run in the Chronicle just two days after I had that conversation written by Scott Carlson.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Scott is listening to your conversations, Erin.
Erin Hennessy:
Yes, he is apparently, which is weird. The title of the piece is “Why It Can Be So Difficult to Gauge a College’s Financial Health.” And I think this is such an important piece. It is not written for a parental audience. It is written really for a faculty audience. But it just sort of gives you this sense of for quote-unquote “laypeople” who aren’t in this all day every day who do other important things with their lives, how hard it can be to make these decisions around, Is this institution gonna be there for four years? Is my kid gonna have to transfer?
There was also a piece last week or the week before about students who were at an institution in West Virginia that was closing, they transferred to another institution, and that institution then closed on them. And that’s just a nightmare scenario for students. So, I thought this piece was great. I would love for there to be a companion version of this piece that is written for parents.
But I thought it was really interesting because we talk so often about faculty being blindsided by financial issues on their own campus. And we all sort of blame leadership and say, oh gosh, you aren’t communicating enough.
And I feel like this piece is a really important part of the puzzle that says it’s really hard, even for those of us in the business, to have a good sense at any given time of what an institution’s financial position is. So as always, we’ll include links in the show notes, encourage you to read this piece and share it with lay audiences and not lay audiences. And I just think it’s a really helpful piece that we’ll be sharing with clients and with others moving forward.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
And I would say, I think that you’re spot on, that we get that question quite a bit. We get that from internal audiences, by the way, from faculty and staff as well. How do you think we’re doing?
Erin Hennessy:
Yeah.
Yeah, what have you heard?
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
And, exactly, and how are you analyzing what you have available to you? And what I do like about this piece, and as you described your process of sharing with your friend, is that there is data out there. There’s a couple of caveats to that. It’s a couple of years behind, right?
So we’re really saying this is a snapshot in the past and we’re making assumptions that trajectory is very similar to today. And that’s what’s really, really difficult.
I had a colleague in my doctoral program whose daughter was being recruited for an athletic scholarship. And some of the institutions that were recruiting her, I suggested that he do some due diligence because I was very concerned. Would she be able to transfer if she needed to because the institution wouldn’t be there?
And there’s this great book that I read a number of years ago, the Book of Isaiah, and it’s about a student who gets trapped in that campus closure situation. What happens to that student? How do they end up in that spot and then what happens to them? And the reality is you and I have worked with some of those campuses, some that have been able to create the runway for the students to depart gracefully, some not, we’ve talked about that before.
But I think the reality is how can we continue to not just think of that fiduciary responsibility, and maybe I would just say fiduciary awareness, as being something that we only want our board to be thinking about, but instead, our campuses writ large. Have a fiduciary awareness for your own institution as well so that you can be making decisions about whether it’s education, employment, advancement, whatever it might be, because it’s not just students that find themselves trapped.
Erin Hennessy:
Yeah, absolutely. The other piece that I wanted to share at the top of our conversation here is more of just a note for everybody’s day planner that sometime in mid-April, weirdly the coverage hasn’t yet included the exact date, but sometime in mid-April, we are expecting the relatively new president of Columbia University in New York, she assumed office last summer, as well as two members of her board of trustees to appear before the House Committee, whose last hearing on campus antisemitism led to the resignation of two out of three of the witnesses, that being the presidents of Harvard and Penn. This is going to be appointment viewing, I think for most people in higher ed.
The president of Columbia was, I would say lucky for her, out of the country for the last hearing. And is now going to have the opportunity to be in front of the committee with her, two of her bosses essentially, and I’m just fascinated to see what the strategy appears to be on the part of the House Committee for including the two trustees. I have my guesses, but it’ll be interesting to see it play out. And it’ll be interesting to see what lessons the President of Columbia has taken from her colleague’s prior appearance, and how we can see that those differences in prep that I am assuming are going to appear in this outing. So we shall see what happens, but join me in tuning into C-SPAN, which is today celebrating its 45th birthday.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Happy birthday, C-SPAN.
Erin Hennessy:
Happy birthday, C-SPAN. So yeah, I’m just, I’m fascinated to see what that hearing is going to look like if members of the House are feeling emboldened. I am guessing that some of them are by their “success” in getting two out of three of the previous presidents to step down. It’s just gonna be really interesting hearing.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
And going back to a conversation that we had with someone on a campus last week, a senior vice chancellor, she was talking about the fact that as she watched the testimony from the three presidents, she thought about us.
Erin Hennessy:
What a compliment.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
And she thought, she thought, what would Teresa say? Because the way that she framed it is, it was clear to her and to her president who brought this to her attention, that the presidents had been prepped by lawyers, not by communicators.
And so I thought it was fascinating that our ears should have been burning on that day because there were conversations about what would we have done? And I’ll be curious to see if the Columbia president has had that kind of reflection because I can guarantee she has.
Erin Hennessy:
I myself would be out of the country for months, months and months and months.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Yes, I would just not come back.
Higher Voltage Ad Read
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
I have a C-SPAN story. This involves both of us. There was, at one point, I was in a hearing. Do you remember this? And I was texting with you, and I said, I’m on C-SPAN. You were watching it. And I started waving, and then I started making faces, and then you got to see me on C-SPAN get pulled from the audience of that hearing for being inappropriate in that setting. So, my only C-SPAN experience, and it is a we experience, Erin.
Erin Hennessy:
All the best ones are. All the best ones are.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
So, to everybody, do not wave to your colleagues at home if you ever find yourself in the audience for a C-SPAN event.
Erin Hennessy:
What’s the line? Act like you’ve been here before.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
I don’t know that line. That’s very, very clear.
So I’m gonna shift to another conversation and that is a piece that was recently in the Cap Times and then was in Inside Higher Ed. And that is about the University of Wisconsin-Madison planning a marketing push, they just issued an RFP, to counter elitist perceptions in the state. I thought this was interesting because we’ve had this conversation, the two of us, many, many times.
What would a campaign look like if we could start to have a campaign to push back on what perceptions are of us and what we actually do? So moving away from elitist and leftist labels, but instead talking about impact for a state. So the way that the University of Wisconsin-Madison is framing this is that they want to make sure that they are talking about the value of higher education for all institutions across the state, the value to the citizens in the state.
And what they want to have happen is to have some of that also read and appreciated hopefully by their state legislature as well. And my hope is this becomes a model for other states to be thinking about how do you raise that tide? How do we think about the language that we’re using? How do we start to push back on some of these perceptions that we have and how do we start to move away from an us versus them mentality for higher education. And I know we’ll get into that with Brandon, but I thought that this was an interesting approach. I know the devil’s always in the details, but in this case, I’m really interested in those details.
Erin Hennessy:
Yeah, and it’s fascinating to see this RFP come out and, you know, we can dig into where the money is coming from and…
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Not public sources. They’re very clear with that.
Erin Hennessy:
Right, because the relationship between the university and the state government hasn’t always been one where they would necessarily support this kind of expenditure. So it’ll be interesting to see how this all unfolds.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
But let me push back on that for a second, because…
Erin Hennessy:
Go ahead.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Here’s what I think is interesting. When we normally see the pushback, it’s because this is in a marketing and communications frame. If we’re talking about lobbying, nobody seems to mind if this kind of effort is undertaken by lobbyists. This isn’t a new thing per se, it’s how they’re going about it that’s different. And that’s what I think is fascinating, is that we’re shifting how our tactics are being employed, the strategy of communicating who and what we are and what we do still has some similarities, but if it’s a lobbying effort, people think of it differently than they do a marketing and communications effort, and I think that’s fascinating.
Erin Hennessy:
Hmm. Okay. We’ll fight about that one offline.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Okay. So I was gonna take this one step further, and the second article that I want to raise and I think we can discuss these together is that I shared a piece from The New Yorker, and here is how they described it. “Have the liberal arts gone conservative? The classical education movement seeks to fundamentally reorient schooling in America. Its emphasis on morality and civics has also primed it for partisan takeover.” So I think this is, yes.
Erin Hennessy:
This is just your attempt to shame me for being so far behind on my New Yorkers that I didn’t even know this article was out there.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
You’re welcome. I am just going to, first of all, it came out yesterday. I am just gonna go ahead and just use my tote today in everything that I do so that you know that I have read the latest episode. Latest edition, latest whatever it is.
Because I think this is what I want us to be talking about. We get so caught up in our own words to describe what it is that we provide. And I feel as if that political difference in language has some breadcrumbs for us to be thinking about. And I think that we have organizations, both in higher education and outside of higher education, that are telling us that it’s not necessarily the liberal arts that really is the rub. It’s how people are perceiving what they think the liberal arts are versus maybe something like a civics- or classics-based education.
So maybe we should be looking at some of our language. And more importantly, we should be looking at the language that others are using.
Erin Hennessy:
Yeah, I mean, I’m fascinated to read the article in about four years when I get to that point in the pile. And I’m interested, you know, just to sort of lean in on that example that you raised, like when we talk about the classics, they’re very real and very, I think accurate criticisms that, you know, the classics represent an outdated view of the world and, you know, privileged, white, European, men.
And so at this time when we’re sort of battling against political forces that want to strip out funding for DEI and strip out diversity statements and strip out “wokeness” from our classrooms and how we navigate changing our vocabulary, shifting our vocabulary to be more palatable to the full political spectrum. I’m not saying you’re suggesting that we like just sort of smoke and mirrors and don’t look at this over here, but sort of how we continue to live the values that higher ed, you know, holds at its center, diversity and those kinds of things, while shifting language to appeal to a different political group. It’s a lot.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
It’s a lot. Well.
Erin Hennessy:
And you and I know it’s all going to land on the desk of communicators to figure out how to do it. And that’s when all of our heads explode.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Well, and that’s, I think there’s a couple of resources. Read the article because they go into that. There is a real reason why that civics education is something that’s being encouraged, right? What is the motivation and the rationale for that? And they definitely talk about where we are in how we talk about diversity, whether it’s valued or it’s not.
And I would point to, I know I’ve mentioned him before, but my colleague and friend Ray Day and the data that he is polling these days. He is very much polling on how do people perceive different words? How do they perceive different titles?
So are there ways for us to not be talking about DEI, because DEI is a phrase, is something that’s a lightning rod, but instead, what are some of the foundations behind it? And it’s such a fine line that you have to walk between political and polarizing. So what is that razor’s edge? And that’s really where they’re trying to narrow that data collection to give us a better sense of where we are as a society and how people are thinking about, not just the language we use, but the values that we’re also describing associated with that language.
Erin Hennessy:
Okay, you’ve convinced me, I will dig it out. I will read it on the plane tomorrow. And, you know, all of those things I think are just going to be amped up and amped up and amped up over the next, what is it, eight months until our presidential election. It’ll be fascinating to watch how that unfolds.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
I wish that we would have done an episode in January. Oh wait, we did, where we talked about exactly this. So, I would encourage everybody to go back to the episode from January, where we talk about our New Year’s resolutions, or what we think you should have on your radar screens, because this ties back into that. And really it’s a preview for what I think will be included in our conversation with Brandon as well.
Erin Hennessy:
Yes, agreed.
Musical Interlude
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
It is my honor to welcome Brandon Busteed to Trusted Voices. Brandon writes at the intersection of learning and work. He is the CEO of BrandEd and was formerly the chief partnership officer and global head of Learn Work Innovation at Kaplan and executive director of education and workforce development at Gallup. He’s always very clear to say on all of his platforms that views are his own. So, I’ll put that out there.
I want to add to his bio by saying Brandon is an internationally known speaker and author on education and workforce development. He’s published more than 100 articles and keynoted more than 200 conferences. He was named a LinkedIn top voice in education and is a frequent contributor for Forbes.com. Brandon received his bachelor’s degree in public policy from Duke University, where he was a two sport division one athlete. He received an honorary doctorate from Augustana College, and he is a trustee emeritus of Duke and has served on the board of visitors of the Sanford School of Public Policy. Brandon, welcome.
Brandon Busteed:
It’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you for the invitation. And it’s always uncomfortable to have your bio read, but thank you very much for that anyhow.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
No problem. It’s always like, where do you look, right? Somebody’s talking about your bio. Do you look, well, where do you look? So, here is my first question than I promise we’ll get into real questions. Knowing that this is gonna come out in about a week, I want us to go ahead and memorialize who we think is going to win March Madness, men’s and women’s, and then we’ll talk about your expertise. But Brandon, I’ll let you go first.
Brandon Busteed:
Well, there’s a difference between who I think is going to win and who I’m rooting for, so I’m just going to put that out there.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Yes.
Brandon Busteed:
So as a Duke graduate, of course, I have to root for both the men’s and women’s Blue Devil teams. But I’m rooting for one of my good friend’s Duquesne Dukes. That’s not too far astray from Duke. Right? The Duquesne Dukes, they just got their first NCAA tournament bid in 47 years. He’s 47. So his entire life, he’s never seen the Dukes. He was on TV at the win when they won the A-10. So, I’m rooting Duquesne Dukes and Duke University Blue Devils.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
That’s great. And our colleagues at Duquesne are over the moon. They are dancing right now. They are so happy. So I love that choice.
Erin, what are you thinking?
Erin Hennessy:
I am always less interested when my Villanova men’s basketball team is nowhere near the bracket, and we’re still in a rebuilding process after being…
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Sounds like a fan.
Erin Hennessy:
Yeah, absolutely. After adjusting to the post-Jay Wright era, he remains the coach of my heart and, I believe, still the finest dressed man in collegiate athletics. I am rooting, however, for one of our clients who, you know second tournament appearance in three years. They are a 16 seed, but I like nothing better than an underdog story. So, my heart is with the Longwood Lancers for as long as they are in the bracket, and after that then I’ll just sort of pick whoever my nephew tells me I should be rooting for. And for the women, it’s Caitlin Clark all the way.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
So Erin and I have been going back and forth on this because my choice is going up against her choice in the very first game. So I’m going with Houston. I have to tell you, I just think I’m choosing it because I think that is just an institution that is one for us to watch right now. And for that reason, I’m gonna go ahead and double down on their intercollegiate athletics as well. And I was telling her, we have Clyde the Glide, we Houston have.
Erin Hennessy:
We? Interesting. We?
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Clyde, the glide that we’re gonna pull out, and Hakeem Olajuwon, and with both of them behind Houston, I don’t know how they lose. So with that, I’m gonna also say that I also am an Iowa fan and a Caitlin Clark fan with my head, but my heart is with my CU Buffs. So they are a fifth seed, and my fingers are crossed that they make it far this year. Brandon, what do you think on the women’s side?
Brandon Busteed:
Well, look, I think Iowa is definitely the nation’s fan favorite. You know, we’ve watched a fair number of the Iowa games here just because my daughter plays basketball and she’s a huge Caitlin Clark fan. It’s hard not to root for that team. It’s hard not to root for her. So sure, I’ll throw my hat into the appropriate bandwagon of Iowa and Caitlin Clark.
But again, I’m gonna, I’m gonna have to say my Duke Blue Devils I don’t know if you saw the coaches speech that went viral a couple weeks ago. But if folks haven’t checked out the women’s basketball coach at Duke, just check it out on YouTube, and she gave a phenomenal speech about making harder something that we just get used to so just put in a plug for that one.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
I love that we’re talking about women’s sports and we have teams that we’re rooting for and we can talk about players and this has a different kind of meaning and excitement this year. So that makes my heart happy.
Brandon Busteed:
Yeah, for sure.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
So with that, I’ll launch into questions. And I want to start by saying, Brandon, we’ve known each other for well over a decade, maybe two decades. And we’ve heard each other present about the state of the industry and opportunities and threats that are on the horizon and how leaders should be thinking and planning for the future. I’m curious how your positions have changed over that timeline and over your career and which forces have caused them to change. Or, if they haven’t changed, why has your advice stayed the same?
Brandon Busteed:
It’s a good question. I could probably give a different version of that answer, depending on a couple different tracks of thinking. But I’ll say I’m probably on the side of I’ve been more consistent over at least the last decade than hopping on different tracks or feeling like the things I’ve been advocating for really need to be fundamentally adjusted.
And so a lot of this goes back to one of the signature projects I was involved in when I was at Gallup, which was the Gallup Purdue Index study. Still to this day, by far the largest representative study of college graduates in U.S. history, looking at their long-term outcomes on multiple dimensions. This wasn’t just about how much money they make, but it was the degree to which they were engaged in their work, whatever that work was. The degree to which they were thriving in their wellbeing across multiple dimensions of wellbeing, and trying to look at the relationship between those long-term outcomes and the kinds of experiences that they had or didn’t have during college.
And so, Teresa, the big outcome from that study was that when you look at what I’ll call the magic of college, what really makes college work when it works, there’s just a handful of key ingredients, and these are consistent across generations of college graduates and they’re really in two buckets.
Having a relationship-rich experience. So those would be things like including I had a mentor who encouraged my goals and dreams, right? I had a professor who made me excited about learning. The professors of my alma mater cared about me as a person. So relationship-rich education.
And the other category was what we defined as work-integrated. So, this was not just did I have a paid job during college, but more importantly, did I have a job or an internship where I was able to connect what I was learning in the classroom. There was some connection between the working and learning. And fundamentally, I’ve been on that bandwagon for a long time.
Really, to me, it’s about the fundamentals, making sure that we’re delivering on the fundamentals of a high quality great education. And that’s found in the relationship-rich elements and the work-integrated elements. And then when you step back and you look at the headwinds that have been facing higher education over this timeframe, there’s real doubts about the work readiness of graduates. At the same time that price tag has gone up, student loan debt has gone up, which has forced this return on investment calculation that a lot of families and prospective students are doing and really what it comes back down to is relevance, right?
So if I were gonna take all that and say what’s the most important thing we need to focus on is ensuring that when students touch this thing called college that they feel it’s relevant, right? When you look back on the experience of it, that you see that it was relevant, relevant to your work, relevant to your day-to-day life. And I think we’ve lost track of that focus on relevance. We’ve lost track of the fundamentals around relationship-rich learning and work-integrated learning.
And so that’s largely where I’ve spent most of my time advocating, writing, speaking is really pushing around those fundamental things. Certainly technology has been a backdrop of that, but I think that’s been more of the side dish as opposed to the full on strategy, if you will.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
So as we’re talking about this, I’m curious, because you’re talking about relationships, you’re talking about application, you’re talking about relevance. So really, it’s the what’s in it for me. How is it that we’re so off on telling what people want to hear about as we think about the ways in which we discuss higher education?
Brandon Busteed:
Well, look, first of all, and I know you guys know this well, we’re not clear on terms and terminology. And there’s a real disconnect between some of the language that we often use inside of the higher education field and vernacular versus what, for example, business leaders might describe. I’ll never forget some of the focus groups I was involved with during my time at Gallup, we were asking what people were looking for in a recent graduate. And there was great consistency between academics and business leaders, for example, where most of them would say, well, we want somebody who is a critical thinker, right?
But then when you started to dig under the hood of that definition and said, well, what do you mean by that? The emerging words and descriptions were actually pretty different between business leaders and hiring managers and faculty and other academics and that definition. So although that was an area where we actually agreed on critical thinking, our definitions of that were actually really different. And so even where we agree on words, we’ve got some inconsistencies in terms of what we mean.
But I think fundamentally, we have this kind of silly debate going on inside the academy of the purpose of college, that it’s to make somebody broadly educated, we think about the liberal arts and the humanities underneath that, or that they’re vocationally trained or skilled as if these things are mutually exclusive. And I think that at the core is what’s really killing us right now, is that we’ve treated those things as different ends of a spectrum or mutually exclusive, when at the end of the day, what managers, hiring managers of all types of organizations for-profit, nonprofit, government are looking for most is both a broadly educated student who’s also specifically skilled in certain ways. And these aren’t, again, they’re not mutually exclusive, but we’ve kind of treated it that way.
So we’re using different words, words that don’t quite translate, and I’ll just use this example because I bring it up all the time. I just moved off the board of AAC&U. AAC&U of course is an organization that has long advocated for the value of the liberal arts in higher ed, but I’ve been very outspoken in saying that the words “liberal arts” as a descriptor are a horrible branding combination, if you think about the general public in the United States, because too many people think liberal and they think politically liberal. And then if you think about, “oh, path to a good job,” right? Arts doesn’t necessarily come to the top of the list. So when you put “liberal arts” together the way it is received as a branding or marketing message, it falls flat for far too many people.
So it’s a mix of stuff going on there, but I think we’ve really been disconnected from the language we like to use in the academy and the words and things that are resonating for students. And then I’ll say, that’s kind of in the perception bucket, right? We’ve got misperceptions or words that aren’t clearly understood or terminology isn’t.
But the other side of it is like, we are actually falling down on the scalability of the things I mentioned, right? Relationship-rich and work-integrated. There’s examples of it everywhere, but if you look at the national data, less than a third of all college graduates in the United States hit the mark on having an internship where they were able to apply what they were learning in the classroom. So in other words, two thirds of graduates are not hitting the mark. And on that precious one of having had a mentor who encouraged their goals and dreams, only two out of 10 college graduates hit the mark on that one.
So it’s not that it’s not happening. Our issue is that we are failing to scale it. I think we’re failing to scale it because we have not truly made those things intentional. You know, that’s the other part of the reality side of the equation where we actually are under delivering in some very fundamental ways.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Well, let me ask just an extension of what you’re talking about and for a further definition. Because you’ve generated data that shows that we’re underestimating the desire for on-the-job training, licensure programs, and professional certificates. Can you tell me more about how you’re thinking about and advocating for shorter pathways, as you describe them?
Brandon Busteed:
Yeah, I mean, in part it is shorter pathways because, if you’re thinking about an industry-recognized credential, and there’s many of them, most of those are far shorter than a four-year or six-year bachelor’s degree experience depending on what clock you’re counting there. And the reality is, again, this is another one of those areas where I think people think it’s a mutually exclusive path. Right? Either I get a bachelor’s degree or I get an industry-recognized credential.
More and more what we’re seeing are students who are combining the two. They may be getting a bachelor’s degree, but they’re getting an AWS certification, or they’re getting a Google IT cert., or they’re getting a financial services designation, like the SIE or whatever it might be. And so, I’m a huge advocate of that, of blending the bachelor’s degree experience with specific skill and industry credentials.
But the reality is if you look at the enrollments in higher ed, right? I mean, the last roughly 12 to 13 years, we’ve had declining enrollments in degree-seeking programs in US higher education, right? So the degree is really what’s on the decline. But in the last several years, the spikes in enrollments where we have seen growth in higher ed has been in short form educational offerings, whether those are certificates, industry credentials, right, certain things that would fall under that bucket.
And so look, here’s the good news. There’s evidence that higher ed institutions are growing by providing shorter form educational offerings, right, in addition to degrees. And so I think if you’re an institution that sees your role only in the business of providing degrees, I think you’re limiting the potential of the institution. You’re also limiting the type of students that are going to come to you because more and more are looking for this blend of opportunities, right?
And look, there have been examples in the early days, institutions that started to offer industry credentials early on in a student’s career as a way to build student efficacy towards completing a degree. And if you think about it, you know, if you finish freshman year or a sophomore year and you leave and don’t have the credits to graduate, you really get nothing from that.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Just debt, possibly.
Brandon Busteed:
It’s not like you’d get a certificate for completing one year of college, right? But I complete an industry credential, a Google IT cert, right? That’s at least, you know, a badge, a stepping stone of accomplishment on the way that now builds my efficacy as a student. Like, hey, maybe I can do this. Maybe I can pursue an associate’s degree. Maybe I can pursue a bachelor’s degree, right?
And so I think they serve multiple purposes, helping individuals get skilled and on that way, faster to a decent paying job. But it also is a way to build efficacy towards becoming a more consistent kind of engaged, lifelong learner. And I don’t think that’s easy or natural for most people.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
So, I think there’s also this added bonus. And then Erin, I know you have some questions for Brandon as well. There’s this added bonus for institutions. And that is these types of programs can also help from a budget standpoint as well. Right? So if we’re thinking about what do people want and we’re also thinking about needing to balance budgets, there can be a really good match in the middle there, too.
Brandon Busteed:
Absolutely. Look, I mean, this is about being, you know, responsive to the needs and desires of prospective students, employer partners, especially if you’re thinking regionally as an institution operating within a region. Everybody does in some form. You might be a national brand, but you still operate in a region. There’s a lot of reasons for us to be thinking about these things and to get out of this dynamic of we’re an either or. It’s either a degree or nothing. Right. It’s a degree or vocational training. Right. Like that is the great trap that we’ve fallen into that somehow we need to climb out of.
Erin Hennessy:
I wonder, Brandon, and this is sort of building on that conversation, what you think about accreditors and institutions that are looking at sort of at the shortened bachelor’s degree. I know the New England accreditor last week, week before, became the last, I think, regional accreditor to say, yes, you can go ahead and experiment with … and we, again, going back to the branding, we need to come up with a name for it. It’s not a bachelor’s degree because it’s less than the 120 credits, but it’s a shortened three-year degree. Do you feel like that’s higher ed just slowly sliding towards a recognition of these shorter pathways and still trying to call it a bachelor’s degree? Or do you think that’s a potential innovation that’s going to get some traction and go somewhere?
Brandon Busteed:
It’s a good question. One of the things that I thought would be taking off more so now, if you’d asked me 10 years ago, was the idea of an accelerated bachelor’s degree program, right? Like a three-year bachelor’s degree where students are going year-round and, you know, they accelerate out. What’s interesting is, you know, we need to think about the different, what I’ll call, archetypes of students that are out there, right? You’ve got traditional age students who still, and their parents, who still desire a very traditional four-year residential college experience. And for those students, the idea of chopping a year of that off is like, no no no no, I want to get all four years out of this or more, right? And so they’re …
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
You just described my child.
Brandon Busteed:
Yeah, so there’s not that desire, right? But I’ll tell you where we’ve seen early examples of this taking off is in the online serving, adult serving institutions, right? The WGU’s, the SNHU’s of the world, the UMGC’s, Purdue Globals, what you’re seeing, especially in the competency based models that are offered, are younger students, the fastest growing demographic enrolling in those institutions are actually traditional age students, but they’re doing college in non-traditional ways.
And what you’re finding are examples of young, eager go-getters who are saving money, living at home, working, and getting their degree done on average in like two and a half years. Their bachelor’s degree. And it’s a combination of online competency, the ability to accelerate outside of a traditional academic calendar. So there’s a lot of things going on there.
So I think, Erin, to your question, I think it’s really still to be determined which versions of this are ultimately going to shake out. You know, is it going to be the three-year bachelors, a new version like you’re talking about, there’s clearly an appetite for accelerated lower-cost options, right, that do things like also recognize prior learning and prior work experience. And so all those things, you know, taken in whole, there’s plenty of evidence to say there’s a lot of students out there who want an accelerated path to a degree program in addition to wanting shorter form educational training, right?
And so I think both of things are happening. But I’ve been surprised so far at least on how little uptake there’s been on the “three-year bachelor’s degree,” which is closer to kind of what you’re describing here. So I think TBD, I’m glad to see the innovation though. I think the innovation reflects, hey, we think there’s an interest among students. There’s an appetite for shorter, condensed.
And you know what’s in there? Relevance is in there. Because if we really think about it, it’s students will react to something. They’ll say it’s long and not worth it if it’s not relevant but it becomes very worth it and time kind of gets thrown out if you feel that it’s highly relevant, if you’re super engaged, right? Like think about the concept of flow. Flow is when we get in that moment where like we’re doing something we’re excellent at, we love it, and we lose track of time. And we might be working really hard, but like we’re in flow and you just lose track of time. If the education that we’re providing is relevant, I think we worry less about the length and it just becomes something that people value because of its relevance.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Then we get to passion rather than just having to do something, right? And I think that’s where we’re seeing students who aren’t completing is because we aren’t engaging them. We aren’t making this something that they want to complete and in a way that they want to complete it. So we keep saying, find your passion, find what it is that you want to do, but we’re not giving them the resources and the opportunities to do that.
Brandon Busteed:
Yeah, look, and we could talk a long time about the difference between things like passion and engagement. But what I’ll say is, to me, it’s a combination of a few things, right? It’s where I hit a point where I touch excellence. What am I really great at? What are my natural talents? How do I apply those? And it’s something that I’m interested in, I’m excited about, right? Those things alone can, I believe, lead to passion.
There’s also passion where I might not have the talent to do it, but I’m still passionate about it, right? And those are things that might become more hobbies and whatnot. So I think we still can improve a lot in how we help students think about these various things. Like, what am I ultimately aiming at? Right? Am I aiming at fulfillment? Is fulfillment different than how much money I make? How related are those things?
This goes back to a lot of fun Gallup research, for example, around well-being, where well-being doesn’t increase over about $75,000 a year in income. Certainly income matters, but at a certain point, it has diminishing marginal utility. Like these are all things that I think we can be much better guides around for students because a lot of them are going down a very straight path. Like which job can I make the most money in? Others are like 100% passion. I’ll find a way to make money if I just do what I love. Not always. So it’s a little bit of dialing those things in.
Electric Kite ad read
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
I think there’s this difference that I’m starting to see in market research with Gen Z. And that is that they are saying, I’m more interested in a fulfilling life. I am less interested in riches. I’m more interested in being able to cover my bills and to be comfortable, which they see as different than having excess. So even as we’re starting to think about the ways in which Gen Z is approaching this, I think there is some additional questions for us to ask and tweaking as well.
Brandon Busteed:
Yeah, no, certainly mission and purpose is growing in terms of the things that are most important to employees overall, right? So that’s a general trend in the workplace, especially so for younger generation in the workplace. And the other thing that is at the top of the list right now in terms of what people want out of their jobs is learning and growth and development.
And so we talk about lifelong learning all the time in higher ed. We actually have very little measures of whether we’re producing that, you know, if we’re honest and we step back, how are we measuring lifelong learning? Right. I mean, there are ways to do it or any of us doing it, you know, rigorously with a lot of intent? No is the answer. I’ve certainly looked for a lot of those examples. But it also stresses the workplace, the modern workplace, because you’ve got a lot of people who desire constant learning growth. And it’s not just, I’m getting promoted. That used to be more than like, oh, I want a bigger title. I want more money. Now it’s about, I want to feel like I’m learning or doing something interesting each day. I want to feel like I’m growing and what I’m doing. And that might not necessarily mean a promotion or raise. But if every day I wake up and I’m learning something new and interesting in my job, that’s a really good job. And so, you know, those are things that, you know, now are part of where I land.
I’ve been giving a lot of talks on around the statement, the future isn’t going to distinguish between places of learning and places of work, right? I just think we are gonna be in a constant process of learning in our places of work, and we’re gonna be in a constant process of trying to develop work-integrated examples in our educational experiences. And those things are growing because they’re important and they’re growing because there’s real demand for that.
Erin Hennessy:
How do you see institutions taking further steps down that road considering what a tightrope institutions have to walk when they attempt to innovate? There aren’t a lot of industries that are held to such a high standard and really given no room to experiment and fail in the way that higher ed is given very little room to experiment and fail. And sure, part of that is you know, the investment of time and money that higher education requires. But we’ve seen the sort of, attempts of institutions to do something new, to do something different and not figure it out on the first go, see it hit some snags and have people dismiss those kinds of innovations and approaches as overstepping, you know, reaching outside of a lane. How do you see, has that, has that changed at all in the past couple of years? Is there more room for higher ed to try and fail than there used to be?
Brandon Busteed:
I think there is, I mean, I think to your point, it certainly has been an industry that has been criticized for a lack of change, right? And in some ways, in very good ways, these are institutions that have been around for hundreds of years, right? There’s important educational pedagogy that they’ve codified over these years. I mean, there’s a lot of things that are certainly going right, but it’s an industry that’s been accused of not being able to innovate, not changing.
You know, like a lot of people throw shade at accreditors, oh, if it weren’t for the creditors, I could do this or that. I got to be honest, I see a lot of innovation out there. It’s not in large numbers of institutions, but if you look at the examples, I mean, you take a Southern New Hampshire, right? That was a near dying institution, not less than 25 years ago, and it is now, I think, officially the largest enrollment institution in the United States. Private institution, just sheer innovation with its model. Western Governors University, brand new institution. Arizona State University, this is a public institution that has found ways to innovate pretty much any way you can possibly imagine. Purdue, a public land grant university, right?
So there’s private examples, there’s public examples, there’s large, there’s small, and all of them had some of the same exact barriers that the rest of higher ed does. Either a legislature or whatever it might be. They found ways out and I think it’s been strong alignment at a leadership level. You know, a lot of folks I think underestimate alignment between boards of trustees and presidents and senior leaders. Where there’s alignment in those groups, a lot of things start to happen. Where the senior leadership, academic administration and the overall administration are engaging the faculty early on in thoughts and decisions around innovation, I’ve seen great outcomes. It’s when it’s dropped on their laps or it’s a big surprise where things usually go astray.
But one of the things I’m worried most about around this, it’s not accreditors and the standards of accreditation. Sure, there could be some lessening of some of the current standards to make room for innovation. But I think our biggest challenges are boards of trustees that are not in sync with the senior leaders of institutions. And that’s not always an easy thing to dial up but where I’ve seen alignment with levels of leadership, I have seen incredible innovation. And there are institutions that you’d be like, well, how are they able to do it and someone else isn’t? I tell you, the secret is sitting at the board of trustees and the alignment between board and the senior leaders.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
But I think I’m going to go back to how Erin phrased the question because I think there’s a difference between not being allowed to fail and being afraid to fail. And that’s, Brandon, where I think that board influence is so important and that alignment is so important, is to set the boundaries for what each of those are and how you’re going to proceed in a strategic way.
Brandon Busteed:
Yeah, no, I think that’s well said. When you have support at a board level, right, you’ve got a little bit more room to fail and go like, well, you know, that didn’t work. Uh, and we’re going to try another direction and that’s fine. Right. So, uh, so I think there’s definitely something to be said for that. And, you know, it’s interesting. I’ve watched Bridget Burns and you know, the work she’s done with the University Innovation Alliance. And one of the things that she talks about all the time is getting those universities, the ones that have been part of the university innovation Alliance to actually talk about their failures so that they can all learn from them. I mean, we don’t do this, right?
We all go to, you know, she makes this point. It’s really her point that I’m echoing. We go to conferences and we talk about everything that’s going great and, oh, but we don’t spend time together digesting something we tried, it didn’t work, here’s why it didn’t work, this is a key insight to pass along. There’s wisdom from that failure. We rarely ever share that across institutions as well.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Because we’re all so worried about what everybody else thinks.
Brandon Busteed:
Hahaha, yeah.
Erin Hennessy:
I wanted to dig in a little bit on some polling questions, ask you to step back in time, put your Gallup hat back on. I know you, during your time at Gallup, really brought to the fore this shift in thinking about the value of higher education and were among the many organizations that sort of highlighted this split between Republicans and Democrats and really just brought a lot of insight into conversations I think we as an industry had just been guessing at. How do people feel about us? Are we still, you know, a big part of the American dream? All of those things.
And I wonder what you took from all of that work about what it’s going to require to move the needle, or is it too far gone? Are we going to stay in this area where we aren’t viewed as a public good anymore? I’m guessing that this will go back to your relationship rich and your work specific approach to higher ed, but what is it going to take to get people to think we’re worth an investment of both time and money, that we are providing something that is important to the fundamental approach of this country, to democracy and to citizenship and to the economy, or are we just stuck where we are for a while?
Brandon Busteed:
Yeah, so there’s a lot of fascinating stuff in there. And there’s been a lot of obviously, you know, Gallup was one of those organizations that started to see this very early on. And there’s since been a lot of work done by both Gallup and many other, you know, research entities that have kind of built on it and more understanding the nuances under it. But let me just say a couple things, right? Confidence in higher education has plummeted over the last decade. Now relative to others, confidence in institutions in general, if you look at all institutions, right, has for the most part gone down. But higher ed has fallen, you know, significantly, right?
Erin Hennessy:
But we’re still in a better spot than Congress is at this point, right?
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Is that what we want to be our basis?
Erin Hennessy:
No, but it’s useful.
Brandon Busteed:
Yeah, so, but here’s part of the good news of that. Higher ed was about as high as you could be before the slide, right? So I would argue we really, higher ed, didn’t have any room to go up. I mean, it was already at the highest of the high of kind of confidence in institutions, right? There was a widespread belief, even from people who didn’t have a degree, that a degree was “worth it,” right?
But now that’s been chipped away at for a number of reasons. And so the good news is it was really high to start. It’s still high in the grand scheme of kind of historical measures of confidence in institutions, but it has taken a real dive. And it’s driven by a couple of fundamental forces, right? One is that there is a real lack of belief about the work readiness of graduates, right? This gets to relevance, right? If you believed it was relevant, you would go, oh yeah, graduates are well prepared for work. And this isn’t just graduates going into work for for-profit companies.
Like I think that’s the other thing we get stumped on is when we think about that, we’re like, oh, this is about producing graduates for businesses. No, no, it’s producing graduates for our intelligence agencies, for our local community organizations, nonprofit, philanthropic organizations. This is employers of all shapes and sizes who do not believe that college graduates are well-prepared for success in the workplace.
It’s not just the fault of college and universities because you say, well, what’s the number one thing that makes somebody believe a graduate is prepared? It’s they had a job or an internship where they applied what they were learning. Well, here’s the news flash. We need employers of all shapes and sizes to step up and provide more internship opportunities. This is where the finger points right back to them. They want to point the finger at higher ed. It’s like, oh, wait, yeah, the thing I want most is a graduate has had some work experience. So this is where the employer ecosystem has really not been able to grow and increase the number of internships that have been offered. That number has essentially been flat forever, for as long as it’s been measured.
So it’s this lack of belief in the work readiness combined with everything you hear about rising price tags. And as you guys know, sometimes that’s just the price tag, not the real price. But when it’s not transparent and all you see is the published price tag, you know, it acts like a brick wall for somebody who can’t afford it, you turn away, you don’t peek your head inside the tent and explore, you’re like, oh, price tag, can’t afford it, I’m out, right? So those two things have been really problematic.
Now, underneath the surface, the thing that I’ve been worried the most about is that higher ed has become a political football in many respects. And where we are now, I wrote an article about this earlier this year, it’s the most politically polarized institution in America, statistically tied with the presidency. And of course, you’re either strongly in support of the president or you’re not, depending on your political party. If you’re a Democrat, you’re in support of Biden for the most part. If you’re a Republican, you’re not. So the fact that higher ed is as politically polarized as the presidency, that is a really troubling stat. And the reason why I say it is, Frank Newport, who was the head pollster at Gallup for three decades, he tracked all these trends politically. I’ll never forget when we first saw that in the education views of higher ed data, he was really concerned. It was like he saw a ghost. And I was like, what’s wrong, Frank? And he’s like, well, look, he’s like, I’ve never seen an issue that once it’s become politically polarized, I’ve never seen it recover. And what he was saying is like, whatever the issue is, you know, my glasses, these aren’t cool for Democrats and they are for whatever, whatever the issue is. Once it gets politically polarized, he’s never come up with an example where it has come back.
And so that’s where we are with higher ed, right? That’s just going to be a whole host of other problems and challenges that we’re gonna confront. And it’s overall not gonna be productive for the students, that’s for sure.
Erin Hennessy:
But is there anything higher ed can do about that polarization, short of you know, we see all these institutions doing programming around bringing two opposing speakers together to have a civil conversation. And I kind of feel like, I don’t know, that is five years ago what we should have been doing or 10 years ago what we should have been doing.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Oh God, like 20 years ago.
Erin Hennessy:
Is there anything that we can, we higher ed institutions individually can do right now to attempt to address some of that polarization? Or is it one of those things where we have to say, it’s not the disease, it’s the symptom. We’re seeing this is a larger national “illness” to just belabor the metaphor, and it’s not something that is really about higher ed. We’re just a useful straw man, and there’s nothing we can do to sort of address this polarization. Do you think there’s a fix that we can be part of?
Brandon Busteed:
Yeah, look, I think we can certainly help, right? Is it going to solve it entirely? You know, probably not, right? Like, we’re probably going to live for a good while in an era where there are politically polarized views of higher ed. That said, it’s interesting. You get into the data. And this was a few years ago when I looked at this. So obviously, things, you know, can change and do evolve.
But when you use different words, there was little to no political polarization. You should ask people, what about your confidence in community colleges, for example? At the time that I looked at that last, there was no difference in views of community colleges based on political affiliation. If you use the term post-secondary education, lesser known than higher education or college universities, less political polarization, right? So we actually have words describing, if you say higher ed or colleges, using those descriptors way more polarized than if you asked about community colleges or post-secondary education writ large right so there’s some interesting nuances there.
My point about the words liberal arts, I mean, all of us in the academy know that we’re not saying liberal politically, but just putting those words as a label, I don’t think it’s productive. I believe deeply in the value of that kind of pedagogy, but I wouldn’t use those words or labels in the current environment.
But look, Erin, I’m going to sound like a broken record on this. What do I think is the most important thing we can do to just put the political polarization kind of at bay or on simmer as opposed to high heat? It’s just double down on the relevance of our education, the relevance of what’s offered, and as best we can do that at a level where we’re either stemming the price increases or doing things like we’ll use a Purdue as an example. They’ve frozen tuition now for 13 consecutive years. Purdue is a better deal than it has been ever. Enrollment’s at an all-time high, they’ve gone up on almost every ranking. You can measure them. And that was an institution that just set out to say, we’re gonna really focus on our cost structure, any ways that we can help students save money. You know, they made a real commitment to it and it’s been a popular stance, right?
So I think it’s pretty simple. If we can make efforts to reduce the cost of higher education and increase the relevance of it. And again, I don’t think those are mutually exclusive either. I think we make a lot of strides around this political polarization. So that’s not the simple fix. That’s not gonna be the only fix. But I think institutions that are focused on that are not going to be institutions that are going to be disproportionately enrolling liberal or conservative students. And I think we’re increasingly seeing examples where institutions are basically enrolling students of a particular political affiliation. That obviously is going to be a really interesting challenge going forward if that stays consistent.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
But I want to put a fine point on something. Higher education has always been political. The difference is now it’s becoming polarizing. And I think that’s something really important for us to be thinking about, because from its founding through, you know, as recent as this year, all the way through, the through line has been education is political.
Brandon Busteed:
That’s interesting. I hadn’t thought about that way, but yes, it is definitely polarized and it has become polarized in a very recent period of time. Because the earliest parts of that data we saw in about 2014. So we’re 10 years into the polarization, right? There was really no strong evidence of polarization in the overall views prior to that. And now it’s just, it’s widening, right? And that is a new challenge and if Frank Newport is right in his prediction and the history of this, it’s not going to be a short-term challenge.
Erin Hennessy:
Teresa, you bringing it home?
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
I’m bringing it home.
So Brandon, I was intrigued by something that you wrote recently. You had a Forbes article and you talked about the need for a national initiative to make education more engaging and relevant. And this is the part I thought was interesting, the need for the Department of Education and the Department of Labor to work together to integrate learning and work. So were those just musings? Were those just wishes? Or how are you thinking about the potential impact if this actually could be a thing?
Brandon Busteed:
Yeah, so that’s one specific idea, which is an idea that was championed initially in some form by Jamie Marisotis, president of the Head of the Lumina Foundation. And in his book, he advocated for a merged Department of Labor and Education. And so, to answer the question, I think there are federal level initiatives that move in that direction. I think there are state level initiatives. I think there’s institutional level initiatives. And then I think there are just like literally individual student, parent, employer initiatives around it. So back to your question. Yes, I think right now having an integrated view of learning and work is where we need to be. And I’ll just give you a couple of quick stats. The rate of learning needed to remain relevant in a workplace has skyrocketed.
There’s a neat little IBM study that indicates that the number of days the average employee needs to spend training for upskilling or reskilling or whatever terminology you want to use has jumped from 3 to 34 days in the last half decade. It’s gone up 10x in just half a decade. Now, if you’re an employer, you realize suddenly I’m in the business of education, right? And I’m gonna be for a long, long time. If I’m an employee in an organization, I realize, wow, a big part of my job to remain relevant is some form of ongoing skilling, training, education, whatever terminology we use.
Then we go back to everything I talked about from the Gallup Purdue Index, the need to improve the relevance of American education at both the K-12 and the higher ed level. It is about work integrated learning, right? And there’s a lot of examples of it. Can I do an apprenticeship, an internship, a co-op? Can I have teachers do externships where they work in a workplace and bring back the insights to the classroom, right? We have many different derivatives of how we can do work integrated learning, but at the end of the day, I fundamentally believe the future will not distinguish between places of learning and places of work. You will sit in one or the other and you’ll be like, yeah, this is just what happens, right? It’s a constant process of working, applying, learning, right? And that, I think, is where the future is quickly headed.
So if we can start by thinking about that at an innovative level at the federal level, I think it makes a lot of sense. Do the departments have to merge? I don’t know. But I think coming up with a lot of linkages and synergies between the two grant programs that encourage university–employer partnerships for example, we should double up on those types of initiatives.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Well, thank you. Brandon, thank you so much for your time today. We have learned so much, and we have a lot to talk about. We appreciate your time.
Brandon Busteed:
Always, it’s great talking to you both. Thank you so much.
Musical Interlude
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
So I always love talking to Brandon because I think some of the ways that he thinks about our industry and some of the ways I think about our industry overlap. And I was really taken and I agree with the idea that we need to focus on our outcomes, right? We need to focus on our impacts. We need to be talking about relationships and application of what it is that we do and relevance of an education. I hear people say that sounds so simplistic and we make it harder than it needs to be so often.
Erin Hennessy:
So I guess where I come down on it, and because the conversation went in a couple of different directions, I didn’t have the chance to get to the question that I had planned to ask, but I feel like we’ve been talking about outcomes, and we’ve been talking about impact, and I guess sort of my question is, are we doing it wrong…
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Yes.
Erin Hennessy:
Or have we not advanced how we’re doing it since the days of me running around Long Island in 1995 as an admissions officer? And so I guess my question for him was, what’s the vocabulary we should be using? I thought it was interesting that he said we shouldn’t be talking about the liberal arts anymore. Then, what’s the phrase we should be using? And I guess, you know, what’s the way in which we should be talking about outcomes if it’s not jobs and salaries and graduate school acceptances and those kinds of things.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
I think we’re still talking about these things in ways that are us talking to ourselves. And I actually think we do a better job of talking about these different areas when we’re trying to influence our rankings more than when we are trying to talk to the public about what it is that we do. And we’re not using, to his point, the language and the vocabulary that people really want to hear. And I think this is where we start to have that conversation around what resonates and the difference between a liberal education and instead talking about foundational conversations and foundational writings for different eras of our country or for the world or for a moment. I think we need to be thinking instead about what does this mean, not what are the easy ways and shorthand ways for us to talk about ourselves to ourselves.
So, I think there really is this ability for us, as we’ve talked about earlier in this episode, to really think about the ways in which the liberal arts are resonating when others are talking about it. And we need to start using some of their language in how we discuss the liberal arts, how we discuss what it is that we provide, how we discuss higher education, and shift away from an us versus them mentality for the liberal arts or the classics or some of these core areas belonging to us or to them.
Erin Hennessy:
I hope we caught that sigh on the microphone because that was a big sigh. Yeah, I guess that’s right.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
I think that gets to that polarization part, right? How do we start to claw back so that we’re just a political entity, we’re not a polarizing one? And I think that’s where this isn’t a communications and a word issue alone, but I think communication and words can be part of the solution.
Erin Hennessy:
Yeah, and I guess it’s not a topic for this podcast, but you know, revealing my biases, which I don’t think are a surprise to anybody, as someone who leans towards the liberal side of the political spectrum, my perception is that the polarization is being driven more by one side of the spectrum than the other. And I guess there’s some strategy to trying to co-opt the other side’s, quote unquote, the “other side’s” language but on some level it kind of rankles a little bit, you know?
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
I think that there has been so much comfort around how we’ve described ourselves that we didn’t notice when the ground underneath us was shifting. That would be my suggestion. And I think…
Erin Hennessy:
Yeah, we’re so convinced of our own virtue.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Yes. And higher education has always been a canary in the coal mine for politics in this country. And unfortunately, we aren’t recognizing that status until we’re gasping for air. And right now, we’re gasping. So there were moments for us to be thinking about this and moments for us to be adjusting and to be really having this be a communications issue. And that has passed. So I think it really does start to become something very, very different to help us shift away from that polarization if we can.
Uplifting episode, right, Erin?
Erin Hennessy:
I’m glad we’re recording late in the day.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Yes.
Erin Hennessy:
I don’t know how much motivation I’ll have to go back to my work after this.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Well, and I think it’s a moment for us to get back to what we were talking about, that in this overlap of learning and work, we have to still remember to have that learning and to have things that bring us passion. So, Erin, may you have passion.
Erin Hennessy:
Teressa, may you have work.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
I want learning and work, Erin.
Erin Hennessy:
I feel like this is a good indicator that we should record in the morning before either one of us get too goofy and I need to take my allergy pills before we do this.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
And to our audience, may they have learning, work, and passion.
Erin Hennessy:
And allergy medication.
Well this was a great episode. Appreciate Brandon spending so much time with us knowing that he is a very busy dude, particularly in the early days and months of a new job. So we appreciate his time, we appreciate your time dear listeners, and we will be back in your feed very very soon with another episode of Trusted Voices Podcast.
Teresa Valerio Parrot:
Thank you for joining us for this episode. You can find links in the show notes to the topics and articles referenced as well as a copy of the show’s transcript on the Volt website, voltedu.com. Remember, that you can always contact us with feedback, questions or guest suggestions at trustedvoices@tvpcommunications.com. Be sure to follow Trusted Voices wherever you get your podcasts and we invite you to check out Higher Voltage, another podcast on the Volt network that is hosted by our great friend, Kevin Tyler. Kevin explores the evolution of higher education that is happening right before our very eyes. Until next time, thanks to Erin Hennessy, DJ Hauschild, Aaron Stern, Nicole Reed and the Volt team for a great episode. And thank you for listening.
