Podcast Transcript

Rob Birdsell: Hello and welcome to the next class. I'm Rob Birdsell, your host joined as I am frequently by my co-host Kent Hickey. Kent, how are you?

Kent Hickey: I am terrific this beautiful morning here in the Seattle area. Rob, how are you doing today?

Rob Birdsell: Well, for our listeners, this is February 10th and it's 48 and sunny in Chicago. I am a very happy man. I think I got sunburned on my walk this morning.

Kent Hickey: That's very, very good.

Rob Birdsell: I think the deep freeze is over, but now that I said that, we'll get six inches of snow. Maybe next week when you and I are up at Lone Rock.

Kent Hickey: There we go.

Rob Birdsell:  So excited for this conversation around higher education. I know dear to your heart given your wife Terry's role. But the goal of this is for Catholic school leaders who are listening to get a little inside baseball from a good friend of mine, Peter Stokes, who I worked with 20 years ago at Edge Adventures. Way back then, the Chronicle of Higher Education wrote a column about Peter as one of the most interesting people in higher education and he leads or is on the Hiron Consulting higher education practice. But Kent, you you're living this with Terry. Any thoughts before Peter joins us on the state of higher education? 

Kent Hickey: Well, I would just say, based upon some of the discussions had with her and with others, it really seems like higher ed has been in, you know, an area of great change for years. This isn't just pandemic related. Maybe that accelerate a little bit, but particularly so for our Catholic colleges. I just think there's huge enrollment issues that they're facing, but also value questions that they're having. You know, if you look at most high schools now, I think what's happening is they're, you know, how AP has always been really big, and it still is, but it's almost more something that you put on your application as opposed to actual credits. What high schools are really doing really well, including our Catholic high schools, is dual credit. You know, they're they're really looking, I guess what I'm saying, is the value, the cost, and it's a critical time for our Catholic schools. I'm looking forward to what Peter has to say about all this.

Rob Birdsell: So Peter is coming to us from Boston. He and his wife have lived there since I've known him and he went right from Edge Adventures. He did like you Kent a short stint in executive search, and did not like it. And found a home in Hiron where he's been for many many years. But I remember talking to him. He like you likes doing the work and felt that he was putting people in jobs to do the work and he didn't do the work. He just... He's always been a doer and it was an interesting stint I thought you would find kind of interesting, similar to your your stint. I think you also are a doer and like to to build and do things and the other thing you will have in common Peter is a big soccer player, and still I believe still plays in a co-ed league in Boston. And for for many years we had an edge adventures team, which is kind of a fun fun thing when I was out there in Boston all those times to to knock the ball around the pitch.

Kent Hickey: Yeah. No, that's a great connection. And of course, we have a connection with you as well there, Rob, because you remember I was, you know, I was a soccer coach at Market High, a soccer powerhouse, and I think you were cut from soccer at Market High, were you not? So, I mean, there's another connection, I guess.

Rob Birdsell: Well, actually, no, the story is even funnier. So, I thought freshman year I was going to be a football player even though I'd never played football a day in my life and I'd played nine years of soccer. And so, I did get cut from football. And when I went to go play soccer, they said, "The team's been filled. You can't we don't we don't need you anymore".

Kent Hickey: You couldn't even make it as the kicker of the football team. Wow. Okay.

Rob Birdsell: No, I was about 90 pounds and 5 foot, 4 at best. Bobo Pzinski did not think I was was material for the epic market high football team.

Kent Hickey: All right.

Rob Birdsell: So, Peter should be joining us here in a minute, and to to our listeners: hire Ed is the subject today.

Kent Hickey: Yeah. And it will be good to get some of his thoughts on this and particularly that value. I'm really looking forward to what he has to say about the kind of the value part to this, you know. So, anyway, looking forward to it.

 

 

Rob Birdsell: All righty, Peter, welcome to the next class. Good to see you.

Peter Stokes: Well, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to see you guys.

Rob Birdsell: I was introducing you briefly to our listeners while Kent and I were having a little fun reminiscing about my getting cut from the Market High soccer team, of which is a terrible rumor. I just wasn't allowed to go out because I went for football first and then the soccer team was filled up.

Kent Hickey: It's under, we kind of do mess up a little bit on trying to identify the number of teams you were cut from from market high. So, give us a little grace there, Rob. So...

Rob Birdsell: And Peter, are you still playing soccer?

Peter Stokes: Well, it's funny you ask. I've taken a two-year break, but I just signed up for spring season, so I'm going to play in the over 62 league.

Kent Hickey: Oh, that's what I want to find, Peter.I am over 60. Well, what quite a number that an over 62 league.

Peter Stokes: Yeah. And the next the next rung up is over 68. So that's my retirement plan.

Kent Hickey: Oh my gosh, I love it.

Rob Birdsell: Kent, maybe you should move to Boston.

Kent Hickey: I should.

Kent Hickey: Yeah, we can use you.

Peter Stokes: If you know, you got a pair of cleats, come on over.

Kent Hickey: Yeah, I'd be considered fast with that crew.

Rob Birdsell: So, Peter, it looks like you're coming to us from your home office.

Peter Stokes: I am indeed.

Rob Birdsell: And I told our listeners, you are coming to us from Boston. But the conversation today, is for Catholic school leaders and what they should be aware of in this changing Catholic higher education landscape. So, I think the first one that I'm intrigued with, Peter, if you could talk a little bit about the enrollment cliff. I have a friend who's on the board of Marquette University and I heard him talking about this before the pandemic. So this must have gone back six, seven years. He was talking about it. Marquette was planning for it. So what is it... What should high school leaders be aware of as as they counsel their students as they think about where to go to college?

Peter Stokes: Sure. So this really goes back to the great recession of 2008 which was 18 years ago and as a consequence of the recession, folks at the time were being conservative in their spending. Married couples and others decided not to have so many children. And as a consequence of that, we now are at a point where we have  fewer high school graduates that are available to enroll in colleges. And so in addition to that, there are a couple other factors at play. Nationally, the birth rate in the United States has been declining for a couple of decades. We currently have a birth rate of about 1.6 children. And the replacement birth rate is 2.1. So we don't actually have a high enough birth rate to grow our own population or even to sustain it. And what really has driven growth in the US population over the past few decades has been immigration. And you know, and there are a number of factors at play right now that are, perhaps going to lead toward less immigration into the United States. So those are two key elements of it. One, we simply have fewer high school graduates that are ready to go to college. Another piece of it is that we have fewer folks coming into the country who might study at US universities. But there's also another kind of cliff and that is not the demographic cliff which is about those birth rates and population numbers but we also see a demand cliff where fewer students are choosing to go on to college. And so, in 2019, for example, the year before COVID, about 66% of high school graduates chose to go right on to college. And as of 2024, that number had declined to about 63%. So a 3% difference might not sound like a lot, but it actually does have a pretty substantial impact. And let me just put this in a slightly wider historical context, and then we can, you know, pause there and see if there's more to talk about.

But if we go all the way back to the end of World War II, if we go, for example, to 1950, we had about 2 million students enrolled in US higher education. Over the next 70 years, we saw this tremendous expansion. By 2010, we had 21 million students enrolled in US higher education. From 2010 to 2020, that number declined to about 18.5 million. And that's roughly where we are today. But because of this declining birth rate and because of the effects of the 2008 recession, for the next 10 to 15 years, we're anticipating a further 13% decline in the addressable market for high school graduates attending college. So what all of that means is, we have a mismatch of supply and demand. We have too many seats and too many classrooms and not enough students to fill them. And for that reason, we've seen, you know, a growing number of college closures and mergers. And we can talk about that as a separate topic, but that's certainly one of the consequences of this mismatch of supply and demand.

Rob Birdsell: That's really interesting. Thank you for that. The with, you know, basic economic supply and demand doesn't seem to be affecting the price though.

Peter Stokes: Well, there are some institutions that are in fact seeing this as a significant problem that does need to be addressed. There was there was a piece in the chronicle of higher education which is you know a very important periodical in the world of higher education that was just arguing you know higher ed is still not looking at this issue as seriously as it needs to. But there are some interesting institutions out there that are innovating in interesting ways. So, for example, there have been, you know, a half dozen or so schools in the past 18 months or so that have introduced three-year bachelor's programs. So, that's an effort to get a bachelor's degree in three years rather than four, save 25% of your tuition, get out into the job market faster. So BYU was the first institution to get out there and do that. Johnson and Wales, Plymouth State... And we're starting to see other institutions. University of Maine, is now coming out with three-year programs. So, that's one way, but we also see institutions that are looking at differential pricing depending upon the degree that they are offering. So, for example, you might have an engineering degree with a sticker price of $40,000. You might have a nursing degree with a sticker price of $35,000 and then you might have a liberal arts degree for $17,000. And so that kind of differential pricing is meant to map to different kinds of professional outcomes in terms of earning, you know, the first several years after graduation. So, I think we will see some adjustments to price and how price is positioned, but it's fair to say that far too little has has occurred still.

Kent Hickey: That's really fascinating and and I was really struck, Peter, by when you talked about 2008. I never would have thought of tha. That it traces its back its roots back to then. But anyone who was in any schools in a leadership position at that time I think we forget how dire that wa. Like that was a cultural shift that felt like a, you know it's like, folks that have gone through the depression right they see the world differently. It's just it feels like that was a real differencemakers across the board with for 2008. But what you're saying is that, we've seen ramifications from that. I assume the high schools see the ramifications and such. It's  almost like a different mindset, right, that you have to have now.

Peter Stokes: And you know, there's also just population movement away from the Northeast down to the south into the Midwest. And that's also creating, you know, it exacerbates some of these challenges in those regions that are losing population at even faster rates because of outofstate movement. So what we're describing here are some sort of national data, but how they play out in local markets can vary considerably. For example, South Carolina has a growing population. The state of Maine has sort of the fastest declining population. So this plays out differently in different states.

Kent Hickey: Yeah. And then with high schools, going back to that again, it's a lot of choice. you know, Florida, you know, kind of Catholic schools, a lot of them are just kind of flush with cash as opposed to other areas. I want to just look at that if you don't mind real quickly because I think you could could offer some real good advice for our folks out there that are in the Catholic high school market, right?

Because I think some of the pressures that you're describing, particularly in areas that are struggling with population enrollment, it has an impact on these high schools. I just want to give you one example. When Rob and I were at Market High years ago, it was an AP school, right? I mean, AP was the thing and and that continued to be that way for some time. It still is a big deal, but I would say it's more of a big deal for the college applications as opposed to the actual credit, you know, you receive for that because it's it differs so much by college. It seems to me like on the high school level, the Catholic high schools that are really attracting more students are the ones that can say through dual credit, we will have you graduate with these number of credits. And I don't know if they can say outright, you'll start your year as a sophomore. I guess what I'm saying is would you advise high schools to do some of the same kind of thinking that you're seeing some of the better colleges do in valuing and placing a value on the product they're offering?

Peter Stokes: I mean, dual enrollment is something that is on the mind of many many colleges and universities right now, and some folks of course have been doing it for a long time and the state of Texas has had very robust programs for dual enrollment for for quite a long time. But many, many more institutions particularly smaller private institutions are looking much more closely at dual enrollment as being a very important revenue stream just to help with their financial sustainability, but also as a way to create demand for their degree programs, right? And if a student can finish a year of college through a couple of years of high school while taking online courses or even in person courses, that's fantastic. And it's similar in a sense to the three-year credential idea. It's a way of, you know, accelerating folks progress to the job market.

Kent Hickey: Go ahead, Rob.

Rob Birdsell: No, what's I was just thinking about that if, you know, a student took dual credit junior senior year and then they went to a three-year degree program, you could be getting out in two and a half years.

Peter Stokes: Conceivably. Of course, you know, where these credits transfer is always a local issue. But I think we could imagine you know a few years from now that will be the case.

Kent Hickey: To follow up on that, I think we're talking about value, you know, it goes back to your comments, Peter. I think that, as well though, we need to define what value means because just your example you brought up Rob is that if the norm were to be, you know graduates at 20 something like that there's also though value to the maturation process particularly in valuedriven schools, that happen well beyond, you know, the actual classroom. And, Peter can you speak to it? It seems to me like parents for example are also really interested in the values that are learned in a given school that's being high school or being in college because character issues are important, and learning how to be a good discerner are important. Do you see do you see that in the work that you do?

Peter Stokes: Yeah, absolutely. There is a tension between the sort of the professional focus of certain degree programs and what you know we've generally thought of as the liberal arts or a broad general education curriculum. So there's a tension there, and some some politicians, some higher education leaders, some policy folks see that as an eitheror proposition. But I do think a growing number of higher education leaders see it as more of a bothand proposition. And I think any values-based institution, is going to lean more closely in the, you know both and direction. You know, people talk about durable skills as though, you know, this is an idea we'd never thought of before, but I think probably the three of us all learned some durable skills in the course of our education, which took place, you know, some time ago, right? So, we have to stay committed to certain types of of educational experiences. Some of those are in the classroom, some of those are outside the classroom, some of those take a good deal of time to bed in. I do think that there seems to be some evidence, although I don't know quite what's driving it, but there does seem to be some evidence that adolescence is lasting longer than it used to and that there are, you know, a growing number of college graduates who are, you know, sometimes referred to as failing to launch. And so I think you are starting to see some institutions see that as an opportunity. How do we provide services to our graduates that enable them to live in particular cohort communities that enable them to have internships that can prepare them for the job if they're still undermployed and that ultimately can provide other services to them, mental health services, other sorts of services to enable them to launch. So this is, you know, I think an occasion for some interesting innovation, and there are some universities out there that are trying to help students through these transitions in ways that we didn't see in the past.

Rob Birdsell: It kind of reminds me of a conversation we had last year with Dan Porterfield. Um, Peter, he's the CEO of the Aspen Institute and has a book growth mindset. And it was a conversation of the opposite of the value, we're we're discussing. It was all about giving young people that growth mindset for life. Which traditional liberal arts universities have done for a long time. Any any thoughts on that, Kent?

Kent Hickey: Yeah, I think we're going back to looking at the value again. What I was the other the example that I was thinking about we've talked before is there's a phenomenally successful tech executive here in the Seattle area, John Stanton who's an early you know early wireless guy he's the owner of the Mariners now and such but I remember him talking to a group of seniors once he had gone to Whitman a small, really good liberal art college here in Washington state and he was extolling the value for people that want to move into leadership positions of philosophy degrees and such as that. But I think it's probably hard to get that home when so much of the value is limited to I'm you're going to get this XYZ job. So it would seem that we also have to really examine what we view as values and with the growth mindset you know that we had discuss us before that's a value have to have to look at. Going to a question though, it, you know, Peter, based on what you're talking about with whether it's failure to launch or however you do it, it almost seems like the discussion with boys or parents of boys is in some ways different from the discussion with girls or parents of girls like they there's now a a stark difference and we're seeing lower number of boys, right, in the college setting. How do you address or how would you talk to those parents differently of boys and girls?

 

Peter Stokes: Well, I mean just going back to the you know the participation rates you know and earlier I mentioned that you know the college the rate of you know graduating high school and going on to college has dropped a few points in the last few years. What's also happened is that 70% of young women continue on but only 55% of young men continue on to college immediately upon high school graduation. In some states, Iowa is one of them, fewer than half of all graduating high school males go on to college. So, more don't go on to college than do. And so there there is definitely some some evidence to suggest that how young men and how young women are experiencing these transitions is different. I have a son and a daughter. My son is 27, my daughter's 24. Both went to the same university, went to the same high school, but they've got very different interests and how they've approached their postgraduate life has been quite different. You know, one is much more exploratory and the other is much more of a rocket ship.
I'll let you guess which is which. But you know, that's simply uh the way it seems to be these days.

 

Rob Birdsell: Let's take a brief pause to hear a word from our sponsor.

 

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Rob Birdsell: Well, you've told me, Peter, so I can't tell you which one is which. But you know, the reason I invited you on this podcast was you recently wrote about university closures and pressures on them. And that got me thinking that if I were a school leader, I would want to know what evidence I should be looking for, so I don't send kids to a school that the university it's going to close in two years or five years. You don't you want to have an institution that is there for years to support you. Can you talk a little bit about that article you wrote and some of the findings and what you're seeing around the pressures and closures of universities?

Peter Stokes: Sure. So, you know, going back to again that demographic cliff, that demand cliff, when we have this, you know, declining population of collegegoing high school graduates, we then have to figure out, all right, well, how do we sustain all of this post-secary infrastructure that we have? And again if you if you just think back 1950, 2 million students 2010, 20 million students, 21 million students, we built this amazing infrastructure, you know over those 60 years including you know the entire community college system. So now we simply have to undo some of that work. We have to anticipate that, there will be college closures and college mergers in the coming years. You know, famously Clayton Christensen, who is a Harvard Business School guru, he wrote the book The Innovator's Dilemma,  focus on innovation. He very famously proposed back around 2008 that half of all colleges would close within a decade or so. And of course, that didn't happen, and that was an extremely imprudent kind of prognostication to make. His thinking at the time was that online learning was going to supplant, you know, most inclass instruction. Of course, that hasn't happened. But we should expect to see something like a 15% decline in the total number of institutions, the total number of seats in classrooms over the coming decade.
So just to put this in perspective, if we just think about what's happened since 2020, we've had about 130 either colleges close or merge and the ratio has been about 2:1, two closures for every merger. And those 130 or so institutions represent about 200,000 students. So, those students were all affected by those closures. Sometimes they're seniors and they're they're almost done and it's not too disruptive. Sometimes they're freshman and it's extremely disruptive. And the data suggests that when a student's college closes, only half of those students continue on to another school. And of those that continue on, only half finish. So these closing

Rob Birdsell: Woah, 75%.

Peter Stokes: Yeah, extremely disruptive to the student population. So again if we think just over the last you know five or so years 200,000 students displaced we all have a stake in what happens to those kids right? We all want them to finish their degrees. And so, no matter where we sit, whether we are an institution that's looking to be acquired by a healthier institution or if we're a healthy institution thinking about acquiring the assets of another institution or if we're just watching, we all have a stake in what happens to those students. And furthermore, those institutions, those 130 or so represented about $2 billion in endowment, right? So when an institution is acquired, its endowment goes to the acquiring institution. When an institution closes, its end endowment is used to settle its debts and then any remainder is essentially dealt with at the discretion of the state attorney general. So again, we all have an interest in keeping those dollars in education, and in supporting the mission that those gifts were given for. So, that's sort of the last, you know, five or so years. If we look ahead, we've examined , you know, every private four-year institution in the country. There are about 1,700 of them. And based on our analysis of various financial features, we place 370 of those institutions at the highest level of risk. So, they are very, very likely to close in the next 5 to 10 years or merge. So those 370 institutions represent 600,000 students. So three times as many as you know those affected over the past 5 years. And those 370 institutions represent about $18 billion in endowment. So again, we all have a stake in what happens to these students and we all have a stake in ensuring that those those philanthropic dollars that were, you know, there to support higher education continue to be used for those purposes rather than simply get dispersed, you know, by a state attorney general. So, we have to be thinking about this as being a very very difficult and painful rebalancing of supply and demand. And again we can expect this to play out over the next 5 to 10 years. Once we get there, once we have 18 million or 17 million students enrolled in US higher education and we have, you know, 17 million or 18 million seats in classrooms, we're actually going to have a healthier environment. that's going to be better for everyone. But the distance between here and there does create challenges for parents as they're trying to evaluate, well, is this school that my child is considering likely to be there by the time they finish their degree? And there are, you know, quite a number of colleges that probably can't make payroll in 18 months that are still accepting applications for the fall of 2026. And it's natural that those institutions don't want to say, "Hey, we're in bad financial shape because that's just going to drive the enrollment away and that's going to umfurther exacerbate their challenges and put them out of business even sooner." But the question becomes, well, do they have an obligation to the families that are considering, you know, investing in their institution? Do they have an obligation to be honest about that? Some states like Massachusetts have tried to regulate that and require that institutions be put on a watch list if they meet certain financial risk categories. The private institutions in the state of Massachusetts lobbyed heavily against that again because that could effectively be a death sentence. Once you get put on the warning list, you're at grave risk.

Rob Birdsell: This is fascinating, Peter.

Kent Hickey: Unbelievable. By the way, I want to do a shout out that I want to recognize you. You did some pretty high level math on the fly a little while ago with that 75% and I just want to acknowledge that. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Rob Birdsell: So, but if I'm a school leader, like this is this is a really big deal. If 75% of those students aren't going to complete, if you're going that's just remarkable

Kent Hickey: That it's like I never would have thought of acquisitions and mergers as being now part of the landscape that has to be described. Nor would I ever thought as a parent that I that my investigation is not just, you know, what the what the job is, you know, or GPA or whatever. It's actually now like I'm blown away by this watch list, which is a death list. I assume like if you're on the watch list, good luck trying to get kids to enroll in your school. But it's almost like your due diligence has to be asked the question now what what does your payroll look like 18 months out?

Rob Birdsell: What question I mean what questions should parents or school leaders be asking universities, Peter?

Peter Stokes: Well, I mean, there are a number of key data points that we look at and and some of these are pretty easy to get your hands on. It's not hard for higher education consultants like me to spend time with this data. But I I wouldn't expect most parents to be digging around for this data, but if they have the energy and the will to do it, and there are certainly some out there, we try to look at 10 years of enrollment data and look at the enrollment trends. We try to look at changes in net assets at the institution. We try to look at how their net tuition revenue is performing per full-time equivalent student. And there are some other measures that you know start to get you know a little bit more technical like asset to liability ratios and and liquid assets agency ratings and that sort of thing. But there are a handful of key metrics that you can look at and if the trend lines are negative that's a yellow flag and you want to be cautious about that. Now, what can sometimes happen for those institutions, that have a couple yellow flags is some donor steps forward and provides a major gift that buys the institution another number of years to then figure out okay well what is our sustainable path to the future. So that can happen. So the yellow flags by themselves are not necessarily a death sentence, but there's certainly reasons to be caution cautious. I mean one of the things that happened of course after COVID was the government stepped in and provided you know large uh investments into higher education to to help schools weather you know all of the challenges of of remote instruction and so on and so forth. And those dollars essentially ran out by about 2024. So in fact in 2024 we saw an enormous spike in closures and that's because the funds from the federal government had effectively been propping up some institutions that probably would have otherwise closed in 2021 if COVID hadn't happened. And so, you know, there can be resources that appear unexpectedly, whether they're, you know, government resources or private philanthropy. But if you do see some of these yellow flags, you do want to be cautious and you should be talking to, you know, the seniormost people you can at the college or university to understand what its prospects are. And if you can look someone in the eye and ask them some direct questions, hopefully you'll get something approximating, you know, a fair answer.

Kent Hickey: Conversely, if I were in admissions work in a college and I had very positive data along the lines the 10-year enrollment that Peter that you described or even the asset to liability statements, maybe that's also part of it as well.

I just have one other question that comes to my mind Rob with and actually something that we've talked about before and this may not directly pertain to our discussion, but I think it does, is that I also kind of feel like if there's a donor that comes in to save you for three years and if the issue is systemic that's just three years you know delaying something that's going to happen anyway. The school does not take the kind of actions, you know, that it needs to take to really really examine systemic issues. There's a really interesting monastery, a Benedicting monastery called Mount Angel. It's in southern Oregon. And their numbers are going up a lot. And one of the reasons they think that their numbers have gone up is that they invite prospective monks not for a come and see weekend but for a come and see year. Come and and you're not taking vows or anything like that. But for a lot of let's say young people that are not ready to make a commitment to a school or their parents whether you call it a gap year or whatever you call it. I think what they're doing is they're taking the gap year mentality. I got to find out where I'm at. I got to find out my direction in life. And if it's going to include prayer and living in community and I saw what their their day looks like. It has some work. You know, you're a monastery. It has some fun times. They by the way run their own brewery. That can't hurt. Motto, taste and believe. I guess my point is that there's a monastery that's looking at its numbers, made changes in its approach on how it does all of what it does, and they're seeing their numbers ramp up significantly, which doesn't generally happen at Catholic monasteries around the country. I don't know if this relates to anything that the work that you're doing, Peter, but it seems to me like that kind of thinking needs to happen with some of these colleges as well.

Peter Stokes: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you can identify an unmet need, there's an audience out there that needs a certain kind of experience and no one else is delivering it. And if you can deliver, you know, against that need, that creates an opportunity. So whether that's, you know, a $17,000, you know, degree in the humanities rather than say philosophy or English, or if that's a three-year bachelor's degree, or if that's dual enrollment in high school. I mean, those were all opportunities that 20 years ago no one was talking about because they didn't need to. That didn't mean that there wasn't demand for those things. It just meant no one was paying attention to it. So now out of necessity, people are and they're finding demand for those offerings. So, you know, I do think that there are many segments of you know, audiences for higher education. They're not all of one type.
You know, and so some people really want that extended time for reflection. They know they need to learn how to be socialized. They need to learn how to build friendships. They need to learn how to get along with other people. They need to understand who they are and what what motivates them. There are some 17-year-olds who seem to know exactly where they want to be when they're 35. I don't understand the mind of that kind of a 17-year-old, but they're out there. And you know, congratulations to them. But, you know, a lot of other folks are are in a path of discovery. And if you can offer a a unique way for them to go down that path, then that could be pretty powerful.

Kent Hickey: I just I mentioned that real quickly. Just we had one of those sons ourselves who we thought you got to go to college. So, he goes to he wanted to go in the military and didn't want to go to he didn't want to be an officer. He wanted to be, you know, an infantry man. And so he tried for college for 6 months. He comes back and says, "I tried it. I I'm telling you guys, I don't want to do this. I really want to try the army." So he went into the army and he became a medic. And now he's doing some really wonderful things, you know, after that four-year period. But it's as a parent, I needed to also listen to the wisdom of my 17-year-old.

Peter Stokes: Yeah. Absolutely.

Rob Birdsell: So, Peter, as we prepared for this, we had about 20 buckets of stuff to talk about. I think we've gotten through like four of them. Which is a good sign of a good conversation. So one one last one that I would love to hear your thoughts on before we wrap this up is: generative AI is obviously the hot hot subject in many work fields and education. Any thoughts you have on AI's effect on higher education?

Peter Stokes: Yeah, I mean it's a topic I've been giving a fair bit of thought about the last couple years, and there are a couple ways to imagine how it might impact higher education and and how students explore for college. So one of the things we hear for example is that students are turning to AI platforms to do college searc,h and you know compare and contrast and an AI platform can create a table and compare and contrast features and so forth and and I've heard you know university admissions people say we have no control over how we're being represented in those platforms. If you're in a guide book, if you're in a ranking, you know, you have some control over how you're presented to the world, but you can't advertise right now at least in these AI platforms. And so, you know, it gives students a a different venue to hear different things about the institutions they might be considering and the universities and colleges have less control over that. So that's an interesting challenge and it may in fact be a benefit for some of the students who are doing that exploration. I do think that the recruitment, and retention, and career services domains of higher education are likely to be among the places where AI really builds you know an early beach head. And so there are some very interesting AI tools. They get referred to as a digital workforce that can actually go out and interact with students who are expressing interest. It can feel to you like a real phone call. It can feel to you like a real email exchange ,or it can feel to you like a real chat, but it's actually driven by an AI. And as a consequence, you're getting more attention than you would otherwise get with, you know, limited resources on the number of people in a call center. So there are some, you know, real potential benefits. There's quite a lot of concern about the role of AI in the classroom and the extent to which it is preventing students from learning. And then there are certainly concerns about how AI might impact entry-level jobs. And I read an an interesting article the other day in the Harvard Business Review by a former colleague of mine named Dave Duncan that was about the role of judgment, in a professional services industry context. So if you're an accountant or a consultant or something like that, you generally have to spend a few years working with data, doing some analyses, building some powerpoints, and presenting your work to your your manager, your superior, and a lot of the time getting things wrong. And it's by getting things wrong, and having people explain to you why the recommendations you know you've drawn from the data are wrong. That's how you learn and that's how you develop your own judgment. But where so much of the work that's done now is augmented by AI. You lose that opportunity to build your own experience making mistakes and to develop your own judgment. So that's a challenge. So we have to think about how we can help students use these tools effectively, but at the same time develop thei  judgment. And I think that comes back and to what you were saying earlier about values-based education about you know building those durable skills about not just focusing on the vocational or professional aspects of training but really thinking about how you build decision making judgment in a values-based way.

Kent Hickey: Yeah, Rob and I, in our seminars we use the rule of benedict, 1500 year old I think the best management tool ever made but one point someone asked St. Benedict, what is it that you guys do in that abbey? And he said, we fall and get up. We fall and get up. We fall and get up. There's something to the failure, right, that people have to experience, in all this. I'm fascinated by this conversation, Rob. My thought is that and particularly to in our listeners out there we this what Peter's comments are amazing, and I know what thought particularly some of the statistics but I think every college admissions counselor Catholic a Catholic high school across the country needs to listen to what Peter has to say, because to me, it really shifts the kind of work that's going on with parents, in the discussions that people have.

Rob Birdsell: And, when I when I read that article, Peter, that we'll put in the show notes if you can remind me what it was. But it was great, and I was reading it and being like, "Oh my god, every school leader needs to understand what's happening." And so that's why I invited him on. And, grateful Peter for your time. Always good to see you. And we conclude every podcast with the same question. And so I'm going to ask this final question to you: who is your greatest teacher and why?

Peter Stokes: There's a couple candidates for that. Well, I'm going to pick an art teacher I had in high school. His name was Mr. Mickelson, and he introduced me to a few painters  from the 18th century in Europe, and just really allowed the kids in his classroom to explore art, to think about the history of art, to think about what it means to pick up a paintbrush yourself or to pick up a pencil and start drawing and to create your own stories on a canvas or on a piece of paper. And to do that in a way that allows you to to follow your own intelligence, your own experience, your own desires. And for me that was just really expanding. He would even occasionally let me sit in class and read a book, which was also positive because I like reading at the time. And so, you know, there are those teachers out there who really invite you to explore your intellect, to explore your own values, to explore your own thoughts, and to discover things along the way. And I found that really to be a rich environment for that sort of thing.

Kent Hickey: Wonderful.

Rob Birdsell: Well, Peter, thank you so much. And Kent, Peter was actually a teacher of mine early on in my career. He taught me a Gant chart.

Kent Hickey: Oh, okay.

Rob Birdsell: I still remember work. It was a late night. We were working and he's like, "You got to build a Gant chart", and  I'm like, "I have no idea what he just said." So, we went downstairs, we got a beer and he told me what a Gant chart was.

Kent Hickey: Wonderful.

Rob Birdsell: So, Peter, great to see you. Thank you for joining us on the next class.

Peter Stokes: Yeah, hey, thanks for having me. It's been great talking with you both. Thank you.

Kent Hickey: Thank you, Peter.

Rob Birdsell: All righty. Carlos, our producer, has come from behind the the curtain and is joining us for this this closing discussion. What what did you guys think of Peter Stokes?

Carlos Cardenas: It was a very great talk. Definitely.

Kent Hickey: I thought it was a wonderful talk, as well and I think some of the data he presents is really, really challenging and I just you know we oftentimes need to like colleges are kind of the canary in the coal mine a little bit for high schools right and so what I hear him saying is, if you guys are not changing, andto changing figure out who you are all these things you're just going to be reacting all the time. So, get a plan, move forward. I'd say the same thing with our Catholic high schools and grade schools as well. Look at the data. Be data driven in the approaches you take and there might mean that some changes that you need need to have. I guess the final comment is yeah, we got to get this information in the hands of our college guidance counselors and leaders. Rob, as you suggested, what do you think, Rob?

Rob Birdsell: I was also blown away. I mean, the fact that 75% of students who begin college, so they're going to college will not complete if they go to a university that closes or merges. I mean, that's just astonishing because these are the ones they're going they got into college. They're there. But if they just had the misfortune of choosing one that closes or merges, they're 75% chance, that they're done. And that's what I just think these school leaders need to understand and need to teach the parents and the students, what are the five questions you ask every college you're thinking of going to? And I think Peter Peter gave to you.

Kent Hickey: Yeah, and including in particularly that enrollment trend. And again, Rob, I want to say, that 75% your math on the fly during the discussion. It was impressive and I just applaud you for that.

Rob Birdsell: I'm not just an English teacher, you know, I can do some basic math.

Kent Hickey: It was impressive.

Rob Birdsell: All righty, let's close it out here.

Kent Hickey: Okay.

Rob Birdsell: Thank you, Carlos, our producer, for working the magic and doing the edits. Thank you to all of our listeners for joining us for this stimulating conversation with Peter Stokes if you're on consulting. Check out the show notes for the article that got this whole conversation going.
And we look forward to seeing you at the next class.

Kent Hickey: God bless.