Speaker 4: From CurtCo- Media. ( singing)
Bill Curtis: Welcome to Politics: Meet Me in the Middle. I'm your
Bill Curtis: host, Bill Curtis. As always, our goal here at Meet
Bill Curtis: Me in the Middle is to present diverse opinions whenever
Bill Curtis: possible. We want to leave you with a balanced perspective,
Bill Curtis: so that you can intelligently draw your own conclusions. If
Bill Curtis: we all make an effort to understand and respect each
Bill Curtis: other, we can solve complex issues from the middle. Of
Bill Curtis: course, keeping in mind that we all have goals, we
Bill Curtis: have problems to solve, we're all emotional about our foot
Bill Curtis: race through life, but most of all, we can lead
Bill Curtis: or contribute to our community's future, if we have knowledge,
Bill Curtis: respect, and appreciation for one another's points. So, think of
Bill Curtis: this podcast as an intimate dinner conversation in your mind.
Bill Curtis: It's just the four of us and you, of course.
Bill Curtis: Allow me to introduce our panel. Firstly, connecting through Zoom,
Bill Curtis: our co- host, Pulitzer Prize winning historian, bestselling author, and
Bill Curtis: worldwide lecture, a man of many talents, Professor Ed Larson.
Bill Curtis: How you doing, Ed?
Ed Larson: Nice to talk to you again. I'm doing great. Thank you.
Bill Curtis: And also Zooming in, Jane Albrecht. She's an international trade
Bill Curtis: attorney, who's represented US interests to high level government officials
Bill Curtis: all over the world. She's also been involved with several
Bill Curtis: US presidential campaigns. She's president of our local chapter of
Bill Curtis: the Democratic Club. Hey, Jane. It's nice to remotely see
Bill Curtis: you too.
Jane Albrecht: It's always nice to be here, Bill.
Bill Curtis: And our special guest today. He's a bestselling author and
Bill Curtis: lauded NYU professor, Scott Galloway. He's a wonderfully outspoken teacher
Bill Curtis: of brand strategy and digital marketing at NYU Stern School
Bill Curtis: for second year MBA students. He's widely known for two
Bill Curtis: amazing podcasts, The Prof G Show and Pivot, which he co-
Bill Curtis: hosts with tech journalist, Kara Swisher. Also, check out his
Bill Curtis: digital newsletter called, No Mercy, No Malice. His rants are
Bill Curtis: both entertaining and educational. Thanks for joining us today In
Bill Curtis: The Middle, Scott.
Scott Galloway: Thanks for having me, Bill.
Bill Curtis: Let's talk about higher education. The schools are all talking
Bill Curtis: about opening up this fall. How do you guys feel
Bill Curtis: about that?
Scott Galloway: As it relates to universities, your 19 year old being
Scott Galloway: at home, in what was his bedroom that was converted
Scott Galloway: to an office, and he's antsy and you're antsy to get
Scott Galloway: him out or back to Tulane or to Chapel Hill,
Scott Galloway: that's a new sense, but it's not profound. I worry
Scott Galloway: that the super spreaders of phase one of the pandemic,
Scott Galloway: depending on state, you had 40 to 70% of the deaths were
Scott Galloway: registered in these venues of super spread, which is where
Scott Galloway: there's senior facilities. I wonder if this phase two is
Scott Galloway: going to involve the strident statements from university chancellors, who
Scott Galloway: claim that it's our national responsibility to open campuses, which
Scott Galloway: is Latin for, parents, please send in your tuition checks, and if
Scott Galloway: we're inviting the next level of super spread, when we
Scott Galloway: bring 18 to 22 year olds to small towns and
Scott Galloway: massively increase the density and then delude ourselves or enter
Scott Galloway: into consensual hallucination, that these 18 to 22 year olds
Scott Galloway: are going to practice the same protocols we're spending a
Scott Galloway: ton of time to enforce on campus, off campus. The
Scott Galloway: reason that young men and women go to college is
Scott Galloway: to not distance. So, I think we're tempting disaster. I
Scott Galloway: think it's borderline negligent, and I think it is financially
Scott Galloway: driven. I think these schools are used to getting between $
Scott Galloway: 100 million and $1 billion in deposits in the next two weeks
Scott Galloway: and have come up with reasons why we need to
Scott Galloway: reopen. In my view, almost every university should shut down
Scott Galloway: for the fall semester and go to all online learning.
Bill Curtis: Let's talk about that. What do you guys think about online learning? What
Bill Curtis: are its pros and cons? Is it working?
Ed Larson: I taught a class this summer by choice, which was
Ed Larson: fully online because when I converted over in the spring,
Ed Larson: I had the old model and I had to finish
Ed Larson: up the class that way, and I completely redesigned the
Ed Larson: class, that class that I've taught for 30 years, I
Ed Larson: taught it a different way. I think you can do
Ed Larson: it better. You can do it worse. If you're willing
Ed Larson: to be innovative, if you're willing to work it, that's
Ed Larson: what the students said, I kept trying to get feedback
Ed Larson: from them and they all said that the courses they
Ed Larson: had, the flip over courses in the spring, just sucked.
Ed Larson: But the summer, they thought, you're really trying to do
Ed Larson: it differently and you can make it work. I think
Ed Larson: there's certain subjects that are naturally suited to teach online,
Ed Larson: if you're teaching a certain sort of content, that's vocationally
Ed Larson: driven, but it's not as good for the teacher, it's
Ed Larson: not as good for the student, but it's better than
Ed Larson: getting sick. Even the schools that are going online, many
Ed Larson: of them, oddly enough, are still bringing the students back
Ed Larson: to campus.
Bill Curtis: Some of them, Ed, are really back to campus, but
Bill Curtis: it's still going to be mostly remote education in their
Bill Curtis: dorms, right?
Ed Larson: Yeah, but the problem is not really the classroom. I
Ed Larson: think Scott pointed out. The problem is the socializing of
Ed Larson: these students, and if they're back on campus, they're still
Ed Larson: going to be all together in the evening. They're all going
Ed Larson: to be together in the dorms. They're going to go
Ed Larson: out to the bars together.
Bill Curtis: Well, isn't the remote really more to protect the faculty
Bill Curtis: than the students?
Ed Larson: Oh, I don't think so. I think you're talking about
Ed Larson: a spread among the students, most of whom won't have symptoms,
Ed Larson: but some of them will, then when they go out
Ed Larson: to other places, they become a super spreader within the
Ed Larson: community. So, I don't think it's just to protect the
Ed Larson: faculty. I think it's also to protect the community.
Bill Curtis: When we interviewed the students who are going back to
Bill Curtis: university, they kind of scoffed at the idea of having
Bill Curtis: their dorms regulated and wearing masks in dorms, and they
Bill Curtis: just said, it's all pointless and they're not going to
Bill Curtis: get sick anyway, so good luck.
Ed Larson: That's exactly what I hear from them too, so that's
Ed Larson: the point. Think of bringing 4, 000 students back to
Ed Larson: Malibu, think of Bloomington, Indiana, think of Missoula, Montana, Davis, California.
Bill Curtis: How about sending 60,000 students into a Texas school? Scott,
Bill Curtis: as a parent, how would you manage your college age
Bill Curtis: kid if he doesn't go to school?
Scott Galloway: We're going to need a bigger boat, if we're going
Scott Galloway: to talk about managing college- aged children, but I think
Scott Galloway: we're tempting disaster here, and to Ed's point, to take
Scott Galloway: 40 or 50,000 students, put them in Athens, Georgia, but what happens
Scott Galloway: when the ICU in Athens, Georgia, that probably doesn't have
Scott Galloway: a ton of beds, is overrun with the cashier from
Scott Galloway: the bookstore, the bartender, the grocery clerk. The feature of
Scott Galloway: universities is their density. In Soho, it is striking to
Scott Galloway: me, every September. It is an ant farm, people crawling
Scott Galloway: all over each other in and around [crosstalk 00:06:40].
Bill Curtis: That's the fun part.
Scott Galloway: That's exactly right. That's the point of college. The point
Scott Galloway: of college is density, and we aggregate and we congregate
Scott Galloway: in rooms, where the windows are sealed shut for temperature
Scott Galloway: control. You get around a 19 year old with alcohol
Scott Galloway: and these protocols are just an exercise in futility. The
Scott Galloway: virus didn't get the memo around our campus protocols. It
Scott Galloway: just doesn't care. This thing, I think, will spread like
Scott Galloway: wildfire. You're going to have some high profile cases of
Scott Galloway: this beloved professor who came on campus week six, was
Scott Galloway: dead by week nine. You're going to find a bunch
Scott Galloway: of students going home. Bringing people together, letting them infect
Scott Galloway: each other, and then distributing them to the four corners
Scott Galloway: of the country and the earth, it reads like the
Scott Galloway: opening scene of Contagion 2, and it's irresponsible, and the
Scott Galloway: universities that have the weakest financial position tend to be
Scott Galloway: the most delusional around their plans to open.
Bill Curtis: How many schools are going to go out of business
Bill Curtis: from COVID?
Scott Galloway: That's an interesting question. Because they haven't done what every
Scott Galloway: other organization in America is doing right now, and that is having
Scott Galloway: a sober conversation with your employees, furloughs, layoffs, cost reductions,
Scott Galloway: and continues to delude themselves that everything's moving back to
Scott Galloway: normal, and basically said, " We're returning back to normal. Parents,
Scott Galloway: send in your tuition." Tier two universities with high international student
Scott Galloway: exposure, large tuitions, low endowments could be to education what
Scott Galloway: department stores are to retail, and that is we could have
Scott Galloway: a large component of our educational institution, we're talking to
Scott Galloway: hundreds, maybe even 1000 universities, you're going to death march
Scott Galloway: to go out of business, because these are businesses at
Scott Galloway: the core, that have consistently received and counted on cash
Scott Galloway: flows plus 4% every year, dependably for the last 40
Scott Galloway: years. They are just not constitutionally capable of acknowledging a
Scott Galloway: financial crisis or dealing with it, and it's coming.
Ed Larson: I just could see this could fundamentally transform higher education.
Ed Larson: The Depression did this. If you go back to history,
Ed Larson: the Great Depression, that was when public schools exploded. The
Ed Larson: high quality, the Yales and Stanford's and Princeton did great
Ed Larson: in the Depression, but so did the state schools. They
Ed Larson: exploded. And you left others behind, and this could be
Ed Larson: an equivalent experience for higher education, or even a more
Ed Larson: important experience.
Jane Albrecht: What I see in public education, and I agree with
Jane Albrecht: Scott's assessment of it, I see that there has been
Jane Albrecht: a crisis building and it just hasn't quite fully exploded
Jane Albrecht: yet, and that is the increased cost of college education,
Jane Albrecht: which has most recently come to the forefront, in terms
Jane Albrecht: of the student debt crisis. It's a situation that's unsustainable.
Jane Albrecht: The real question, in my mind, is I do think there
Jane Albrecht: will be some dramatic effects on education, between this crisis
Jane Albrecht: and the new technology, but to what degree is it
Jane Albrecht: really going to bring down the cost of education?
Bill Curtis: I've got to quote Scott again, because this is my favorite
Bill Curtis: quote from you, Scott, and you said, " Let's take this
Bill Curtis: opportunity to turn luxury brand universities back into places where
Bill Curtis: unremarkable kids have a chance at a remarkable future." And
Bill Curtis: I just loved that. What did you mean by it?
Scott Galloway: In 1982, the generosity of California taxpayers in the regions
Scott Galloway: of UC allowed a really unremarkable kid, who is the
Scott Galloway: son of a single immigrant mother, who never made more
Scott Galloway: than $ 40,000, gave me a shot at a remarkable education
Scott Galloway: undergrad at UCLA, and then a remarkable graduate education at Berkeley,
Scott Galloway: for a grand total of $7, 000. When I applied to
Scott Galloway: UCLA, it was free, or effectively free, and they let
Scott Galloway: in 40% of the applicants. Now, it is not free,
Scott Galloway: it's very expensive, and they let in somewhere between eight
Scott Galloway: and 12% of the applicants. The question I think we
Scott Galloway: have to face as a society is, do we want
Scott Galloway: to double down on the remarkable? Do we want to
Scott Galloway: double down, as we've been doing the last 40 years,
Scott Galloway: on the top 1%, and not make them millionaires, but
Scott Galloway: make them worth 30, 50, 100 million, or do we want to
Scott Galloway: do what we did in the eighties? And I think
Scott Galloway: it's probably all of us have benefited from, and that is
Scott Galloway: take kids who are good, but maybe not remarkable, and
Scott Galloway: through the greatest upward lubricant in the history of Western
Scott Galloway: society, affordable public land grant education, give them remarkable opportunities
Scott Galloway: and remarkable futures. I think we just have a bigger
Scott Galloway: decision here. Do we want to continue as academics? And
Scott Galloway: I'm guilty of this, to be drunk on luxury. We
Scott Galloway: brag that our admissions rates are down to 10%. That's
Scott Galloway: tantamount to the head of a housing shelter bragging they
Scott Galloway: turned away nine and 10 people last night, or do
Scott Galloway: we want to return to a society that says, " Maybe
Scott Galloway: you're good, but we see the remarkable in you, and
Scott Galloway: we have this remarkable thing called public affordable universities, that
Scott Galloway: are going to give you a chance to be remarkable."
Bill Curtis: So, where does the money come from?
Scott Galloway: I think we have to enter into a grand bargain.
Scott Galloway: I think it has to be a collective effort amongst
Scott Galloway: citizens, who vote for officials, who are willing to increase
Scott Galloway: funding again, but at the same time, universities have to
Scott Galloway: hold themselves accountable and dramatically decrease the cost per student,
Scott Galloway: by leveraging small and big tech and having some very
Scott Galloway: painful conversations with administrators and faculty, who have not been
Scott Galloway: subject to the same economic hardship and demands as every
Scott Galloway: other person in every other sector.
Ed Larson: I am also a beneficiary of how cheap my college
Ed Larson: and my law school and my grad school work, and
Ed Larson: if we could get back into that situation, we can
Ed Larson: instead start lifting the boats, because now the price of
Ed Larson: education is just out of the reach of maybe 60, maybe
Ed Larson: 70% of the people. They don't even think it's a
Ed Larson: realistic possibility, but you can change the trajectory of the
Ed Larson: schools of these great state schools, and some of the
Ed Larson: elite privates, so they let more people in, because they
Ed Larson: have a bigger cushion, because now they're doing a mix
Ed Larson: of online. We're finding out, with faculty teaching online this
Ed Larson: year, we're learning what we can do online. You put
Ed Larson: that mix in, you have a chance to finally start
Ed Larson: bending the curve in the right way. Just as beginning,
Ed Larson: say, in the 1980s, we've been progressively bending it in the
Ed Larson: wrong way.
Jane Albrecht: Going back to providing free or low cost college education
Jane Albrecht: at state universities for in- state students is neither such
Jane Albrecht: a radical idea, nor is it impossible. When we were
Jane Albrecht: all young, if you were an in- state student at
Jane Albrecht: a state university, tuition was very low. In fact, when
Jane Albrecht: I was very young, before college age, it was almost
Jane Albrecht: free. We're not going to be able to stay competitive in this post-
Jane Albrecht: industrialized world, unless we really seriously develop our talent. Every
Jane Albrecht: other major industrial country does, and they don't ask their
Jane Albrecht: kids to go into $ 100,000 in debt and up to
Jane Albrecht: do it, and not to mention the fact, investing in
Jane Albrecht: our population, investing in the education of our population, also solves
Jane Albrecht: other social problems.
Bill Curtis: So then, Scott, do you think that online learning is
Bill Curtis: really the future after COVID?
Scott Galloway: We're going to just have more of it, just as
Scott Galloway: retail went to 18% online commerce, and now it's at 28%.
Scott Galloway: It's jumped 10% in the last three months. We're going to
Scott Galloway: see a quarter, a third, a half of learning, go
Scott Galloway: to online, as a means of cost reduction, and in
Scott Galloway: some cases, superior delivery. Walk into a retail store, walk
Scott Galloway: into an emergency room and compare it to 40 years
Scott Galloway: ago. It looks a lot different. Walk into a university
Scott Galloway: classroom, a lot of them don't look and smell that
Scott Galloway: different than 40 years ago, except the fact that they
Scott Galloway: don't charge 80 bucks per class, which is what I
Scott Galloway: was charged at UCLA. Here's a stat. I'm teaching 400
Scott Galloway: kids, all online, this fall, because I'm not returning into
Scott Galloway: campus until they have a vaccine. My class has 400
Scott Galloway: registrants. They're each paying $7, 000. That's $2.8 million for 12 Zoom
Scott Galloway: classes, or approximately $240, 000 a night for me to be
Scott Galloway: on Zoom for two hours and 40 minutes. That is
Scott Galloway: outrageous and it needs to stop.
Bill Curtis: Are they making massive profits, and if they are making
Bill Curtis: massive profits, where do they go?
Ed Larson: I put some of the blame on guaranteed student loans.
Ed Larson: I think you can see a direct relationship with the
Ed Larson: skyrocketing cost of education, with this assurance of guaranteed student
Ed Larson: loans of all these students, who were thrown money, then,
Ed Larson: of course, these students, who get all these loans, these
Ed Larson: loans aren't even forgivable in bankruptcy and they're hobbled with
Ed Larson: these loans for the rest of their life.
Jane Albrecht: I actually benefited from the guaranteed student loans, but that
Jane Albrecht: is right. When you have the student loan program, you've
Jane Albrecht: got a subsidized system in an intensely market economy. The
Jane Albrecht: schools recognized, when they came into play, that they weren't
Jane Albrecht: limited anymore in charging what the parents could pay or
Jane Albrecht: the students could pay. They had that, plus what they
Jane Albrecht: could borrow. Problem is I don't think the answer is
Jane Albrecht: to get rid of the student loans.
Bill Curtis: You guys aren't answering my question. Are the presidents of
Bill Curtis: colleges getting listed in the Forbes 400? Where's all the
Bill Curtis: money going?
Scott Galloway: It's people, the compensation and benefits. We have 190 faculty
Scott Galloway: at NYU Stern. We could run the place with 60.
Scott Galloway: That's the harsh reality. Everyone would have to work harder.
Scott Galloway: Everyone would have to be more accountable, but that is
Scott Galloway: what has happened to every industry except ours.
Ed Larson: It's not how much individual faculty in the humanities are being
Ed Larson: paid, it's the numbers of them, that the number of
Ed Larson: faculty you have went up quite a bit, but also
Ed Larson: the number of administrators went up.
Scott Galloway: At NYU Stern, we have leadership and ethics departments, and
Scott Galloway: I can't get my nine year old to eat his
Scott Galloway: breakfast, but I'm going to teach a 28 year old
Scott Galloway: how to be more ethical? These departments cost millions. They
Scott Galloway: cost millions. There's no measurable outcomes, in my viewpoint. There's
Scott Galloway: no accountability, and once you introduce a cost to a
Scott Galloway: university, it's the most stubborn barnacle in the world. It
Scott Galloway: is never going anywhere.
Bill Curtis: We're going to leave that right there and take 30
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Bill Curtis: Welcome back. We're with Scott Galloway, Jane Albrecht and Ed
Bill Curtis: Larson. Scott, a little while ago, you suggested that we're
Bill Curtis: going to need, post- COVID, a lot more online learning,
Bill Curtis: so that we can give more people the opportunity to
Bill Curtis: have serious quality education. But then again, 74% of students
Bill Curtis: are dissatisfied with online classes, so good luck in getting
Bill Curtis: parents and students excited about paying tuition for them.
Scott Galloway: Pursuing intellectual curiosity, falling in love, getting your heart broken,
Scott Galloway: developing resilience, spilling into adulthood in a safe, joyous campus
Scott Galloway: environment, that's absolutely magic and I would hate to believe
Scott Galloway: that that would just become the domain of the children
Scott Galloway: of rich kids. What has been laid bare naked is
Scott Galloway: that, I don't even think it's the Zoom classes that
Scott Galloway: are that bad, Bill. I think what's really eyeopening, is
Scott Galloway: parents are listening in on the Zoom classes and going, " That's
Scott Galloway: what I'm paying $ 58,000 a year for?" So, there's been
Scott Galloway: a recognition that this pricing has just gotten so far
Scott Galloway: ahead of what it's worth, because there's this general dictum
Scott Galloway: in the US, that you have failed as a parent, unless
Scott Galloway: you let your kids into school. Okay, they didn't get
Scott Galloway: into a tier one. They got into a tier two,
Scott Galloway: through cartel pricing. There are universities out there that are
Scott Galloway: offering you a Hyundai and charging you the same price
Scott Galloway: as a Mercedes, because somehow we've convinced everybody you have
Scott Galloway: to have a car or you have failed as a
Scott Galloway: parent. Even if they don't get the Mercedes, as long
Scott Galloway: as they get a Hyundai, you buy the Hyundai for
Scott Galloway: the same price as the Mercedes.
Bill Curtis: But you need the Mercedes on your resume.
Scott Galloway: Well, it helps. It sets you into a different weight
Scott Galloway: class, in terms of your economic opportunities moving forward, and
Scott Galloway: that goes back to a notion of a caste system,
Scott Galloway: but when you talk about the amount of debt on
Scott Galloway: young people now, it's just so unhealthy for our economy. They
Scott Galloway: form households later, they get married later, they're less inclined
Scott Galloway: to start a business. Just the amount of sheer stress
Scott Galloway: it creates across households. We like to think of university
Scott Galloway: administrators and faculty as being nice people who sit around
Scott Galloway: with their Labrador and watch PBS, and we're incredibly noble people.
Scott Galloway: We're the same as anyone else. We will come up
Scott Galloway: with rationalizations for why we deserve to earn more money
Scott Galloway: and have better healthcare and have less accountability. It's just
Scott Galloway: really nice to have fewer responsibilities and more money, and
Scott Galloway: if the marketplace will afford that, you will take advantage
Scott Galloway: of it and you will invent reasons why it makes
Scott Galloway: sense, and we have been doing that for four decades.
Scott Galloway: Education has stuck out. It's the mother of all chins
Scott Galloway: and the fist of COVID are coming for it, and
Scott Galloway: it couldn't happen to a nicer group of people.
Bill Curtis: We've spent something like $ 6 trillion, trying to make it
Bill Curtis: a little easier to get through two or three months
Bill Curtis: of COVID. Why can't we spend one and a half
Bill Curtis: trillion to eliminate the college debt?
Scott Galloway: I don't think that's a good idea. I think that we
Scott Galloway: allocate some of that capital back to public grant, public
Scott Galloway: universities, but not until those universities get in fighting shape
Scott Galloway: and say, " We are going to dramatically lower the cost
Scott Galloway: per student and dramatically expand our enrollments." Every conversation I
Scott Galloway: have with university is they pretend that they're interested in my thoughts,
Scott Galloway: they bring me in and they basically go through a
Scott Galloway: lot. They do a lot of nodding and then they ask
Scott Galloway: me for money, and I'm like, " That's not the point. Until you
Scott Galloway: start delivering education at a much lower cost, I don't
Scott Galloway: think you should be raising money." As a matter of
Scott Galloway: fact, I just think we're feeding the crack addict at this point. I
Scott Galloway: think these universities, I think this. Every business is going
Scott Galloway: to come out of COVID leaner and meaner. They're doing
Scott Galloway: what they're supposed to be doing. They're reshaping around a
Scott Galloway: new economy. They're making difficult decisions. They're tightening their belt,
Scott Galloway: and instead, at universities, they're in consensual hallucination with each
Scott Galloway: other, that we're returning to campus in the fall and
Scott Galloway: charging the same tuition. It's delusional, verging on, in my
Scott Galloway: opinion, on reckless.
Jane Albrecht: Scott, I think you're right, that this will put tremendous
Jane Albrecht: pressure on, but even assuming most universities close for the
Jane Albrecht: fall semester, I think it's entirely likely that by January,
Jane Albrecht: most of them will open.
Scott Galloway: Yup.
Jane Albrecht: Is one semester of this kind of pain going to
Jane Albrecht: really bring that kind of change?
Scott Galloway: I think there's an opportunity, if we embrace it, around
Scott Galloway: experimenting with great online learning, to dramatically increase the online
Scott Galloway: competence and potentially increase enrollments across our better universities. There's
Scott Galloway: just so many great public school systems, that society would
Scott Galloway: greatly benefit from, if they could efficiently expand their enrollments.
Scott Galloway: But I think that one semester of substantially impaired revenues
Scott Galloway: could put 500 to 1000 universities out of business. University
Scott Galloway: of San Francisco has a 60% admin rate, a negligible
Scott Galloway: endowment, a ton of international students that aren't going to
Scott Galloway: show up, which are cash cows. 19% of NYU students
Scott Galloway: are international, but it's probably 40% of our cashflow. When you
Scott Galloway: have the xenophobic tropes coming out of the White House,
Scott Galloway: at some point, they'll decide, " I don't need their shit anymore."
Scott Galloway: You could have hundreds of universities, small, high tuition, liberal
Scott Galloway: arts, experiential universities that don't have the brand, you could
Scott Galloway: see them almost out of business by October, because they
Scott Galloway: just don't have anything to fall back on.
Bill Curtis: Are there any Ivy League schools that are at risk?
Scott Galloway: No, they're bulletproof. They have huge endowments. They have endowments,
Scott Galloway: somewhere between the size of the GDP of El Salvador
Scott Galloway: and Norway. They'll double down on their exclusivity. They just
Scott Galloway: have to go into their waiting lists. They're more spectacle
Scott Galloway: than historic. The entire Ivy League educates 64,000 students. I
Scott Galloway: don't want to say it's irrelevant, because we talk a
Scott Galloway: lot about it.
Bill Curtis: You've accused them of being a finishing school for rich kids.
Scott Galloway: No, I think it's worse than that. I think they
Scott Galloway: offer classes to the children of their investors. I think
Scott Galloway: they're drunk on exclusivity and lost the script around what
Scott Galloway: it means to be a public servant, but they're fine.
Scott Galloway: They'll double down on their exclusivity. They have incredible brands.
Scott Galloway: People talk about Apple being the best brand in the world. No,
Scott Galloway: it's not. MIT's the best brand in the world. Harvard,
Scott Galloway: Stanford are the best brands in the world. No one
Scott Galloway: spends $ 100 million to put their name on the side
Scott Galloway: of a building on the Apple campus. These are the
Scott Galloway: strongest brands in the world. They've gone centuries. They're global.
Scott Galloway: They'll be fine. So will the big state universities. They're
Scott Galloway: going to be fine too, but, USD, there are so
Scott Galloway: many schools that charge tier one prices, don't have big
Scott Galloway: endowments and their cost structures are inflexible, and when you
Scott Galloway: go from two, $ 300 million a year in cashflow, to
Scott Galloway: 80 overnight, you're in financial crisis. We're going to see
Scott Galloway: that in September. The public, the government, universities, administrators, we
Scott Galloway: all have to hold hands and cross the Rubicon here
Scott Galloway: and say the goal is more good kids given remarkable
Scott Galloway: opportunities to a dramatic expansion in the number of freshmen
Scott Galloway: seats at a much lower cost.
Bill Curtis: Do you have some advice for students and parents, as
Bill Curtis: we go through this process, where their actions could, in
Bill Curtis: fact, take this opportunity, to make higher education a better
Bill Curtis: place in the future?
Scott Galloway: I think a lot of it just comes down to citizenship.
Scott Galloway: Who you vote for, making sure that funding is a
Scott Galloway: priority, putting pressure on the universities as an alumni to
Scott Galloway: expand enrollment. It's very easy to get caught up in
Scott Galloway: this. I don't know how many of you say it with pride, jokingly, "
Scott Galloway: I could never get into the school I got into,
Scott Galloway: now." We say that all the time and we say
Scott Galloway: it as a point of pride, but it's not. It's
Scott Galloway: a point of tragedy because that means kids like you
Scott Galloway: are not going to get into that school. The real
Scott Galloway: point of pride should be, " It's much easier to get
Scott Galloway: into my school now than it was when I applied."
Scott Galloway: That is where we need to be and we're not
Scott Galloway: there. We've gone the opposite way, because we all love
Scott Galloway: the idea of having our credentials go up in value
Scott Galloway: and being able to brag about our university, so we
Scott Galloway: take pride in the exclusivity, once we've gotten our passports
Scott Galloway: stamped to a better life. Yeah, as citizens vote in
Scott Galloway: administrator or vote in elected officials who are willing to
Scott Galloway: stop the defunding of government, hold our universities more accountable
Scott Galloway: to dramatically expand their enrollments. I get a lot of
Scott Galloway: questions from parents and kids about whether or not they
Scott Galloway: should return to campus. I'm telling them to demand more
Scott Galloway: financial aid or to taking a gap year. I think
Scott Galloway: they should start acting more like consumers. Look, I don't
Scott Galloway: think there's a silver bullet here. We've got to attack
Scott Galloway: this from all angles.
Ed Larson: I would really stress the role of state universities in
Ed Larson: all this, whether it be community colleges, state colleges, or
Ed Larson: state universities, like the Michigan's or Virginia's of this world.
Ed Larson: If they take advantage of the online opportunity, if they
Ed Larson: cut their tuition costs, some of them still keep it
Ed Larson: pretty low, but others have raised it up. If they
Ed Larson: make themselves, once again, open to more middle class, greater
Ed Larson: variety of people, they can use this as a leverage
Ed Larson: opportunity, like they've had twice before, during the Great Depression
Ed Larson: and then again after World War II. The state universities
Ed Larson: really stepped forward and that's where you saw the Michigan's
Ed Larson: or the UCs really change, and they were an instrument
Ed Larson: for American greatness and they could be it again. The
Ed Larson: land grant universities and the state universities have this opportunity,
Ed Larson: and if they grow themselves larger, look back. Cowell helped
Ed Larson: drive Stanford's quality. I think if the state universities play
Ed Larson: that role again, they will help drive quality at other
Ed Larson: schools, and we can revive the American education system, through
Ed Larson: lower cost and a broader opportunity for good students to
Ed Larson: get into good schools and get a good education.
Scott Galloway: Here, here.
Jane Albrecht: We're only a couple of weeks away from when most
Jane Albrecht: universities would start their fall semester, yet I only have
Jane Albrecht: heard a handful who said, " We're going totally online." Isn't
Jane Albrecht: it getting late in the game for them to change
Jane Albrecht: their mind?
Ed Larson: Most of these schools are actually offering most of their
Ed Larson: classes online. They're just trying to get their students to
Ed Larson: come back because they have all these dorms they need
Ed Larson: to fill, because they are deep in debt (inaudible)
Ed Larson: and they need to fill those dorms. But, actually, the
Ed Larson: classes themselves at most of these schools, even if they
Ed Larson: had the students back in the dorms, most of the
Ed Larson: classes are actually online. It's just a scattering of classes,
Ed Larson: a fraction of the classes, that will actually be live,
Ed Larson: and I agree with Scott, you've got to dangle that
Ed Larson: out there, but as we get closer, more and more will be online.
Scott Galloway: We are begging disaster here. What happens when you send
Scott Galloway: 30 or 40,000 asymptomatic carriers to Athens, Georgia, and then,
Scott Galloway: in week three, a bunch of people, older people who
Scott Galloway: work in the campus community, and some of these communities
Scott Galloway: are basically the campus, and then the people servicing them, what happens
Scott Galloway: when the cashier, the nurse, the library attendant, in their
Scott Galloway: fifties, sixties and seventies, hit an ICU that has a total
Scott Galloway: of a dozen beds? This sounds cynical and depressing, but
Scott Galloway: it doesn't mean I'm wrong. I think if we continue
Scott Galloway: to think that the virus has received a memo around
Scott Galloway: our optimism and our need to get back to some
Scott Galloway: sense of normalcy, I don't think that virus gives a
Scott Galloway: good damn what we have planned.
Jane Albrecht: Most universities are opening, right?
Scott Galloway: Most are. I think we are inviting disaster. It's just
Scott Galloway: insane. The whole point of this pandemic, the only thing
Scott Galloway: we know that works, is to keep asymptomatic carriers away
Scott Galloway: from each other, and the university system is a function
Scott Galloway: of one thing. It's a function of density, which is
Scott Galloway: our enemy here. We are inviting disaster and I think if we
Scott Galloway: don't change our protocols really fast, we're going to end
Scott Galloway: up sending these kids home after some very, very ugly
Scott Galloway: things start to happen, in these small college towns.
Bill Curtis: Scott, this has been really spectacular and I really appreciate
Bill Curtis: you coming on, and I hope you'll come back. In
Bill Curtis: the meantime, how can people find you?
Scott Galloway: Thanks, that's a generous question. So, my Friday blog that
Scott Galloway: you referenced, No Mercy, No Malice, comes out every Friday.
Scott Galloway: I teach courses online called The Prof G Sprints, and
Scott Galloway: I also host two podcasts, The Prof G Show and
Scott Galloway: Pivot, with my co- host, Kara Swisher, but thanks for
Scott Galloway: having me on and I always have time for raging moderates.
Bill Curtis: Okay, and Ed Larson, Jane Albrecht, thank you so much
Bill Curtis: for coming into this conversation. It's going to be an
Bill Curtis: interesting fall and I think we're going to be learning
Bill Curtis: a few lessons. Have a good day, everybody. If you
Bill Curtis: like what you hear, please tell your friends, and let
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Bill Curtis: to your favorite podcast. This episode was produced and edited
Bill Curtis: by Mike Thomas, audio engineering by Michael Kennedy and the
Bill Curtis: theme music was composed and performed by Celeste and Eric
Bill Curtis: Dick. Thanks for listening. ( singing)
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