race, classroom technological advancements and other education issues. we hear from former health and human services secretary and first-term congresswoman donna hat lalla during this panel. -- shalala during this panel. who are going to examine the new and innovative ideas that are really transforming our schools. we'll be talking about new approaches that are reshaping traditional models of education from k-12 classrooms to university lecture halls. we are also focused on how the latest technologies are being integrated into the classroom and look at the growing number of college alternatives geared towards preparing the next generation of students for the jobs of the future. before we begin, i would like to thank our presenting sponsors, and our supporting sponsor, the university of irginia. for now, please welcome to the stage, chairman and ceo chris whittle. [applause] chris: hi, good afternoon. very nice to be with you this afternoon. we are pleased to work with "the washington post" along with the university of virginia on the sponsorship of this installment of the transformer series. we think it is very consistent with what we have been working on for the past four years which is the transformation of k-12 education around the world. hundreds of educators, architects, engineers have been working on the idea of the first global school and what we also hoped would be viewed as the world's most modern school. hese will be major campuses in the great cities of the world and our first two are under construction as we speak. they will open here in washington, d.c., and in china this coming fall, each for about 2,500 students from k-18, 15 grades each. these are schools that we hope will be models of progressive education in the cities and countries where they are based. there are multiple features we are focusing on. one is they prepare children for global life, exposing them and teaching them about languages and cultures throughout their years with us. second, we are pushing the boundaries of personalization in education, particularly with advanced advising systems. and we want the school itself to be, if you will, an art and design lesson every day, all of these campuses are being designed by renzo piano of italy who did the shard in london, the whitney in new york. we are pleased to be a part of this event and thank the "washington post" for all of their cooperation. [applause] >> thank you so much, chris. now i'd like to welcome "the washington post "'s eugene scott. he's going to lead our first discussion. thank you. good afternoon. i am eugene scott. i'm a political reporter for the fix. i write about political analysis and identity politics but for most of my career i have been an education reporter so i am excited. e have with us the ceo and co-founder of x.q. institute which works with high schools across the country providing a nonprofit network of educators, students and community leaders. russlynn is also the director of the emerson collective, a social change organization focused on education, immigration reform and other issues. welcome to the post. russlynn: thank you. eugene: before we begin, i want to tell you we can join -- you can join the program tweeting your questions and using the hashtag #postlive. i will certainly try to get your questions in and not only ask questions that i want to hear but let's get started. to give people some background who are not familiar with the xq institute, what would you say x.q. institute is and what are superschools? russlynn: x.q. is trying to transform every high school in this country. high school -- if there is one place across the education system that's been pervasively stuck it is high school transformation. we have seen great progress especially since 2000 in the elementary and middle grades, we have been stuck the last 30 years where achievement has been flat since the late 1980's in reading and math. one in three students, those that do graduate, are not college ready. but 95% of kids across all demographics as they enter high school are desperate and want o go to college. we hope to spur action in communities. eugene, you said you have been writing about this for a long time. we have had fits and starts across the education system, particularly in early grades but we'll get momentum and then get stuck. in part, our experience tells us that is because community stakeholders are most dependent on public education for public learning are not the change being done. x.q. set about hoping to empower communities everywhere and spur and reimagine the next high chool. i saw maybe if there were five communities that we could help empower to dream big and different, but we didn't expect there would be 10,000 across the country that participated in what would become a seven-month designer learning process. these are the super schools. what we didn't expect is even after we identified the first 10 , 150 teams would continue. we are up to 19 now. eugene: ok. russlynn: the lessons are coming through. the experiences of what works and what doesn't are becoming ever more clear. listen, we could help spur 1,000 and that wouldn't be enough. we are delighted to partner with districts like tulsa and states like rhode island. i had the opportunity of coming back from puerto rico where olks are dealing with a crisis in their schools which we haven't seen in a long time. we are working with communities everywhere. eugene: what makes a school a super school? like if there are three things that distinguish -- all schools are super to some degree. russlynn: we are and one of the y lessons of 19 approach agnostic. there is no one size that fits all. there needs to be core design rinciples ranging from a much deeper vision of student success, where students are deeply entrenched in the real world learning experiences. breakthrough uses of space and time, grand rapids comes to mind. it's a schoolhoused in a museum. its curriculum is based on 250,000 cultural and historical artifacts. riots that serves in los angeles that fosters homeless and young people, high schools and teaching in multiple facilities and doing a school on wheels. again, there's no one size fits all here. they're doing breakthrough uses -- one that comes to mind, purdue, polytech nick where at the end of four years young people are guaranteed admission to polytechnic university. there, educators are there in a nimble way innovating with as all 19 equity-added center realizing that to really empower young people to have control over their scheduling, to do personalized learning with technology done right. they had to borrow a hair application so students could schedule with people as they needed. eugene: so this is in the interest of the students. are you seeing any one particular thing emerge as the biggest challenge to high schools in this country? russlynn: the fact that they have been stuck. we are educating students the way we have done in over 100 years, six hours a day, chunks of time divided into blocks over eight or nine periods. every day for four years. every other industry has outpaced our high schools. they look virtually the same. their lack of innovation and -- not new unique to high schools but we feel them the most in high schools, the pervasive inequities that have riddled our system for far too long. students dependent on public education one study showed 60% of high poverty high schools don't offer physics at a time when knowledge is currency. it is only through knowing more and mastering more content at the end of high school that we will truly be future ready and ready for the future of work. eugene: i know you worked on a lot of these with the obama administration. with the u.s. department of education. are there any approaches to this issue that you see the current administration tackling in a way that you think is effective? [laughter] russlynn: i think ensuring that leadership is empowered in use of rts at local resores and flexibility can be helpful when done right. having said that, to roll back everything that now research has said makes a difference is shameful. the last administration was the first to say under title 9 to identify a truth woven through the spirit of our democracy under title 9 that students ought to be free from sexual violence in our schools. as the assistant secretary of civil rights under obama for the first term, i never met a faculty member anywhere that said they wanted rape on the campus. instead, they wanted advice and help to cure a pandemic. we were the first administration to identify that gender identity equals gender under title ix. to roll that back at a time of enlightenment seems counterproductive at best. the civil rights data collection has been transformed since 1968 under obama's first term. we were able to ask basic questions that showed we absolutely had a school to prison pipeline to erase those data, to throw away the truth about course access, the truth about where dollars are going, the truth about who has access to our strongest teachers, to throw away the thermometer ecause it says we have a pervasive fever is ignorant. we remain ever hopeful that these issues, that public education is the great equalizer. that if there is one place of bipartisan agreement, it ought to be in the enforcement of equity and access for all of our young people and this new congress will continue to remind us of that. eugene: and speaking of that you mentioned l.a. earlier. we've seen congressional lawmakers from southern california express concerns about the teachers strike, issues of privatization and in equity in public schools in southern california. i know you obviously work in california quite a bit. what's been your reaction to that issue? i assume you've been following it pretty closely. russlynn: i don't know the specifics of the collective bargaining, negotiations in los angeles. it is a cry for help from educators that are struggling to do more with less, and we as a country and as a people need to unite around them. having said that, it is with a heavy heart that you see kids that you see not learning, especially young people that need their teachers and schools open the most. eugene: speaking of issues you are seeing in schools and covering politics, i have read quite a bit how kids are struggling to understand the conversations about sexual assault and identity changes, immigration, police brutality. what role can schools play in helping students better process these issues? these issues we are discussing on a daily basis? they n: it's not what can, it's what they have to. one of the hallmarks of the obama administration office for civil rights, its guidances were written with applications sections, real advice and counsel on how you deal with these issues, how to help bus drivers have conversations that are grown up conversations. how to help process what is happening around them and yet still feel safe. for sure how to identify facts, to be able to know what is true, to know that they have a right. the obama administration reminded the country that all young people, regardless of whether they are documented or not, have a right to go to and access public education in this country. teachers and educators as we were saying are dealing with issues. that they never had to before. i was talking with a leader of a school in brooklyn not too long ago who was sharing the story of a ninth grade student and burqa a hijab being threatened not just because of her ethnicity ut because of her sex, confronting fears. schools are safe havens. they should be. having said that right after 2016, we were down with one of our our partner schools in southern california, helping them figure out how to get swastikas off their walls. eugene: now, when you think of these issues in the context where we are politically, looking at 2020, what are some of the topics and focus you would like to see this next group of candidates focus on related to public education to perhaps reverse some of the things you're fearing could become the new norm? russlynn: supporting the notion of alignment -- high schools are the future of work. ensuring our young people when they graduate can be ready for college and career, even if -- 11.6 million new jobs have been added to the economy since 2008. 11.5 million of them have acquired a college degree. we need to prepare young eople. we could do a front to support states. we could make pell grants accessible for high school students doing middle college or college prep programs. we have to enforce the nation's civil rights laws. this congress should use its oversight authority and its legislative authority if necessary. doing something around teacher preparation, supporting teachers. a $10,000 annual tax credit. if you are capable and ready and excellent to teach in our nation's schools. eugene: these are things the democrats can do now? russlynn: we can do now. ensuring that teacher accountability is back in preparation programs, and that civil rights protections are a part of the elementary and secondary education act that was codified into law in the last administration. these are things we can do now. eugene: have you heard any new ideas coming out of this new lawmakers far from that you are excited about that you have thought about before or feel like the next step for ideas you have worked on previously? russlynn: as you focused on your last question, focusing on criminal injustice in equity is admirable. this idea of infrastructure conversation, i'm hearing grumblings that if true we are talking about $100 billion for school construction. we haven't seen anything like that since the new deal. but if schools were really hubs of community, one of the partner schools in memphis, tennessee crosstown is in the old sears roebuck distribution center in the middle of the crosstown concourse. it is serious diversity by design, surrounded by 35 businesses including a hospital serving 70,000 residents. if we thought about school construction in that way -- one of them in endicott, new york, the home used to be ibm. it was partnering with business is not just to develop curriculum but to ensure apprenticeship programs. we thought about construction n new waves. not just a new deal but really revolutionize. we were the first, eugene, as you know to do universal high school education. we can once again lead the planet on innovation with an equity mindset when it comes to our schools. so there is certainly some conversations that give me hope. we look forward to supporting those who want to do the right thing. eugene: obviously when talking about innovation we often think technology. is there a specific thing in public education in the area of technology you believe will be transformative? russlynn: that has finally caught up with policy. there is no silver bullet. there is no one device. there is no one piece of software. there is no one platform. but finally a vision for transformed policy can be done because technology will make access and opportunity easier and better. teachers can see what is happening to young people in real time. we can do personalized learning and catch kids before they lip. we don't have to wait for an end of year text. daily playlists that meet students where they are, adaptive assessments that will not just identified when young people do something wrong but exactly the problem they know. we know now they are not just at a fourth grade reading level or eighth grade. we know that it is fractions. we know we can come with a laser focused tackle and spin and identify interventions when eeded. we know we can get teachers to the students that need them the most through serious coaching, through technology. it facilitates not only the way teachers do business but the way students learn. eugene: before i get to a question we have, you talked about catching students before they slip. most of x.q.'s focus is on high school. what if they slip before high school? how do you get them on track? russlynn: for far too long in our public education, we believe high school is just too late it's too late that's why we haven't focused. when i tell you we have improved by an entire year's worth of learning between fourth graders today and fourth graders in 2000, two years worth of learning with eighth graders today versus their counterparts in 2000 in mathematics, that is because we focused relentlessly on that as a country. but finally we have neuroscience data that shows high schools are not too late. we know the plasticity of the brain. in high school, secondary rapid improvement of the secondary -5.el rivals that only prek neuroscience data is telling that. with the right stimulation you can improve the iq of high school students. we know what is possible now. we can debunk the myth of what is not, and we can get the learning to kids that need them in innovative, real-world ways. eugene: as i perhaps give you a warning, i wasn't able to get to the questions because i had too many of my own. your two -- twitter handle, your website, how can people learn more? it is @russlynnali. my name has two n's because my father was creative. we are at xqinstitute.org, and all of our information is on our website and we always get back to you in fast time. russlynn@xqinstitute.org. eugene: awesome. thank you so much for being here. [applause] karen: hi, good afternoon. i am karen tumulty, and i am a columnist at the "washington post". we are very pleased and very honored to have such a great panel of educators and beyond educators with us today to talk about innovation and the sort of intersection of government and education. so here we have to my far left the president of bates college, clayton spencer, dr. wayne frederick, the president of howard university, and not the hd dr., it is -- it is not ph.d. doctor, it is doctor doctor. and this woman who has a bit -- who has been a three universities and is now probably the most overqualified freshman congresswoman in history, having been h.h.s. secretary as well. and so congresswoman shalala, i have got to get off the main topic to get to the news, how do we get our out of this hutdown? ms. shalala: those three presidencies don't qualify me to answer that question. bill clinton said i was the most qualified to serve since john quincy adams. [laughter] grown-ups have to step up, particularly on the senate side say enough is enough. as you know, during the shutdown during the clinton administration with the whole government shutdown, senator bob dole, majority leader, said enough is enough. everybody is going back to work. his is tragic. what scares me is we are using policy differences to hurt people, to close down the government. i don't know of any country in the world that when they have policy differences, they close down the government. i couldn't think of one. i looked as far as i could. we need rules to prevent this kind of thing. perhaps continuing resolutions that automatically cuts in when you can't agree. but we cannot go through this again ever again. t is going to end. at some point the senate will step up. right now the senate has said very clearly that they will not do anything the president won't sign. so what we did in the house, now we have the majority, is we passed all the senate appropriations bills. we didn't pass the house appropriations bills. we took the bills that passed last year and passed them word for word and sent them to the senate. there would be no disagreement between us about what it would take to open the government and o start negotiations about a smart strategy to protect our borders, because we believe in that. at the end of the day it will have to be the senate. karen: well, so what should speaker pelosi be doing right now? ms. shalala: right now she's doing what she can do. she's trying to put pressure -- she's trying to make it very clear what the outlines of the deal we think would be reasonable. she is reassuring the public we are in favor of strong borders, and she's saying to the senate leadership, we're ready to go. karen: well, first of all, the other thing i should have mentioned is we want you to be part of our conversation. if you have any questions, please send them to me. they will get to me here with #postlive. so dr. frederick -- ms. shalala: you want to answer that question? -- fed eric: dr. frederic: i am definitely not qualified. karen: the first visit that betsy devos did was to howard, and you took some criticism i think on your own campus. by the way, props to you for allowing sort of free expression on campuses ecause you have been amazing in doing that at howard. you took some flak for her coming to campus. a month later you are in the white house with a bunch of other historically black college leaders meeting with the president. it is there that betsy devos mously referred to hbcu's as being pioneers of school choice. you again took a lot of flak for reaching out to the trump administration. how is that relationship going now? dr. frederick: yes, i a couple of things to explain that particular circumstance. so betsy devos is secretary of education. every secretary of education is an ex officio of howard's board. with that in mind, the secretary of education, who often the secretary of education often invites themselves to the campus or are invited by us. we want them on the campus. that is a good thing. she was confirmed at 12:00 on a tuesday and i got a call she wanted to speak to me at 4:30 p.m. that afternoon and she informed me she wanted to come on thursday morning. very quick turnaround. they did want to come to our campus as the first visit. i think it was the right thing to do. i have had a lot of interaction since then. i would do things differently, one of which is consult with a broader swath of the campus, particularly students, to educate why i think it was important. i have had a lot of interaction with her. she has been a good i think listener. i do disagree with some of the policies, but in those circumstances, she hasn't been shut off to getting feedback on what is going n. i think on the president's side, if you look at that carefully you notice i am not in the picture. it was a photo op, and i felt strongly about the fact that we shouldn't participate in a photo op. however, all of the senior administrators who advised the president met with the historically black colleges and universities, and that in and of itself was historic and unprecedented. i have been in howard's administration the entire time president obama was in ffice. we enjoyed a good relationship but i don't think as a group we as well, had that access and opportunity to talk. the last thing i will say the situation we find ourselves are difficult. the 105 hbcu's are under significant pressure. every year i have been president, one or two have closed. i don't see that happening unless something dramatically changes. we still only represent 4% of higher institutions in this country but are responsible for 35% of the african-americans who get bachelor degrees in stem disciplines. the outside role we play in terms of diversifying the workforce in this country has been neglected for some time. it is one of those situations where i think you are trying to make sure you have access and can get the assistance you need and make the case wherever that is. e civil nk like all th rights leaders, we want to be at the table. martin luther king wouldn't go to the white house even though he -- he went to the white house though he thought it wasn't welcoming. we need to look at the menu, push the plate back if we don't like what we say but at least we can tell our constituencies what they are serving and we know what we need and make an argument to get them to say something different. we have to continue some dialogue. karen: and you really do honestly feel there is an open line of communication between you and betsy devos and this administration? dr. frederick: with the department of education and the secretary i have to say yes, absolutely. and that has been refreshing. now with secretary duncan we also had good access as well. let's be clear about that. it was not a closed door circumstance. i had the opportunity to make the case for that and several ther things as well. karen: so president clinton, one of the things we want -- clinton -- president spencor. sorry. spencor. -- spencer. one of the things we want to talk about, cutting-edge innovation in colleges, and there is a phrase you have often used, purposeful ork. as the mother of a senior at a liberal arts college, i hear the work part and think jobs. there is something you said that struck me that this is much more than finding a job. you said it is fundamental to who you are and who you will become. could you talk -- what exactly does purposeful work mean? clayton: so purposeful work now is a program at bates. karen: you teach things like being a duala. clayton: bates is a very classic liberal arts college. but we recognize and embrace the fact that college has always been about preparing students for life and work. we shouldn't be prissy about that and assume teaching a liberal arts education, you claim they learn critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, they do learn all those things, and then just tell them good luck. it's a huge investment for families. it's a huge investment for students themselves of their talent and their financial investments. they need to know how to animate what they have learned in the liberal arts to be effective actors in the world. college has always been about that. on one hand this is innovative. on the other hand it is deeply what college and a liberal arts education has always been about. so the terms, why do we pick those terms? so number one, it's based on the thought that everyone in life is looking for a life that has meaning and that allows them to act in the world in a way that brings them meaning. work can be, it can be for money or not, in the home, in the workplace, etc. the important thing to know about purposeful work is it's not a kind of work. it's not do-gooder work. you can -- want to be a forest ranger, a ballet dancer, work for jpmorgan, you can do whatever you want. it's what aligns what your values are, what your interests are with how you act in the world. what we are doing with our students is helping them understand that it is that alignment thereafter. -- they are after. how do they start to take courses they are interested in. don't run to economics because they think it's a proxy for getting a job if they don't have an interest in economics. so take that philosophy course and begin to understand your interests, then we have a curricular dimension that is infused in the liberal arts and we have a practical internship program. i won't go into all of hat. the purpose piece is what emerges, it is the alignment with your interests and what you learn to do well and how you act in the world. the notion that you have a assion and then you have to go impose that on the world or let it out, i mean, if you are leonardo divirchingy, that probably works. for -- divinci, that probably works. for those it's doing things and achieving mastery. we work with people in intentional ways to do that. we can talk about that. -- who ess what you you want to be. clayton: these kids will have seven, eight, nine jobs. and we always said that the liberal arts is the most powerful and adaptable kind of education there is, but then you need to make sure students are aware of it and they use it as they move through the world and keep relearning and adapting. that's what it's going to take in this global high velocity change economy. karen dr. frederick, howard has more of its students applying, more african-americans applying to med school from howard than any ther university. one of the things i think distinguishes howard is you have a major medical institution right there that is part of the core of the university's mission. even with those numbers as impressive as they are, we are still looking proportionally they are not where they should be. how do we change that? is stem education in the early years? is there something colleges should be doing to better prepare african-americans and other minorities to go into the medical field or what? dr. frederick: sure. it's multifactual. we need to have an approach to fixing it. just to put it in context, the country has a crisis, in my opinion. when you look at health care disparities, outcomes for african-americans have drastically well below the outcomes for the majority of the population. that has a lot of impact on the communities people live in and impact on the overall productivity of the country. i think everyone needs to be involved. in 1978, there were more african-american males who applied to medical school than in 2014. just think of the difference of what this country was in that 40-year span, and yet still we are at a place where you have less african-american males even applying to medical school. and you're right, howard sends more african-american applicants to medical school than any other institution in the country, which, again, is worrisome because when you look at howard institution as a private institution, with 9,400 -- ents and an endocument millions, that is an outsized burden to have. how do we fix that? pipeline is an issue. we have a middle school focused on math and science. that is one of the solutions. we have to infuse college -- if you stuck one of my middle school students on campus on the walk, and ask where they go to school, they will say howard university. they won't say howard university middle school. they already have that form that, listen, this is normal. i'm going to be back here. or on another campus like this. we suspect stem education. we have to recognize the gender gaps. i am the proud father of a 14-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter. my 12-year-old daughter is good at math. she would not join the math club despite being coaxed by several teachers. when i went to speak to her about it she said, i don't like working with boys because they take over stuff, they mess it up and we have to fix it. [laughter] again, at a very early age we don't recognize how much of our education system really takes an offramp for many students because of gender and all these other issues as well. so i think we really have to look at our middle schools. we have to look at the pipeline. the last thing is we have to invest as a country both government and private in making sure we take away the barriers for those students' success. if you look at silicon value evened the numbers, they're very low. when i became president i approached google and said, look, you come up with every reason why you don't hire my folks. you send a resident professor at my campus. i said, let's try something different. i want my students come out here and i stead of you complaining about them not being able to code, you code teach them with my faculty. you are responsible for teaching them. the second thing is they're getting a content education and the faculty now can come and change their curriculum so that it is as cutting edge as possible. they have hired at least six of our students in the first quarter and hired five in the silicon valley area and we now expanded that program so it's year long. innovations like that to break down barriers will be necessary moving forward. karen: of course, education and health care is your two wheelhouses, colliding here. i remember at one point talking to you during the health care reform efforts that led to the affordable care act and you were very passionate, for instance, about the role that nurses should play. so we've talked about sort of preparing students to live up to their potential, but how should we be rethinking education to be turning out the kinds of skills and professionals that we need, especially now we do have a health care system that is -- doesn't look like what it's used to? ms. shalala: in nursing there is a four-year program and we actually transformed nursing as part of the report i chaired for the institute of medicine where you have to get a four-year degree, really, to get a job and an advanced degree if you really want to practice with a broader sweep. but it's not just nursing. when i think about that kind of preparation, i'm very weary about doing in some professions you do it like nursing. i am very weary about doing it all at the undergraduate level. i always have been. and so i've always worked with institutions, even when they wanted to do undergraduate business schools to make sure they have the liberal arts. frankly, we don't know what they need to know 10 years from now. but here's what i do know. at the university of miami we started the launch pad. this gives an opportunity for any student -- not just in business or engineering -- to start a business. so we have these serial freshmen entrepreneurs. we want every student at the university think about creating a job, not just about taking a job. that requires a different kind of thinking. you walk into the launch pad which is in the student center and you present your idea and they'll help you put together a business plan. so it's the largest activity at the university of miami. the vast majority of the students that walk in there and start businesses come from the arts and sciences. and not as much -- not engineering or business, but they're english majors and theater majors. they just have a good idea. and we've created hundreds of businesses over the years because of that. but it's a different way of educating students and it's understanding it's not just the classroom activity. lots of people have entrepreneurships in their business school but it's a different way of getting the kids to think in a fresh way. look, i was in junior achievement as a kid. i created four, five businesses. shaped the way i think about american business. karen: how do you look at this sort of getting students, especially in the liberal arts to sort of think kind of creatively and entrepreneurly but still have the sets of practical skills that are going to turn your idea into something that's real? ms. spencer: well, one of the way we do it at bates, we have two short terms. it's five weeks, you take one course that's intensive. and we have brought in -- this is a new innovation brought in practitioners to teach those courses. so we have graphic designers, music producers, filmmakers, entrepreneurship, a business competition, all of those things that are in this kind of more experimental zone of that one month while during the regular semester they're being history philosophy, economic majors, they're learning critical thinking, research review. so that's one of the important ways we do it. the other way is through a really well-designed internship program, and i'd like to reference what dr. frederick said. have one of the animating principles of purposeful work is we need to fill our equity promise to students. so long ago, american higher education began reaching out more broadly, bringing in more students, creating more diverse student bodies. then it occurred just about in the 1990's we better support them for academic success. but then if you're just relying on kids to use mom and dad and their professional networks to get an internship, you are leaving all this fantastic talent on the table. so one of the animating features of purposeful work is what i called the third leg of the equity promise. we let you in, we help you succeed and then we'll help you bridge to the world of work. and we have -- we spend $350,000 a year supporting students in internships. we have a set of core employers like the google model where there's a pre-existing relationship between us and we work very hard to make sure that our students of color are overrepresenting in those co-horts. ms. shalala: you talk to the university people from fairly elite institutions, we have to remember we need also to provide apprenticeships and alternative ways of getting into the workforce and those kinds of investments we're just starting to make and just starting to think about. i had a cousin that spent two years in college, brilliant student, hated it. came to me and said, i think i can get an apprenticeship as an electrician and he did. took six years. long apprenticeship. he's making a lot of money now and is very happy and very passionate about what he's doing but he's also a great reader. he spent a couple of years in college but we need alternative treks as well. what we don't need to do is to funnel minority students into those. we still have a fundamental equity problem in this country and all of us are working on that. karen: well, we just have a little bit of time left. i wanted to ask one question that i think is top of mind to everyone who has a student which -- whether they are a kinder guarder in or postcombrad and you coming from -- postgrad, you coming from florida, what do we do to make our schools safer? ms. shalala: we can start by identifying early on young people who have real challenges. and i mean by that intervening early on. if you look at the scandinavian countries do, they identify a child that may have behavioral problems in kindergarten or first grade and then assign someone that sticks with them and their family, working with them right through. if you look at parkland, at every stage of that man's life, a teacher tried to intervene to get him into some kind of services. but there were no seamless services. and so it was hit and miss and at the end of the day we got a seriously deranged human being who caused unbelievable damage. so mental health is one piece. we got to get rid of the guns. no other country on earth has assault weapons, doesn't have background checks, makes it easy to buy a gun. so we're going to do a background check bill on the house side and i'm sure we're going to pass it. i hope we get back to the assault weapons ban. i helped negotiate that in 1994. . we banned assault weapons. we have too many guns. we don't need to get rid of the second amendment. we can manage and reduce the number of guns and who has access and not mess around with hunters. karen: you come from a school not in an urban setting. what keeps you awake for school safety? clayton: we all have to be thinking about the active shooter, natural disaster are with greater frequency. i worry, and we drill for it. you can never be prepared, but we spend a lot of time on a variety of risk management topics. wayne: i will go in a different direction because they covered what i would have said. i think one of the things we don't do, and we have become shy and apprehensive is talking about our immunity. -- humanity. we are almost hesitant to bring up the issue of being nice, of intervening and giving some humanness to what we do. that worries me. students are bright. they are ambitious, they can create jobs. but i still think our education system is a key part of where we need to stop and say there is a high price, a high price and value to being nice to someone. >> [indiscernible] >> [laughter] wayne: the reason i double down, in social media we hide behind devices and say things. we have a country that has normalized tweeting which obviously the president does, but we all have normalized it and are doing the same things. no one is intervening. as you mentioned, sometimes we see someone having trouble, we don't have good mental health care services. who goes out of their way to say let me be the one to intervene or the one to give somebody a kind word on that and make a difference? karen: i can't think of a better way to close than reminding people decency is something we need to be instilling in young people as well. thank you all very much. thank you for being with us today. thank you. [applause] josh: hello. i am josh white, the american desk editor at the washington post and former education editor here as well. i'm delighted to have on stage with me, ryan craig, cofounder of university ventures investment firm, the focus is on health care education and creating new pathways from education to employment. also dr. bob mcmahon, president of kettering university in flint, michigan, an experiential learning based school with a focus on stem and business ields. and doctor sanjay rai. the top college in maryland that serves 60,000 students each ear. it is a new record, just about one third of adults in the united states have a traditional four-year college degree which means there are a lot of people that don't. many of those are not prepared to go directly into a specific job. many are underemployed and many are saddled with a lot of debt. our discussion today is going to focus on how we are preparing the next generation of students for the jobs of tomorrow. before we begin i want to remind the audience, you can tweet your questions using the #postlive. i watcht to start with mr. craig. there is a problem and also a lot of possibilities. what do you see is the biggest problem, and what are the chances of success? ryan: what gets most of the attention around higher education is the crisis of affordability. you can't miss it. every week on the front page somewhere, now $1.5 trillion for student loan debt. about $40,000 per college graduate. the fact of the matter is if every graduate were entering into a $60,000 a year job, you wouldn't have a problem. it is a combination of affordability and employability. over the last decade we have seen a real crisis in employibility. underemployment is now north of 40%. a big reason is the digitization of the economy and both in substance as well as in terms of form because it has changed hiring. college graduates simply aren't being prepared for the entry-level jobs that employers are looking to fill. it is a major problem. josh: but there are pathways to success. dr. mcmahon, you have a' looked -- your university has for a very long time focused on this issue of employability. can you talk about what your university does, how it does it and why it has been successful? bob: it is actually very interesting. we are celebrating our centennial this year, so we were founded 100 years ago. the motto we have is very appropriate. it is "the future of education built a century ago. in a lot of ways we represent in practice what a lot of institutions and a lot of higher ed-- a lot of conversation in higher ed is about outlines as aspirationalle goals for how you integrate theory and practice and education. students, first off, we have no summer holidays through we go 12 months a year. the curriculum is 4.5 years long. the students, when they join, they are split into two cohorts? in a 12 week on, 12 week off rotation from freshman year. they spent 12 weeks -- spend 12 weeks in intense academic curriculum, and then 12 weeks in a profession aal placement in industry, government, or eabtories that complements their professional goals and why they are -- the degree that they are seeking. these are not -- these are cooperative placements but not observational. they become employees of the organization. they have the same expectations and demands placed on them as any other employee. they have the benefits one has, etc. over the course of 4.5 years, they advance in their corporate roles as they advance in their academic abilities. this creates a virtuous circle that is unprecedented in american higher education because it creates the whole individual. i would like to say our employability of our students, the placement rate of our students vast late wildly between 99% and 100% every year. i underscore the point you just made. we have one of the lowest debt default rates of the united states because when our students leave, they are -- it is that combination of cost and the ability to address the debt that is at the center piece of a lot of -- josh: that is fairly unique. the vast majority of colleges and universities, they interface the job market to the world of employers, i think that world of employers, is career services. one office out of dozens often on the periphery of campus, not open in the evening or weekends when students have the most time. only 50% of students in bachelor degree programs partake of career services. when they do, they are likely to meet someone who has worked their whole career in career services as opposed to the industry we want to get into. it doesn't work like that. colleges and universities don't see as their responsibility getting students jobs. they continue to espouse the old tired line we prepare you for your fifth job not your first job. if they don't get a good first job, they won't get a good fifth job. >> doctor ryan, at montgomery college that's one of the things you're trying to acresse. talk about what a community college can do for a very large community for someone seeking work, success in life, and what programs are most successful. sanjay: thank you for the opportunity. before i answer your question, when i go to these types of discussion, often we are quick to conclude there are lots of problems with our higher education system. i want to say clearly u.s. higher education system is still one of the best in the world. a lot of countries are able to replicate a lot of things we do very successfully, but in one area they haven't succeeded. that is our higher education system. we start with a good place. we have a strong system. we do have a couple of challenges. we have to understand the root cause of the challenges. globalization, technology and changing demography of the nation is something that is asking us to do things differently. i speak from montgomery college, a community college right outside washington, dc, from their perspective. these three things i mentioned, that kind of goes into three different areas. education -- areas. accessibility, how education has to be more accessible. for aa forwardable, higher cost of education is an an issue. and the employability is there. one year at month fwomry college will cost about $6,000. ffordability is important. in montgomery county we have three campuses that are ccessible. if someone is not college ready, gaps, english, those types of things. we do that very well. and other 1,300 community colleges across the nation do hat very well. to come back to that issue, what we do at montgomery college, we work really closely with the industries, and we create programs on the credit side and also the noncredit side. if you are an underemployed or unemployed i.t. worker, you can go to montgomery college and enter our cyber security program hat is offered at a very ffordable price, $500, $600, and there are thousands of cyber security jobs that are open in this d.c., virginia, maryland area. so we provide our companies talented work force. at the same time people who are underemployed, unemployed, they et opportunities to do that. biotechnology is the same area. about half of students have their masters degrees. but they don't have the skills to be employed in the technology -- in the biotechnology industry we have in the life sciences corridor in this area. we create programs working very closely with those areas, so there are several in data analysis, big data is another huge opportunity, especially in the section of i.t. and data science. a lot of new tools are being developed. there's lots of opportunities on that. and there is no other country that is ahead of us in these types of things. we have a premier higher education system, the community college system is uniquely american. we need to look at that and develop those systems further. josh: dr. mcmahon, one of the things your university is working on is experiential learning, and you have autonomous vehicle program, crash test facility labs. alk about those programs and why specifically focus on an individual a autonomy. what do students get out of that? dr. mcmahan: they get the world out of it. i say that because the university is founded on a ifferent idea. that is in order to educate the whole person, that you have to create an equiffleans. -- equivalence. if you look at how we typically treat experiential learning in united states, it is always integrated into our educational system in a way that is subordinate to the classroom experience. that says we have this university or this program and we're going to add an speernsal component to it. we were going to take this on and send it. we're going to attack this thing on and call it a whole. the kettering model is the opposite. these two things are equal in importance. one is not subordinate to the other. each informed the other. students spend as much time in the am a case of the discipline as in the acquisition of the knowledge and support of the discipline. that creates a virtuous circle that is bidirectional. the students' experience in their cooperative place or is these other experiential activities informs the classroom. how many universities are out there, where a faculty member is teaching abstract concept, talking about both theories and then turns around and faces the students and says you are working in a wind tunnel lab. do you use this in this way or do you have a way you have adapted this formalism to that particular application? and she says no, we do not really use that. would you come up here and she us how that works? and that closure of application and knowledge is explosive. mr. craig: and that is so hard to do. so much harder than what we have done the last 20 years. which is why these institution objects the stage here are so exceptional. the reality is it's a big problem. you've got millions of employers and post secondary institutions would show the med students and graduates with jobs? no single institution with a couple exceptions is capable of managing relationships with employers, the numbers of relationships and level of depth they need to be managed. no employers really interested in doing that and over the last decade, we've seen the emergence in hiring friction, the increased propensity of employers to say im not hiring anyone for this position unless they demonstrate they have already done it effectively. even for entry-level jobs we see all kinds of exterior -- experience requirements now on jobs that should be entry level. for example entry level sales positions. we want three years' experience with sales force. that's crazy. josh: how do you get experience? mr. craig: exactly. we are seeing the emergence of these intermediaries to stand between postsecondary education and employers. and we call them last mile training, bridging that last mile to the employer typically by training on digital skills and post secondary institutions that are not very good at training, but they don't have the relationship with employers to understand what technology employers are looking for in these jobs. josh: employers are looking for marketable skills and experience. what does that mean for the philosophy major? what does that mean for someone studying classical literature, english? mr. craig: i just published a book last year called "faster and cheaper alternatives to college," where i make the argument there are new faster and cheaper alternatives, boot camps and apprenticeship models, staffing models that incorporate training for providing new pathways to the good first jobs college graduates are having a hard time getting, probably not at your institutions, but a lot of them. dr. mcmahan: even for us, our largest academic department, even in a stem-focused curriculum, one of the big new announcements recently, we opened a comprehensive set of music studios for students to go in and report. -- record. we have bands forming because there is so much energy around the intersection of the arts and engneerning sciences. mr. craig: you can get student jobs and do all kinds of things and have room to do all that. the challenges we are seeing, too few institutions doing a good job of that. we believe in the next 5-10 years, students will vote with their feet in favor of faster, cheaper alternatives. we are not saying we should have r would benefit from less post secondary education per capita, that would be economic suicide. what we are saying is we should think about how to consume post secondary education as we have done everything else. it should not have to be all-you-can-eat in one sitting, but get what you need when you need it, if that means taking a faster and cheaper pathway, being in a job for a couple years with no debt, looking around and ascertaining what secondary or tertiary pathway, develop those cognitive executive skills you need to be successful, you should do that. and the pathway will be available. alternately, we need to develop those cognitive skills. dr. mcmahan: community colleges are a critical part of that. we need to look at this as a spectrum and lifelong engagement. josh: you talked about the concept of placement colleges. talk about that. mr. craig: i say this lovingly because my mother taught at community college for 30 years, and i know many of them are run as academic institutions where the priority remains, degree programs and associate degree programs over employer and industry focused certificate programs. associate degree programs for the most part are stepping stones. transfer colleges to four-year institution, and some community colleges do that better than others. what we would like to see is the distinct community college system that's focused on employment and employability rather than an academic model. that is what community college is due today with their certificate programs and industry focus, as montgomery is doing, and what work force works. josh: dr. rai, what do you think of that? dr. rai: that is important, but we don't to do that. you have to learn how to think critically. since you brought up philosophy, i'm assume mathematics and physics. if you look at the fundamentals of philosophy, physics, and math, they are not following it. other community colleges, a a lot of students who go from credit programs to noncredit program. you are doing a degree in cyber security. lots of opportunities for these courses for certifications in other areas. that's happening. noncareer side are going to the credit side. at montgomery college a large number of students do that. why is that important? we heard the expression "last mile." in all of the economy, the last mile becomes longer. and the model is to credit to noncredit, it shortens that mile. that can happen, if you work with your community and you understand economy. or example, career science program. we're all aging population, and we're going to use a lot of health care workers because of aging. and a lot of what our health care workers are from baber boomer generation. we have to replace them, also. at montgomery college, we became the first community college in the country to have a hospital, on the campus. that creates a wonderful collaboration between the health sciences program and the hospital. those other models at montgomery college and a lot of other community colleges are doing. and doing it really successfully. most questions that we read in the literature about issues with higher education is skill gap. in u.s. higher education system, community colleges are already doing those things quite well. the question is how do we scale that up, and how to make the entire spectrum of higher education equally proactive, equally responsive. >> i'm a prospective student and looking for australia these things. marketability, job, success in the future. >> enroll at montgomery college. dr. mcmahan: after you are done, come see us at kettering. [laughter] josh: how do you decide what is going to be best for you given these warnings or concerns, how do you evaluate the faster --vast array of opportunities that are out there given what we know? mr. craig: the data is not great. you don't have too many institutions outside the boot camps that are advertising 98%, $70,000 a year starting salary jobs, so that is where we are headed. this combination of the crisis of affordability and employability called the employment imperative, where 90-plus percent of students are enrolling a in a secondary institution for getting a job and first job in particular. that data needs to be there. institutions need to take responsibility for helping thore students. not only preparing them but helping them into the workforce and getting good first jobs. josh: dr. mcmahan? aside from enrolling at kettering. dr. mcmahan: aside from enrolling at kettering, this whole -- we have to take a strong look at this whole notion f skills development as when -- as distinct from education in a sense. when you talk to not just employers but graduate schools and professional schools and ask them what they are actually looking for in graduates, they are -- they can actually articulate this clearly. they are looking for a set of ttributes. they are not as particular into -- aboutdomain knowledge, they recognize that three-quarters of the stuff, the material, the facts, if you will, that a student learns when they are in school will be obsolete within a year of their graduation. and so they are more likely to say we can teach them what they know when they come to us. what we need is we need is a -- need a student who believes, who knows, that no matter what they are faced with, they can figure it out. and they have been given the tools and the skills to do it. students that are resilient, students that know how to operate in organizations, who do not believe, it is not just about the acquisition of knowledge but also about the application of knowledge. how you work within groups in order to advance ideas and the human condition. those are the skills that traditional higher education tend to say those are those other things. we're going to focus on the knowledge acquisition. we will let that happen at some indeterminate point. that is an artificial distinction and as the relationship of the consumer to higher education evolves, and it is evolving, but the demand will be evermore directed at that integration of those skills into education. josh: unfortunately, that is all the time we have. i want to thank dr. rai, dr. mcmahan, and mr. craig for joining us for this great panel. [applause] i would like to hand off to my colleague, nick anderson, who will be hosting the final panel. nick: hello. thank you all for being here, for joining us. my name is nick anderson. i am a higher education reporter at "the post." i've been writing about universities and colleges for seven years now, and im pleased to be here with two experts from academia who will be talking with us about technology, globalization, higher education and the changes we see and the goals we might have to open up universities and classrooms to new perspectives. right on my left here is cynthia miller-idriss, a sociologist at the american university in washington, d.c., and she is also director of the international training in the school of education. she has a doctorate from the niversity of michigan. she is also the co-author of a book on this subject called "seeing the world: how u.s. universities make knowledge in a global era." we will talk about the ideas in that book. to her left is thomas nichols. tom is a professor of national security affairs at the u.s. naval war college at newport, rhode island. he is also on the faculty of the harvard extension school. and he is also notably a five-time "jeopardy" champion. he holds a bachelors degree from boston university and doctorate from georgetown, and he's the recent author of a book that is somewhat on point to our subject here, called the "depth of -- "the death of expertise, the campaign against established knowledge and why it matters." thank you for being with us. i would like to open the discussion. before i go any further, i am sorry, i want to encourage those of you in the audience or i -- or watching us online to please tweet to us any questions that you might think that we should have here in the discussion. at the #post-live. we can involve them in the discussion. i would like to begin by talking about technological changes, you see it in your classrooms. there has been much made of the idea that classroom instruction is changing and the technology is changing the way professors relate to students. let's get real specific on the ground. how has your classroom changed, cynthia? we will get your experiences, we can talk about pros and cons of this. dr. miller-idriss: thank you for having me. it is a pleasure to be here. i would say i teach pretty traditional seminar style graduate and undergraduate classes. when i first started teaching 15 years ago, the overhead projectors, i was using overhead slides and having to make those, so there are simple ways to make my life easier with embedded video, with skype sessions, to show up on screen for 15 or 20 minutes. students get to ask them questions. i rarely receive hard copies of papers anymore, it is through portals or discussion portals. that students engage over the ourse of the week. most of the reading materials, are online, so there's a tpwhrude engagement for them was online materials and with tech in the classroom. when it kms to discussion, it's face-to-face. nick: do you have any distance-learning element? dr. miller-idriss: not in my class, but i have to go to a conference in april, and we will set up a zoom class for that. in a pinch if i'm out of time, a couple of students will be with me at that conference in san francisco, we'll gather there and the rest of the class will zoom in. it's not a hybrid class, but it is a way not to have to make up a class where we can do content and use the tech to get through thatmissed class. nick: tom, what about you? what is your experience with how technology has worked with students? dr. nichols: first of all, i should say that my views do not represent the naval war college. one of the interesting ways technology changed the educational experience is the impact it has on o the students rather than what it has on me. it's things like difficulty --i have been teaching for 30 years. getting students to walk into a brick-and-mortar library is really difficult, and the serendipity of accidental discovery happens for them online rather than examining stacks of books. it is a subtle difference but important. cynthia talked about getting papers handed in online. also all papers -- i shouldn't say all, but a lot are automatically first drafts. because students are not typing and fixing, but putting them on a screen, they look good, and i think that's hurt writing and editing skills. nick: and creating more work for you. dr. nichols: well, having the papers in front of me on screen creates less work. i find i type faster than i write, so i put more comments on paper than i used to than when i scrawled them with my dreaded red pen. it's also opened students to a lot more possibility for information. it is a great thing for example. i'm a technophile. i'm not resisting the influence of technology on a student but i am concerned about it. i like for example the fact that students will not just settle for what's on the silly bus. -- silly bus. there is a serendipity of a different kind, where they start looking online. i lose control over that process, and by the way, you took me back with overheads, with overhead slides, so they -- have been teaching long enough, my hands were covered with chalk. that is an improvement, i use embedded video, i use links that are live. sometimes in the middle of the class i would say there's something i i would like you to see. and i would just pull it up out of this vast repository. nick: people talk about flipping colleges. do you have a distant element? dr. nichols: the naval war college has its own distance program. that is a separate issue. i teach in the resident program. the harvard extension school, the effect of distance education of what i do for 15 years has been profound. cynthia and i were talking about this earlier. i was initially speptic. now i have come over to that. it's just wait the world is now. there are good and bad aspects of that. i am old-fashioned. i want the students in the classroom with me. i want them where i can see them, i want them where i can take their temperature, see their facial expressions, and i find the distance element adds a real challenge that maybe in some ways makes me a better teacher or consciencious teacher, but it really is a level of challenge i have to overcome. nick: that is interesting. a lot of people in the higher indication world were thinking a few years ago that the distance element through technology was really going to change things, that somehow universities would be democratized and transformed by opening up the world through technology and bringing professors such as yourself to ar-flung places. do you feel that that promise is still out there and viable? are you a fan of that idea or a skeptic? dr. miller-idriss: i would say that i am a fan of the idea. it is largely an unrealized potential. but it's a potential to democratize knowledge to create access, to create better pathways for equity. where i teach, we have had fully online programs only for about 18 months. and we have seen a 00% increase in the masters programs where we have those programs. i think the latest figures are 26% of u.s. graduate students are now enrolled in fully june line programs. it may not have changed my teaching that much -- i think we have to acknowledge that there are large numbers of students who are learning this way. at our school, it has radically, not radically, but significantly diversified. the student population. the online population is more diverse than the traditional population. those statistics, is that bearing out nationally? it has yet to be proven. it has the potential for first generation students, for working parents, for people who are constrained on time, can't physically get to campus, veterans. i think we have whole populations for whom online spaces create more access. nick: tom, you said you are a bit skeptical. let's talk about mooc's for a second, the notion of massive open online courses. it was free, now there are small charges people face sometimes. but massive was the idea that somehow a professor would reach tens of thousands of people and this was going to be a great thing. you are not on board with that idea. why not? dr. nichols: no. back to the conversation you were having with cynthia. we have to differentiate the technological optimism was always overblown about this. when these debates began in the 1990's, i think sometimes we lose sight -- the technology is open-ended, but we lose sight on the limitations of human beings. that at some point, we are running up against the natural limitations of how human beings learn, and technology can keep better, but that won't change the way your brain is tructured. when it can comes to the democratization of education, mooc's, the idea was again the world would be an open university. we need to differentiate between the students who can't get any education at all, who have now been able to reach out -- i first noticed this when i was teaching a course on cold war history. distance options made it possible for students in the former soviet block to join my class. they couldn't come to the united states, but someone says i live in poland, that is great. it made the class better and for that student there is no other way to get there. the problem with distance options is it puts a huge amount of responsibility on the student to be incredibly disciplined and organized. i think concerning incredibly disciplined and organized, i'm here to give you breaking news about students, they are not incredibly disciplineded -- isciplined or organized. we approach with the diligence that, as though you were under the guidance of a professor. one of the problems with distance courses is students say it is online. i was going to go to class but i get it online. then maybe they don't or they don't, the question goes by that think wanted to spur the class with. for one group of students, especially for those in less developed countries or newly democratized countries, this is great. for students who have to rely on a huge multidiscipline initiative when it is available to them, that encouraged some bad habits. nick: i want to tap into the knowledge both of you expressed in your books recently. cynthia, yours on seeing the world, how u.s. universities make knowledge in the global era. both of your books seem to me at least broadly dealing with a problem you see on the potential limits woor putting on our knowledge. talk to me about the lessons you learned from writing that and how they might apply to the universities as you are seeing them. dr. miller-idriss: one of the things we learned in that book, team of scholars at the riche council, 1 universities, over a long period of time. -- research council, 12 universities, over a long period of time. one of the things we found out in how they organize knowledge about the rest of the world, the world outside the u.s., is that the social sciences systematically discourage graduate students from engaging in empirical research overseas -- nick: really? dr. miller-idriss: and they do because of their perceptions because of the best way to secure a tenured track position is by working on --there are lots of reasons. sociologists do that because they feel the tenure-track positions are better secured through working on domestic issues. the political scientists had other reasons, and the economists working globally with universal models, essentially. but across the board, there was not deep contextual specialized knowledge the way that, i think, when tom was trained and i was trained, there was a lot more resource, a lot more resources, a lot more funding going into graduate support for training overseas, those things were drying up. and faculty were discouraging students from doing it. they said the best way to get a job is a domestic issue. we were surprised, but the interviews were very clear. nick: so that is really interesting, because it raises the question, are universities paying lip service to globalization but actually not really -- dr. miller-idriss: yeah, i mean, one thing you find is tension between specialized knowledge and cosmopolitan citizens. a lot of push over the last 10 years in universities has been the rising study abroad, short-term study abroad courses, often one or two weeks. that can be learning experiences, but they are often geared more toward creating citizens can navigate public transportation worldwide than actually developing public knowledge that is rich and deep and embedded in local culture -- nick: are you saying it is not enough to buy a euro pass? [laughter] dr. miller-idriss: i mean, that is important. and that is two months. you you are already talking about a longer experience. nick: tom, your book was provocatively titled "the death of expertise." i wonder, probably had a naughty -- had an audience in mind that was not just universities. but talk to me a little bit about whether you see a death of exspear tees in universities, too. -- expertise in university, too. dr. nichols: universities where intellectuals have to bury their burden here, this is the point cynthia was making, universities have become the province of jargon, specialized theory rather than knowing theorizes, rather than knowers. in a lot of universities, the term "public intellectual" is almost said with derision. you are not a real scholar if you are a public intellectual and you do something like we are doing right now. part of the problem with globalization and traveling, there was at least in political science, a strong attack on areas of special interest. the idea you could learn to speak indonesian and you went to jakarta, and you study the indonesian system -- that is for saps. what matters is empirical, high-quality, scientifically testable data. people who knew everything about a particular model and nothing about indonesia. a gap started to develop between the ability of these academics to talk about their area and what the public needed to know. i still put most of the burden -- the reason the book is so provocative is i put a lot of the burden on the public because the public doesn't pay attention, they have short attention spans and would rather watch tv. but intellectuals and academics should have to bear their share. nick: they should play a greater role engaging the public. dr. nichols: yes, and it is not fun. this is something -- in a pleasant environment like this, it is wonderful, but giving a public lecture to the public, talking about something controversial, that can be very unpleasant. i would argue that as intellectuals, that is part of our obligation to society, to engage in those things. nick: i want to ask about a trend we have been seeing lately the last couple years in international enrollment in the united states, the data we have been reporting from the institute of international education shows that at least for two years there has been a declined in the number of international students coming to the united states. some people are speculating that this is perhaps a result influenced by donald trump and the trump administration policies on student visas and immigration. i wonder if you have concerns about this decline in international enrollment into the united states and if you have any theories on what might be causing it? dr. miller-idriss: i have some concerns, obviously. i am a proponent of global students and scholars, but one of the things i would say is there is a maximum capacity we are always going to hit with in-person exchanges. globally, something like 2% of students participating in some kind of in person face-to-face exchange. connecting back to the tech issue, one thing that is underexplored in an exciting direction is the area of virtual exchange. president obama announced an initiative in 2015 to fund virtual exchange and under the -- and now the e.u. has funded it as well. erasmus initiative. it takes high-quality, semester-long courses and brings them together in rigorous ays. not just one week of learning public transportation. when we think about international exchange, we have to think what is the point of it. we want rigorous cross-cultural deep engagement that helps people across boundaries and reduce polarization -- in this country and outside this country -- and ideally, international xchange can do that, but i think coming to this country or going to another country is not the only way to do it. have concerns about it. there is some reaction to the visa bans, but there are other ways to achieve some of the same goals. nick: tom, do you have any thoughts on the trends of inflow being reduced into the united states? dr. nichols: im not known as someone who is ever stenting in criticism of the president and his administration. i don't think that's it. i think at some point you reach a natural popping out level, and i will even say something counterintuitive, that there is a positive affect underlying this. when i was writing "the death of expertise," i was looking at -- -- at colleges. how many small colleges rebranded themselves as universities? in ways that made no sense, if you come from the academic world, there is a difference between college and university, very small colleges or state colleges, teachers colleges rebranding themselves as universities, as though they had a particle collider. what i realized they were doing was rebranding to attract foreign students. and im not sure -- because foreign students don't want to come to a college, they want a degree from the university. and im not sure it is healthy to build programs at schools that are already on shaky academic ground primarily organized around drawing in foreign money to hand out degrees. if that starts to settle back down, maybe i can get some courses, and that might actually be a good thing, because i think that explosion of programs was unsustainable. and we are seeing that. i don't think that has anything to do with trump. nick: so it could be a simple supply and demand issue -- this could happen in any administration, republican or democrat. dr. nichols: we are social scientists, we don't have the data yet, and going on the role of the anecdote counts as data, anecdotally, we found this drop off in my classes outside of government institution, i already saw some of those dropoffs long before president trump. nick: i am going to ask the magic wand questions. 0 seconds or less. if you can wave the wand tomorrow to fix one thing in higher education, what would it be? dr. miller-idriss: it would be easy. easy, im still signing approval forms on paper that has carbon copies. i can't tell you how many generations behind we're in terms of matching where students are in this seamlessness, but their lives are outside of campus. they can order a car from their phone. i think i bought a house from my phone. but i cannot approve a course with a phone. we are technologically, if i could just get an app to approve student forms, the kind of seamless life that exists outside campus, we could bring that tech and innovation to make everything flow more smoothly, we would see more resilience. nick: it is about cutting bureaucracy. dr. miller-idriss: bureaucracy, innovation, and it is a culture of change that will recognize the way we work on campus is so far removed from how our younger generation is living their lives. that causes frustration for them in ways that lead to failure to persist and all kinds of other anxieties. nick: tom, wave your wand. dr. nichols: i will end with a highly contrarian argument into the virtualization and virtual programs and all that stuff, the one thing i would wave my wand and say, to the extent this is based on the idea everybody needs to go to college, i would stop saying that. we have propagandized multiple generations of young people into believing that the only path in life is to go to college. if you can't go to a residence college, then you go to a distant college, and if you cannot do that, you take some then courses, and we end up with people demographically who have had some college or not really a college experience. there are a lot of paths to happiness that don't involve college, and we need to stop saying that. nick: that is a controversial one but a subject for another discussion. we are unfortunately out of time right now, but this is great talk, thank you for being here. have a great day. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> this is day 3 of the partial government shutdown. money for nine federal departments and dozens of other government agencies expired on december 21. employees of those closed agencies are not being paid, and most are not working. some who have been deemed essential must work without pavement as the debate over the government shutdown continues, watch the story unfold on c-span. a week ahead in washingn and finding out what will happen when it comes to the shutdown, two guests are joining us, alexis simendinger and stephen here.are thank you for coming on this morning. we have heard this idea of two different tracks going down the road when it comes to efforts on reopening the government over the shutdown, what happens in e

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