Friday, May 9, 2025 - In a special episode recorded at the Milken Global Institute, Jeff moderates a wide-ranging panel with higher education leaders including the presidents of Dartmouth, Stanford, UC San Diego, Yeshiva University, and the CEO of ETS. The conversation explores the crises and critiques facing higher ed—from campus protests and declining public trust to research funding and economic ROI. The leaders discuss how institutions can reaffirm their missions, serve a broader public, and restore faith in the value of a degree in an era of polarization and political scrutiny.
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0:00 - Intro
0:49 - Higher Ed’s Top Challenge
07:51 - Mental Health on Campus
10:35 - Brave v. Hostile Spaces
13:30 - Withholding of Federal Grants
19:15 - Banding Together
30:33 - Making Higher Ed More Inclusive
38:17 - Fed. Gov’t - Higher Ed Partnership
41:54 - Measuring the ROI of College
47:32 - Looking Ahead
Jeff Selingo:
It's Jeff. If you listened to the last episode, you know it was recorded at the Milken Global Institute in a conversation I had with Bill Ackman. Now here's the second episode, a panel with the presidents of Dartmouth College, Stanford University, UC San Diego, Yeshiva University, and the CEO of Etsy. Thank you to the Milken Global Institute for sharing this audio with us. To watch these sessions or any of the sessions from the meeting, go to milkeninstitute.org Good morning, everybody. It's great to have everybody here. I'm Jeff Salingo. I'm a journalist and author of Who Gets In? And A Year Inside College Admissions. I also have a new book coming out this fall called Dream Finding a College that's Right for you. And for the purposes of this panel, I'm also a special advisor at Arizona State University. In my 25 years in and around higher ed, I really don't recall a moment like we're living in right now where higher education is essentially in the news every day, sometimes multiple times a day. So we're going to jump right into the conversation today because we have a lot to cover. I'm really excited to introduce our panel today. Immediately to my left, we have Sian Beilock, who's the president of Dartmouth College. We have Ari Berman, who's president of Yeshiva University, Pradeep Khosla, who's chancellor of the University of California at San Diego, Jonathan Levin, president of Stanford University, and Amit Sevak, who is CEO of ETS. Welcome, everybody.
Jeff Selingo:
So when we think about the history of higher ed, I think higher ed is in many ways like a living kind of organism. And Post World War II, we had this huge growth in higher ed, both the GI Bill, the Higher Education Act, a lot of research money coming into higher ed. But over the last 10 years, it's kind of fallen on hard times. Right. When you think about public perception of higher ed, we've also seen enrollment declines overall, especially at the undergraduate level. We saw net price increases, the college going rate. This is a number that really concerns me. Ten years ago in the US 70% of high school students went right onto College. Today it's 62%. Right. So we've had almost a 10 percentage point drop in the last decade. And then, of course, the last hundred days. Right. Higher ed has been in the news almost daily as the Trump administration really decided to crack down on kind of this one sector more than other, more than any other. And clearly there's many issues that led to this point. But I want to just kind of go down the line here. And if you had to diagnose kind of the problem with higher ed, whether that's an idea, a policy, a strategy that has kind of permeated the sector, whether that's over the last year, over the last 10 years, over the last 50 years, what. And resulted in where we are today, what would that one thing be? We're just going to do a quick lightning round down and Sian, let's start with you.
Sian Beilock:
Yeah. I think we lost sight of what our mission is. We are education institutions. We're not political institutions, we're not social activist institutions. Our goal as an institution is to foster views on both sides of ideological debates. And when the institution itself is taking political positions, it's very hard to do that. It doesn't mean defending what's important about higher ed, academic freedom, our fierce independence, that's really important. But if we can't have a mission that's focused on education, we will fail to live up to what I think great universities are supposed to be.
Jeff Selingo:
Okay, Ari, what's the one issue for you?
Ari Berman:
Top line is universities used to be about core curriculum. Today it's about gaining career credentials. We've seen a major shift. The history of universities has been an invitation to students to explore great conversations, making them part of a historical dynamic with great texts and ideas that they worked and studied together as fellow journeyers. And what's happened is that somewhere in the last quarter of the 20th century, the universities switched from core curriculum to open curriculums and they moved to you choose what's right for you. And as a result, the sense of community, the sense that we're part of something deeper and more profound has been lost. And in its place has come careers and professional and accreditation and credentials. And that has created a disastrous situation. And we'll talk more about it later.
Jeff Selingo:
Well, I think one of the reasons why is because of increasing costs. Right. People want that ROI on higher ed, but we'll definitely talk about that. Pradeep, what's the one issue?
Pradeep Khosla:
Yes, so I would pick, I think long time ago, higher education was supposed to create the whole citizen to maintain and enable democracy to sustain itself. Over time, because of higher education costs, the whole perception has changed to one of social mobility and one of career readiness. And we are not seeing that promise being delivered by the normal citizens. So I think that's where the real slight gap is, where they don't see the value for the tuition they are paying.
Jeff Selingo:
So, okay, Jon, what led us to this point?
Jonathan Levin:
I'm going to sneak in two, because I think the higher education ecosystem is not really one unified thing. Large fraction of universities and colleges in this country are not selective and they're really open to students who can pay. And a big challenge. There is value because education gets more expensive. We haven't figured how to automate it. And there's a lot of questions about the cost of going to those colleges. And the demographics are turning against many universities and so they are short of students and it's hard for them to deliver a high value education at a lower reasonable cost without students incurring a lot of debt. For universities like Stanford, that's not our problem. We have lots of students who want to come. And the real cost after financial aid has been falling for 10 years. Last year, 88% of the students who graduated at Stanford walked out of graduation with zero debt because of financial aid. And the challenges I think at the so called elite universities are different. Those are more challenges of politics and values and, and universities in that category need to be aspirational places that anyone in the country would want to send their children to and would think it was an incredible opportunity to learn and be exposed to different ideas.
Jeff Selingo:
Amit?
Amit Sevak:
Yeah, Jeff, for me it's communicating and having measurable value of the higher ed institution. If you go back just a few decades ago and you had a higher education degree, you had a high probability of getting a well paying job, supporting a family and integrating into the social fabric, that value proposition has changed. The unemployment rate has gone up for college graduates the last couple of years in the country. The underemployment rate is nearly 40%, which means the average college graduate in the United States almost two out of every five are in a job not in their field of study, not at a salary level. That makes sense, that makes an ROI sense. So it's that measurable value. Having that graduating and having that transcript or having that diploma is not proof of readiness and the ROI just isn't there.
Jeff Selingo:
And we're gonna talk a little bit about that in a few minutes. So I wanna take a deeper dive on some big issues that have been in the news the last couple of weeks, particularly DEI and access and belonging more broadly, research funding and the role of, of American higher ed on the world stage when it comes to higher ed. And Sian, let me start with you because in visiting campuses I've sensed a shift since the pandemic. Right. Students seem more anxious about whether it's about politics, about the future, about their place in the world. I talk to faculty not on every campus. But faculty report students seem a little bit disengaged. College has always been kind of this time of exploration, even discomfort, I might say. But it now seems that that discomfort is kind of tipping into paralysis. Right. Rather than growth in students. So I know you've done a lot of work in this area. What do you think is happening developmentally for this generation? Why does college just seem so much harder, so much less fulfilling than it used to be? And I think that plays into this value of why we want to go or don't want to go.
Sian Beilock:
Yeah. You know, our researchers on our campus and beyond have done a lot of work looking at levels of anxiety, depression, happiness in young people. And it's no secret that across the globe we're seeing higher levels of depression, anxiety, lower levels of happiness. And I think that pertains to everything in their life, college being one of them. You know, Dartmouth, what we do is we are a leader in training leaders and we over index for that. And I really believe that to train leaders, you can't think about just what happens in the classroom. You have to think about the whole person. And that includes students health and mental well being. And I'm a psychologist. My research shows that if you are worried about something, you're going to stay away from it. And that's exactly what we don't want in our leaders. We want our leaders to create, to be in brave situations. I don't want to create safe spaces. I want to create brave spaces where they're uncomfortable, where they can challenge, where they can lead across different views. And, and so we're really focused on giving our students the tools to flourish inside and outside the classroom and to the tools to approach really hard questions and really hard issues. Because if people retreat to their corners, their polarized corners, and just shout at each other, we are not going to get to the best solutions in the world. And I think one place to start is thinking about students, mental health and well being. And it's not something that sits next to academic excellence, health and well being. Mental health and well being is a precursor to academic excellence. And unless we're talking about that in the same sentence, especially at our most elite universities, we are not going to be producing the next leaders of our democracy.
Jeff Selingo:
Okay, so then, Ari, how do you distinguish between discomfort that's kind of essential to intellectual growth and hostility? Because it seems like a lot of the tension on campuses have been between, as Sian just said, right. Creating those brave spaces, but also trying to manage this kind of outward hostility that A lot of students have felt, particularly over the last two years.
Ari Berman:
Yes. Let me first just address a little bit what Sian was talking about with anxiety and mental health, which is so essential, which I see as a consequence of the fact that students don't feel that they're part of core communities, meaning when they. In the past, the universities, when you entered into it, you felt supported. You're part of a vertical community that started thousands of years ago. You were built on this, and your students were fellow travelers and journeyers in this educational exploration of ideas. So when you were going through periods, and I think that research has certainly shown it's community which helps reduce risk. It's true for religious communities. It's true. If students feel they're part of a strong university community, that helps reduce the risk. At Yeshiva University, the most popular event that we have is something called Stomp out the Stigma, where undergraduate students speak about their challenges in front of a thousand students who support them and love them. And that feeling that they're supported, that they have a community with them, is what helps reduce risk and anxiety. In terms of what you were talking about, which is hate, okay, there's a line to cross. You know, anti Semitism, which has certainly been in the news since October 7, is not about Jews. It's about hate. You know, I'm wearing my blue square. And Robert Kraft's organization speaks about not just Jewish hate, but all hate, which has no place in our society. And everyone should know that. You're next. It just first starts with the Jews. And there's certainly no place in the academy, because the core of the academy is academic freedom. And if ideas are disqualified because of the personal identity or political leanings of the speaker, then great ideas can't rise to the top. And that needs to be said. Tenured professors need to know it. The presidents need to say it, that antisemitism is hate, and that hate attacks the foundation of the university, which is academic freedom. And I just want to add that brave spaces don't mean not having boundary conditions. Free expression is so important, but you can't have free expression that robs someone else of free expression. That means not shouting down speakers. That means not spewing hate. That doesn't make other people feel like they can be on campus. And it certainly means not setting up encampments with one shared ideological view that don't let other people walk across campus. You can have brave spaces. You can have boundary conditions. You can have the kind of community and trust we're all trying to get at in a way that helps us train the next leaders.
Jeff Selingo:
Well, okay, so speaking of free expression, training the next leaders, what this administration has done in is come after research funding for colleges and universities, particularly those that they don't think are doing enough to combat Antisemitism on campuses. And Jon, can you just paint a picture as a leader of a major research university and Pradeep as well, can you just paint a picture for us about what this means in reality? We keep seeing headlines about overhead rates and researchers and programs being cut. Can you just paint a picture, for example, at Stanford and pretty briefly at UC San Diego, about what this means in reality on the ground?
Jonathan Levin:
Sure. So one of the really important decisions in modern U.S. history was after World War II. After World War II, the federal government realized that if the United States was going to be the leading country in the world, it had to be the leading country in science and technology. And there was a debate about how the US would pursue that goal of leading the world in science and technology. Different ideas about how to do that using the private sector, using universities. And the idea that one at the time, which was a visionary idea, was that the federal government would provide support for basic science and research and technology. They would locate that within universities and it would all be based on a competitive merit based system where awarded by federal agencies. And that system has been the source of incredible strength for the United States. We dominate the world in science and in technology, even today when there's a lot of global competition in that area. And it also made the US the most innovative economy in the world because not only did that provide a foundation of basic science, but at places like Stanford, where we created innovative ecosystems like Silicon Valley around the university, that got ideas out into the world. And so if you just take my university as an example and you look at the students who have come at it and the companies they've created, Nvidia, Google, Doordash, Zoom, Cisco, just probably 7 to 10 trillion dollars of market value has come out of the university. And a lot of it has come out of federally funded research. Sometimes it comes straight out of the university. Google started as an NSF funded project on digital libraries. Larry Page and Sergei Brin took it out of university. Sometimes like generative AI, you get decades of research on things like gradient descent and neural networks. Just sits around and then the computation and the data show up. And all of a sudden you get OpenAI and Anthropic, by the way, both Stanford companies. And that's an incredible ecosystem to have that the US has created. And I think to your point, Jeff, you know, right now, there's always debates about things like exactly the level of funding and indirect costs. Those are completely valid, legitimate debates we can have. We've been having them since the first grant was written. And what's happened now is the federal funding is sort of caught up in a broader question about all the things that Sian and Ari were talking about, values on campuses and so forth.
And, you know, it would be healthy in the long run to try to disentangle those, but that's not the current political situation that we're in.
Jeff Selingo:
But, Pradeep, you were telling me earlier, I mean, there's real dollars, like big dollars at stake here.
Pradeep Khosla:
Let me make this very specific, and I'll take the UC San Diego context. We have a $1.8 billion research portfolio, all competitive, out of which $400 million is what is called indirect costs. We call it facilities and administration. The way these are computed, every three, four, five years, the feds show up on campus, they give you categories. Like, Here are the 10 categories you can charge. Then they do a desk audit of those categories. Then they compute the cost. So at UC San Diego, that number turns out to be like 64%. Then they'll say, no, no, no, I'll only give you 58. Okay, fine, we'll take it. So it is a legitimate process, audited by the feds for the feds and accepted by the universities. This is different from 30, 40 years ago when it was a one flat number and there was no real computation. So that's how it is computed. To say that this is all fraudulent and waste, I think is a mistake. To now argue that there may be a part of it which might be fraudulent. And we have seen in the past there have been universities which are fraudulently charged and there have been a few scandals around it. So that is possible, but it is not by any means rampant, and it's not by any means like the way to do business. Secondly, out of that $1.4 billion of direct cost. So now when you take the indirect cost and go from whatever it is to 15% at UC San Diego, we'll go from 400 million down to 250 right away. Sorry, 150. And then if you take the direct cost and cut that by 50%, the indirect will also go down. So that's another 75 million out of 150. So right away, the way we will lose $325 million a year without lifting a finger. But that's just our problem. But it is the country's problem. We are the number nine ranked university in highly cited researchers. We are one of the largest life sciences, biotech research hubs in the country. We are the source of technology. As Jon was saying, we are the source of a whole lot of good stuff. The country is going to suffer. And here's my biggest problem. If we let our lead slip by one or two years of no investment in research, the other countries are not keeping quiet to catch up later. For every one or two years we don't invest, we're going to take five to seven years to catch back up. So I think we're going to lose this game, game that we have won since World War II.
Jeff Selingo:
Okay, so then if this is so important, why didn't higher education band together when the administration first went after Columbia several weeks ago? Why didn't all the presidents just say, we have to stop this? So I think this is for any president up here.
Sian Beilock:
We are, I mean, we through organizations have, such as the American Association of Universities, have entered into lawsuits against the government in terms of indirect cost rates. We are coming together to, I think, make a case for the importance of these issues. But I think it goes back to always thinking about what our partnership looks like and can we make it better. So right now, the American Association of Universities, which I know that Jon and Pradeep and I were just at the meeting, we're actually working with the government on new models for indirect costs that could actually help both the universities and the federal government get what they want because we believe this partnership is so important.
Pradeep Khosla:
So I think the problem, we are confusing the social agenda and the civil rights issues and using that to penalize our competitive spirit. I think both are important. We need to focus on the civil rights. We need to focus on the social agenda. And I think the universities might have gone a little bit too far. So we need to focus on that. But punishing you by taking your research away, I don't know. It's punishing the country. It's not punishing the universities.
Jeff Selingo:
Yeah, Amit.
Amit Sevak:
I think I'd add, Jeff, that the architecture that Jon mentioned at the beginning that's worked so well for so many decades, where research and basic science and technology has fueled so much economic development. The opportunity right now is to reset that in this new global context. We have a rivalry that's emerging with China and others. And we think about how is America going to compete? How is the United States going to compete economically, strategically, militarily? A lot of what funded that in the past was not just economic, but had geopolitical interests. A lot of our investments back then was our rivalry with the Soviets. So as we think a little bit more, I think it is a broad architecture question so institutions can come together. And as Sian mentioned, I mean, I'm seeing so much activity. Even research institutions like ETS that are very much closely working with higher ed are working together. But this is an architecture piece. It won't get solved in a couple of months. We have to reimagine how are we going to fund basic research at a fundamental level and for what purpose.
Sian Beilock:
And this is not it's American competitiveness, but it's American prosperity. Dartmouth has the largest rural health system in the US we are one of the largest employers in our region. Universities are a seed of prosperity around them from California to the Southwest to the East Coast. We have to think about how we can continue in that leadership role and deliver frankly to our customers, which are the American people.
Ari Berman:
You know, I just want to say that, look, disruption here is going to create different opportunities. And that's what was mentioned. And really, I mean, they're talking about continuing all the architecture of the past. There might be new ways of funding and thinking about how universities are getting the money in, in terms of the research that would be very creative and productive for the future. We don't need to be sticking to the models of the 60s and 70s on the one hand. On the other hand, I don't think we should forget. And it's amazing that the AAU is working on this part. I'm curious if they're working on the other part, which is all the civil liberty problems and the problems in universities. I mean, we're talking about real. I have professors who are lined up calling me to come to Yeshiva University. Okay? Two weeks ago, the former chair of Rutgers Math left Rutgers to become a full professor at Yeshiva University. It's not just the students that are suffering, it's professors and. And that's core for academic freedom. And that's what the AAU needs to be focused on as well. And when you have that petition to sign, not just against the government, but when you have the petition to sign against hate, that's when we know that the American universities have gotten the message.
Pradeep Khosla:
So I think AAU did sign that petition. We as president did sign support for anti. Like not supporting antisemitism and really becoming a place where freedom of speech and academic freedom are protected. But look, there is a whole lot of 30, 40 years of progressive thinking in higher education that needs to be undone. It cannot be undone overnight. But I can tell you the commitment from AAU and from senior leadership of public and private is strong. Nobody wants to tolerate anti Semitism on campus. Nobody. In fact, on my campus we dealt with a camp very, how should I say, within a few days and very precisely. And the end result of that was a no conference vote on me because I was siding with somebody else. Right. But I didn't care because my job is to protect the institution for a greater future for the whole population.
Ari Berman:
After October 7, I started a coalition of university presidents who were able to say that we stand with Israel, with the Palestinian people who suffer under Hamas's cruel rule, and all people of moral conscience whose universities united against terrorism. We had over 100 university presidents who signed. Major public private universities, faith based universities and HBCUs signed together an unprecedented coalition. But there are other presidents that couldn't sign. And the reason they said they couldn't sign because they were afraid. They were afraid for the safety of their Jewish professors. That is actually what is happening on campus. And the AAU and the presidents looking at what's going on on campus is really essential to move America forward again.
Sian Beilock:
I think we have to go back to our mission here. Our mission is educating our leaders in an area that in an environment that does not include hate, where people can speak, where we are welcoming everyone, that requires every university leader to stand up and focus on that mission. And that is how you actually move forward. Whether or not signing a petition is the best way to do that, we can have an argument about. But the idea is that every university leader is talking about the value of having different viewpoints on campus, talking about the value of what we are as education institutions, not political institutions, and allowing our students to learn how to think, not what to think.
Jeff Selingo:
So there's deep inequities in the system, however. And Amit, let me start with you on this because we've always thought of higher ed as a meritocracy, even though it really isn't. And there's all these tools. ETS has been long synonymous with measurement in higher ed. Tools that were meant to signal merit and readiness, mainly testing, admissions, testing. But over the past few years, we've seen things like, you know, Varsity Blues expose deep inequities. You know, test optional policies took hold in admissions. Employers increasingly say.
Amit Sevak:
Most employers I talk to increasingly say graduates aren't prepared for the, for the real world. So how do we balance this need for kind of merit and fairness on one hand, with kind of these deep Inequities in the system where whether you go to college is largely tied to where you grow up, how much your parents make your skin color and increasingly your gender. Absolutely. And to just pick up on this because it ties into your question, this question on the fundamental purpose of higher ed. That's really what's going on here. What is the mission? What's the purpose? And we've talked about it just in the last couple of minutes. Jeff. There's an economic value of helping people get prepared for the future. There's a social value around some of the concepts we were just talking about that Ari and Sian were referring to. And then there's this research value, this long term impact on society and stability and so forth. So you've got the economic, social and research. I'm going to start with the economic side and focus there on your question. The reality is that to get to merit, to get to fairness, we have a fundamental question of what are we, what are we measuring? And in the past and up until just recently, the actual value of a college degree was clear. Right. You get a college degree, you get a job and you move ahead. That value proposition is broken. And right now getting that college degree for the vast majority of institutions doesn't actually demonstrate readiness. The skills that I pick up during, let's call it a traditional four year undergrad degree don't necessarily translate for a good percentage. That's why, as you said in your opening comment, the number of high school students now saying I'm going to college right out of gate has dropped almost 10 points. I mean, that's significant drop for a country of our size and economic power. So how do we address that? In my view, we have to re architect the way we measure skill progression in higher ed. From the moment a student comes in, what's their current diagnostic of skill that goes well beyond can I do math and can I do basic critical reasoning or reading comprehension on a standardized test? Actual much broader readiness skills at the beginning. Career inventory really tracking and helping for the vast majority. We have over 10 million plus students in higher ed in the United States. And traditional four year measuring career interests, helping students find what their purpose is in life through tools, in psychology, through sociology. There's so many great ways that we can measure and monitor and help nurture career progression. But the most important thing is, Jeff, during the time we move beyond seat time, the way we're structured, the way higher ed is organized is based on credit hours, Right? How Many hours over 120 credits have you gotten through you get your piece of paper, we're focusing primarily and we've conflated time in seat with actual learning. That's the architecture of 100 years ago for high school and for higher ed. So to change that, we need to move to more of a skill based measurement approach where over those four years or so we're actually measuring skill acquisition, having transcripts that are not just ABCD on academic courses, but actual skill readiness. So it's the shift away from making the invisible skills more visible and actually helping these students get ready that solves the academic, that solves that economic value piece. The social and the research, those are different discussions, but I think fundamentally moving towards a model where we're measuring development of skills and getting these students ready. Because for the vast majority, they're not going to become researchers, they're going to actually go into the work world and we need to get them ready for that.
Jeff Selingo:
And I do think the social and economic pieces are related. And as we move to talk about the future of higher ed and what's next, how do we make it more inclusive? If we look at just the results of any election over the last eight years, one of the best predictors of who you're gonna vote for is whether you have a college degree or not. Right? And I think about where I grew up. When I graduated from high school 35 years ago, about 65% of my high school went to college. Now less than 50% of that same high school goes to college. This is a County that 20 years ago was voting reliably Democratic. Now is the county that most went for Trump in the last three elections. Right. So most of the people that I grew up with and when I go back to visit my own parents, right, they just don't see higher education for them. Right. They just see it as for somebody else. So how do, if higher ed is so important to economic mobility, to the future of the country, how do we make it more inclusive? I want to make this another lightning round and let's go around. Amit, let's start with you and then come down, .
Jonathan Levin:
Clarify the value proposition for students. Just, it's a communication problem. What's the value that we're creating, the investment and the return? I think we have to. Again, this is sort of a problem for the broad mass of education because we're thinking about how do we get, say the college education rate up from 50% in this country to some larger number. And that is going to require creative alternate models of higher education that reduce the cost for students and still deliver great value, whether that's using technology or some change in the length of time or the content that's delivered. By the way, this is an incredibly important problem to solve because if you look at the way technology is going to change in the next 10 or 20 or 30 years with automation, which could come very quickly, it will affect exactly those students who are getting sort of some amount of college education who might have been headed for a very good career and earnings and may not be headed for that in the future. And so this is.
Jeff Selingo:
Don't you think some of this is.
Jonathan Levin:
Right, critical problem.
Jeff Selingo:
Right. But don't you think some of this is social too? Because students, you know, people see the headlines around the protests at these colleges, all these other things happening on campuses, and they say, that's not for my kid or that's not for me. So isn't there a piece of this? It's not just economic, it's also the perception that you're delivering to people.
Jonathan Levin:
I think the yes to some, yes, I completely agree with that is a problem on some campuses. But if you look at the number of campuses where there were protests last year, small number, concentrated in a relatively small number of schools, the schools where those types of things happened have to address those problems and they have to find ways to. That's a somewhat different problem. That is a problem basically of defining culture on campus and defining a culture on campus where speech is protected, a broad array of ideas are allowed to flourish. People have great freedom to pursue things that they care about and they can't infringe on the freedom of the other people.
Jeff Selingo:
Okay.
Jonathan Levin:
And that's a critical thing that needs to happen on universities. But I think the problem of how do you deliver a low cost college degree to, you know, 60% of American high school students, it's not unrelated, but it is a somewhat different problem that's been going on for decades of growing costs. And that's also a very important problem to solve. That's something we have to be creative about and think about what is the role of, you know, different types of funding of technology and doing that, of accreditation and so forth. And I think that is a problem that we should wrestle with, particularly given the changes in technology.
Jeff Selingo:
And I definitely want to talk about that future. Pradeep, how do we make it more inclusive?
Pradeep Khosla:
I spent my first 30 years at a private institution, Carnegie Mellon, and my last 13 or so at UC San Diego. And looking back, I think I made a mistake. I should have been at a public university because public university is is the model of access. It is the model of inclusiveness. It is the model where you are admitted not based on being the best of the best, but by asking the question, will you benefit from an education at UC San Diego? Are you good enough to come to UC San Diego and graduate and benefit from it? Rather than saying, are you the top three of all the people who applied? So I think we are like public institutions. We need to expand the infrastructure. We need to invest more in public institutions. Not here across the country. I think every state should have a public institution or two which is at the top of the heap in terms of its rankings. And selectivity of admissions should not be the criteria for ranking an institution because that clearly is exclusivity and not inclusivity.
Jeff Selingo:
Okay, Ari, how do we make these institutions more inclusive?
Ari Berman:
I think that influencers like in this room should know that there's a change underfoot in higher education and faith based universities are on the rise. Faith based universities outperform in enrollment the national average year after year. Its accessibility is part of its mission to create scholarships for students. And what we're seeing is that students are interested in universities that believe in academic excellence and are values based. This is part of. Part of a broader trend for America. You know, I just spoke at the inauguration. I gave the benediction at the inauguration under the rotunda. In the rotunda. And what I said is that this is a moment of historic opportunity. Americans are searching for meaning. Our merciful Father, help us rise to meet this moment. This is supported by data. Jonathan Haidt has great work on this about the dearth of meaning that students are feeling and they're being driven to universities that actually give them. It's not that they're searching for God, they're searching for purpose and they identify with college with convictions. And that's what's happening. And not just America. Internationally, students are coming at Yeshiva. We've doubled the size of our graduate schools, which are diverse. Student, student body. We had just. Our last student speaker at our major centennial dinner was a woman who graduated last year from the University of Tehran, A Muslim woman who's now the president of Yeshiva University's School of Science and Health. The student body.
Jeff Selingo:
Okay. All that said, though, the other three presidents have all seen their number of applications skyrocket over the last couple of years. So seriously, so obviously you have something that people still want.
Sian Beilock:
Look, I think you just heard about public universities, about faith based universities, about elite research universities. It's very clear it's not a one size Fits all. And the question is, how do we each be clear about our mission? How do we lead from powers of our mission? And how do we make sure that people feel like they can be on our campus, regardless if they lean to the right or the left, regardless of whether they're Jewish or Muslim or Christian? It it is about having a campus community where people feel brave to push in each other, in a community where the outcome is clear, which is academic excellence.
Jeff Selingo:
So we have about 12 minutes left. I want to talk about the future. What does this higher ed system look like for the next 10, 20 years? Jon talked a lot about the changes in the economy. If we think about this as a system that is undergoing tremendous change, and I understand it's a system with a small S because very different institutions in very different spots. So look at talk about the federal government role first. Sian there was a graphic in the New York Times a couple weeks ago that caught my eye. And the lead of the story was, for over eight decades, American universities and the federal government wound themselves into an ever tighter embrace. Is there a path forward that looks different where American universities aren't as dependent on the federal government? Or do you feel like that is a model that has worked for 50, 60, 70 years and it will continue to work going forward?
Sian Beilock:
I think that the partnership, we've seen the value of that partnership, and so I'd rather talk about it as a partnership and how we benefit each other and we both bring responsibilities to the table with that partnership. Universities do need to be beholden to the American people. They have to be places that are inclusive and uphold values of democracy. And at the same time, the federal government doesn't get to dictate what we teach or how we teach or how we do our research. But we're both part of a partnership that has to live up to those expectations. And so my hope is that that partnership continues. I think partnerships can always be remodeled and reframed and we can do it better. But look, the proof is in the pudding in terms of what we've built, in terms of companies. Companies in terms of discoveries, in terms of advancing our society. And I think it would be a real shame if that went away.
Jeff Selingo:
Okay, but Jon, you mentioned earlier all the companies that spun out of Stanford. I mean, there's a lot of value there. Is that really the role of just the federal government and institutions to kind of carry that burden, that financial burden, particularly of research? How about all of these companies that you've spun out.
Jonathan Levin:
Well, the way the federal government. So you could ask the question, and this is really about the research enterprise of universities. Are there other ways to have the US be the leading country in science and in technology? Could you have a different type of approach, say where companies did all of the research? You could envision a model like that, but it would be very different because companies don't have an incentive, they don't have an. Companies are great at taking ideas and scaling them up in a focused, laser focused way. Doing basic research that won't pay off for 30 years is not a good economic model for a company. Shareholders would not like that model. If you did that over many, many decades, just doesn't work that well in industry. That's a model that universities excel at. And so I think it would be good for the country if that model, I mean, that model should continue if the US is going to continue to be a leading country in the world in 20, 30 years. One way to think about it is I had a colleague, Paul Romer, he's an economist and he won a Nobel Prize for economic growth. And he said innovation is like having cooks who work in a kitchen and they take ingredients off the shelves, ideas, and they recombine them in different ways. Universities, research universities, stock the shelves of the kitchen. They put the ideas up there, innovators come out, they take the ideas, they turn them into great products and services that benefit the US and benefit the world. I think the federal government plays a critical role in that. And I think Sian is absolutely right that that partnership is very important for the country. And so we have to find a way to try to continue that partnership. It may look different going forward than it does today. The funding models could look somewhat different. And I think the ecosystem of universities to the points that were made earlier, from an education perspective, it's a great thing that the US has a wide variety of different types of universities. We should be proud of all these other types of universities. It's wonderful. We have faith based universities. It's wonderful. We have great public universities, great community colleges. And I think that ecosystem, it's in the interest of the country to find a way forward where anyone in the country could look at any one of those universities and perhaps find a place to come and get an education. And we could do it in an affordable way that would deliver a lot of value to students.
Jeff Selingo:
Okay, so let's talk about what that might look like. Let me start with you on this. We've been talking a lot about the value of higher education. You talked earlier about underemployment Unemployment. There's a lot going on with AI now and new college graduates. How should we value higher education? How should we measure the ROI of. Of college graduates? How much money you pay and how much money you make? It seems like that's what we do now. Is that really the way to value it?
Sian Beilock:
I think we need to go beyond just the economic value. So there's an economic value of higher ed. There's the social pieces. We've talked about, we talked about the research pieces. I envision, Jeff, A world in which American higher ed will have systematic, measurable outcomes across those different dimensions. A world in which we're measuring, along the journey, student progress and certain skills that have the economic. The career readiness that Pradeep talked about. But I also think to the points that Ari and Sian raised, there's actually a ton of ways we can measure progression in the skills and values that students are learning along the way.
Amit Sevak:
Let me give an example of citizenship. You know, the only test in America that measures for a high school student or college or person in work is the immigration test. We don't actually measure civics or civic reasoning at scale. Maybe that's something that we ought to consider. That's an example of a type of assessment that has a particular purpose or an outcome. If you go outside of education, you go to healthcare, you go to finance, you go to some of the other speakers here at the Milken Conference. Those sectors are measuring outcomes, Jeff, at such a incredible level of detail. The private equity firms, the hedge funds, you go to health care, the hospitals, the pharma companies.We don't do that yet in higher ed. And so the problem we're having is, as we're trying to wrestle with what should the purpose be, what should the value be? How do we communicate this? We got to start with the basic outcomes. Are we delivering the skills that are actually helping people get a job? Are we doing things that measurably demonstrate social stability? Otherwise, we're just talking. But if we can actually do that, we can actually considerably make higher ed more clear as a value proposition for society and also have that unique partnership that's very different. It's an opportunity right now.
Jeff Selingo:
Right. But at the same time, the skills needed to keep up in the workplace today are increasingly churning at a faster rate. So how can higher education keep up? There was an interesting piece that Derek Thompson had in the Atlantic last week about the recent college graduation gap. Right. In terms of jobs. Right. And, you know, his evidence shows that perhaps AI is starting to take some of these Entry level jobs that many of your graduates are taking. So how can colleges kind of keep up with that? And I would just love to hear some perspective, I think, of the president.
Pradeep Kholsa:
I think, look, the whole idea of higher education is learning to learn. To say that you do four years and you're done, and now you can use whatever you learn for the rest of your life is mistake. I mean, the country's economy is driven by science and technology. The country's strength is driven by science and technology. Our defense posture is driven by science and technology. So clearly we are underestimating the power of higher ed. The ability to think, problem solve, soft skills, some hard skills is really important. But in all of this, I think we have to be an inclusive higher education institution that embraces everybody, that protects everybody. Not intellectually, but I'm talking, right?
Jeff Selingo:
I mean, we also have a lot of presidents up here of institutions that students are not coming out large amounts of debt, right? They're graduating in four years. But the vast majority, the problem is the vast majority of our system is not necessarily producing those results. And this is sometimes what the American people see.
Ari Berman:
Jeff, can I just jump in with a different ROI? Because everybody's talking about the economic roi and you know, we're talking about all these different inclusive models of universities. I just want to mention historically black college and universities. My president, my friend Wayne Frederick, former president of Howard, is here. It's another example of communities, strong, historic, vertical communities that build on each other, that are excellent also in research. The faith based universities are also excellent in research. And when you start thinking about new models for the future, it's very much thinking along these lines. But the other kinds of ROI is the relationships that are developed. Before I spoke at the inauguration, I have to say I got a little nervous. This is also very intimidating crowd. But I was speaking in front of a lot of people at the inauguration and I really wanted to speak to my dad, who's my greatest cheerleader. He passed away two and a half years ago. So I reached out to my rabbi, who was my teacher in Yeshiva University when I was in 1920. I have a 35 year relationship with him. And he said to me, ari, I love you. You're great. You're going to be amazing. Just enjoy. And those relationships that you develop in universities that are vertical communities that stay with you for a lifetime, that support you and nurture you and that's part of who you are, you can't have an roi, that's more important. And everyone in this room, think about your Professor. Who's your professor that moved you and changed you? That's what's essential from the undergraduate experience, and that's what you have when you have a star. Communities of learners and fellow journeyers in a real university with a mission.
Jeff Selingo:
Okay, so we have two minutes left. I want to go back to almost where we started. We talked about a postmortem about what went wrong over the last 40 years. I want to kind of look ahead. If we were here at Milken last year when I did the higher Ed panel, almost none of these questions would have been pertinent. So what are you thinking about for next year? Right, what, what is, what is. What is. What is a topic that maybe we're not talking about now, that we'll probably be talking about next year? What's, what might keep you up at night? If it's not international students, if it's not research, if it's not campus protests, what might keep you up at night? Amit, let's start with you and then we'll come back down.
Amit Sevak:
Demonstrating the value of the higher ed value proposition, quantifying it more clearly, having that be more tangible. What makes the American higher ed system so great is its diversity. But that's also the challenge to try to find across that diversity the actual outcome.
Jeff Selingo:
And I think that's only going to become more of a challenge as we have a demographic cliff of 18 year olds and who knows what's going to happen with international students. Jon?
Jonathan Levin:
I mean, I think we're at a point in time that is, it's a moment of crisis for universities in many ways. And so the most important thing right now is to get through a period of crisis and reformulation of the Federal partnership, the partnership with the American people. To start with, where Sian started this session, which is what is the purpose American universities, which is discovery and learning, and what are the ways in which we can execute on that purpose at the highest level, which is a commitment to freedom at the university, to a range of ideas, to a strong culture of inquiry and curiosity. And that's got to be the top priority, not just this year, but next year and going forward. That's the way you create universities in America that anyone in the country, in the world would want to come to.
Jeff Selingo:
Pradeep, we have 30 seconds for three people, 10 seconds.
Pradeep Khosla
My view is that between now and then we got to change fundamentally the culture, the whole role of discovery and education works well when the environment is extremely inclusive. But our definition of inclusion has left to an implementation that is exclusive and we need to change that culture. Inclusion means inclusion, period. End of story.
Ari Berman:
I'll end with how I ended on January 20, which is to bless the university presidents and leadership with the wisdom to pair progress with purpose and truth with virtue. That this is what is essential in our universities. That it's not enough just to have progress. We need purpose. This whole conference is about towards a flourishing future. You cannot be flourishing with just progress. You also need purpose. That's what we're about. And the mission of universities to seek truth and to raise productive and moral citizens. This is exactly what we need to be focused on. And if universities are true to their mission, we will achieve it and do it. And I bless everyone with this.
Sian Beilock:
Yeah, I would just say that I do think this is a time of self reflection about what we can be doing better and where we can be asserting our value. And that's not mutually exclusive with being clear that we need to be fiercely independent institutions. And that's how we learn. We learn as institutions and people. And it's okay to always do that.
Jeff Selingo:
Please join me in thanking Sian, Ari, Pradeep, Jon and Amit. Thank you very much.
