00:00:00
[Music] I was just sitting here contemplating about like how I'm going to pay back all my student loans.
00:00:05
I've applied to over 300 jobs. I don't have a job. Student loan debt just reached an all-time high $1.48 trillion as of June
00:00:13
of this year. A historic drop in US college enrollment. We exist to educate, to teach you how to think, not what to think.
00:00:24
We'd better be thinking about big transitions or transformations, if I can use the word, because um there's a lot
00:00:31
of new competition coming into our market. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lions and Dartmouth President Seon Bo.
00:00:44
[Applause] Hello, sir. Thank you for joining us. Hi. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Hi. Hi. Nice to see you.
00:00:54
Good to see you. Hi. Good to see you. Hi. Thanks for being here. Nice to meet you in person. Nice to see you. Yes.
00:01:00
Go Bears. Go Bears. Go Bears. All right. All right. All right. Big Green, let's not forget you, Big
00:01:07
Green. Okay. So, um, what an interesting time to lead a university in America. So many things to talk about, but I wanted to start with uh the premise that
00:01:20
student loan debt seems to be a challenge on the young population, the emerging working population today. At the same time, government research funding seems to be getting cut back and
00:01:33
there seems to be questions about the administrative overhead fees that are getting paid. What is the business model
00:01:39
of the university today? The revenue and the expenses and what does it look like going forward from your point of view
00:01:44
and how are you planning for that? Let's just start with that broad picture about the business model and how it's changing.
00:01:50
There's a lot to that question. I'll I'll start and will certainly have lots to contribute. um you know that when we at the top level if we think about you know how do we sustainably provide the
00:02:03
fundamental and translational research that we're so good at that we're built for the education really transformative
00:02:10
educational experiences that many of you have had in these great universities um
00:02:15
so you know one way to think about that is on the research side if there is less federal funding coming in over time and
00:02:21
I think that's that's a good bet uh can we partner more with with industry are there other sources? Is there way to gear philanthropy even more toward the kinds of research that we need to make
00:02:32
sure we're doing? So, so we are thinking about what that bundle that funding model looks like on the research side
00:02:38
and on the education side as well. You mentioned debt and and an issue that that's become. I think what you would
00:02:44
find whether at Dartmouth or at Berkeley that if you're coming to one of these institutions from a lower income family,
00:02:50
uh you're probably paying no tuition and many of them are leaving with very little debt. So, um, to say there's all
00:02:57
these higher education institutions and then to talk about averages, I think you you would be surprised at how much
00:03:04
support lower income students are getting. Yeah. And I would just add to that that I don't think education is
00:03:09
one-sizefits-all. And at a place like Dartmouth, which is I would talk about it as a different kind of ivy, it is
00:03:16
cheaper to go to Dartmouth if you're lower or middle income now than it was 10 years ago. And that's because of the
00:03:22
philanthropy that we receive from amazing alums and families. And that is what we want to do. We want to make institutions a place where anyone can go regardless of background. Bring the best
00:03:33
and brightest together and send them off without a huge debt burden. We package without loans. A third of our students
00:03:40
go for free and they come out on average making more than they would otherwise if they hadn't gone to a school like
00:03:46
Dartmouth. But I think it comes down to the institutions having some responsibility for pushing out students
00:03:52
and making sure that they're not serving them in education that then they can't find jobs in. And so as we think about
00:03:59
loan burdens and others, I do believe the institutions have a responsibility to their students. And I think we have
00:04:04
to do a lot more in talking about ROI than we do right now. So just ask one follow up to that. Does
00:04:09
that mean that we have too many universities in the United States and they charge too much generally? So you
00:04:14
guys are leading two of the top institutions in the United States. Are all of the second tier, the third tier,
00:04:21
the fourth tier that are providing perhaps negative ROI on the cost of their education, do they need to kind of
00:04:27
get shut down or reformed or what's the future of that? I think if you aren't thinking about the ROI and that is part of what you're
00:04:34
delivering, it's a fair question to ask. And I also think that we've pushed too many people to think that college is the
00:04:40
end all beall. There are different ways to be successful in this country. I certainly think there's a place for an
00:04:47
amazing elite education like Dartmouth if we are teaching students how to think and not what to think. But the idea that
00:04:53
everyone needs to go to a 4-year college or university, I think that's outdated. Let me ask you about uh different
00:05:00
degrees and loans and the risk that you take. I mean, $70,000 a year tuition, but you're not on the hook for it. students who take these loans are on the hook for it and their brains are not
00:05:11
fully developed. Would you I can confirm this. Okay. Well, the neuroscience data suggests that your friend text isn't developed. Boys a little bit later than girls, by
00:05:23
the way. Yeah, you can't I did okay. Um I went to forom. I did okay. Um the point I'm
00:05:31
trying to make here is shouldn't you the university be on the hook for these loans? And shouldn't you be responsible
00:05:38
for the outcomes for these students? And would you be uh in support of having the
00:05:45
loans and the amount of the loans match the desiraability of the degree and its ability to monetize in the you know postgraduation
00:05:56
or said differently would you guys underwrite the loans? Yeah, look I think we do at Dartmouth because we don't our students are
00:06:02
packaged without loans. They don't take out loans and in fact for a student uh in a middle inome family lower and
00:06:08
middle- inome family it's about 5,000 a year to go to Dartmouth. So we do underwrite in that way. Now you asked
00:06:14
the question about other institutions where students are coming out with high debt and low ROI. I think it is fair to
00:06:20
ask what share of responsibility the institution should take and I do think that that's part of the reforms that we
00:06:25
need to think about in higher ed writ low. So you're in favor of it. I'm in favor of the institutions having some responsibility but and at Dartmouth we
00:06:32
take that responsibility very seriously. Do you think they should take responsibility? Should you take responsibility for the outcomes? Well,
00:06:38
well, the word responsibility. So, I'm I'm an economist. Is is is a responsibility the liab the financial
00:06:44
liability at the end of the day or as people have been saying, look, if if we are not providing an economic pathway
00:06:50
for our students on average at Berkeley, you're talking about Berkeley now or or Dartmouth um you know that that people
00:06:56
will stop coming and they will stop taking loans. So, that market mechanism is working pretty well as it is and and
00:07:02
we are producing really wonderful outcomes. I think the earlier question about what about the you more than
00:07:07
thousand 1,000 higher ed institutions in this country and I think there is pressure on the whole system but um we
00:07:15
we are certainly making sure we have a brand new program called social sciences career readiness internship program and so we are launching lots of new things to make sure that we are providing that
00:07:28
kind of support. I'd push back and say I don't think the market's working exceptionally well because I think students are coming out overburdened
00:07:34
with loans without the kind of job prospects that we have responsibility. What would happen what would happen if
00:07:40
we ended the federal student loan program? Yeah. I mean I think it's a interesting thing to think about. I what I don't
00:07:46
want to do is throw the baby out with the bathwater and that there are student loan programs that are really helpful to
00:07:52
some students in terms of being able to go to the school they want and to get the education they want. Is uh is DEI
00:07:58
the bathwater? I let me let me ask you guys actually a question. What is the correlation between DEI and scholarship? Is there one?
00:08:09
I don't think having a diversity of thought and thinking about merit are mutually exclusive. I think that's a false dichotomy. Okay.
00:08:15
We were the first Ivy League to bring the SAT back uh at Dartmouth and many of our peers followed. And the reason is we
00:08:22
looked at the data and what we sh found was that it was a great equalizer in finding students from lower income
00:08:27
backgrounds and higher income backgrounds who are succeeding in something that's less actually susceptible to financial input like
00:08:35
letters of wreck and what you did for the summer and a better way for us to find lower income students who are
00:08:40
excelling where they are but maybe don't have the prep or the background. So I I think it's a false that they're mutual.
00:08:47
There was no impact to the quality of the actual scholarship, what the professors taught, the language that was
00:08:54
used, all this concept of like microaggressions, all this stuff that got in the way of teaching math and
00:09:00
science. Do you don't think that happened? No, I think that we have to focus on our core subjects and merit. But I think the
00:09:08
idea that I believe in diversity. I think we should have a diversity of people at the d the table from lived
00:09:13
from lived experience to political ideology. I think we have better outcomes if we can sit together and push
00:09:19
at each other and I have conservative views on my campus and more liberal views on my campus and I have students who come from veteran families and
00:09:26
students who come from the middle of the country and students who come from the coast. Bringing people together with different perspectives allowing them to
00:09:32
push at each other you get the best outcomes. And do you notice that the schools veered away from that or
00:09:39
did we spend any period of time I'm just curious veering away from what you just said or no? Yeah. Is there nothing to see here or is
00:09:44
everything of course no I mean I think I'd be the first one to tell you that I think higher education has a responsibility to
00:09:50
reform from within. What is the reform that what happened? I think we lost sight of what our mission was. We're educational
00:09:56
institutions. We're not political institutions. We're not social advocacy organizations. How did it happen? Thank you. How did it
00:10:04
happen? And just to say when we lose sight of that mission, people don't trust what we produce, whether it's the students or
00:10:10
the knowledge. How did it happen? You know, there there's a lot of theories for what exactly went wrong. I
00:10:18
think having strong leadership and being clear about what your values are is a really important point part of this. I
00:10:24
spent much of my academic career at the University of Chicago and I think that's a place that was very clear about the
00:10:29
fact that institutional neutrality is the way to get the best outcomes that it's we don't shout down speakers that
00:10:36
we don't set up encampments that declare a space for one ideology those are all things we've been pushing at Dartmouth and we are excited about where we are going and the outcomes but
00:10:47
we have work to do Rich how should I same at Berkeley same at How we doing at Berkeley, Rich? Uh, hey, no, beware the caricature problem because Berkeley undergraduates
00:11:02
produce more funded new businesses than the undergraduates at any other universities. We lift more people
00:11:07
further up the economic ladder than any other university in the country. And so,
00:11:12
so, so the caricature problem is very real here. Berkeley, I have been saying very publicly that we need to I'm agreeing with what she just said that we need to move in the direction of view of
00:11:24
of institutional neutrality. I'm talking about viewpoint diversity all the time. Do we have some getting better to do?
00:11:29
You better believe we do. We were thinking we were so tolerant. I think we weren't very tolerant of viewpoint
00:11:34
diversity. And we're we have a new course called Openness to opposing views. It got launched this summer.
00:11:40
5,000 people have signed up for it. We have something called the Berkeley Liberty Initiative. It is exploding on
00:11:45
campus. Do we have people on all sides of the spectrum? We sure do, but people keep pointing to one side of the
00:11:52
spectrum. It's like, look what's going on at today's Berkeley. Um, how should Chimamath or I explain to our Asian daughters or sons if they
00:12:04
don't make it into one of these schools because you have to um admit somebody for
00:12:11
diversity who got lower grades and a lower SAT score. How do we explain that? We don't admit in that way. We're
00:12:17
looking for school students with great scores, great grades, and who have grit and ambition
00:12:25
and allow us to bring a class together where people can push and get make better ideas for the it's sorry it's it's been the
00:12:33
law since 1996 in the state of California. We can't use race or gender or affirmative action. It's literally
00:12:39
illegal. We get audited for this all the time. So, if that's what you meant by your question, we don't do it. And it's part of the California master plan for
00:12:45
higher education that a third of our incoming class every year are community college transfers. They're grittier,
00:12:52
they're older, they're more firstgen. If that's the diversity you're worried about, then I have a different talking
00:12:58
broader not just to your universities, but to what we've seen at other universities. Perhaps Harvard would fall
00:13:03
into this category or others. And you know, we do think about that. What are we explaining to our kids in terms of
00:13:10
or maybe the general question what Jason is trying to say is what message does that give the broader American student
00:13:16
and the broader American parent about what is actually happening in higher ed when a a case like that gets litigated
00:13:24
to the Supreme Court. Yeah. Look, again, in a place of viewpoint diversity, you can have
00:13:29
different views on affirmative action and we have different views of that on our campus. Our goal and as we've always
00:13:35
done at Dartmouth is we're looking for the best and brightest students and that's not only just a test score or a
00:13:42
grade because that doesn't tell the whole story but we're certainly bringing students together based on all of the
00:13:47
things they do and we're not picking students to fit any sort of quota or system and the University of California has
00:13:54
effectively been aligned with that decision since 1997. Tell us about the growth of
00:13:59
administrators versus professors. There's another sort of common maybe it's a accurate statement or a
00:14:06
misconception that um many of these elite institutions in America have been overroought by administrators and they
00:14:13
get in the way. They gum up the system. They have all these ideas. They turn out to be idiots. Ideas are idiotic. Um
00:14:19
that's a theory. Um have you seen that play out at your two fine institutions or nothing to see
00:14:26
there either? Do you want to go first? I I will start um we for years and we have further to go but we have been talking about bureaucratic burden. We
00:14:40
actually have an initiative and we just call it bureaucratic burden and there is too much of it at Berkeley. Berkeley is
00:14:46
a very very large organization with lots and lots of people. So as we think about how do we make some of the hard
00:14:52
decisions for for making things faster um and we've been working very very hard at that. clock speed of the world uh is
00:14:59
is is going up so fast and the clock speed of these institutions pace for change that gap is widening and we need
00:15:06
to get better at getting better. So I promise you with AI and many other things, it's like well academic advising, how is that going to change
00:15:12
with a AI? It'll change a lot. We're going to always need human academic adviserss in my view, but that world is
00:15:18
going to change a lot. How do you navigate what's on campus? Last point is, you know, when you talk about the
00:15:24
mental health of our students, I think if you went back to when you and I were undergrads at our universities, the idea
00:15:30
that the university would would help people with me like scaled mental health services, they they weren't there. they
00:15:37
are there now. So you could say you shouldn't be doing that but the expectations of what we are providing
00:15:43
have risen quite a bit. Yeah. And I'll say that I think it's a totally fair question and we always need
00:15:48
to be thinking about moving our resources more towards the academic enterprise. I mean Dartmouth is a place where you're in a classroom with a
00:15:55
faculty member and six to 20 students. It's a very special thing that doesn't happen at all institutions. But we also
00:16:01
have a lot more compliance that we have to deal with that's come in from government over the years that we have to staff up to to deal with. And I like
00:16:08
the idea of rethinking that relationship in a way that allows us all to do our work better.
00:16:13
Let's talk about for one second um what President Trump has done with his um settlements with Colombia and the proposed ongoing thing with Harvard. There's going to be some settlement.
00:16:24
just walk us through what the implications of that are and the cascade effect and the waterfall as it trickles
00:16:29
through the you know to other institutions and whether you guys will have to be party to something or what
00:16:35
that means. Look, I believe in the fierce independence of our educational institutions and I worry that if we are
00:16:43
swaying in one direction or another based on who is in office, then we don't have the trust of the American people. And I think we failed in some ways to show that we could self-regulate and do
00:16:55
that ourselves. But the goal in my mind is get to get back to a place where it's clear that universities don't aren't
00:17:02
political organizations, aren't taking a position that we are focused on bringing the best and brightest to go out and
00:17:09
contribute to our democracy and we can do that ourselves. Rich. Yeah. And I I think that you know if you
00:17:16
look at trust and confidence and when it started to diminish across all kinds of institutions but including higher ed you
00:17:23
know that that predated by quite a bit the the election which was less than a year ago. So I don't want to confound
00:17:29
things where they really shouldn't be confounded. Why have we been losing trust and confidence to grossly
00:17:34
oversimplify its cost its career and its culture and we could go into each of those and talk about it. the cost thing came up, you know, are the career opportunities there? And by culture, it's sort of have things got too
00:17:47
progressive or not tolerant enough of viewpoint diversity? Those are all reasonable things to talk about. But um
00:17:53
so I think I think part of the questions that are being asked in under this administration and even before that,
00:17:59
many of them it's like, yeah, we need to be more reflective. I I just said I think there's too little viewpoint diversity.
00:18:05
Let's go to let's go to culture. David, you know, you had a um a great career at
00:18:11
Stanford and that was during the politically correct era and then we saw safe spaces trigger words and students
00:18:18
feeling they were being harmed by words. I'm curious what your thoughts are on culture on campus from your perspective
00:18:23
having lived through it because this does seem to reemerge every couple of decades.
00:18:29
Well, political correctness never ended. It just got renamed. I mean, I think they renamed it woke. There may have
00:18:34
been some other things in between. Um, you know, Peter Teal and I wrote an article for Stanford magazine back in, I
00:18:43
think it was 1995, so 30 years ago, called the case against affirmative action. And it was basically making the
00:18:48
case for completely color-blind admissions, having it be strictly based on merit and not taking race into consideration. And obviously that
00:18:59
argument did not prevail and win the day because we had the Supreme Court case a couple of years ago that basically said
00:19:04
that I think it was at least Harvard, I don't want to speak for every college, but basically was still engaging in racial discrimination. And so I think
00:19:11
you know that article or that argument it clearly was losing in practice for 30 years until the Supreme Court reached that decision. Um, so I think this is why there's a lot of skepticism on these
00:19:24
issues and I think you have a wave of presidents and I think leadership matters coming to the forefront and talking about what we need to do in this space. At my inauguration two years ago
00:19:35
I just finished my second year and I'm the third longest serving Ivy president right now. Um, just a side note, there's
00:19:43
been a bit of turnover a little bit. So, tell us like did you watch the Claudine Gay testimony and what did you think
00:19:49
when you were watching that train wreck happen? Yeah. What was going on in the group chat
00:19:54
while it was hurdling? Yeah, the Ivy group chat. Ivy group was brick wall. Look, I mean,
00:20:02
I think we have a responsibility to be different kinds of campuses. And the testimony, I think, was an outcome of being a campus that wasn't protecting
00:20:12
the people, wasn't inclusive, and wasn't calling balls and strikes when we need to. And we've been very clear at
00:20:18
Dartmouth that we value free expression, but your free expression can't rob others, which means no shouting speakers down and no taking over parts of space and declaring it for one ideology.
00:20:29
That's not free expression. It's just John Stewart Mill's philosophy of spheres of influence just don't
00:20:35
intersect with others. But let me sorry, let me just ask one. No, I just want to follow. Rich, isn't the like best part of Berkeley shouting
00:20:42
over the speakers? [Laughter] I'm trying to get through traffic over there sometimes and you've got a
00:20:49
thousand students on the freeway. It's like kind of the tradition. There's a difference between
00:20:54
protest protest protest is fine speech. I think that's a really important distinction and it's really important for leaders to be clear. Protest is fine. I have protests outside my office
00:21:04
all the time. I have students chalking messages. That's fine. But the problem is is when one person's free speech
00:21:11
takes precedence over another. And nobody's disagreeing with that. The Heckler's veto is something we talk a
00:21:16
lot about. We are coming down on people. It's not appropriate. Right? So people are outspoken. People are you know
00:21:23
that's part of Berkeley's tradition. I will often say to people free speech university hundreds of ways and places
00:21:28
to express your free speech rights and no more tents and no more blocking say their gate. So it's sort of like look we
00:21:35
we need parameters that help this to be as constructive as possible. But the John Stewart Mill Marketplace for for
00:21:41
ideas, we're trying to keep it as open as we can. And and that is something I'm just going to I worry about the idea for
00:21:48
our faculty and our community. The idea that we're going into a world where there are acceptable questions and
00:21:53
unacceptable questions. That's a bad problem. That's 1984. But going upstream, and I just want to
00:21:58
go upstream with you guys for a second. Where's this coming from? And what's going on in K through2?
00:22:03
Yeah. I think we don't talk about K through2 enough. I think we really have to go back. Our students are landing on
00:22:10
our campus without having civics, without having practice engaging in difficult conversations. I mean, I think
00:22:16
we really have to move backwards and not just think about the university setting because we're getting them much later.
00:22:21
And for the we train all of our students at Dartmouth go through Dartmouth dialogues to learn how to have
00:22:27
conversations with people you disagree with. I believe it's like a muscle. You have to train it through practice. Are they showing up basically just
00:22:32
unprepared? A lot of them through COVID didn't have these skills. And we've seen this in different ways where you at one
00:22:39
point when we were in school, if you had a fight with someone, you'd have it face to face. Then it went to text messaging. Now it goes to you leaving a long
00:22:46
voicemail on someone's a voice memo and then not even engaging. And if anyone who has teenagers out there, when I tell
00:22:52
my 14-year-old to pick up the phone and call someone, what are you talking about? You know, we have to get those
00:22:57
muscles back. And a university setting, a college setting is the place to do it. We're not just about knowledge transfer.
00:23:04
We're about forming the identities of our to Freeberg's point though, I just want to ask the point of question. I think it came out today, but uh high schoolers
00:23:12
are graduating woefully unprepared. It's not just the skills of debate. This is fundamental math, science, English, they
00:23:19
can't read, they can't add, they can't write. What what is happening in our primary
00:23:25
and secondary high school education system? What is broken there that's delivering these kids to you? so
00:23:32
academically unprepared. I I I I understand emotionally, but let's just first address the first one. Why? I think they're they're both. And I
00:23:38
mean, I'm not an expert in K through 12. I don't have all the answers there, but I'll say that one thing is that we're
00:23:43
not getting rid of income gaps in in achievement in K through 12. Students come into kindergarten at very different
00:23:50
levels depending on their parents income and they leave at those same levels. If we were doing something important and
00:23:55
successful in terms of education in the US, we would see differences and changes there. And I think we have a lot of work
00:24:01
to do to think through a K- through2 system that's not serving the entire Is there any lowhanging fruit there? Is it like having the ability to have more
00:24:07
tutors, extending the school day to 5:00 p.m. having summer sessions? If you could as an, you know, educator and and
00:24:14
somebody who works in this field, is there any lowhanging fruit that we could say, "Hey, President Trump, we need a,
00:24:21
you know, 25 billion more dollars a year to do this." Yeah, I mean, it's a it's a great
00:24:27
question. I would say one thing is making sure that we're putting good teachers in the classroom.
00:24:33
School unions are a problem. What does good mean? Competent and able to teach at different
00:24:38
grade levels and the ability to measure their outcome. Hold students accountable and push them
00:24:44
forward. And my research before I became uh a college president, I study performance under stress and anxiety. So, it's been helpful the last few years. But one of my findings is around
00:24:56
teachers uh especially in lower grades being really uh unprepared in terms of math competency and transferring that on to to young students. The teachers themselves don't know how
00:25:06
to add. Well, I think there's a very No, I mean I think it but what's interesting is there's there's probably
00:25:11
a very good teacher emerging which is AI. How are you guys thinking about whether higher education should even
00:25:18
exist and what the role of higher education and classrooms and teachers and textbooks are in a world where I
00:25:23
have a personal tutor available to me to walk me through the knowledge transfer at my own pace to think critically? AI
00:25:29
seems to have the potential to play so much of the role of what higher education and even K- through2 education
00:25:34
has played historically. Are you guys calculating for your strategic planning with AI and what does it do?
00:25:41
Absolutely. Well, I'll start I'll start with that. Um, so my daughter just graduated 3 months ago. I have two kids.
00:25:48
She just finished college and I'm astonished by how much she has developed and I think most parents would have a similar experience. And I think if you stripped out sort of the knowledge, the
00:26:00
part that you could easily access with AI, she would still astonish me in how much she has developed. that's a residential university and all the interactions and all the things and the
00:26:12
challenges and and and the the the overcoming them. And so, you know, the the idea people were predicting with with massive open online courses the death of universities 15 years ago. And
00:26:25
I really think that when you start realizing that's what makes it so darn transformative and at least any AI I've
00:26:32
seen so far is not getting close to what we're able to do. I think these uniquely
00:26:38
human skills, there is such an important part of a residential community that allows that to come together. Um, I'm a
00:26:46
big uh proponent of of how we think about integrating AI into what we're doing. Dartmouth actually was the
00:26:51
birthplace of the term artificial intelligence in a 1956 summer conference where people got together and talked. We
00:26:59
developed basic. We were uh the first institution to put it in all the math classes. I thinking with technology is so important, but there is a human
00:27:09
element of developing young people 17 to 25 that universities really can excel at. And I think that's one of the reasons that the culture issue and the idea that we're teaching students what
00:27:23
to think instead of how to think I think has hit such a an important point is because this is exactly what we should be doing. We should be thinking teaching those kind of critical skills that allow
00:27:34
students not to be in a safe space but a brave space where they learn how to be uncomfortable and interact with others.
00:27:40
Fair enough. But I I predict AI will play an important role and I predict that the teachers unions are going to fight tooth and nail from seeing AI show up and it's going to challenge our
00:27:52
ability to kind of provide this advantage for our students. And meanwhile in other countries around the world particularly looking across the
00:27:59
Pacific things are going to be very different than they are here. What is the conversation with the teachers
00:28:04
unions who are so politically connected who can be so troublesome and we saw this recently with the long shoreman's
00:28:10
strike that happened where they didn't want to have automation that would provide faster lower cost unloading and
00:28:15
loading of the docks and so on. it made it really hard. What's going to happen with respect to the teachers unions and
00:28:20
their ability to kind of move through this accelerating transformation that's going to be underway?
00:28:26
Well, I'll I'll start. I think categories of labor across the economy are going to be under threat. Um, so
00:28:33
it's it's easy to start with thinking about organized labor, but not organized labor is going to be terrifically under stress. And I think that a a lot of people are going to be pushing back on
00:28:45
on what's what's about to happen. So I I think that's that's the larger frame. It's really how jobs across white collar. In fact, I think a lot more
00:28:58
unrepresented jobs are going to disappear as a result of AI than represented jobs over the
00:29:04
next 10 years. Um we don't know. But I I I think o overframing in terms of representation, at least for me, is missing really the core issue here.
00:29:16
There's been a lot of talk um about recent graduates having a hard time uh finding jobs and that for at least male
00:29:24
students, the degree versus non-deree in terms of unemployment has now shown no difference. It used to be if you had a degree, you had roughly double the chance of getting a job. Are you seeing
00:29:35
that in the ground? I know you have elite institutions, but are you starting to see that even at your incredible
00:29:41
universities and are you concerned? Yeah, I mean I think again we have to talk about what the future of work is.
00:29:48
We haven't seen that at Dartmouth. Our students are succeeding in getting jobs, but again we're not just teaching
00:29:53
students how to code. Everyone who gets an engineering degree also takes classes across the sciences, across humanities.
00:30:00
We're teaching them how to think across difference and in in many ways which I think are these uniquely human skills I
00:30:07
hope that will be important for being a leader. What's on that small list of uniquely human skills or attributes that you most
00:30:14
want to get into those students? I really do believe that the ability to listen and have a conversation and speak face to face and have eye contact to have empathy to understand that even if
00:30:26
I don't agree with you, you are a human. we have these things together and we're working towards some sort of positive
00:30:32
democracy I would say is at the top of the list. We've been working with that with the two Davids. In fact, we've been working with that.
00:30:38
It's a muscle. I think you can build it over time. They're getting there. Yeah. Look, there's there's no question
00:30:44
I was talking to to an alum and somebody who's close uh very senior and and I said, "What what should be in our
00:30:51
strategic plan?" And he said, "Keeping humanity relevant." If that's not a big deal, I I don't know what is. And as we think about the sorts of skills that we're going to need in our students, I
00:31:02
think, you know, a sense of agency is is something that pops to mind for me. It's like a sense of agency. I kind of I I
00:31:09
can act on the world. I'm not act purely acted upon and and it's partly my responsibility and that so goes so far
00:31:17
beyond the way we think about education at least traditionally as mostly knowledge transmission. And and I think
00:31:23
we can do that in our classrooms. we have some curriculum that they do perceive themselves as victims
00:31:29
at times. Let me um let me maybe shift it for the last question uh and end maybe where we
00:31:35
started to end. One of the things that has happened is that with the cost of of higher ed, there's been the emergence and the importance of endowments. And as these endowments have emerged, there's
00:31:48
been a perception and then those things have been laid bare that there are side doors and back doors and all kinds of
00:31:53
different ways in which to get into schools. The Varsity Blues thing is like a perfect example of just the manipulation
00:31:59
of the system that just again to your point, people lose trust. um what role do endowments play? How much influence do they exert when it's good? Um when
00:32:11
they can't fund a budget, what happens? Uh just walk us through that cycle where there's a perception that they could be
00:32:18
doing more. Harvard's got a $55 billion endowment. Um but just walk us through that for each
00:32:24
of your institutions, how reliant you guys are on this and and the impact it makes on you being able to be totally
00:32:30
meritocratic. Yeah, I mean I will say very clearly that we are looking for the best and
00:32:35
brightest students. Our endowment is a way that allows us to fund students regardless of their ability to pay and
00:32:43
our financial aid we from our endowment hundreds of millions of dollars each year to support students so that they
00:32:49
come out without loans and they're ready to go and that is because people believe in the institution. So it is a way an
00:32:57
important way that private citizens give back to support what they're doing. And I think it is an extremely important to
00:33:03
what we do. It also funds our research. There's a lot of talk about indirect costs and what those actually mean. We
00:33:10
lose money on every research dollar we bring in. We spend our endowment to create the buildings, to create all of
00:33:17
the compliance. You can't make discoveries in the middle of Main Street. You've got to do that in a scientific enterprise where we are
00:33:23
putting the skin in the game. And I think it's great that people are giving back to be able to do that. But it
00:33:29
doesn't drive our decisions. What I think of it is is a support to do the good work we need to do. Yeah. And if I may just add a little
00:33:34
bit, I know we're out of time, but I think, you know, our endowment per student is is far far lower. And like
00:33:40
can it's it's going into scholarships for our students and the accessibility. It's like what's the effective cost of
00:33:46
these educations even with our lower lower prices. And also on the research end, right, we've got something called
00:33:51
the innovative genomics institute. A lot of that was philanthropic capital that came in and went into an endowment and
00:33:57
crisper comes out of it and some other things that are changing the world, right? So so it's really important that
00:34:02
we have that kind of funding both on the education and research side and and I just say that there's multiple
00:34:08
inputs into the system. I think the endowment is important. I think having a really robust partnership with
00:34:14
government that makes sense is really important for the American innovations and discoveries that we're doing. And
00:34:20
then for people who can pay the tuition, paying tuition is another aspect of that. But all of those come in to to try
00:34:26
and create what we're trying to create. Before we wrap, we've um pointed out a lot of problems and challenges and left
00:34:34
you guys in a kind of defense state. I I want to just give each of you an opportunity to talk about what you're excited about at the university that
00:34:41
you're leading. Uh maybe just take a minute. What what gives you kind of optimism? What are you encouraged by? What are you looking forward to
00:34:47
accomplishing? Uh as we kind of uh finish up the segment. Well, thanks. I'll start. You know, true
00:34:53
of Dartmouth as it is for Berkeley. Uh we view these things, we hope you do, too, as some of society's most valuable
00:34:58
assets. To what use shall we put them over the next decade? That's sort of what we've been entrusted with, right?
00:35:04
And so if you said on the education front um for example economic mobility right what would it look like to double down on economic mobility when a third of our our students are already transfer
00:35:15
students from from junior from from community colleges it's sort of like wow could we get even better at that I think
00:35:20
we can and we can do better at that right and as we think about the research it's like what are these fundamental
00:35:26
seismic shifts you're thinking about the biology revolution or the AI revolution or or planetary and human health I mean
00:35:33
these are things that you I believe we all need these institutions to be contributing to massively and that's
00:35:39
part of what's going into these strategic plans. So um I think you should be rooting for us.
00:35:45
We are rooting for you. Yeah. And I would say a few things. One uh Dartmouth has uh the most rural academic medical center in the country.
00:35:56
We serve a huge population of people not connected to the institution. And I'm excited about how we double down and make health systems better. I think
00:36:06
that's such an important part of what we do as universities. And the second thing I'll say is that I am very excited about
00:36:13
our students. Just one other thing that Dartmouth is doing that is so impressive. We have one of the only
00:36:19
bipartisan studentrun political unions in the country co-chared by the Dartmouth Conservatives and the
00:36:24
Dartmouth Democrats. And those students are changing the culture at institutions. Last year we had a debate
00:36:30
between Kellyanne Conway and Donna Brazil. We had uh Cornell West and Robbie George. They're dealing with DEI,
00:36:37
immigration. They are talking about the issues and putting it out there and they're creating a culture where it's
00:36:43
cool to have conversations and be uncomfortable instead of shout each other down. We should be excited about
00:36:48
that because they are the next leaders of our free world. Awesome. Thank you both. You took on
00:36:54
tough roles. We appreciate you being here today. Thank you. Thanks for coming. Thank you. Thank you so much. That was awesome. Appreciate it.