Tuesday, April 14, 2026 - These days colleges are under fire from the Trump administration and critics on multiple fronts. Dartmouth's president, Sian Beilock, is one of the few Ivy League presidents not getting hauled before Congress, though her approach has plenty of detractors. Jeff and Michael talked with Beilock about the purpose of college, and how to lead in this polarized and uncertain time. This episode is made with support from Ascendium Education Group.
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“It feels like there’s no jobs,” in The New York Times.
“Dartmouth announces AI partnership with Anthropic, company accused of plagiarizing Dartmouth professors’ publications,” in The Dartmouth.
“What an Ivy League Education Really Gets You,” in The Atlantic.
0:00 - Introduction
1:52 - An Up-and-Coming College President
4:17 - ‘Leading With Values’
6:24 - The Choice to Be Outspoken in this Moment
7:16 - How Should We Think About the Modern College Presidency?
8:33 - How to Respond to Controversial World Events
10:00 - Why Does College Seem So Much Harder and Less Satisfying to Students Today?
12:24 - How Can Colleges Provide More Work Experience?
15:30 - Helping Students Learn Soft Skills
18:04 - What Role Should Colleges Play With AI?
20:15 - Do Students Need Colleges to Learn in an AI Era?
22:27 - How Should College Presidents Engage With Students?
24:53 - Should Highly-Selective Colleges Expand Their Classes
26:39 - Sponsor Break
27:24 - The Importance of Clarity of Mission
33:04 - How Should Colleges Talk About the Soft Skills They Teach?
35:20 - How Personal Stories Bleed Through in Leadership
37:10 - The Challenge of Presidents Forging Relationships With Students
40:27 - Lightning Round with Sian Beilock
Sian Beilock
At the highest level, it comes down to what the mission of, I believe, a university is for.
And I believe our mission is education and knowledge production. We're not a political institution.
I see our students walking across campus, and I think one of them might be the next president of the United States. And certainly they'll leave Fortune 500 companies.
And so I've learned over the years from my time at Dartmouth, also being president at Barnard, the importance of sitting down and having those face-to-face conversations.
Jeff Selingo
That was Sian Beilock, president of Dartmouth College. She's a cognitive scientist by training, but as you'll hear, she's also one of the few college presidents right now who's been willing to speak openly about what higher ed needs to do to regain trust and where it still has work to do.
Michael Horn
And so Jeff, we wanted to have Sian on to talk about her leadership in this moment, what students are really experiencing on campus, and how colleges need to evolve in the age of AI.
That's all ahead on this episode of Future U.
Sponsor
This episode of Future U is sponsored by Ascendium, a mission-driven nonprofit committed to improving learning and training systems to better serve learners from low-income backgrounds. For more information, information visit ascendiumphilanthropy.org.
Subscribe to Future U wherever you get your podcasts. And if you enjoy the show, share it with your friends so others can discover the conversations we're having about higher education.
Michael Horn
I'm Michael Horn.
Jeff Selingo
And I'm Jeff Selingo.
Michael, you and our listeners might recall that last spring, had the audio on from my panel at the Milken Global Conference, which was made up of several college and university presidents, including, Sian Beilock, who's the president of Dartmouth College.
You know, when I came back from that session, and you might recall, I was, like, texting you even, I think, from offstage in LA telling you, you know, she's the real deal. And back in the day, we used to profile presidents at the Chronicle — kind of up-and-comers, presidents that, you know, maybe got the big job, but people didn't know them yet. And it was kinda one of my favorite exercises because it kinda reminded me of, like, draft day or predraft day on ESPN where they're trying to figure out who's gonna go first, who's gonna go second.
And we really wanted to try to find out, like, who's the next president everyone's gonna be talking about so that we could get to them first, and we could profile them.
Now I guess we weren't the only ones to think this because Sian has been in a lot of places since then.
Michael Horn
Yeah. Yeah. She has, and I confess, like, it wasn't a mystery in our household. We could tell right away she was bold. Those who know, my wife's a Dartmouth alum.
But as we'll discuss, and she'll discuss in this interview, she's one of the few college presidents, Jeff, right now, who's actually stepping into the spotlight not away from it, and we'll talk about that dynamic.
And what I found interesting is that her answers keep coming back to mission.
You're gonna hear that over and over again in this interview. What are universities actually for, Jeff?
Jeff Selingo
Yeah. And while that sounds simple, but right now, it's a pretty contested question, actually.
And we're also gonna talk to her about what students are dealing with, rising anxiety, uncertainty about jobs. You'll hear she has her own teenager at home. And also this sense that the ground is shifting under them because of AI.
Michael Horn
And then the big one: If you get a college education from an AI agent, what's the value of going to college at all?
It's a question we love to revisit here, Jeff, and we got her take on it as well.
Jeff Selingo
Yeah. And so Sian started as president of Dartmouth in July 2023. As we mentioned, she's a cognitive scientist by training whose work focuses on why we perform at our best or our worst under pressure. She previously led Barnard College, and she's the first woman to lead Dartmouth. Sian, welcome to Future U.
Sian Beilock
Great to be here.
Jeff Selingo
So you seem to be one of just a couple of Ivy League presidents who isn't getting hauled before congress or, to be honest with you, getting fired. So what's been your secret to success?
Sian Beilock
You know, I really lead with values, and I'm constantly making decisions for Dartmouth with my team around our values.
And at the highest level, it comes down to what the mission of, I believe, a university is for. And I believe our mission is education and knowledge production. We're not a political institution. We're not a social action organization, even though those are important. But when you focus on what your mission is around education, I think the decisions you make follow from that, and my hope is that we're making reasoned and principled decisions that allow people to trust in what we're doing.
Jeff Selingo
So but yet, at the same time, you're not flying below the radar, per se. Right?
I interviewed you on the Milken stage last year. You've been in basically every major media outlet. You know, you had an oped in The Wall Street Journal, etc. You're not really shy about what ails higher ed.
Why be out there like that? What does it what does it achieve in in your mind? Yeah. I thin
Sian Beilock
Yeah, I think we have a responsibility as higher ed leaders to talk about what we can do to regain the trust of the American people. And if we're not out there talking about it, and we're not taking action to try and do that, then I'm worried that someone else is gonna try and do it for us. And I think we have to be responsible for what we do and held accountable for the outcomes.
And I'm willing to say that we haven't gotten everything right. We have work to do. And I know that other leaders are starting to say that, too. But at the end of the day, our customer is the American people, and I want them to trust the people we're producing and the knowledge that we're putting out to better the world.
Michael Horn
It seems that's clear. Right? You're really defining proactively the agenda, the conversation, and so forth. But at the same token, a lot of other presidents seem to be doing the opposite, sorta keeping their head down and hoping it will pass.
Do you have a sense of why that is?
Sian Beilock
I mean I think, look, there are different ways to lead and different perspectives on the current moment. And, you know, I don't have the prescription for any one institution, But I really do believe that we have some work to do in higher ed, and we have to be the ones out there talking about it and being clear about where we're going, what our responsibilities are, and how we can essentially continue to be what I think is such an important part of our country and our impact on the world.
Michael Horn
I'm curious with that as an entry point, because sort of thinking about the broad sweep, if you will, of the college presidency over time, people often use the 1960s and '70s as sort of a high watermark of public influence, right, of the job. University leaders like the University of California's Clark Kerr or Yale's Kingman Brewster, cover of Time Magazine. Right? You have Father (Theodore) Hesburgh at Notre Dame holding more than, I think, a dozen White House posts, over six different presidents.
So if sort of we're not in the era right now of long tenures, national voices on big national issues, how do you think we ought to think about the modern college presidency?
Sian Beilock
Look. I mean, I think the modern presidency is more complicated, I would argue, than ever before in terms of constituents, in terms of how quickly information passes through different constituents, and in terms of what we're asked to do.
At Dartmouth, our goal is to be the best undergraduate education within a world-class university, and we take that very seriously.
But we're clear that our focus is on educating students and having some ... And being a world class university, but we're willing to call what comes first and and what comes second.
Michael Horn
So I think certain things start to flow from that, and maybe we'll get into that here because you all have won a lot of admiration for how Dartmouth has handled questions around neutrality, free speech, things like that in the wake of October 7 and the like around the country. But I know that, you know, that's not always popular on campus — alumni, students, whoever might not always feel, 'Gee, that's the right way we ought to be on this.'
How do you think about balancing these questions that are so polarizing and will animate different groups, you know, on campus as well as alums in very different ways?
Sian Beilock
Yeah. Again, I mean, I sound a little bit like a broken record, but it comes back to our mission.
After the terrorist attacks on October 7, I sat down with my team, and we talked about the fact that we're an educational institution. So how do we educate in this moment? How do we put our experts front and center?
And we went to our faculty who were heading Jewish and Middle Eastern studies, and we asked them if they were willing to be out in the open to have open conversations about the complexities of the issues in the Middle East. Because that, again, is our purpose, to find the experts and allow them to be out there with the knowledge.
And so they were willing to do that. They'd already been team teaching classes together on the politics of Israel and Palestine. And, you know, I think our faculty led in those situations, and it led from our values about what we're here to do.
Jeff Selingo
So, Sian, I'm gonna lean into a couple of other issues, for a minute.
You know, I've been on the road a lot since my last book came out in September, spending a lot of time in high schools and communities as well as college campuses. And, you know, I have two teenagers living at home as well, and I sense a lot of unhappiness and anxiety, on the part of this generation. You know, some of it, I think, is related to what happens after college, and we're gonna talk about that in a minute.
But what are you seeing you know, I follow you on social media. You spend a lot of time interacting with students. You know, what are you seeing? What are you hearing? Why does college seem so much harder and maybe in some cases less fulfilling than it used to be for, you know, many in our generation, when we went to college?
Sian Beilock
Well, I have a teenager at home as well, so, I think the stress and anxiety goes well beyond thinking about college, sort of, in daily life. And look, we know that young people are more anxious, less happy than they have been in generations. And there's researchers who can speak more about the causes of that than I can. But I will say that I just got back, actually, I just had student office hours in our dining hall, which I do every week where I sit down and invite students to come talk to me.
And look, I think there's a lot of uncertainty about what the job market's gonna look like with AI. I think there are, as we've heard from experts in the field, issues around loneliness and connection, and, you know, desire for community, and a desire to really understand the whole scope of issues out there, where you get actual knowledge that's credible. I think we know that trust in higher education has gone down, but trust in our news sources, trust in our political system. I think young people are looking for that information.
And so I think that's one of the best things about Dartmouth, that students go to classes, they hear very broad perspectives, and then they can sit in their dorm rooms and argue with each other at eleven at night. And in fact, at Dartmouth, you can't yell at someone and disappear. You are around them on campus. This is true for our faculty as well.
And I think it creates a kind of community that allows them to be connected in a way that is so important to their mental health and where they're going.
Jeff Selingo
So you mentioned AI in the job market and what happens after college. You know, The New York Times recently published this discussion from a focus group it had of Gen Z white-collar voters, and it titled it, 'It feels like there's no jobs.'
And you've said that Dartmouth is moving toward what you called a guaranteed experiential opportunity for any student who wants one. Is that the answer? Because there's all this data we know from the Business-Higher Education Forum, for example, that finds, you know, millions of students want experiential learning. They want internships, but, you know, employers are not always playing ball on that front, and there's a lot fewer available than the reality shows.
And in fact, we've had employers on this podcast that have talked about not only is early career hiring, not only are the rungs on the early career ladder disappearing, but a lot of the experiential learning opportunities — co-ops and internships — are also disappearing from employers as well.
So how do we kind of fix that gap?
Sian Beilock
Yeah. I mean, I think our campuses need to be more porous with the outside world.
And at Dartmouth, we have a really unique aspect of our experience called the D Plan, where students actually are required to spend two quarters of their four years off campus working or doing an internship. And in return, we ask them all to be on campus as sophomores during the summer, which is called 'sophomore summer.' And anyone who's a Dartmouth grad will talk to you about the amazing time they had at sophomore summer.
But those two quarters off campus really allow our students to use what they're learning in the classroom to get experiences and then bring those experiences back to campus. And our push to raise money for internships and guarantee a paid internship to any student who wants one is really to give students openings and opportunity to have varied experiences and to say that we own the ROI, not necessarily just employers.
And so I actually say I want every student to have an internship they hate. I think that's important to understand where they might be going, but I wanna lower the barrier to entry for companies to take on interns, which is work, whether it's financial or getting our students ready.
And I think in a world that is increasingly AI-driven in terms of how people interact with technology and employment, those human capacities, the ability to dialogue, to talk face-to-face, to have discernment, to have reason, to get along with someone you disagree with are more and more important than ever. And I do think that's one thing that those internship opportunities give our students.
They also give them opportunities to not get everything right, to struggle in new settings. And what I think we need to be producing these days are students who know how to think and know how to jump into situations where they don't know the answers and know how to be uncomfortable in figuring out how to get through a new problem. And that's what I think we get in the classroom and also in those internships.
Jeff Selingo
And we hear that so often. Right? We hear that maybe this could be the rebirth of the liberal arts, for example.
But do you get the feeling... You talked about discernment and problem solving and communication and working in teams, just in some cases, just getting stuff done. Right? Like, all the things that students learn in a good undergraduate education.
But do you feel maybe it happens at Dartmouth, but I'm not quite sure it happens across higher ed. Do you feel students really know those soft skills, those foundational skills, whatever we wanna call them? Do you feel like they know they're learning them, whether that's in the classroom or outside the classroom? It often feels to me in talking to recent college graduates, they kind of recall that years later when they're in a job, and they know how to do something, or they can figure something out. And I often ask them, well, how did you know that? And they said, well, I was able to translate or transfer that skill, you know, from my undergraduate experience. But often that comes to them much later, not much later, but even years after college.
Do you feel higher education is doing enough to help students really understand what's happening in the classroom and how that connects to life outside?
Sian Beilock
Well, it's one thing that we're really focused on. We have a new center for career design. We've replaced our old career center, which was really matching students with jobs, and we've put in coaches around different areas of interest. And we're helping students translate their experiences and what they're learning into those kinds of skills. And I think we're helping them reflect earlier or more successfully in terms of what they're getting, both in the classroom but outside.
At Dartmouth, you get to campus, and everyone goes into the woods on a first-year trip with seven other people without their phones led by a sophomore or junior. I'm gonna tell you that is, like, the one worst four days of my year, always waiting for the calls about what's going on, but it teaches such amazing skills. First of all, to get along and talk to people you don't know, and then our student leaders are leading them. They train for a year to be able to go out and take these students on these trips. And at our center and through our faculty, we're helping them translate what those skills are they're using to do that to the kinds of meaningful skills they need in a first job or to engage with others.
And I think that is a skill that you learn, how to translate that, how to reflect, and we can help build that.
Michael Horn
If I had a nickel for every time my wife talked about her outdoor experience at the beginning of Dartmouth, I would be a very rich person. Let me shift a little bit.
There's been a lot of media coverage also around Dartmouth's AI policies, the agreement with Anthropic, I think, in particular. You've been outspoken on the topic and the importance.
What's your take on what AI is going to do to and with higher education, and what should the role of the university be in all that?
Sian Beilock
Yeah, well, I mean if anyone says they know the answer, I think they're lying because I think no one knows.
But from my perspective, we have a responsibility to be in conversation with the companies, to be at the table, and to try and grapple with what it means. And I want our faculty and our community to be doing that and not just a company like Anthropic or OpenAI.
And that's really one of the reasons why we entered into the partnership so that we could be at the table having these conversations together. Of course, faculty still get to decide how they teach, and what they teach, and whether they have AI in the class or not, but I want to be having those conversations.
Again, I think we have a responsibility to chart that next path, and I'd much rather have our research and educational experts doing it than companies sitting in Palo Alto.
And I would say the other aspect of this is that the term artificial intelligence was actually coined at Dartmouth in 1956 in a summer conference. We're celebrating our 70th anniversary this year. And for the school that birthed this term, again, I think we have a responsibility to talk about it.
And from my perspective, talking about what human judgment means in the age of AI. We've seen so many studies about what jobs might get taken away, what AI can do. I wanna think across a liberal arts perspective, what are those human qualities that we need to continue to train and distill?
And as knowledge becomes more and more ubiquitous, you can get it online. You don't have to go to a four-year school. In fact, I think we often overemphasize the importance of it.
But if we are going to be responsible for an investment that so many people put into this institution, I want my experts and faculty thinking really hard about what we are providing.
Jeff Selingo
Yeah. So I'm just wondering. I just saw a talk by Ben Gomes at Google, literally today as we're interviewing you. And a question I asked him I wanna ask you because you just mentioned it.
You know, in this day and age, you could essentially take an entire undergraduate curriculum using an AI agent if you wanted to. So what is the purpose of higher education? But more than that, do you worry, you know, there's so much talk about the future institutions. Probably no one's worrying about the future of Dartmouth, but they are worried about a lot of other colleges and universities out there.
I mean, do you think that colleges and universities have to really change to kind of keep ahead of AI?
Or is this idea that, well, yes, you could take a college curriculum, you know, using an AI agent, but there's all these other things you can't get that way?
Sian Beilock
Yeah. I think it's a great question. And as a leader who's always pushing, I'm constantly worried about whether we are, you know, meeting the moment. And I think from my perspective, again, it's those skills and the ideas of learning how to think, not what to think, but how to think, that happens through one-on-one interaction.
We have one faculty member for seven students. Those kinds of interactions and that reasoning, and I think that is such an important part of developing the skills to be successful in the economy of the future.
All those skills you get outside of the classroom, whether it's leading a trip or a sports team or other. You can certainly learn a lot through AI and knowledge that is out there, but there is something special I think we produce, and something special we produce in graduates. And I wanna be able to speak clearly about what that is, about the fact that we own that return on investment, and continue to double down on it.
And I will say that I think we've had times in our past where people have thought that's the end of the university, maybe when MOOCs came out or during COVID. But any parent of a student during COVID would tell you that the one thing they wanted their kid to do was go back to campus.
Michael Horn
Completely. On that note, something that strikes me is you mentioned earlier the weekly lunches you have with students in the dining halls. It strikes me that a lot of presidents don't do an active job of really having those conversations and being available. I don't know what your relationship is with The Dartmouth, the student newspaper, something Jeff and I think a lot about from our backgrounds. I know when Rick Levin, when I was at Yale, like, he let me call him every night at the for the Yale Daily News. But that seems like actually an important part of the job that maybe a lot of presidents have forgotten, just that we may disagree, but we have connection and you have a way of connecting with me, and I'm not this figure that's just always away.
I'm just sort of curious how do you think about building those relationships with the student body and perhaps other constituencies on campus?
Sian Beilock
Yeah. Look. I think it is something that you have to think very specifically and strategically about. And it's so easy for your time to get sucked away traveling or working with alums or being in DC or thinking about the university budget.
And, this is why I do this because I see a really bright future. I see our students walking across campus, and I think one of them might be the next president of the United States, and certainly they'll leave Fortune 500 companies. And so I've learned over the years from my time at Dartmouth, also being president at Barnard, the importance of sitting down and having those face-to-face conversations.
And I also try and practice what I preach. I will have conversations with anyone. Not everyone agrees with the people I will have conversations with, but I want to talk. And I wanna hear, and I wanna listen, and I wanna learn. And part of that is sitting in the dining hall, and we have cookies so students can get a cookie as well and come. And I get questions that are softballs, and I get really hard questions from students. And my thinking changes as a function of them.
And I will say something that is nice about being at a school that really does value those one-on-one interactions in a long history of Dartmouth. I actually taught a class last winter with a classicist, our director of athletics, and a biomechanist on athletes in the 21st century. And so I got to be firsthand in the classroom with our students. And, again, it was a lot of work, but it reminded me why we're all doing this.
Jeff Selingo
So, Sian, as we start to wrap up here, I wanted to ask about affordability because there have been a lot of headlines recently about the net price of highly selective colleges. It has fallen, especially for those families with median income of college-age children. And indeed, you know, many of the highly-selective colleges, Ivy, Ivy-plus colleges, you know, they continue to be much more generous with their financial aid these days than they ever have been in the past.
But I'm just wondering, why not give more students this opportunity? You know, as we look across you know, this is a perennial question that Michael and I ask. You know, as we look at, you know, these highly selective colleges, they continue to be small. They continue to serve essentially as many students as they served, you know, 30, 35-plus years ago. Why not use some of that largeness to expand your size and not just on financial aid?
Sian Beilock
Yeah, look, I think they're both legitimate questions. We've been working very hard at Dartmouth to focus on affordability in the middle class, and now if you make up to $175,000 a year, tuition is free. And it is cheaper to go to Dartmouth now than it was ten years ago for a lower-middle-income student.
I think it's exactly the right question to ask, and it's one we're asking on our campus. Dartmouth is the smallest Ivy. And, you know, look, I think being at a school like Dartmouth positions you for success in the world, and I think it's a totally reasonable question to ask. Like, do we have a responsibility to educate more students, especially as the population has grown? And it's one that we are talking about.
Jeff Selingo
Well, I'm glad somebody's talking about it.
So, Sian, thank you for joining us. And Sian will be right back with us at the end for a lightning round of some quick hit questions, so be sure to stay tuned.
And we'll be right back.
Sponsor
This episode of Future U is sponsored by Ascendium, a mission-driven nonprofit committed to improving learning and training systems to better serve learners from low-income backgrounds. Ascendium envisions a world where low-income learners succeed in postsecondary education and workforce training as paths to upward mobility. Ascendium's grantees are removing systemic barriers and helping to build evidence about what works so learners can achieve their career goals. For more information, visit ascendiumphilanthropy.org.
Michael Horn
And we're back on Future U, Jeff.
I've still got my wife's Dartmouth hat in the shot. Let's get into it though.
I wanna start with something I loved. We talked about it upfront, but I find it refreshing. Clarity in mission. Education plus knowledge creation. Like, it's that simple for her, but it can also sound generic.
What I actually loved was when she actually started to say what it isn't. You know, she had her list, political activism, etc.
We could debate whether she's got the right mission or not, but what I would say, my pro tip for building strategies or mission statements so that they are not overly vague or leaves everything to interpretation is saying out loud what you are not. The art of strategy is choosing what not to do or what you're gonna suck at or what this isn't.
And in my experience, Jeff, far too many colleges and universities are not clear about that on the front end. They don't communicate that to their stakeholders clearly, and that's where the trouble really gets started.
Jeff Selingo
Yeah. And mission statements are fascinating to me, Michael, because years ago, we did this project with Deloitte and Georgia Tech. We were looking at the mission statements of 700 colleges at that time. We ingested them into some machine learning to try to figure out, like, what do colleges say in their mission statements? And it was amazing that they all had many of the same words, right, about serving students, about knowledge, about research.
And in fact, it was my contention even back then if you threw up 700 college mission statements, you could never figure out who they match with because they all sounded the same. And I fear, by the way, now in the age of of Claude and OpenAI and ChatGPT and everything else and Gemini, these might sound even more alike because people, as they're writing their mission statements, might just put them into AI, and suddenly now we're gonna have an AI statement, essentially an AI mission statement, for everyone.
And I think what has ended up happening, especially about politics, Michael, is that sometime in the last 20 years, and if you talk to university presidents, it may have started soon after 9/11, where there was an expectation that the university takes a stance on everything.
And for a while, that was okay, but then there was, now you had every month that was obviously dedicated to a different group, and then you had, you know, political activities both in the U.S. And outside the U.S. And I was talking to a president recently, and he was like, there could be a day where something would happen in the news, and somebody would ask us, 'Are we putting a statement out on it?'
And I think that's probably where universities lost their way, where they couldn't figure out, like, what is our mission? Is our mission to say something around this political issue? You know, do we have a big community or neighborhood of students on campus that this would impact? Like, I think that's where this was lost.
And I often feel that mission statements, just like they're often bland and general and not very specific, this often happens around university leadership tables where there is, you know, the president and all the vice presidents, and suddenly now everybody has an opinion on what the president should do. And I think especially as we're in an era now with presidents who are not long into their tenure. They're new to institutions. They may not have the background about what that institution has done in the past. And that was what was most interesting to me is that, you know, she's fairly new to Dartmouth. She doesn't have Dartmouth roots from what I could tell, right, in her background.
Michael Horn
No. She does not.
Jeff Selingo
Right. Went to UCSD as an undergrad and went to Michigan State, which I also found fascinating, for her master's and PhD. So she came into that community, you know, obviously knowing something about it, but not being of that community And pretty quickly staked out what she wasn't going to be. And that to me, obviously, she had to get signals from somewhere, but as you indicated, during the interview, not everyone was happy, whether it was faculty, whether it was students, whether it was alums. But clearly, I'm assuming she had to get a signal for somebody that that was okay.
Michael Horn
No. I think it's a good point, Jeff. And I guess credit to her to know who she is as a leader.
You know, David Gergen used to talk a lot to me about, like, ‘Do you know yourself? Have you centered yourself before you can have the confidence, right, to be clear around that and know you're not gonna please everyone all of the time, to your point?’
And so I do think you're right. Like, she's not always in step with everyone. I hear a lot of the back chatter. But ... But I think she's clear. She is communicating clearly. We both during the interview were back channeling with each other a little bit and saying, like, 'Wow, she is crisp. Like, she's not meandering around the question. She's direct. Her language is precise throughout.'
You know, she calls the 10/7, the October 7th attacks, they're terrorist attacks. Like, that was a very intentional use of the word. No ambiguity. She calls, you know, the center for career design now. Right? It's no longer a matchmaking effort of career services, but a design outfit that starts from the beginning.
I think that language precision, I think it's very intentional and very grounded in who she is and comfort with walking into the community. It would be an interesting other question to figure out, like, you know, how did she feel like she had the permission to run with it, I guess, I suppose.
But I personally find the leadership actually leading to be refreshing in this era.
I do wanna pick up on one thing you asked. It's a bit of a segue, but you asked whether students appreciate the soft skills that they're leaning into, and do they actually understand and value what they're learning? I was recently at a ... I've been in a few different campuses recently, and one of them was describing how they do this with their students. My wife was with me, and she sort of looked at me afterwards. It was like, 'That felt like a lot of phrases and whatever else.' And I would call it, you know, supply-side languages.
Jeff Selingo
A lot of word salad.
Michael Horn
Exactly. And she was like, I kinda tuned out. And it did raise questions for me, Jeff. Is this like, is this higher ed talking to itself in effect? Do the students, do they care about this until they're really looking for jobs? And is what they're getting, is it transferable as maybe people in the liberal arts or otherwise think that it is? You know?
And look. I get it. The connection probably depends. Are you building skills in the context of real knowledge? I think that's important. But it probably depends what skills we're talking about. Right? Communication in one setting may be very different from another, but, you know, maybe managing people is more universal. I don't know. But I guess my point being, are the students really grasping this on the front end, or does it feel like that word salad? And you talk to a lot of students.
So I'm sort of curious. Like, do they want the second transcript from Brandeis, or is that their parents that want it?
Jeff Selingo
Yeah. I think it's definitely their parents. Right? They don't quite understand this. Think at 18, it's their parents that are paying attention to this. I think especially at a place like Dartmouth.
Again, there was this Atlantic piece recently that talked about the strength of the Ivy League is really kind of around the networking ... being in the classroom with other high-achieving students. So in some ways, I don't think it really matters what the Ivy League does on career services because, in many ways, it is more about the signal of the degree.
Michael Horn
That's a good point.
Jeff Selingo
So, you know, right. So in some ways, I think that students are not going there because suddenly now Dartmouth is gonna be better on career services than every other Ivy League. Right? They're going there because it's a member of the Ivy League, they think that that degree is gonna carry a signal. I think the parents think the same way, although they'll pay more attention to this. I do wanna take this maybe slightly differently, Michael, because I do feel that leadership and often writing who we are is often biographical. Right? I often think of, you know, Paul LeBlanc talks about his first-generation roots. Right? He often started ...
Michael Horn
And it bleeds through.
Jeff Selingo
Right. Yeah. He talks about who he is, how he grew up, and it does bleed through. Right? Michael Crow talks often about how he ... You know, his father was in the military, was in the navy, and that meant he moved around a lot as a kid, and how that really led to this idea that you should have a lot more choice in education because he didn't have a lot of choice in education.
And Sian was similar where she mentioned, you know, how she is a mom, and she's a mom of a teenager, which, by the way, may be pretty unusual, I think, among a lot of presidents now. You know, I think a lot of presidents end up later in their careers in the presidency. And by then, if they've had kids, you know, their kids might be gone, and out of the house by then.
And so the fact that she is like dealing with this in real time with near peers in her own house, I think really influences how we think about not only managing the student experience on campus, but managing these outcomes because you're thinking of it as a parent. Because trust me, you know, I have a 10th-grader at home right now, and I'm thinking of it much differently now than I did even two years ago about, 'What is the value of college? What are we trying to get out of college? What am I looking for in a college?'
Michael Horn
That's really interesting. I'm just thinking about all the Future U campus tours we've been on together also, Jeff, and how some presidents have come up to us, like, literally minutes before and said, 'Hey. Do you think I should say this or not?' Right? Like, it's sort of their own uncertainty.
It actually translates into the last thing I wanted to ask you about because, I mean ... We audibled on it with the question around, like, her spending time in the dining hall, right, weekly with the students, and then her teaching a class we learned. And I asked the question about the student newspaper because I always think that connection's really important. But maybe I'm wrong. My impression is that this is something that's missing from a lot of presidencies across the country right now. I could be wrong, but, to me, the connection with students on campus on a very regular, ongoing basis. And the fact that it could even change her mind about something. I remember coming home from some meetings with Rick Levin and, like, having changed his mind at a couple of things and how good it made me feel, to be candid. But I think that connection with students is maybe far more important than do they appear on the cover of Time or whatever today's equivalent is. What do you ... Am I off on that, or what do you think?
Jeff Selingo
I don't think you're off on that at all, and I think that presidents have become these caricatures. I think they're also afraid, by the way, of being in these environments with students given today's social media.
She talked about, right, like the president's job is much harder now because you're kind of constantly on. People are always watching you. People are always, you know, filming you in some, in some way. And I agree with you that presidents should spend more time on campuses, and it shouldn't just be with leadership. Right? Your relationship with Rick Levin was because of your, you know, position on the Yale Daily News. I'm assuming that that was not true for a lot of other Yale undergraduates, at the time. I was the same way at Ithaca where I got to know the president really well. Didn't really like us that much because, yeah, we were editors of the student newspaper.
But I also remember, you know, one night in particular, there was, back in the day, there was a bomb threat where the student newspaper was located, and campus safety wouldn't let us back in the building. And the president happened to be leaving an event nearby, and, you know, he came over to see what was going on, and, you know, I explained to him what was happening. And I said, they won't let us back in. You know?
This was back in the day, by the way, where you didn't have 'the cloud' and everything else. It was hard to get the newspaper out if you weren't actually in the newspaper office. Yeah. And so, so he said, 'I'll take responsibility for you. He told Campus Safety. He walked in the office with us. By the way, again, we weren't great friends with him at that time. And he sat with us, and we just had a fascinating conversation that we wouldn't have had. It was probably off the record, I would imagine, at that time.
Again, we didn't have phones to record any of this. But I just remembered, like, 'Wow. He's a human being.' And I think that students, again, they're so distant from the president that they never feel that. They never see that. The president, I would be I would kind of be curious. In a president's calendar over the course of a year, if you had to color code it, who do they spend most of their time with? Is it alumni? Is it lawmakers? Is it faculty? Is it their senior leadership team? Is it trustees, or is it students? I think most presidents will say, 'Oh, yeah. I spend a lot of time with students.' But if we really check them on it, do they?
Michael Horn
Yeah. I think that's the right question. I don't know if there are any other thoughts from you.
Otherwise, I think let's wrap it up and bring Sian back, for our last segment, Jeff. What do you say?
Jeff Selingo
Let's go for it. We're now welcoming Sian back for our final segment of this episode, some lightning round questions. So let's start with this.
Sian, during our interview, you mentioned as you walk across campus, you might see a student who could be a future president or a future Fortune 500 executive. There was a piece in The Atlantic recently which asked that question that it, you know, often is asked in the media. 'Does going to an Ivy Ivy plus college really matter in the long run for people's careers?' It is a proverbial question I get as I go out and talk to parents who are so intent on getting their kids into places like Dartmouth.
So I'm just gonna ask you, as a president of an Ivy League institution, does it give you a leg up in the world?
Sian Beilock
Look. I think being at a place like Dartmouth certainly has an ROI that we can measure and look at, whether it's your ability to succeed in a job or pursue your passion. But I think there's lots of good colleges and universities in the country, and we often don't do enough to talk about all the different places students can go and be successful.
Michael Horn
So you've done a lot of research before you were president on what's commonly known, I believe, as choking. Mistakes when the glare of the spotlight is at its brightest, perhaps the second half of the recent Duke-UConn men's basketball game, not to pick on anyone.
But one strategy that you write about to combat that is to actually adopt multiple identities. How does that work? What does that mean?
Sian Beilock
Yeah, the whole idea is that when you have different aspects of yourself that you value, when you have a bad day in one or you feel a lot of pressure in one, you have something to fall back on.
So I'm a college president, but I'm also a mom. I'm an athlete, and I often have bad days being a mom to a 15-year old daughter. And I can fall back on my other identities to give me a little boost of self-confidence.
Michael Horn
I'm taking that one to the bank in my own life.
Sian, huge thank you for joining us on Future U, and for all of you tuning in.
We'll see you next time.
