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[Music] I was just sitting here contemplating about like how I'm going to pay back all my student loans.
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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
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of this year. A historic drop in US college enrollment.
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We exist to educate, to teach you how to think, not what to think.
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We'd better be thinking about big transitions or transformations, if I can use the word, because um there's a lot
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of new competition coming into our market. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome
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Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lions and Dartmouth President Seon Bo.
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[Applause]
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Hello, sir. Thank you for joining us. Hi. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Hi. Hi. Nice to see you.
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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.
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Go Bears. Go Bears. Go Bears. All right. All right. All right. Big Green, let's not forget you, Big
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Green. Okay. So, um, what an interesting time to lead a
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university in America. So many things to talk about, but I wanted to start with uh the premise that
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student loan debt seems to be a challenge on the young population, the
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emerging working population today. At the same time, government research funding seems to be getting cut back and
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there seems to be questions about the administrative overhead fees that are getting paid. What is the business model
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of the university today? The revenue and the expenses and what does it look like going forward from your point of view
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and how are you planning for that? Let's just start with that broad picture about the business model and how it's changing.
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There's a lot to that question. I'll I'll start and will certainly have lots
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to contribute. um you know that when we at the top level if we think about you know how do we sustainably provide the
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fundamental and translational research that we're so good at that we're built for the education really transformative
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educational experiences that many of you have had in these great universities um
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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
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I think that's that's a good bet uh can we partner more with with industry are
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there other sources? Is there way to gear philanthropy even more toward the kinds of research that we need to make
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sure we're doing? So, so we are thinking about what that bundle that funding model looks like on the research side
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and on the education side as well. You mentioned debt and and an issue that that's become. I think what you would
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find whether at Dartmouth or at Berkeley that if you're coming to one of these institutions from a lower income family,
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uh you're probably paying no tuition and many of them are leaving with very little debt. So, um, to say there's all
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these higher education institutions and then to talk about averages, I think you you would be surprised at how much
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support lower income students are getting. Yeah. And I would just add to that that I don't think education is
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one-sizefits-all. And at a place like Dartmouth, which is I would talk about it as a different kind of ivy, it is
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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
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philanthropy that we receive from amazing alums and families. And that is
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what we want to do. We want to make institutions a place where anyone can go regardless of background. Bring the best
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and brightest together and send them off without a huge debt burden. We package without loans. A third of our students
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go for free and they come out on average making more than they would otherwise if they hadn't gone to a school like
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Dartmouth. But I think it comes down to the institutions having some responsibility for pushing out students
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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
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loan burdens and others, I do believe the institutions have a responsibility to their students. And I think we have
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to do a lot more in talking about ROI than we do right now. So just ask one follow up to that. Does
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that mean that we have too many universities in the United States and they charge too much generally? So you
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guys are leading two of the top institutions in the United States. Are all of the second tier, the third tier,
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the fourth tier that are providing perhaps negative ROI on the cost of their education, do they need to kind of
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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
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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
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end all beall. There are different ways to be successful in this country. I certainly think there's a place for an
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amazing elite education like Dartmouth if we are teaching students how to think and not what to think. But the idea that
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everyone needs to go to a 4-year college or university, I think that's outdated. Let me ask you about uh different
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degrees and loans and the risk that you take. I mean, $70,000 a year tuition,
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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
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fully developed. Would you I can confirm this. Okay.
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Well, the neuroscience data suggests that your friend text isn't developed. Boys a little bit later than girls, by
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the way. Yeah, you can't I did okay. Um I went to forom. I did okay. Um the point I'm
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trying to make here is shouldn't you the university be on the hook for these loans? And shouldn't you be responsible
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for the outcomes for these students? And would you be uh in support of having the
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loans and the amount of the loans match the desiraability of the degree and its
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ability to monetize in the you know postgraduation
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or said differently would you guys underwrite the loans? Yeah, look I think we do at Dartmouth because we don't our students are
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packaged without loans. They don't take out loans and in fact for a student uh in a middle inome family lower and
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middle- inome family it's about 5,000 a year to go to Dartmouth. So we do underwrite in that way. Now you asked
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the question about other institutions where students are coming out with high debt and low ROI. I think it is fair to
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ask what share of responsibility the institution should take and I do think that that's part of the reforms that we
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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
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take that responsibility very seriously. Do you think they should take responsibility? Should you take responsibility for the outcomes? Well,
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well, the word responsibility. So, I'm I'm an economist. Is is is a responsibility the liab the financial
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liability at the end of the day or as people have been saying, look, if if we are not providing an economic pathway
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for our students on average at Berkeley, you're talking about Berkeley now or or Dartmouth um you know that that people
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will stop coming and they will stop taking loans. So, that market mechanism is working pretty well as it is and and
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we are producing really wonderful outcomes. I think the earlier question about what about the you more than
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thousand 1,000 higher ed institutions in this country and I think there is pressure on the whole system but um we
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we are certainly making sure we have a brand new program called social sciences
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career readiness internship program and so we are launching lots of new things to make sure that we are providing that
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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
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with loans without the kind of job prospects that we have responsibility. What would happen what would happen if
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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
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want to do is throw the baby out with the bathwater and that there are student loan programs that are really helpful to
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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
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the bathwater? I let me let me ask you guys actually a
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question. What is the correlation between DEI and scholarship? Is there one?
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I don't think having a diversity of thought and thinking about merit are mutually exclusive. I think that's a false dichotomy. Okay.
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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
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looked at the data and what we sh found was that it was a great equalizer in finding students from lower income
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backgrounds and higher income backgrounds who are succeeding in something that's less actually susceptible to financial input like
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letters of wreck and what you did for the summer and a better way for us to find lower income students who are
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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.
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There was no impact to the quality of the actual scholarship, what the professors taught, the language that was
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used, all this concept of like microaggressions, all this stuff that got in the way of teaching math and
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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
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idea that I believe in diversity. I think we should have a diversity of people at the d the table from lived
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from lived experience to political ideology. I think we have better outcomes if we can sit together and push
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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
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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
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push at each other you get the best outcomes. And do you notice that the schools veered away from that or
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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
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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
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reform from within. What is the reform that what happened? I think we lost sight of what our mission was. We're educational
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institutions. We're not political institutions. We're not social advocacy organizations. How did it happen? Thank you. How did it
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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
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the knowledge. How did it happen? You know, there there's a lot of theories for what exactly went wrong. I
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think having strong leadership and being clear about what your values are is a really important point part of this. I
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spent much of my academic career at the University of Chicago and I think that's a place that was very clear about the
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fact that institutional neutrality is the way to get the best outcomes that it's we don't shout down speakers that
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we don't set up encampments that declare a space for one ideology
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those are all things we've been pushing at Dartmouth and we are excited about where we are going and the outcomes but
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we have work to do Rich how should I same at Berkeley same at
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How we doing at Berkeley, Rich? Uh, hey, no, beware the caricature problem because Berkeley undergraduates
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produce more funded new businesses than the undergraduates at any other universities. We lift more people
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further up the economic ladder than any other university in the country. And so,
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so, so the caricature problem is very real here. Berkeley, I have been saying
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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
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of institutional neutrality. I'm talking about viewpoint diversity all the time. Do we have some getting better to do?
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You better believe we do. We were thinking we were so tolerant. I think we weren't very tolerant of viewpoint
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diversity. And we're we have a new course called Openness to opposing views. It got launched this summer.
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5,000 people have signed up for it. We have something called the Berkeley Liberty Initiative. It is exploding on
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campus. Do we have people on all sides of the spectrum? We sure do, but people keep pointing to one side of the
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spectrum. It's like, look what's going on at today's Berkeley.
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Um, how should Chimamath or I explain to our Asian daughters or sons if they
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don't make it into one of these schools because you have to um admit somebody for
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diversity who got lower grades and a lower SAT score. How do we explain that? We don't admit in that way. We're
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looking for school students with great scores, great grades, and who have grit and ambition
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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
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law since 1996 in the state of California. We can't use race or gender or affirmative action. It's literally
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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
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higher education that a third of our incoming class every year are community college transfers. They're grittier,
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they're older, they're more firstgen. If that's the diversity you're worried about, then I have a different talking
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broader not just to your universities, but to what we've seen at other universities. Perhaps Harvard would fall
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into this category or others. And you know, we do think about that. What are we explaining to our kids in terms of
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or maybe the general question what Jason is trying to say is what message does that give the broader American student
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and the broader American parent about what is actually happening in higher ed when a a case like that gets litigated
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to the Supreme Court. Yeah. Look, again, in a place of viewpoint diversity, you can have
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different views on affirmative action and we have different views of that on our campus. Our goal and as we've always
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done at Dartmouth is we're looking for the best and brightest students and that's not only just a test score or a
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grade because that doesn't tell the whole story but we're certainly bringing students together based on all of the
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things they do and we're not picking students to fit any sort of quota or system and the University of California has
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effectively been aligned with that decision since 1997. Tell us about the growth of
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administrators versus professors. There's another sort of common maybe it's a accurate statement or a
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misconception that um many of these elite institutions in America have been overroought by administrators and they
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get in the way. They gum up the system. They have all these ideas. They turn out to be idiots. Ideas are idiotic. Um
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that's a theory. Um have you seen that play out at your two fine institutions or nothing to see
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there either? Do you want to go first?
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I I will start um we for years and we have further to go but we have been talking about bureaucratic burden. We
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actually have an initiative and we just call it bureaucratic burden and there is too much of it at Berkeley. Berkeley is
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a very very large organization with lots and lots of people. So as we think about how do we make some of the hard
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decisions for for making things faster um and we've been working very very hard at that. clock speed of the world uh is
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is is going up so fast and the clock speed of these institutions pace for change that gap is widening and we need
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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
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with a AI? It'll change a lot. We're going to always need human academic adviserss in my view, but that world is
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going to change a lot. How do you navigate what's on campus? Last point is, you know, when you talk about the
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mental health of our students, I think if you went back to when you and I were undergrads at our universities, the idea
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that the university would would help people with me like scaled mental health services, they they weren't there. they
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are there now. So you could say you shouldn't be doing that but the expectations of what we are providing
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have risen quite a bit. Yeah. And I'll say that I think it's a totally fair question and we always need
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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
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faculty member and six to 20 students. It's a very special thing that doesn't happen at all institutions. But we also
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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
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the idea of rethinking that relationship in a way that allows us all to do our work better.
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Let's talk about for one second um what President Trump has done with his um
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settlements with Colombia and the proposed ongoing thing with Harvard. There's going to be some settlement.
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just walk us through what the implications of that are and the cascade effect and the waterfall as it trickles
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through the you know to other institutions and whether you guys will have to be party to something or what
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that means. Look, I believe in the fierce independence of our educational institutions and I worry that if we are
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swaying in one direction or another based on who is in office, then we don't
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have the trust of the American people. And I think we failed in some ways to show that we could self-regulate and do
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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
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political organizations, aren't taking a position that we are focused on bringing the best and brightest to go out and
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contribute to our democracy and we can do that ourselves. Rich. Yeah. And I I think that you know if you
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look at trust and confidence and when it started to diminish across all kinds of institutions but including higher ed you
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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
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things where they really shouldn't be confounded. Why have we been losing trust and confidence to grossly
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oversimplify its cost its career and its culture and we could go into each of
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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
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progressive or not tolerant enough of viewpoint diversity? Those are all reasonable things to talk about. But um
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so I think I think part of the questions that are being asked in under this administration and even before that,
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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.
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Let's go to let's go to culture. David, you know, you had a um a great career at
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Stanford and that was during the politically correct era and then we saw safe spaces trigger words and students
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feeling they were being harmed by words. I'm curious what your thoughts are on culture on campus from your perspective
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having lived through it because this does seem to reemerge every couple of decades.
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Well, political correctness never ended. It just got renamed. I mean, I think they renamed it woke. There may have
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been some other things in between. Um, you know, Peter Teal and I wrote an article for Stanford magazine back in, I
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think it was 1995, so 30 years ago, called the case against affirmative action. And it was basically making the
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case for completely color-blind admissions, having it be strictly based
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on merit and not taking race into consideration. And obviously that
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argument did not prevail and win the day because we had the Supreme Court case a couple of years ago that basically said
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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
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you know that article or that argument it clearly was losing in practice for 30
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years until the Supreme Court reached that decision. Um, so I think this is why there's a lot of skepticism on these
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issues and I think you have a wave of presidents and I think leadership
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matters coming to the forefront and talking about what we need to do in this space. At my inauguration two years ago
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I just finished my second year and I'm the third longest serving Ivy president right now. Um, just a side note, there's
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been a bit of turnover a little bit. So, tell us like did you watch the Claudine Gay testimony and what did you think
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when you were watching that train wreck happen? Yeah. What was going on in the group chat
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while it was hurdling? Yeah, the Ivy group chat. Ivy group was brick wall. Look, I mean,
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I think we have a responsibility to be different kinds of campuses. And the
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testimony, I think, was an outcome of being a campus that wasn't protecting
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the people, wasn't inclusive, and wasn't calling balls and strikes when we need to. And we've been very clear at
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Dartmouth that we value free expression, but your free expression can't rob
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others, which means no shouting speakers down and no taking over parts of space and declaring it for one ideology.
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That's not free expression. It's just John Stewart Mill's philosophy of spheres of influence just don't
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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
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over the speakers? [Laughter] I'm trying to get through traffic over there sometimes and you've got a
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thousand students on the freeway. It's like kind of the tradition. There's a difference between
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protest protest protest is fine speech. I think that's a really important
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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
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that's part of Berkeley's tradition. I will often say to people free speech university hundreds of ways and places
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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
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we need parameters that help this to be as constructive as possible. But the John Stewart Mill Marketplace for for
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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
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our faculty and our community. The idea that we're going into a world where there are acceptable questions and
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unacceptable questions. That's a bad problem. That's 1984. But going upstream, and I just want to
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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
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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
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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
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can't read, they can't add, they can't write. What what is happening in our primary
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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
00:24:49
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
00:25:01
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
00:25:54
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
00:26:06
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
00:26:18
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
00:27:04
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
00:27:16
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
00:27:28
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
00:27:46
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
00:28:39
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.
00:28:50
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
00:29:10
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
00:29:29
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
00:30:20
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
00:30:56
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
00:31:42
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
00:32:05
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
00:35:10
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
00:35:51
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
00:36:01
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.
00:37:01
Thank you. Thank you so much. That was awesome. Appreciate it.
