Trusted Voices: Funding Cuts and Uncertain Futures

Read the full transcript here

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Hello and welcome to the Trusted Voices Podcast. I’m Teresa Valerio Parrot alongside Erin Hennessy, and in each episode, we discuss the latest news and biggest issues facing higher education leaders through a communications lens. For these conversations, we’re often joined by a guest who shares their own experiences and perspectives. But we also make time for one-on-one conversations to talk about what we are seeing, hearing and thinking.

Erin Hennessy

Hi.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Hi. It’s been a hell of a year, and we are just barely in our second month.

Erin Hennessy

I know, last week was a hell of a year all to itself.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Yes. Whoof. Okay. Where do you want to start?

Erin Hennessy

Umm…

Teresa Valerio Parrot

I think we need to start kind of with the elephant in the room, which is the Trump administration’s changes to grant-making policy. Should we start there?

Erin Hennessy

Let’s, let’s.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Let’s do that.

Erin Hennessy

Okay.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Okay. So the changes to the National Institutes of Health indirect funding dropped, for us, last Friday. So normally we say that Friday is when you take the trash out and whoo, was that some trash?

Erin Hennessy

Yeah, buddy. Yeah. Yeah, and I really appreciated having the opportunity to think about that issue Saturday morning, between my yoga class and my pneumonia vaccine. Yeah, don’t love a Friday afternoon drop, to be sure.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

So I got to see that on Friday night, which means that I got panicked calls Friday night, and that was my Friday and Saturday to do list. So thank you, President Trump, for occupying my weekend.

Erin Hennessy

Yes, and just because we are all about belatedly bringing our listeners the very latest news just a half hour ago or so. We’re recording today, Monday, the 10th of February. 22 state attorneys general filed suit in Massachusetts to attempt to stay the decision on NIH indirect cost funding. So, by the time you hear this, we may have a stay or we may not, but that is the latest in this very complicated and kind of hard to communicate about, in some ways, decision from the Trump administration via the NIH.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Yes, but what I have to say is that all weekend long, there were a number of articles, and there were a number of panicked social media posts, and most of them talked about, what does this mean for higher education? And most of what I saw was, this is what it means in billions of dollars for institutions.

Erin Hennessy

Right.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

And I think that those are really important numbers, and they’re big and scary numbers. But what I thought was more important was an article that I saw actually in this was an Alabama outlet, and what it did is it really said, What would NIH funding cuts mean for Alabama? Five things to know. And I thought this was a really important way to break this down, and it put it into language that an everyday person would understand. And I think this is what we need to be doing. The first of the five points was, what is NIH funding used for? This was important. This is what it goes towards. It really goes towards things that impact your life. We need to get away from, these are the billions of dollars, because people can’t relate to billions of dollars for an institution, people think either I went to college or I didn’t, done. But instead, it goes towards dermatology, goes towards urology, it goes towards gynecology, goes towards public health. And, also, it goes towards the university, which is the state’s largest public employer, and it’s this many jobs. That’s important.

Erin Hennessy

Yes.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Second, what are indirect research costs, and how is that money used? So these billions of dollars relate to this kind of use. That’s really important for people to understand, and they say it’s facilities and it’s people. And those, they use the words, it’s these kind of buckets, and they break it down into what that goes towards, that’s really important. Third, how would Alabama be affected by NIH cuts? It’s people, it’s research, and it could be your health. Huge! It could be you. Four, what are the arguments for and against cutting NIH funding? Let’s talk about both sides. And then fifth, what happens next? I really loved that kind of just a clear breakdown. So Alaina Bookman in Alabama, 10/10, would recommend Alaina’s way of telling…

Erin Hennessy

You’re our trusted voice of the week.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

You are. You get a platinum star today from me, because that’s how we need to be talking about this at our institutions as well. Let’s break this down to what does this mean, and how can the average person understand this? Let’s not say hi, I’m an institution, this is what I want you to know. Instead, this is how the average person should think about this. I loved that take.

Erin Hennessy

Yeah, and it’s so interesting. It also rolls into these conversations because the graphic that was put out by an NIH social media account on Friday, that, of course, as always, highlighted some exceptional institutions, and I mean exceptional in, they are not the norm. They are exceptional, and the resources that those institutions have, and made the case visually, that institutions like this don’t need federal dollars, and that it is a waste, and that the implication is always the colleges and universities, particularly ones that are well resourced, are just gobbling up dollars, putting them in a pile and Scrooge McDuckin’ around in them. And that is not what’s happening, and it’s a part of this larger conversation. And you and I have been involved in having it with a couple of different organizations for a couple of different reasons. It’s this conversation where the endowment question becomes this sort of straw man and people assume that every institution is sitting atop a pile of dollars. I guarantee you, many institutions in Alabama have very small or very modest endowments. Most institutions have very modest endowments, if they’re lucky enough to have them at all.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Correct.

Erin Hennessy

And people believe that this is just a money grab, that this is profit, or that this is a large savings account, that we’re just deciding we as an industry are deciding not to touch. Those dollars are supporting this research or supporting our students. A large number of them are supporting student financial aid. And we need to, to your point, and I think that’s what this piece you highlighted does so well, remind people that this is not about institution. You can’t see my arm gestures here. Institutions. This is about job providers. This is about workforce issues and people that are being prepared for your state and regional workforces. This is about student aid, which means that your kid, your grandmother, your uncle, could afford to go to this institution. These places are about people.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Right.

Erin Hennessy

They are not these nameless, faceless, soulless organizations. They are about people. And I think that’s something we need, to your point, to keep coming back to. And it’s a place where we have just not been and, you know I hate to say this, we haven’t been successful in reminding people that these are not corporations, these are not monoliths. These are organizations built on and for and by, people.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Agreed. And I think we’re, we started talking about NIH, and you moved to talking about the Department of Education, because now we’re moving into this space of an executive order, or at least the tapping of the resources of the Department of Education, but as we look at the different arms of the federal government, the money that comes to higher education isn’t just in the Department of Education, it’s in NIH, it’s in the National Science Foundation. It is in so many different parts of the federal government, because we are the stewards of federal funds across multiple agencies. And I think it is so important for us to talk about what that impact is across the different agencies, and we need to be thinking about how that impacts people and the ways in which we are some of the largest employers, to Alaina Bookman’s piece, right, and what that multiplier is for our communities. So my husband and I have been talking about this pretty significantly. Neither one of us is directly employed by higher education, but both of our industries, both of our livelihoods, are impacted so significantly by higher education, and we need to be talking about it as such.

Erin Hennessy

Yes, absolutely. And I think that I was going to make an exceptional point right on the heels of your point. Oh, it came back. I also think in addition to sharing the responsibility for making the case for higher education. We need to, a lot of folks sort of roll their eyes at the economic impact report that colleges and universities pay to have done on a fairly regular basis or perform themselves. But I think we need to go back to regularly issuing those economic impact statements for all of our institutions so that folks can understand, these are the tax dollars that are coming into the community. These are the people that are employed. These are the businesses that can start and continue and be successful in our communities because of the volume of people that come to the institution to work, to learn, to visit and just really start leaning on those statements again. It’s an important metric for state, local and federal partners to have an understanding of, and as we are seeing this chaos on the federal level, we need to make sure that we are sharing up our state and our local and our regional relationships with elected officials, because as things get more complicated on the federal level, we need to make sure we have these partners and these advocates in our corner as well.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Agreed. And it’s important to also note that, I think, that there were a number of elected officials who were fine to have higher education really hit hard and hit with this big hammer until they realized what the impacts were going to be for all communities. Because when we look at higher education being hit, we’re not just talking about the big publics, right? We’re talking about higher education being integral in all communities. When you talk about hitting higher education squarely, you’re talking about community colleges, which are in all communities. You’re talking about publics and privates. You’re talking about regional comprehensives. So when we say, let’s put higher education in the crosshairs, we are talking about hitting all communities across this country. So we’re not just hitting, if the intent was, the blue communities. We are talking about hitting fundamentally all communities and the economic impact across all communities. And I think that was the wake-up call this past weekend that we started seeing and hearing from elected officials across the country. That was an amazing wake-up call that I started to see from the Sunday morning shows and the social media accounts across the country, is what the true economic impact and the reality would be from some of these really broad hammering approaches, what that’s going to really mean. And maybe that value of higher education is starting to resonate.

Erin Hennessy

Maybe.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Let’s hope. Let’s hope.

Erin Hennessy

Let’s hope, but if you look at the 22 states who filed suit on this NIH business…

Teresa Valerio Parrot

I think it’s bigger than NIH, though. I think it’s once you …

Erin Hennessy

I agree, I’m just saying…

Teresa Valerio Parrot

…add in NIH and National Science Foundation and the arts and the Department of Education, and you start to add in all of the different realities of where higher education touches and grows and impacts and makes a difference.

Erin Hennessy

For sure.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

I think you start to see the reality of what all of this means.

Erin Hennessy

I hope so.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

So we’ll see.

Erin Hennessy

We shall see.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

At the very least, I’m going to give advice to our colleagues that we often give our faculty as well, and that is, we sometimes hear from faculty that they are very shy from talking about excellence. And I tell people all of the time I am not a fan of anybody stretching the truth. I am not a fan of anybody talking about anything that isn’t true. I don’t believe in lying, but I do believe in sharing your excellence. If you have excellence, talk about it. And this is one of those moments where I very, very much believe that if you have excellence, share it. Don’t lie, don’t boast, don’t say anything that isn’t true, but own your excellence and share it broadly. This is the moment to do that.

Erin Hennessy

There you go. Teresa says so. So now you have to.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

I am telling you, now’s the time. This is not a time to be shy. This is a time to own your excellence, share it broadly.

Erin Hennessy

Yes. Okay. What else do we want to talk about?

Teresa Valerio Parrot

I want to talk a little bit. We got a little teaser of the annual Inside Higher Ed survey this week.

Erin Hennessy

We did, the Presidents’ survey.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

The Presidents’ survey, yes, they do many, many surveys, but we got a teaser of the Presidents’ survey from Josh Moody, Inside Higher Ed and he, this is the headline College Presidents’ Survey Finds Alarm Over Trump. So we just got a teaser tidbit. The big survey will come out next month, but that was the little bit. And the piece of this is that some presidents actually weren’t that worried about Trump, which I thought was interesting. More than half of presidents surveyed in December and early January, 51% believed that Trump’s second administration would have a somewhat or significant negative impact on the regulatory environment for higher education. So I’m curious about that. 49%. 38% of respondents saying they believed Trump would have a somewhat or significant positive impact on the regulatory environment.

Erin Hennessy

Yeah, I’m more curious about the 38%. Here’s what I will say. Having worked at ACE, one of the things that people often assumed, not that ACE had a preference for one party over the other, but people often assumed that it would be better for higher ed to have Democrats in the White House and in control in Washington, DC, because the perception is that Democrats understand, value, support higher education more than Republicans, which some public polling has sort of bolstered in terms of evidence for that claim. Oftentimes, what ends up happening is that higher education indeed prefers Republicans in office because there is less regulation, they are less inclined to regulate higher education. And for an industry that is regulated, that is touched by regulation from literally every cabinet department on the federal level, the assumption is that Republicans will regulate us less. And I have to imagine that that 38% who said this might not be that bad, might be pretty good for us, I don’t know, had brief amnesia. Thought that this Trump administration was going to be very similar to the last one, chaotic, sure, hamstrung by Congress, not able to get anything done. And I think the last, has it only been 30 days? 20 days?

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Not even, yeah.

Erin Hennessy

Have put the lie to that this is nothing like the Trump first administration in a lot of ways. And I think higher education is squarely in the crosshairs in a way that it wasn’t in the first administration, and that really hasn’t been in any other Republican or Democrat administration.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

I think that’s a fantastic summary.

Erin Hennessy

All right, we’re done. Moving on.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

I think that this is going to be an interesting four years. I think you’re exactly right. I think our colleague and friend Michael Harris said it’s, I think he said it very well that there is a failure of imagination for many to realize how quickly Trump would act.

Erin Hennessy

Yeah.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

And I think that’s, that just about summarizes it well.

Erin Hennessy

Yeah. I mean, it’s clear that they took, this is not original political thought you’re getting here from me, it’s cribbed from all the things that I’ve been reading, that you’ve been reading. But I think people thought, people generally thought that this would be a lot like the first administration. But it’s very clear that folks were doing a lot of work behind the scenes in advance of this administration taking office to have plans in place, and you can talk about the motivation, whether they’re actually trying to achieve policy goals or just flood the zone and create chaos, or maybe a little bit of both, but they knew exactly where the dollars were, exactly the levers to pull. How successful they’ll be is still an open question. Again, breaking news a weekly, a federal judge today ruled that the administration is violating the order to resume federal grants and loans. So who knows what will come out of that, but they’re aiming the machete in all the right places.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Well and what I would say is go back and listen to the episode that we had with Belle Wheelan. Anybody again, this survey was conducted in December and January. Anybody in December and January had a hat tip to this. The plans in December and January were exactly what we’re seeing now. So this shouldn’t have been surprising, because they were very clear that they wanted to dismantle the Department of Education. This was a campaign promise. This is not a surprise, and we were warned. So, yeah, I’ll leave it at that

Erin Hennessy

Well, we’ll leave it at that.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

We’ll leave it at that.

EK Ad Read

Teresa Valerio Parrot

So I will move on to a resource. I want to share something that I thought was really, really good. I know that we have been getting a lot of questions around, what kind of DEI resources can we share? And I saw something that I thought was fantastic, and want to make sure that I put into people’s hands. So we have worked with a gentleman named Jim Keller for years. We think that he is a really, really good guy in resource through Saul Ewing. And he and his colleagues put out a white paper that I would love to make sure that people see and it is a DEI resource that includes a couple of different takeaways, that includes a cheat sheet of key action items, an analysis of the executive orders key provisions and implications for higher education tied to DEI, identification of open issues and ambiguities, and initial guidance of short term and long term strategic responses. This is how Saul Ewing frames their white paper. So just wanted to make sure that if you are interested, there is a 10 page higher education reference guide that we put into your list of resources. If you are looking for something that kind of adds some language and some, also some just tips and guides. Because I know we’ve been getting a lot of questions from people that they’re looking for something to look at, another place that you might want to look I know that we were in conference season. NAICU just wrapped up their annual meeting. ACE’s meeting is coming up, as well as some other meetings. You might want to look at what their agenda looks like. And there are a number of really great organizations that are also talking about DEI. I know last week NAICU had some really, really good sessions too. Look to see who’s presenting, and then go to their websites and see maybe they might have some presentations, or they might have some blogs or some other ways that their presenters are talking about these same topics too. I know, for example, I heard from a number of people that just returned from NAICU’s meeting and were raving about who presented and what they talked about. So maybe look to see what those speakers might have up on their websites too, because this is a perfect time to see how associations are having some great resources put up on either their websites or again, their speakers websites as well.

Erin Hennessy

Perfect. Ah, conference season.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Ah, conference season. I love it.

Erin Hennessy

I know.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

You’re going to be here, there and everywhere as well too.

Erin Hennessy

I know. And I’m looking at all these agendas, and I’m hoping to corner a lot of these speakers in the hallways and sort of get some more intel out of them. I have so many questions about so many things, and…

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Yes.

Erin Hennessy

You mentioned that you had a little something that you wanted to end on a upbeat note for this conversation.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Yes.

Erin Hennessy

Is it? Is it about the Philadelphia Eagles winning the Super Bowl?

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Well, yes, let’s celebrate for a second. I know that this is something that you want to celebrate.

Erin Hennessy

No, really, I am very glad our colleague and producer, DJ is off on Monday so that he can fully bask in the joy of his Eagles winning last night. My win last night came when my brother-in-law decided to make chicken parm for dinner for the game. So that was a big win for me. The football is not even secondary. But, anyway.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Well, I have to say I loved the halftime show. I thought it was phenomenal. So if anybody wants to talk Kendrick Lamar with me and wants to break down the many layers of that halftime show, drop me a line. I am still thinking about it. I have watched it so many times. There are so many things about it that I’m still trying to crack the code on. So please let me know.

Erin Hennessy

And if anybody wants tips on how you too can be in bed before the Super Bowl halftime show starts, I’m your girl. I got my pneumonia vaccine this weekend, and apparently I have reached the age where just every vaccine knocks me out. So I slept for three and a half hours yesterday afternoon and went right back to bed. Anyway, theme of today is more than you needed to know about my life. What is the upbeat story you were gonna bring us home on.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

So it starts not upbeat, but then I think it ends upbeat. Here we go. The Chron had a fantastic piece, I think, from Beth McMurtrie, I love her pieces, and it’s What Keeps Stressed-Out Faculty Members Going? Their Students. And I think all of us need to be thinking about what keeps us going. And I loved this piece because it’s a nice reminder that all of us need to think about what that North Star is, or what that positive thing is, or what is it that reminds us of why we’re in this industry and why we’re doing what we’re doing. And for me, it’s the opportunities that I’ve been presented with and making sure that others have that opportunity. And I know for so many faculty, it’s the students. For me, it’s the students and the opportunities. And for each of us, reminding ourselves of why we’re here, why we do what we do, and keeping that front and center.

Erin Hennessy

Yes, agreed. I had a conversation recently with someone who’s an incoming chief executive in just a couple days at an organization that is in higher ed, but not directly, not an institution, an organization in the orbit. And I was fascinated when she said, you know, my whole thing, my driving purpose is student success. And I thought, that’s to your earlier point about talking about funding and what it actually means if we can make all of these organizations understandable to people around the concept of student success, I think that just moves us forward in so many ways, and the ways in which we can refocus organizations on that core mission, I think this is the time to do that. And it’s a way to drown out some of the noise and chaos to the extent that you are able to do that. And so I think that’s a really lovely way to end.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Excellent. On that note. Everybody, find your North Star. Remember why you’re doing this, and just double down on that.

Erin Hennessy

Yes, and thanks for listening, as always.

Teresa Valerio Parrot

Thank you.

Erin Hennessy

Thank you for joining us for this episode. You can find links in the show notes to some of the topics and articles referenced, and remember that you can always contact us with feedback, questions, or guest suggestions at trustedvoices@tvpcommunications.com. Be sure to follow us wherever you get your podcasts, and we invite you to check out Higher Voltage, another podcast on the Volt network that is hosted by Kevin Tyler. Kevin explores the evolution of higher education that is happening right before our eyes. Until next time, thanks to Teresa Valerio Parrot, DJ Hauschild, Aaron Stern, Nicole Reed and the Volt team for a great episode. And thank you for listening.