Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: And welcome to the 267th episode of objectively speaking. I'm Jag. I'm CEO of the Atlas Society.
Before I even begin to introduce our guest, I just want to say on behalf of everyone at the Atlas Society how sickened I am, and we are by the news of Charlie Kirk's attempted assassination.
Charlie has been a close friend to the Atlas Society, and I've been on their advisory board since the early days and had the honor of speaking at many events.
Some of you may not know that reading Atlas Shrugged was his first awakening to the ideas of liberty. And we are thinking and hoping for the best for him and for his family.
And the news today came from a college campus. So it's very appropriate to have as our our guest, Kathleen Dulaski, the founder and board chair of Education Design Lab, joining us to talk about her book, who Needs College Anymore? A Future Where Degrees Won't Matter. Kathleen, thank you for joining us today.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: Thank you for having me.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: So can we share a little bit of your origin story?
From Sallie Mae executive to journalist to becoming the first female Pentagon spokeswoman, what also inspired you to launch the Education Design Lab?
[00:01:33] Speaker B: Yeah, well, thank you for asking.
When I think about my career, and I'd say I'm in the twilight now of my career, I am, it seems, disjointed when you see it on paper, because I had really three distinct periods of different careers, really journalism.
Then I had the stint at the Pentagon that you mentioned.
I was in government.
And then I spent a fair amount of time in business. I was at aol, and I was at Sallie Mae.
And the Sallie Mae piece actually led me. I started their foundation, and that really led me to looking at sort of what are the barriers to entry for people going to college. And then from there, I went into both philanthropy. I was at the Walton Family foundation for a couple of years working on charter school, the spread of charter schools, and the policies related to that. And then I also ended up being on the board of a university.
And from there, I launched the Education Design Lab, which was about 12 years ago. And the very purpose of that was to try to help colleges disrupt themselves and adapt to the changing world so that they could, you know, serve a broader population of people than who they were serving.
And we can talk about that in more detail. But that's sort of the. The trajectory of my. My career, which I feel like helped me, you know, come to the point to write this book.
[00:03:08] Speaker A: Yes, well, I'm surprised our paths haven't crossed. Because I handled philanthropy for Ted Forstman of Force Little. Oh wow. And company. And of course he and John Walton got together to children's scholarship fund and try to bring some more options and competition into the K12 educational system.
And I also worked at a earlier White House at Bush 41 White House as a speechwriter.
So you know, things were quite different back then. There was no Internet, you know, when you were writing speeches you had to go up to the OEOB library and bring back down the books.
[00:03:53] Speaker B: That's right. Yeah. Well, I was a White House correspondent in that, in that, in that White House. So we probably ran into each other.
[00:04:02] Speaker A: In the hall and you could even smoke in your office. In those days it was still kind of a Mad Men type era. But I am curious, having had that similar experience as the first woman to serve as chief, chief Pentagon spokesperson during the Clinton administration, what were some of the biggest challenges you faced in that role?
[00:04:25] Speaker B: Well, certainly being a woman and being young, I had colonels and even some 1 stars that reported to me in some way and boy, that was in most cases the first time they'd ever reported to a woman, let alone a civilian and a political appointee.
And so it was, you know, it was interesting. But I actually found that, you know, moving from kind of a political and journalistic world to the military world that you, that there was more initial trust when you worked with people or they began working for you.
They, you know, you had their trust until you did something to lose it versus on, you know, the other side of the river. When I was in more the political world, it was the other way around. Right. Like you, you had to gain people's trust. So their suspicion was the starting point. And I found that fascinating.
You were also very much told to stay in your lane when you were working with military people because that's how they advance through their careers is not getting out of line. And in the political world or the journalistic world, you almost advance under the opposite mantra, you know, you know, ask forgiveness, you know, get information you're not supposed to have, you know, so, so I found that, you know, a kind of, you know, it was, it was, it was, it was hard to, hard to figure out. But you know, the, the other thing I should say about that time frame. So I was at the Pentagon 93, 94, 95.
Boy, what an interesting period in our, in our country as you know, the Cold War was ending and you know, being in the military policy world, it was sort of, you know, we were trying to figure out what is the role of the US Military after the Cold War? And we got a lot of things wrong, but we got some things right.
[00:06:18] Speaker A: So turning now to who needs college anymore? Can you explain what you mean in the book by new majority learners and why you believe they haven't been served very well by colleges?
[00:06:32] Speaker B: Right, so new majority learners. I dedicate the book to that, you know, that class of individuals and I define them. And the organization that I ran, the Education Design Lab, you know, supports this group as people for whom college was not originally designed. And that, you know, frankly, is pretty much everyone besides, you know, the sons of landed gentry, you know, from the, the 16, 1700s and even going back further into the European model of higher education. And I actually start the book with my own relative talking about my own relative who was an early graduate of Harvard University in 1673, but he actually was the son of an indentured servant. And I make the point that even though he was white male, you know, considered, you know, European in today would be, would, you know, might, might be considered, you know, somebody that hunted for. He was a, you know, he was a, the son of an indentured servant. And so, you know, he would, he would qualify at the time because he was the first in his family to go to college. He came from a, you know, a poor or, you know, low income family where he had to, he had to, you know, figure out, figure out his own way and he had to work his way through college, as I understand it from reading his biography. And so that's, those are the kind of traits, you know, people who, I mean, now we would classify people of color, people who work part time or have to work a good portion of their time, which is actually 65% of college students are working and another large percentage are working full time time. So, you know, college is not set up to work for them. And that's why so many people, you know, go through into the gauntlet and are spit out rather than get through. I mean, 63% of high school students, when they finish high school, start college, but yet we only have a third of Americans who have four year degrees. And you know, that's because some, I mean, obviously there's a portion that don't start at all, but many people can't get through the gauntlet.
[00:08:57] Speaker A: So Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase, made headlines with the observation, quote, if you look at kids, they gotta be educated to get jobs. Too much focus in education has been on graduating college. It should be on jobs. I think the School should be measured on did the kids get out and get good jobs, end quote. By that measurement, how are the universities doing?
[00:09:24] Speaker B: Well, not, not, not so well. And, and part of the problem is they don't know how well they're doing because it's very hard to track.
You know, what, you know, you lose track of your students once they leave. And so a lot of colleges are, you know, are trying now to figure this out because they are more and more being judged the way that Jamie Dimon is judging them.
In fact, the big beautiful bill that passed this summer includes requirements for colleges to track outcomes, meaning to track the answer to that question, are they getting jobs when they come out? And those of us in this field believe that that is going to have quite an effect on even like a chilling effect, if you will, on what colleges are going to be offering, that they're going to be closing down some of the programs that they, that can't track, you know, that don't lead to a job immediately that, you know, that aren't, that aren't designed to land you at the, you know, at the door of employers like engineering or nursing or teaching do right.
[00:10:35] Speaker A: Well, but it's also kind of good move towards transparency because these students are consumers and if they are saying, well, either this college or this department or this degree is going to significantly reduce my chances of going on to gainful employment, maybe they'll be able to make more informed choices.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I will say if I could add that it is much easier for like state schools to track what happens to their students. I know. So I was on the board at George Mason University here in Virginia, which is the largest public university here in the state. And we, we very much are able to track what happens to the graduates because most of them stay in state.
But you know, a lot of colleges, you know, where people come from all over the country and all over the world, they really have it. I mean, it is, it is a task that, a daunting task that colleges are all abuzz about right now trying to figure out how are we going to track this.
[00:11:37] Speaker A: So you cite research showing that over the past decade, the proportion of adults who say that college is not worth the cost has jumped from 42% to 56%, with 62% of respondents saying they prefer short term skills training to longer term programs leading to degrees. Is the market meeting the demand with this new kind of training?
[00:12:05] Speaker B: Well, I would say it's trying to and not necessarily through universities and colleges. But you know, I have a whole Chapter in the book on, on the boot camp phenomenon that rose up in the last decade starting around 2012, 2013.
And that was really driven by the, the, the tech boom and the IT jobs that were very hot where you could take, you know, one boot camp and, and get hired as a coder or you know, cybersecurity. You could take, you know, you could get some of these certifications and get really good jobs. And so, you know, that opportunity has always been available for, you know, through like trade programs or union, you know, union shops that are helping you become a carpenter and electrician. But now here were, you know, sort of white collar jobs that were offering you, you know, sort of hands on training. And there were a lot, there were a lot of private organizations that got started and doing boot camps. And what's interesting is that a lot of that movement has kind of dropped off now. And I, you know, my, the, the chapter is called the Rise and Fall of Boot Camps. And I really try to analyze why. You know, because you know, it makes so much sense to be able to do a short term like a six month program or a three month program. And, and some of the reasons that it's really hasn't worked. I mean one is a lot of those tech jobs now are getting, you know, they're, they're decreasing in number and availability.
So that's of course one problem is demand, but, but the other is that, you know, these, these organizations, a lot of which were venture capital backed were not getting, you know, they, they, you had to pay out of pocket. Right. So they were mainly attracting people who were already had degrees. Right. They weren't, they weren't standing in or replacing college because you couldn't use your student loans or your federal financial aid. And so structurally we are set up to support people to go off to college financially in terms of your support, financial support. And we're not set up to help them do short term programs. And I think that's beginning to change. Again with the same bill, there's new legislation that is going to open up student loans and, or sorry, not student loans, Pell grants. So for lowering the lowest income, people at least will be able to use their, you know, their federal grants to, to go to short term programs, but they have to be through colleges.
[00:14:44] Speaker A: So you write in the process of researching your book, you set up a test account on one of these sites that give you your chances of getting into college. And you did that for the college where you originally got your degree, which is Duke, put in your SAT scores Your gpa, your extracurriculars, all, all of that, your legacy relationships, and it gave you only a 3% chance of getting into the school today. I have to say, I have a sinking feeling if I did the same for Harvard, my chances of matriculating would be even less. So what is driving that kind of competitiveness?
[00:15:29] Speaker B: Yeah, well, there's a couple of factors. I mean, one is when I went to college, which was, I will confess, in the, early, in the sort of the late 70s, I, you know, went back and researched it. When I did this book, I didn't know it at the time, but only 15% of Americans were applying to college. That's compared to that number I gave earlier of 63% now. Right. So there's just a whole lot more people in the system trying to get in.
Secondly, we have, you know, this thing called the Common app now where, you know, you can just hit send and apply to lots and lots of colleges. I mean, that wasn't the case back then. I applied to one college and you had to handwrite. You had to, you had to mail away for the, the brochure that would come in the mailbox, you know, and you look through the brochure and you would have a handwritten essay and a handwritten application. And so it was a lot of work to apply to one college.
And there wasn't the sense that you had to have your safety schools. I mean, that term just wasn't even a thing back then.
So, I mean, there are a lot of reasons, but those are a couple of them.
[00:16:38] Speaker A: What's been your own children's experience with either getting into college or choosing a different route? And did any of their struggles help to inspire you to write the book?
[00:16:49] Speaker B: Absolutely. In fact, my own kids situation when I was writing the book and thinking and reflecting back, because my kids are now early 30s, but when. I mean, one of the reasons I started the Education Design Lab in 2012 is because they were going through the college gauntlet or the college application gauntlet.
And, wow, the system wasn't really working for either of them.
One of them was, you know, struggled through, you know, from eighth grade on with, you know, various issues and, you know, defying authority and having ADHD and not being able to complete assignments, you know, the whole thing to the point that when we finally, you know, got through three different high schools with her, she, you know, didn't have a GPA that was going to get her into any, any college except an open enrollment.
And so she. Yeah, so that. And. And yet she was really bright, you know, and wanted to go to college. So, you know, I felt like the system definitely did her, didn't do her any favors. And then my other daughter decided, you know, not to go to college, was a performer.
And so I have one who went and one who didn't.
But the system, you know, they both had, you know, both, you know, mental health issues and which I probably contributed to. I mean, I would say things like, do your homework or you're going to be flipping burgers at McDonald's.
And so one of the reasons I went and did this, you know, AI generated test to see how much it had changed since I went to college was I, you know, I wanted to see, like, am I, am I pushing them too hard? Was I pushing them too hard? And I think the answer was yes, that, you know, when you're a parent and you're in the bubble where everybody else is, you know, talking about whether their kids got into, you know, Stanford or uva or whatever, and your kids, you know, you're just sort of at the softball game, you know, sort of trying not to get into the conversation. You know, you feel, you feel otherized. And in my case, I sort of became radicalized and, you know, which is one of the things that led me to start the organization. And then, you know, after learning so much about, you know, as I met all the people who were new majority learners along the way, it also caused me to, you know, want to write the book and, you know, talk about the narratives that are, you know, I think, really hurting, you know, hurting us as a nation.
[00:19:30] Speaker A: All right, well, we are getting a lot of good questions coming in and I don't want to get too ahead of ourselves, so I'm going to dip into our questions and then return to a few of mine.
[00:19:40] Speaker B: Great.
[00:19:40] Speaker A: Candice Morena, always good to see you. She says, I know many young people get frustrated because they get degrees but then find entry level jobs that won't hire them without a lot of pre existing experience.
Why is there a disconnect?
[00:19:58] Speaker B: That is a great question, Candace. And I have a whole chapter called Is Experience the New Degree?
Where I ask the question, you know, why, you know, in this day and age, particularly now with AI, why can't colleges sort of take it on as part of their role to really prepare you for a particular, you know, at least an entry level job, even if you change your mind later about what you want to do and because they don't see it as, as their role to prepare people specifically for work and you Know, why is that? I mean, I think it's a vestige of the liberal arts system where, you know, we are, we are preparing minds and, you know, then you go find a job that's your job. And to some, you know, to some extent that makes sense. But over time, the, the departure or the disconnect between what you're learning in school in terms of theory in most, in most fields, and there are some exceptions we can talk about versus what you're going to be asked to do in your first job is getting, it's getting wider and wider. And so that's why the employers want experience or they at least want to know which skills. They want you to have certain skills and be able to demonstrate that you have those skills.
And I talk about that in the book. That's why certifications are industry recognized. Certifications are really important.
And some colleges, I profile five colleges in the book that are different examples of ways that colleges are starting to come around to this idea that, wow, if we're going to stay in business, we need to help students get experience, not just post a bunch of internships on the career services office.
[00:21:48] Speaker A: Out of the five colleges that you studied, is there one that you kind of would give the best grade or that implementing innovations that others might want to consider following?
[00:22:03] Speaker B: Yeah. And the reason I gave five different ones because let's, like there is one sort of granddaddy college that does this the best. But it's also clear that it's going to be very hard for very many colleges to do what they're doing because they've been doing it since inception in 18, you know, the late 1800s. And that's northeastern University in Boston. It's private. It started out as a, actually as a, as a sort of a, almost like a, a work college for Greek immigrants to, you know, after whatever their jobs were, they would come and get trained to, you know, get better jobs, you know, which is a great model.
And they, and now they've parlayed themselves into being, you know, they have elite status now. They're harder to get into than pretty much any but like five, five of the Ivy Leagues. You know, I did the calculation.
They turn away like 95% of applicants, including my, my daughter, my, my other daughter who thought about maybe going there and you know, she was told, we went to the, you know, the, where you go and, you know, the open house and you learn about and, and what they do and what the open house tells the parents and the students is that it's called a co OP program. Right. Some of you may know it, where you come in and out of work, you do college for a semester or the first year is, you know, learning and building up and gaining, gaining, you know, basic skills. And then you go out to a, an apprenticeship and then you come back and then ideally you go on to another apprenticeship. So it's an in and out program and you actually disenroll when you're an apprenticeship. You're not paying for college while you're at the apprenticeship. You're making money, and then you come back and the college makes it its job to help you to actually, you know, land those jobs for you in your field.
And that's a great model, but it's very hard to do because it takes, in their case, like more than 200 staffers whose job it is to, you know, go find these internships and also to, you know, sort of cycle people through. It's, you know, it's very complex logistically to move people in and out, you know.
[00:24:25] Speaker A: Well, there's clearly a demand for that kind of experience. So maybe some education entrepreneurs will figure out a way to provide more supplies.
Jackson Sinclair, I think in response to something you'd mentioned earlier, says, I agree that some learning paths will probably be shuttered in colleges. Are there any indicators of which degrees are under threat of removal or which degrees are the least remunerative in terms of returns?
[00:24:58] Speaker B: Yeah, and part of it's about remunerative when.
Because some of these degrees, and one of them that you hear a lot that particularly like community colleges are removing or thinking about removing from their, their, their catalogs is. Or like psychology and foreign languages.
Because like psychology, yes, you need, you know, you might have a psychology degree if you're going on to medical school and you become, you know, whether you're a clinical psychologist or a, or a psychiatrist, but there's, there aren't many jobs that psychology specifically prepares you to be able to do after your bachelor's degree.
Even though it's a great major, it's a great general major, just as my, I was an English political science major.
And, you know, I haven't, I've heard English departments. I haven't heard about political science so much being mentioned. I don't think it's that popular of a major anymore.
But certainly the liberal art, liberal arts majors are the ones at most risks, you know, even though a lot of people might choose those to go on to law school or other, other graduate programs.
But that, you know, those are the ones that you're hearing where you know, they're not preparing you specifically for, specifically for a job. So one of the, one of the antidotes or solutions there is to say, okay, you're majoring in psychology, but let's also get you a certificate in, you know, fill in the blank that, you know, human resources management, you know, that you would be able to choose as a student off of a menu of things to get a certificate in your senior year.
You know, unlike a minor where you might minor on like ethnic studies or, you know, or something fun or ecology, this is the idea that you're in effect minoring in something that's job related that you're going to get a certificate in.
[00:27:08] Speaker A: Okay. My modern Gault asks, have you heard a recent report stating that more students are looking to colleges in the south versus going to the Ivy League colleges in the Northeast? What might be causing this?
[00:27:26] Speaker B: I haven't heard specifically south except for the, you know, reasons. I mean, I went to college in the south and, and I mean, I think one of the things that people talk about this is going to sound, you know, like a surface issue, but the weather, you know, people, they want to go to schools that have good, that have, you know, nice weather. And I certainly, when I went to Duke, there were a lot of people there from New Jersey and, and Northern states that, you know, that was one of their stated reasons for going.
So I don't know if that's increasing. It might have to do with the, the people, you know, the, the population shifts to the South.
I, I, you know, I, I don't, you know, there's also a lot of talk right now about whether people are choosing young people are choosing colleges based on which states have the, you know, the political policies that they like, you know, whether it's Florida or Texas or Vermont, you know, depending on your politics. There's been a lot of writing about that.
[00:28:31] Speaker A: Kingfisher21 asks, do you think colleges are having to spend more time getting students college ready rather than focusing on the decrees?
I often see many local students struggle out of high school and need help.
[00:28:48] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Well, if you, I mean, think about it. If you, in my day, only 15 of people went on to college. It was probably the 15% that were, you know, most prepared right now. If we're, if 63% are, you know, at least attempting college, you know, they're, they're, you know, you, you're, there'll be varying degrees of readiness.
And so yes, there's a lot of, a lot of services, a lot of discussion, a lot of Wraparound services for people who need a writing clinic or are struggling with. I was just talking to folks in Arizona who said that a lot of their college students come to college not having had algebra 2. So they're actually adding, you know, adding courses in, you know, very basic math. And a lot of times though, the students don't get credit for the, you know, they don't count as credit because it's like, you know, remedia. They don't use the word remedial anymore. But, you know, they're, they're having to catch up to the starting point. Right.
[00:29:49] Speaker A: Well, it gets back to what you and I were talking about before is whether or not The K through 12 system needs more disruption and whether or not it's doing its job.
All right, we've got some questions here about trade schools, about community colleges, transferring out of those maybe as a way to save costs or get into your preferred school. Any thoughts on those kinds of schools?
[00:30:14] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I'd love to say something about community colleges and the transfer because we've done, my organization has done a lot of work on that topic. Like, you know, two parts of it. One is, you know, the transfer rates are abysmal. You know, something like only 17% of people who start out in community college saying they want to get, you know, finish a four year degree. Only 17% get, you know, actually make it through. And you know, a lot of people are upset about that. There's all kinds of programs around. You know, how do we support that transition? Can we help them transition sooner so that they get into the new, you know, the big school sooner and get to their major? You know, like there's all kinds of work going on there. But then also kind of on the flip side of that, what my organization's working on is, well, what about people who are really going to community colleges? They've been told they have to get a four year degree to get a good job. Let's help them do shorter term pathways that can stack to a degree but where they can build their earnings power from the get go. Because that hasn't always been the case where you come in and you have to take all these courses in community college when you're just trying to get a good job, but you've got to take a lot of liberal arts and you know, general courses. And so we're, you know, we're helping colleges create what we call micro pathways that are, you know, actually designed directly with employers to meet regional, you know, hiring needs and talent needs.
[00:31:44] Speaker A: So we have some viewers who are familiar with what you're doing at education Design labs and fans of what you're doing, but others who may not be familiar. Maybe you can start us off or start us over with, with a little bit about the education Design lab, what it does and who it's serving.
[00:32:04] Speaker B: Oh, great. Well, thank you. It's a national nonprofit that is working at this point with about, we've worked with about 1200 colleges over the 12 years that we've been in existence. And it basically takes, I don't know how many of you are familiar with human centered design, but it takes a. That's sort of the pedagogy or the methodology that we use to kind of work on the problems associated or the barriers associated with higher education right now, like how do we think about serving a broader set of people with a broader set of services? And so we use human centered design to work with, with the employers. And you know, so that's where, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're pulling out what are their needs, you're pulling out what are the learners needs. And then you're, you know, you're sort of matching those to create solutions. And it's been, it's been very, you know, fulfilling. And we've had a lot of success.
It's sort of like we came at the right time because there was a lot of, you know, disruption, sound, you know, talk of disruption in higher ed and particularly for community colleges, the enrollment was dropping like a stone.
And so, you know, we had everybody's attention to say, okay, yes, we need new solutions to get people, you know, trained for the workforce, to get them in school, keep them in school, help them graduate with some kind of credentials of meaning.
It doesn't have to be a degree, but it needs to be something that is a signal to employers.
[00:33:42] Speaker A: Well, we talked a little bit about apprenticeships before in the context of Northeastern.
Apprenticeships have been a part of our country's history. Are they becoming more popular?
[00:33:55] Speaker B: They're certainly becoming more popular in the, let's say policy world and the vernacular, like in the, you know, they're gaining ground as in terms of prestige and you know, political will, if you will. But the numbers of apprenticeships that are both available, there's certainly demand, there's no, no question there. But the, the number available is not, is, is not growing at a, at a very, you know, at a very fast pace. I think there's something like 600,000 registered apprentices nationwide, you know, you know, compared to like 7,7 million people in college at any given time.
And so, and, and you know, the reason is, is the funding, right? We, we are not funding apprenticeships. It requires funding from somebody. And if it's not, you know, like you, you know, it looks like with this new bill that, that at least low income people will be able to use their, their, you know, their federal financial aid grants to help pay for their portion of apprenticeship. Students have to pay to be in an apprenticeship.
Somebody has to pay for the, the, you know, required part of apprenticeships that are, that are, you know, classroom training. And that's been kind of the rub in this country compared to other countries where the government pays or the tuition's free, employers don't want to pay for it and they're not, you know. And so, you know, we, it creates a bit of a chill on the growth of apprenticeships, even though everybody's recognizing that it's a really good model, particularly for now given that, you know, more and more jobs, you know, we're blurring the lines between blue collar jobs and white collar jobs. We really are with technology. It's just happening and it's, you know, which, that part's kind of exciting, but you know, how you train now for those jobs, that, that crossover is, you know, still confounding us.
[00:36:02] Speaker A: So Ann M. Has a question here that dovetails into some of my questions. She asked whether academia thinks that they have a left wing bias. And just wondering, especially in the wake of the October 7th massacre in Israel and the protests on campus universities like Columbia. Although I was speaking at the University of Mercer in Macon, Georgia and I was assaulted by a trans activist for somehow participating me personally, in the massacre of Gazan civilians.
So I just wonder if there is also a sense that, you know, things have shifted so dramatically. We talked about when you and I were growing up, you know, even earlier, like back in the 50s and 60s when there wasn't necessarily kind of a parody, but there definitely was more viewpoint diversity. And if you look at the ratios of sort of conservative to progressive professors and how that has steadily gone in one, one direction, does any part of that present a cause for concern in terms of trying to find ways to establish more diversity of viewpoint on campus?
[00:37:39] Speaker B: Well, I'm, I'm, I mean, it's, it's always tricky to, you know, when I was on the board and we were, you know, I was on like the tenure committees and things at a public university, you know, it's always hard.
You, you're trying not to, I mean, you're not supposed to politicize or think about these things.
And you know, I will say, you know, I've seen the statistics that show that, you know, more professors are liberal.
And I, you know, I think that some of the debate going on now is, you know, up to a point is helpful to kind of get everybody thinking about, oh, you know, have we become, you know, is the, is, are the viewpoints under, do we need to, you know, level set.
But you know, I don't, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm not a fan of, you know, what's going on in the, you know, sort of the attacks on the universities. I mean, my, at my university, which is, you know, one of the ones that, you know, the Trump administration has come after, you know, like we, we, you know, I remember during the October, I was teaching that semester during October, the October 7th, and we have a lot of Arab students and a lot of, you know, even Palestinian students and nobody was demonstrating. You know, there weren't there, there weren't the big demonstrations. And I remember asking somebody, you know, well, why isn't, you know, why isn't this happening here? And the answer somebody just said offhandly, well, you know, everybody's work, you know, everybody has a job. I mean, they're working. They don't have time for this. You know, they have families, you know, they're, they're, you know, in other words, if somebody said it's not a woke campus, you know, so I, you know, I do think the majority of campuses are, you know, places where, you know, it's new majority learners who were really there for, you know, some other reason than to, than to, you know, have spend a lot of time doing that. But I mean, college campuses have always, always, you know, had demonstrations. I mean, I think, you know, what people are arguing on is getting, it's getting to the point where people feel like they're, you know, other view, opposing viewpoints are not safe. And that's, yeah, I mean we, we need, we need some actions to level set that.
[00:39:58] Speaker A: My modern Gault has a question about student debt. How do you think the $1.3 trillion student debt is going to influence colleges going forward regarding admissions and programs?
[00:40:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think this is part of what is, you know, the narrative in the book. I talk about these conflicting narratives, right, that have families kind of tied up in knots, particularly middle class families. You know, one is that you need a college degree to get a good job and the other is that, oh my gosh, you know, the debt is going to be crushing.
And so, you know, it's sort of, they feel kind of paralyzed, you know, then. And so the people who are, you know, are going to college, it's kind of a horseshoe effect, right? I mean, a lot of middle class people are going to college, but they're making choices to go to, you know, the, the least expensive ones that they can, you know, that they can, that they can find and feel good about. But you have this sort of horseshoe effect at the expensive colleges where you have the people who were on, you know, federal, full, full ride, federal financial aid because they're very poor. You know, their, their families make less than like $40,000. And then you have the, you know, self financed people whose parents are saying, you know, honey, honey, let's get you into the best school we can.
And that's who's at these, you know, these campuses. And the middle class is kind of missing, which is, you know, not as it should be.
And so I think that's one of the effects of the, of the rising costs. You know, where you're getting to the point where a few campuses now or, you know, colleges are charging for tuition $100,000 a year. And that's, you know.
Yeah, that's really tough for family, for any family.
[00:41:50] Speaker A: So do you see a future where local companies essentially order up specific skills that they need to be taught and colleges deliver on that training?
[00:42:03] Speaker B: Yeah. I raised this question in the book, like, do you think we will get to a point where, where companies, let's say, might just cut out the middleman and just say, well, you know, we need people to do, you know, this, this type of cyber security role and here are the six skills and here's the certificates you need and we'll offer them or we'll hire a boot camp type company to, you know, to train them and let's cut out the college.
And you know, when you talk to employers about that, even big ones, they say no, you know, we, it's, it's messy business, like building our pipeline. Like we need, we need multiple pathways to pull this off. Yes, we'll do that. What I just described, you know, like train our own or upgrade up, upskill our current staff. But we also, you know, still want people coming from colleges. We just want them to be, have more specific and you know, demonstrable, invisible skill sets.
And that's, you know, that's the, that's the piece that I think we're all working on and, and I think AI actually will help. That's one of, you know, Some of the things about AI are going to make it harder for know, learners and students and graduates. But that's one thing that I think makes it easier. It's going to demonstrate what skills you need to get from A to B to C. Yeah.
[00:43:28] Speaker A: Could you talk a little bit more about AI and how you think it will potentially play a role in disrupting the current gap between what companies are looking for and what colleges are providing?
[00:43:42] Speaker B: Yeah, well, it's interesting. You know, my book came out in January, end of, well, February, end of February. And you know, I would say that by April or even early May, you know, I've done a lot of interviews and a lot of things like this. And you know, by, by May it's sort of like that's when the press, and maybe it's more the, you know, the, the chattering class, you know, sort of got hold of this idea that, oh, the, the first rung of the career ladder is going to really be disrupted by AI, you know, robots taking those jobs. And we started to see that the unemployment rate was higher for college graduates, new college graduates, than it was for the general population, you know, which suggests that they're, you know, getting training that might not be, you know, hireable. Right. But yet they have expectations. And so they're not taking the job at Chipotle or Chick Fil A.
They're holding out in their parents basement. And so we started to see that in the numbers this May and everybody's all agog about that.
It may be short term because there's a lot of hype with employers saying they're not going to need these entry level people and maybe they will, but it could be the start of an actual trend. In fact, I'm teaching a course on how to get hired in the age of AI. That's going to be the name of my course for the spring and we'll do a design sprint around this topic with employers and students.
[00:45:20] Speaker A: So one of the things I really enjoyed about your book was the storytelling. You interviewed 150 different stakeholders from employers to learners. And I'm just wondering if there was any particular experience or trajectory story that you felt was very emblematic about either the problems or the solutions that you'd like to share.
[00:45:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I'll just give two very quick examples because one is about sort of a young man who like found his way without a degree. That I think is emblematic of the possibilities going forward. Right. And that is that his high school was doing these industry certifications in cyber security and offering up courses you know, that used to be if you, only if you went the votech route and you've decided to become an auto mechanic or a beautician, did you get non college track classes. But you know, in, in his high school, he, he got, he got everything and he got, he got a mix. They were calling, they're calling it now CTE Career Technical Education for all. Not, you know, not college for all. But, you know, you could go either. That way you can go either path. And he was able after high school to get a job at aws, you know, Amazon Web Services as a, as a data technician making, you know, more than $70,000.
And then he was able to parlay that into another job. Anyway, I won't tell you the whole trajectory for him, but he by 23 was making like $120,000 as a software engineer. So he was sort of. He parlayed that into a software engineer job. And he said, you know, I wouldn't even go back and get my degree now because it's like not. I wouldn't even put it on my resume if I did because, you know, it's not as useful as other things.
But his story very much points to the need to create those kinds of industry certifications for more fields than we currently have them for and to offer them in high school and in college, but particularly in high school.
So that's. Maybe I should just stop there because.
[00:47:34] Speaker A: No, no, like I said, I thought the stories were some of the best parts of the book. So.
[00:47:41] Speaker B: Yeah, if you have time. Do you have time for one other one? Okay.
Okay, great. So the other story was a family. So in, in the book, in one chapter, I actually kind of go through the categories of people who do need college still and the categories of people who, you know, given the system and their social capital, can, you know, get away without it. And one of the, the example that I used for the, the families that do still need college, it was a family. And I interviewed the mother and the child and her two kids. And the mother had been a migrant farm worker in California. Like, huge, from a huge family. And she sort of like, she, she got pregnant senior year of high school, you know, didn't, didn't go to college. But she wanted, you know, more for her kids. That's how she put it. You know, she was of Mexican descent and she got herself to. They, they got themselves to Denver, Colorado, because they heard there were a lot of charter schools there. They got their kids into charter schools and she managed to get a job as a Like associate principal, but like not, you know, she still didn't have a degree, but, you know, she managed to, you know, work her way up through grit. And anyway, the, where the story ends, which is, I thought fascinating, was she was bound to determine that her kids would go to college because she thought that would be their ticket. And she has two kids and, and they're both in high school now. And I interview them. One of them doesn't want to go to college. You know, he wants to be an entre, you know, he wants to have his own, you know, business as a, as a welder or as a, you know, he's not sure, but you know, some sort of more trade business because he sees, he wants to get out and earn money and he thinks it's macho, his mother said. And so it's fascinating that, you know, how the circle works, you know. Yeah.
[00:49:27] Speaker A: So in the process of writing the book, was there anything that once you got to the end of the process and all of the research that you did that either surprised you or changed your mind?
[00:49:45] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think what I, you know, what I do recognize is for the recommendations that I make that, you know, there's one frame, you know, I give 10 design criteria at the end of the book that are summarized from all the different chapters. And, and the most important one, and I would say the one that's kind of resonating the most as I do the book tour, has been this idea that college needs to become a step ladder approach.
Right. Kind of like I described with Northeastern University.
But you know, what I recognize is how hard that is for colleges to pull off. Community colleges actually are having a better time of it. You know, as I mentioned, the lab is helping them do it because they're not, it's not against their DNA.
You know, the problem for any college is it's, it's not well funded. In other words, they, yeah, it's hard for them to, to make, to, you know, pull it off from a business model standpoint because a short term program, you know, is not a cash cow. You know, the, the cash cow or those liberal arts classes where you put 300 students in an auditorium. You know, I, I took those classes and, and you have one teacher and then a bunch of graduate student assistants. That's the cash cow. Right. And you know, you can't blame colleges for that. That's how they're funded. Right. It's kind of like, that's like Medicare and doctors. It's very similar.
[00:51:14] Speaker A: So maybe we can close with this if there are young people certainly in the audience that we serve at the Atlas Society, I'm on Saturday leaving for our first international student conference in Tbilisi, Georgia.
But for young people who are, and their parents and the families that are thinking about do I need college anymore? Now everybody's situation is going to be different. But what are some of the, if not advice, then what kinds of questions would you advise that they think through?
[00:51:48] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great last question because I, you know, I do get asked this a lot and I think I tell people it depends upon a couple of things.
One of them is, you know, are you, you know, just coming out of high school and in a, you know, in that part of your life when you're still trying to explain, explore and figure out, you know, what you want to do? I mean, I would not tell any 18 year old not to go to college.
You know, as some of these entrepreneurs who have said, oh, you should just go out and do a startup. I, I wouldn't, I would not say that unless they're, you know, have so financially constrained that, that you know, they need to work or they're supporting family member. You know, there are a lot of reasons why someone can't do it or they're, you know, neurodivergent and worried about that, whether they can, you know, handle the, handle the, you know, the, the crazy workload.
I, I would say give it a try because you can always leave as as many people do, right it, the.
But, but I would suggest to those people even think about it efficiently. If money is an issue and mom and dad are not paying, you know, it think about it as a, a, a step by step investment, right where you're, where you're testing put a toe in the water and, and, and use it to explore. And then the second thing I would say, if you know what you want to do, you know, if you know, you want to be a doctor or a nurse or a teacher, you got to have that piece of paper, you know, you might as well get started and figure out, you know, how to most efficiently pull that off.
And that's so, you know, doing, doing some research around and I have in the book a list of, you know, here, here are some, here are professions that do need, absolutely need a degree and probably will for decades. And, and here are some that don't where, you know, it's starting to open up already. And a lot of those jobs are in tech, I would say in, in business, you know, things like sales, the creative arts obviously and you know, Those are a couple of examples.
And then I think this whole AI thing I think you need to think about, you know, be careful. Like I have a nephew who's studying to be a graphic designer and I'm kind of worried about, you know, like is he going to be able to just to get out and get a job in graphic design when, you know, we can all just go and use a, an app to make whatever we want. Yes, there will still be graphic designers, but there won't be as many of them them. And so, you know, think about those kinds of technological advancement issues as well.
[00:54:25] Speaker A: Well, finally, Kathleen, where can we follow you and find out more about your work?
[00:54:31] Speaker B: Well, thank you. I have a substack where I'm continuing to write and post about these issues which is, you know, substack kathleen dulaski.com I think is the way it works on Substack. You can also just google Kathleen DeLasky on substack. And then the, the book has a website which has some other resources and you can also buy the book there which is who needs college anymore.org and that has both ways to buy the book. It's got discussion like discussion guides for different types of folks, families, organizations, colleges.
[00:55:06] Speaker A: Fantastic. Well, thank you again, terrific book and appreciate your time. Also thanks to everyone else who joined us today. Thanks for all of your great thoughtful questions. As mentioned, I will be in Tbilisi, Georgia next week, but Atlas Society founder and senior scholar David Kelly and senior fellow Rob Krasinski will host a webinar to discuss the questions. Is America an idea how to win? We know what those ideas are and why does a country need to define itself by IDs ideas. So we'll see you then. Thanks everyone.
