education, it will examine a new and innovative idea that is really transforming our schools. we will be talking about new approaches that are reshaping traditional models of education from classroom to university lecture halls. we will also focus on how the latest technologies are being integrated into the classroom, and look at the growing number of college alternatives geared toward 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 virginia. so now, please welcome to the stage, chairman and ceo chris whittle.[ applause ] good afternoon and 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, designers, technologists, 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. these 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 dc and in china this coming fall each for about 2500 students from kindergarten through 18, 15 grades each. these are schools that i'll hope will be models of progressive education in the cities and countries where they are based. there are multiple features we are focusing on and one is they prepare children for global life , both in exposing them and teaching them about languages and cultures throughout their years with us. second, we are pushing the boundaries of what we call personalization in education, particularly with advanced advising systems. then, we won't the school itself to be if you will, an art and design lesson every day, and all of these candidates are being designed, and he did that whitney in new york. we are pleased to be a part of this event, and thanked the washington post for all of their cooperation. thank you.[ applause ] >> thank you so much. now i would like to welcome the washington post eugene scott who will lead our first discussion. thank you.[ applause ] >> good afternoon. i am eugene scott, i am a political reporter and i write about political analysis related to identity politics, but for most of my career i have been an education reporter, so i'm excited about the panel today. we have with us the ceo and cofounder of the xq institute which works with high schools across the country providing a nonprofit network of educators, students, and community leaders. they had the goal of better preparing the students for college career. she is also the director of education at the emerson collective, a social change organization focus on education, immigration reform, and other issues. welcome to the post-. >> thank you. >> before we begin i want to tell all of you here and those watching online that you can join the program by tweeting your question and using the hashtag post live. i will try to get your questions in and let's get started. to get people some background who are not familiar with the xq institute, what would you say it is, and what are super schools? >> they are trying to help transform every high school in the country, and if there is one place across the education system that has been progressively stuck is high school transformation. while we have seen great progress since 2000 in elementary and middle grades, we have been stuck for the last 30 years were achievement has been flat that the late 1980s, in both reading and mathematics for high school students. we know that about 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 to go to college. we hope to spur action in communities. eugene, you said you have been writing about this for a very long time, and you know that we have had fits and starts across the education system, particularly in the early grades, but also we will get momentum and then get stuck. in part, our experience tells us that community stakeholders all our most dependent on public education for the learning and are not agents of the change being done. xq want to empower communities everywhere and reimagine what the next high school would like. as we went into this, we thought that maybe if there was five communities that we could help and power to dream big and different, but we didn't expect there would be 10,000 people 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 teens would continue. we are up to 19 now. the lessons are coming through. the experiences of what works and what doesn't are becoming evermore clear. we could help spur 1000, and that would not be enough. we are delighted to partner with district like tulsa and it states like rhode island. i had the opportunity of coming back from puerto rico where folks are dealing with a crisis in their schools the likes of those in our country have not seen for very long time. we are working with communities everywhere to spur this transformation. >> so what makes a school a super school? like if there are three things that distinguish a super school from all schools, how would you define? >> there is no one size that fits all. each of the schools is centered around a set of core design principles ranging from a much deeper vision of student success, were students are deeply entrenched in the real world learning experiences. breakthrough uses of space and time, grand rapids comes to mind, as it is a school that has a museum and curriculum in this case based on 250,000 cultural and historical artifacts. riots that served in los angeles, that serve mostly foster and homeless young people, high schools in multiple, and teaching in multiple facilities, and doing a school on a wheel. purdue comes to mind, polytechnic, where the end of four years, young people are guaranteed admission to polytechnic university. they are the educators and they are innovating as all 19 equity centered and realizing that to empower young people to have control of their scheduling, to do personalized learning with technology done right. they had to borrow hairdressing application so that students can schedule with people as they needed. >> so a super school looks different depending on the community and the student body population and the interests of the students. are you seeing anyone particular thing emerged as the biggest challenge to public high schools in this country? >> the fact that we have been stuck. we are still by large educating students at the high school level the weight we have done for over 100 years. six hours a day and 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. the lack of innovation, and not unique to our high schools, but we feel, the most, pervasive inequities that have riddled our system for far too long. the students that are most dependent on public education get the lease. one study recently show that 60% of high school 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. >> i know that you worked on a lot of these issues with the obama administration with the u.s. department of education, and are there any approaches to this issue that you see this current administration tackling in a way that you think is effective? >> i think ensuring that leadership is empowered in their efforts at local, the local use of resources and flexibility can be done right. having said that, to roll back everything that now research has said makes a difference is shameful. the last administration with the first who said under title ix to identify a truth woven through the spirit of our democracy under title ix that students should be free from sexual violence in our school system. the assistant secretary of civil rights under obama for the first time, i never met a faculty member anywhere that said they wanted on the campus. instead, they wanted advice and help on how to cure a pandemic. we was 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 correction has been transformed since 1968 under obama's first term. we was able to ask basic questions that showed we absolutely had a school to prison pipeline, and to a race those data, and to throw away the truth about course access, the truth about where the dollars are going in the truth about who has access to our strongest teachers, to throw away the thermometer look at the says we have a pervasive fever is ignorant. we remain ever hopeful that these issues, that public education is the great equalizer. also, that if there is one place up bipartisan agreement, it should 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. >> speaking of that, you mentioned austin czarnik and we have seen congressional lawmakers in california express her concerns about the teacher strikes, issues of privatization and equity in public schools in california. what has been your reaction to that issue? i assume you have been following it pretty closely. >> i don't know the specifics of the collective bargaining negotiations in los angeles unified. 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 not learning, especially young people that need their teachers and schools open the most. >> speaking of issues that you are seeing in schools in addition to not learning, and covering politics, i have read quite a bit about how kids are really struggling to process some of these larger conversations are happening at the national level relating to sexual assault and identity changes related to immigration and police brutality. what role can the schools play in helping students better process these issues we are discussing on a daily basis? >> it is not what they can, it is what they have to. it is one of the hallmarks of the obama administration office for civil rights, the guidances was written with application section, and 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, and to be able to know what is true, to know they have a right. the obama administration also reminded the country that our young people, regardless of whether they are documented or not, have a right to access and public education in this country. teachers and educators, and the faculty are dealing with the chichi, and they are talking to a leader of a school in brooklyn not too long ago who was sharing the story of how one student of coming to school being threatened, not just because of her at the intensity -- but because of her sex and confronting fears. schools are safe havens, they should be. hate you said that right after 2016, you could go down to one of our partner schools in southern california, helping them to figure out. context where we are right now with 2020, what are some of the topics you would like to see this next group of candidates focus on related to education that would perhaps traverse some of these things that you would experience the country more? supporting the notion of alignment. high schools are the future. assuring that arc young people when they graduate can be ready for college and career. 11.6 million new jobs have been added to the economy since 2008. 11.5 have required a college degree. so we need to prepare young people. we can look at scientific core, make power grants accessible for high school students who are doing little college or college preparatory programs. we have to enforce the nation's civil right and the legislative authority of necessary and to do something around teacher preparation, a $10,000 annual permanent tax credit if you are capable and ready and excellent to teach in our nation school. ensuring that the teacher accountability for teacher effectiveness is back at the teacher effectiveness programs. ensuring that civil rights protections are part of the elementary and secondary act that was codified. these are things we can do now. have you heard any new ideas coming out of this new congress so far for many lawmakers that you're excited about that maybe you have not thought about before or maybe you felt like the next step in some of the ideas he worked on previously, as you mentioned in your last question focus on any quality. this idea of an infrastructure conversation. i'm hearing grumblings, this is true. we are talking about $100 billion for school construction. we haven't seen anything like that since the new deal. but the schools will really help the community. one of our partner schools in memphis tennessee crosstown is in the old sears roebuck's distribution center in the middle of the cross town concourse it is diversity by design and surrounded by 35 hospital serving 70,000 residents. when we thought about school construction in that way, in new york, the home of what used to be ibm that is partnering with businesses to not just develop curriculum but also ensure an apprenticeship program. were talking about construction in new ways. we can have not only what the new deal, but revolutionize once again. we were the first on the planet to do universal high school education. we can once again leave the planet on innovation, equity mindset when it comes to our schools. there is certainly some conversations i give me hope and i look forward to supporting those when they do those things. when talking about innovation, we often talk about technology. is there a specific thing happening right now in public education in the area of technology that you believe will be transformative? that has finally caught up with the policy. there is no silver bullet or one device or one piece of platform. but finally, a vision for trend form policy can be done because technology will make access and opportunities easier and better. teachers can see what's happening to young people in real time. we can personalize learning and catch kids before they slip. we don't have to wait for an end-of-the-year test or assessments on various playlist that meet students on where they are with adaptive assessment that will just not identify when people do something wrong but exactly the problem that they know. it's not just the math problem they are doing, not doing. we know now that they are not at a fourth grade reading level or in eighth grade reading level, we will know that it's fractions, we will know, be able to laser focus tackle and identify interventions when needed. we know that we can get teachers to the students that need them the most for serious coaching through technology. it facilitates not only the way teachers do business, but the way students learn. before i get to the question we have, he talked about catching students before they slip. i know that the focus is on high schools. what happens when a student has slipped before high school? i did get them back on track? we've gone far too long in the education and we believe that high school is too late. that is not laser focus. an entire year's worth of learning between fourth-graders today and fourth-graders in 2000 with two years of the learning versus eighth graders today with their counterparts in 2000 with mathematics. that is because we focused on, finally we have science data that shows that the high schools are not, we know that the brain in fact high school secondary rapid improvement of the second, secondary level rivals only with pre-k through five. our own science is telling us that. we can actually know that with the right stimulation you can actually improve the iq of high school students. so we know what is possible now. we can debunk the myths of what is not. and we can get the learning two kids that need them and innovative real-world ways. unfortunately as i gave your morning, i was unable to get to these questions because i had too many of my own. but your twitter handle, your website, how do people learn more about you. it's russlynn ali, that's really creative, my name has to letter incident because my father was creative. hashtag high school, we are at xq institute.org. and all of our information is on our website. we will always get back to you in real time. once again that is xq institute .org. thanks for being here. [ applause ]. good afternoon i'm karen colicky, and i am a columnist here at the washington post. we are really pleased and very honored to have such a great panel of educators and be on educators with us today. to talk about innovation and also the intersection of government and education. here we have a nice follow-up, the president of bates college doctor wayne frederick of howard university, donna chellie law, who has been the chancellor or president of three major universities, the university of wisconsin, and the university of miami, and is now probably the most overqualified freshman congresswoman in history. having been hhs secretary as well. congresswoman chellie law, i got a get off of the topic and get to the news how do we get out of the shutdown ? those three university presidencies don't qualify me to answer that question. first of all bill clinton said i was a most qualified person to serve in congress since john quincy adams. grown-ups have to step up. particularly on the senate side and say enough is enough. as you know, during the shutdown that we had during the clinton administration where the whole government was shut down, it was senator bob dole the majority leader who stepped up and said enough is enough. everybody is going back to work. this is tragic. what scares me is that we're 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 closed on the government. i couldn't think of one. i looked as close as i could. we need rules that prevent this kind of thing. perhaps a resolution that automatically cuts in when you cannot agree. but we cannot go through this again ever again. it 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. what we did in the house now that we have the majority as we passed all the senate appropriation bells. we didn't past the house appropriation bills, we took their bills they passed last year we passed them word for word and send them over to the senate. so there would be no disagreement between us about what it would take to open up the government. and to start negotiations about a smart strategy to protect our borders. because we believe in the. at the end of the day it's going to have to be the senate. what should speaker nancy pelosi should be doing right now? right now she is doing what she can do. she is trying to apply pressure and trying to make it very clear what the outlines of the deal we think would be reasonable. she is reassuring the public that we are in favor of strong borders. and she is saying to the senate leadership, we are ready to go. the other thing i should've mentioned is that we really do want you to be part of a conversation. if you have any questions, please send them to me and they will get to me here. hashtag post live. doctor frederick, you want to answer that question ? i was going to sale definitely asked about. the very first official visit to a campus when she became education secretary for divorce was to howard. and you took some criticism on your own campus. by the way, props to you for allowing sort of free expression on campuses because you have been amazing in doing that at howard. so you took some flack for betty divorce coming to campus. about a month later, you are in the white house with a bunch of historically black college leaders meeting with the president and it is there i think that betsy de voss famously referred to hvc's as being pioneers of school choice. again, you took a lot of flak for reaching out to the trump administration how is that relationship going now? a couple of things to explain that under the circumstance. will betsy de voss is the secretary of education in is a member of the howard's board. howard was signed by the 17th president the united states president johnson. with that in mind, the secretary of education often, the secretary of education often invites themselves to the campus or are invited by us. i think that's a good thing. she was confirmed at 12:00 tuesday, and i got a call that she wanted to speak to me at 4:30 pm that afternoon and she informed me that she wanted to come on thursday morning. a very quick turnaround, she wanted to come to our campus is a first visit. i think it was the right thing to do. my fat a lot of interaction with her since then. i would do a couple of things differently. one of which is probably consult with the students on campus in particular and also to educate them about why i thought it was important. i've had a lot of interaction with her. i think she's been a good listener. i disagree with some of her policies, but even under the circumstances, she has not been shut off to getting feedback on what's going on. on the president side, if you look at that picture very carefully, you will notice that i am not in the picture. it was a photo op. and i felt strongly about the fact that we should not participate in the photo op. however, all of the senior administrators who advise the president met and started getting, and that in and of itself was historic and unprecedented. i have been in howard's administration the entire time when president obama was in office, and we enjoyed a very good relationship as well. that i don't think as a group we had that access necessarily. the last thing i will say that the position we find ourselves in is very difficult. 105 hvc's right now under significant pressure. and every year that i have been president, one has closed. i don't see that on the basis unless something dramatically changes. and we focus on higher-end education in this country, were still responsible for 35% of the african-americans who get bachelor degrees and stem difference, did disciplines. the work that we put into supply the workforce in this country has really been neglected for some time. it's one of those situations where i think you're trying to make sure that you have access and you can get the assistance that you need and make the case whatever it is. and i think a civil rights leaders we want to be at the table. dr. martin luther king, jr. would go to the white house even though he probably did not think he was walk on. what i think we have to do to get to the table, look at the menu, probably pushed the plate back if we don't like what we see. at least we can come back out and tell our constituents what we need. and then make an argument to get something different. i think we have to continue some type of dialogue. do you honestly feel like there is an open line of communication between you, betsy de voss and this administration ? and the department of education and the secretary i would say yes absolutely. that has been refreshing. know what secretary duncan, we also had good access as well. let's be clear about that as well. but it's definitely not a closed-door circumstance. i've had the opportunity to make my case along with my federal, fellow appropriations and other people as well. president clinton, one of the things we really want to talk about, president spencer for my saying here. is what you get for having to last names. we are talking about cutting edge in, innovation and colleges. there is a phrase that you have often used, purposeful work. and as the mother of a senior at a liberal arts college, i see the work part and i automatically think oh, jobs. but there is something that you said that i read that struck me that this is much more than finding a job. you said work is really fundamental on who you are and who you will become. could you talk, what exactly does purposeful work mean? purposeful work first is in our program. you teach things like, right? this is a very classic liberal arts like 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 that you're teaching a liberal arts education, you claim they learn critical thinking, collaboration, critical thinking, they do learn 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 financial investment. they need to know how to animate what they learn in the liberal arts to be effective actors in the world. college has always been about that. on one hand it is innovative, on the other hand it's deeply what college in the liberal arts education is always been about. 's other terms, what are we pick those terms? number one, it's based on the thought that everyone in life is looking for life that has meaning. and that allows them to act in the world in a way that brings the meeting. and work can be, it could be for money or not. could be in the home, in the workplace, etc. the important thing to know about purposeful work is that it's not a kind of work. purpose is not do-gooder work. you can want to be a forest ranger, ballet dancer, work for j.p. morgan, you can do whatever you want. it is what aligns with your valleys are, values are coming interests are and how you act in the world. what we are doing with our students is helping them understand that it's that alignment they are after. added they start to take courses that they are actually interested in ? don't throw economics because they think it's a proxy to getting a job if they have no interest in economics. take the philosophy course and begin to understand your interest. so we have a curricular dimension that is infused in the liberal arts, and we also have a very great internship program. i won't go into that right now, but the pieces that emerges is the alignment between your interest, what you do, what you learn to do well. is and how you act in the world. and the notion that you have a passion and then you have to go impose that on the world to let that out, if you were in the time of leonardo da vinci that's probably how it works, before most people passion is a byproduct of doing things and achieving mastery. we worked with students in very intentional ways to do that we can come back to talk more about that. it's not what you want to be when you grow up and who you want to be when you grow up. it's also the intel inside. these kids are going to have seven, eight, nine jobs. and we have always said that the liberal arts is the most powerful and adaptable kind of education there is. but then you need to make sure our students are aware of it and they use it as a move to the world and keep relearning and adapting. that's what's going to take in this global high velocity change economy. dr. wayne frederick, howard has more of its students applying, more africans americans apply for med school from howard than any other university. one of the things i think that distinguishes howard is that you have a major medical institution right there that is really part of the core of the university's mission. but even if those numbers as impressive as they are, proportionally, they are not where they should be. how do we change that? is the stem education in the early years are something that colleges should be doing to better prepare african- americans and other minorities to go into the medical field or what? assure. it's a small factor that we have to put in, i think we have to have a pretty important approach to fixing it. and to put it in context, the country has a cart, crisis in my opinion. when you look at healthcare disparities and you look at outcomes for african-americans, they are drastically well below the outcomes of the majority population. that has a lot of impact on the communities that people live in, it has a lot of impact i think in the overall productivity of the country. i think that everyone needs to be involved. in 1978, there were more african-american males in this country who apply to medical school than in 2014. think of the difference of what this country was in the 40 year span. and still we are at a place where we have less african- american males applying for medical school. you are right, howard since more african-american applicants to medical school than any other institution in the country. which again is worrisome. when you look at private institutions, with 9400 students and an endowment of $780 million, that is an outsized burden to have in the state capital to do. heady fix that and pipeline is an issue. we have a middle school in our campus focused on math and science. i think that is one of the solutions. we have to infuse the idea of college, if you step on one of mike's middle school students in campus, and you see them on the sidewalk catching the bus in the u.s. where they go to school they say good howard university. no one says the middle school. the already have that formed that this and this is normal going to be back here or another campus and we have to push that. of course there's a lot of conversation in this country, we also have to recognize that gender gaps. and the proud father of a 14- year-old son in a tooleville daughter. my tooleville daughters good at math. she would not join the math club despite being approached 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 then we have to fix it. i think again, at a very early age we also don't recognize how much our education system really takes an offramp for many students because of gender and all of these other issues as well. i think we really have to look at our middle school, the pipeline and the listing i would say is we have to invest as a country. both government and private and making sure that we take away the barriers for the student success. if you look at silicon valley and the numbers are very low. when i became the president, is a lesson has come up with every reason why you don't hire my folks, use and the professor to my campus, let's try something different. i went to howard whisper, met students to come out here and instead of you complaining about them, you can't complain that they are not prepared because you are responsible for teaching them, the second thing is they are getting a concentrated education the faculty can now come back and change the curriculum so that it is as cutting-edge as possible. in the first quarter of they hired 26 and they hired another five in the silicon valley area. and now we've expanded the program all your route for the fall and spring. i think innovations like that to break down these barriers will be necessary to move forward. education and healthcare are your two will houses that are colliding. i remember at one point talking to you during the healthcare reform efforts that led to the affordable care act. you were very passionate about the world that nurses should play. we've talked about preparing students to live up to their potential. how should we be rethinking education to be turning out the kinds of skills and professionals that we need especially now that we do have a healthcare system that doesn't look like it used too. in nursing, there is a for your program. and we've actually transformed nursing as part of the report that i cheered for the institute of medicine where you have to get a four-year degree early to get a job and an advanced degree if you really want to practice with the broader sweep. but is not just nursing. when i think about that type of preparation, i'm very leery about doing it. and some proficiency do it like nursing, i am very wary about doing it all at the undergraduate level i always have been. have always worked with institutions even when they wanted to do undergraduate business schools to make sure they have the liberal arts because frankly you don't know what they need to know 10 years from now. here's what i do know. at the university of miami, we started the launchpad. this gives an opportunity for any student not just business and engineering to start a business. we have the serial freshman entrepreneurs. we want every student at the university to think about creating a job, not just about taking a job. that requires a different kind of thinking. you walk into the launchpad which is in the student center and you present your idea and they will help you put together a business plan. it's the largest activity at the university of miami. the vast majority of the students who walk in their and start businesses come from the arts and sciences. and not just engineering or business. but they are english majors, 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 its understanding that is not just the classroom activity. lots of people have entrepreneurship in their business call. but it's a different way of getting the kids to think. in a fresh way. i was in junior achievement as a kid. i created four or five businesses. it shaped the way i think about american business. how you look at this sort of getting students, especially in the liberal arts two think creatively and entrepreneur lee but also to make sure you still do have the sets of practical skills that are going to turn your idea into something that's real? one of the ways we do it at bates, we have a short-term at the end of our two regular semesters and it is five weeks, you take one course that is insensitive. we are brought in, this is a new innovation brought in practitioners to teach this course is. so we have graphic designers, music producers, filmmakers, entrepreneurship, this is competition, all of those things that are in this experimental zone that one month , while during the regular semester they are during the history philosophy majors learning critical thinking research review, that's one of the important ways we do it. the other way is through a really well-designed internship program. i'd like to reference what dr. wayne frederick said. one of the animating principles for purposeful work is that we need to fulfill our equity promised the students. long ago, american higher education began reaching out more broadly bringing in more students, creating more diverse student bodies. and then it occurred to us that we better support the for academic success. then if you are just relying on kids to use mom and dad and their professional networks to get an internship, you are leaving all of this fantastic talent on the table. one of the animating features of purposeful work is what i call the third leg of the equity promised. we let you in, happy succeed, and help you bridge to the world of work. we have spent $350,000 a year supporting students in internships. we have a set of core employers like the google model where there is a pre-existing relationship between us and we work very hard to make sure that our students are overrepresented. you know you are talking to university people though for fairly elite institutions. he had to remember that we also need to provide apprenticeships and alternative ways of getting into the workforce. and those kinds of investments, we are just starting to make and just starting to pick about. i had a cousin that spent two years in college, he was brilliant but he hated it. he came to me and said i think i can get an apprenticeship as an electrician and he did. it took six years, that's a 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 tracks 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. all of us are working on that. we have a little bit of time left. going to ask one question that i think is top of mind to everyone who is a student whether they are a kindergartner or postgrad, and you coming from florida, what should we be doing to make our kids, school safer? oh my goodness. we can start by identifying early on young people with challenges. what i mean by that is intervening early on. if you look at with the scandinavian countries do, they will identify a child that may have behavioral problems in kindergarten or the first-grade. then they will 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 senior services. and so it was hit and miss. at the end of the day, we got a seriously deranged human being who caused unbelievable damage. mental health is one piece. we've got to get rid of the guns. what other country on earth has assault weapons, no background checks, makes it easy to buy a gun ? we are going to do a background check bill on the house side, and i'm sure that we are going to pass it. i hope we get back to the assault weapons ban. i helped negotiate that a 94. we banned assault weapons. we just have too many guns. we do not need to get rid of the second amendment. we can simultaneously manage and reduce the number of guns and who has access to guns and not mess around with hunters. you come from a school in an urban setting and you come from one that's not, what keeps you awake at night on this question of school safety? i think we all have to be smart about the active shooter scenario, the natural disaster scenarios, they are happening with greater frequency. i worry about that stuff. we drove for it. you can never be prepared. but we spent a lot of times in a variety of risk management topics. i'm going to go to completely different because they covered exactly what i would've said if i went i would've told you something totally different. i think that one of the things that we do not do and we become very shy and apprehensive about talking about is our humanity. we are almost hesitant to bring up the issue of being nice. of intervening and giving some humanist to what we do and that worries me. so the students that come to our bright, they are vicious, 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 of value to being nice to someone. come out to congress. the reason why double down and that is we hide behind our devices and say things. we have a country now that has normalized tweeting which obviously the president does. but we've all kind of normalized it and we are doing the same things. no one is intervening. as he mentioned, sometimes you see someone having trouble. we don't have good mental health care services i agree with all that. but who goes out of the way to say let me be the one that intervenes or let me be the one that is give somebody a kind word on that day that probably makes a difference. i can't think of a better way to close down just reminding people that decency is something that we need to be instilling in our young people as well. thank you all very much. thank you for being with us today. [ applause ]. hello, i'm josh white the american desk editor here at the washington post. i'm a former education editor here as well. i'm delighted to have on stage with me today ryan craig, cofounder of university ventures and investment firm, that focuses on global higher education in creating new pathways for education to employment. also doctor bob mcmahon, president of kettering university in flint michigan. and doctor sanjay ri, senior vice president for academic affairs at montgomery college a top college right here maryland that serves 60,000 students each year. it's a new record. just about one third of adults in the united states have a traditional four-year college degree. which means that there are a lot of people that don't. many of those graduates are not prepared to go directly into a specific job. many of them are underemployed in many of them are saddled with a lot of dead. 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 hashtag post life. i want to start with mr. ryan craig. there's a problem in a lot of possibilities. what do you see as the biggest problem here, and what are the chances for success. i guess most of the attention around higher education is affordability. he can't miss it every week somewhere in the front page student load and that is one point trillion dollars about $40,000 for college graduate it's a lot. the fact of the matter is that if every graduate was entering into a $60,000 year starting salary job he would have a problem. it's a combination of affordability and employability. over the last decade, we seen a real crisis and employability. underemployment amongst college graduates is now north of 40%. a big reason for that is digitization of the economy both in substance as well as in terms of form because it has changed hiring. college graduates to simply are not being prepared for the entry-level jobs that employers are looking to fill. it's a major problem. there are pathways to success. doctor mcmahon, your university has for a very long time, focused on an issue of employability. can you talk a bit about what university does, how it does it, white successful? it's actually a very interesting story in american higher education. we are celebrating our centennial this year. we were founded 100 years ago. the centennial model that we have i think is really very appropriate. the future of education billed a century ago. in a lot of ways we represent and practice what a lot of institutions and higher ed is outlined as aspirational goals for how you integrate theory and practice in education. in our institution, students, first off, we have no summer holidays. we go 12 months a year. the curriculum is four and half years long. the students when they join our split into two cohorts that go into a 12 week on 12 week off rotation for their freshman year. and they spend 12 weeks in intensive academic curriculum and 12 weeks in a professional placement and industry, government or laboratory that complements their professional goals and why they are the degree that they are seeking. so these placements are cooperative placements but they are not observational. the become employees of the organization, they have the same expectations and demands placed upon them as any other employee. they had the benefits that a typical employee does etc. over the course of the ford half years, they advance in the corporate roles and they advance in their academic abilities. this creates a virtuous circle that is really unprecedented in american higher education. because it creates the whole individual. i like to say our employability of our students, the placement rate of our students, that vacillates wildly between 99 and 100% every year. and i your point you just made, we have one of the lowest debt default rate than any institution in the united states because when our students leave, it is that combination of cost and the ability to address that is at the centerpiece of a lot of the affordability. that is fairly unique. the vast majority of colleges and universities are interfaced to the job market, to the world of employers. its career services. that is one office out of dozens. it is often located on the periphery of camp is not open on the evenings or weekends when students of the most time. only about 50% of students in bachelor degree programs even partake in career services. when they do walk in, they are likely to meet someone who is worth the whole career career services is supposed of the industry they're trying to get into. it would be great if we could all get a job in crete, career services but it does work like that. colleges still see that the responsibility to get students jobs. they go with the old tired line we prepare you for your fifth job not your first job. students today know if you don't get the first job you look at the fifth job in today's economy. and that is one of the things you are trying to address the skills gap in the first job. can you talk a little bit about what a unique college can do to serve a very large community that is seeking work, success in life and what programs are most successful and how you do you do it. thank you for the opportunity. before i answer your question, when i go to these types of discussions, often, we are quick to conclude that there are lots of problems with higher education. i want to say that he has higher education systems is still one of the best in the world. a lot of countries are able to replicate a lot of things that we do very successfully. but one that has not succeeded and that is our higher education system. we still start from a good place and still have a strong system. but we still have a couple of challenges. you have to understand the root cause of the challenges. i think globalization is not easy. and it is something that is asking us to do. and a think from a comely college or community college, outside washington dc, from their perspective. the idea, this pretense that i mentioned, that fields into three different areas of accessibility, higher education has to be more accessible, more affordable, the cost of higher education is certainly an issue, and the, is there too. one year at montgomery college will cost $6000. affordability is important. we had three campuses that serve and they are accessible. they are accessible to technology, we have a strong online program. academically we are also accessible. if someone is not college ready, you need some gaps we have gaps in math or english and those sorts of things we do that very well. and also 1300 or so community colleges across the nation to that as well. the challenges of the higher education system that faces today, the community colleges are doing that quite well. coming back to the, issue, what we do at montgomery college, our economy is high technical economy and technology economy, so we work very closely with the industries. we have cleared programs from the credit side and also from the noncredit side. if you are on and under employed or unemployed id walker, you can come to montgomery college and you can enter into a cybersecurity program that is also available on the evening at a very affordable class at five or $600 a so. there are thousands of cybersecurity jobs that are open in this dc area. so the companies, the talented workforce, at the same time, people have the opportunity to do that. the current program, about half the students have undergraduate and master degrees. they just don't have the skills to be employed in the programs that we have in the area. so we create programs that will get them working really closely with industries in those areas. like data analysis, there is a lot of huge opportunities especially in the conception of ideas. a lot of new tools are being developed. that is lots of opportunities right there. and there are a lot of other countries that are ahead of us in those types of things. i think that we have a premier higher education system. the community system is uniquely american. and we need to start looking at those other two systems. dr. robert mcmahan, one of the things that university is on his experimental learning. you have autonomous vehicle programs , crash test facilities, labs, talk a little bit about those programs. why specifically focus on an individual technology or something like the autonomous vehicles ? what do the students get out of that? they get the world out of the. the reason i say that is the universities actually found it on the different idea. and that is in order to educate the whole person, that you have to create an equivalence. if you look at how we typically treat experiential learning in the united states, and 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 are going to add an experiential component to it. were not going to change what we deliver and how we delivered into the classroom, we are just going to attack this thing full on and call it a whole. this is that these two things are equal in importance. one is not subordinate to the other. each informs the other. so the student spends as much time in the application of the discipline as in the acquisition of the knowledge and support of the discipline. that creates a virtuous circle. that is bidirectional. if students experience in their cooperative or the other activities informs the classroom, how many universities are out there were a faculty member's teaching them abstract concepts, stokes equation, and it is talking about the theory and then turns around and faces the student and says now sue, you are working in a wind tunnel lab facility, do you use this in this way or do you have some other way in which you adapted this formulas into that application. and then c says no we don't really use that. would you come up here and show us how that works? that closure of application and knowledge is explosive. so much harder then given the last 20 years in the class which is why the implications on the state are so exceptional. the reality is that this is a many to many problem. you have millions of employers, how do you match students and graduates with jobs? no institutions maybe a couple of exceptions here is capable of managing the relationships with a number of relationships at the level of depth you can imagine. and no one is really quite interested in doing that. over the last decade, he seen the emergence of hiring which is the increased propensity of employers to say i'm not hiring anyone for this position the less they demonstrated that they have already done it. you see all kinds of experience requirements ellen jobs that should be entry level for example entry level sales positions, you want three years experience of salesforce.com. how do you get experience ? exactly how you get experience. using intimate arrays that stand between traditional postsecondary education: last mile training. typically going on the digital skills postsecondary institution just really aren't very good at training because i simply don't have the relationship of employers to understand what technologies employers are looking for in this job. 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 or english ? i just published a book that came out last year called faster and cheaper alternatives to college where i make the argument that there are these new faster cheaper alternatives like boot camps, and appreciative, apprenticeship models and staffing models that will be providing new faster cheaper pathways to the graduates that companies are having a hard time getting pregnant your institution but a lot of institutions. even for us, our department a liberal arts is our largest academic department. even with the focus curriculum, one of our big announcements recently as we opened a conference of set of music studios for our students to go in and record. have bands forming because there's so much energy around the intersection of the arts and engineering in the sciences. if you can give your students jobs, you can do all kinds of things. the challenge is we are seeing too few institutions doing good job of that. we believe that in the next 5 to 10 years, many students were going with their feet and faster cheaper alternatives. we are not saying that we should have our benefit with less per secondary education per aggregate per capita that is suicide, what we are saying is we should but a restaging of how we consume that postsecondary education. it shouldn't have to be all you can eat at one setting it should be what you can get when you needed. if that's a cheaper pathway to it good first job and being at that job for a couple years with no debt and looking around and ascertaining what secondary pathway you might want to move on and move up and develop those cognitive executive skills you need to be successful in your career, you should do that. those pathways will be available. ultimately, we will need to develop all of those cognitive and humanity skills. community colleges are very critical part of the spectrum. we really need to look at this is a spectrum and a lifelong engagement. you have talked about the concept of placement colleges. talk a little bit about that. i say this lovingly because my mother actually taught at community college for a number of years i know committee to college as well. i know that many of them are run as academic institutions where the priority remains a degree programs and associate degree programs over sort of employer and industry focus certificate programs. associate degree programs for the most part are steppingstones transfer colleges to four-year institutions. some community colleges do that better than others. what we would like to see is a distinct community college system that is really focused on employment and employability rather than an academic model. that would involve some sort of hybrid about what community colleges do today with their certificate programs and industry focuses as montgomery is doing and what workforce is doing. sanjay rai what do you think about that? i think that's important but we don't want to do either or. i think we got a look at it critically. since you brought up the philosophy, i am assuming that mathematics and physics and fundamental questions would follow that. a lot of the students who go from short-term programs long- term programs, they might do the cybersecurity on the other type, there is lots of opportunity to take long-term courses. of course along pouring, the long-term side is going for the credited side. why that is important is because you heard the expression lost mice. that last mile becomes longer if , it's not only miles. and the model that is for creditor noncredit the shortens. so that can happen only if you understand your economy, you work with your community. at montgomery college, for example, the sciences program, a lot of it with the aging populations, we are going to use a lot of healthcare workers because of aging. and a lot of healthcare workers are the baby boomers, so we have to place them also. at montgomery college, we became the first community college in the country to have a hospital right on our campus. it is a wonderful collaboration with our health sciences program in the hospital. so i think those of the models the montgomery college and a lot of other community colleges are doing. and they are doing it very successfully. so most of the questions that we have for these issues is in the system with community colleges, are we doing those things quite well. the question is how do we scale that ? and how do we make it for higher education. equally proactive and equally responsive. from a priss, if i am a prospective student and i'm looking for all of these things, marketability, job, success in the future, up and go to montgomery college. and after you're done come cs. how to decide what's going to be best for you given these warnings, concerns and some places that are specializing, how do you evaluate the vast array of opportunities that are out there you don't have too many institutions advertising placement rate into $70,000 per year starting jobs. . 97% of students say they are enrolling in a post canary in the touche and for the purpose of getting a job and a good first job in particular. and they take responsibility in helping the students and preparing them and helping them into the work force . >> aside from enrolling, the whole ally would conclude is this whole, we have to really take a very strong look at the whole notion of skills, skill development as a thing distinct from education because when you talk to not just employers but graduate schools and professional schools and ask them what they're looking for, they can art to chelate this clearly. they are looking for a set of attribute. not so much , they're not as particular about domain knowledge because they recognize that three quarters of this stuff the facts that a student learns well 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 but what we need is a student who believes and knows that no matter what they are faced with they can figure it out and they've been given the tools on the skills to do it. students that are resilient and students that know how to operate in organizations, who do not believe and who understand that it's not just about the acquisition of knowledge but it's also about the application of knowledge and how you work within groups in order to advance. ideas in advance the human condition. those are the skills that traditional higher education tends to say, those are those other things and we will focus on the knowledge acquisition and we will let that happen and some other indeterminate point. i think that is an artificial distinction. as the relationship of the consumer to higher education evolves and it is evolving, the demand will be evermore directed at the integration of those skills into the education . >> unfortunately that's all the time we have. i would like to thank our guests for joining us for this great panel. [ applause ] >> i will now hand this often nick anderson who will host the final panel. hello and thank you all for being here and joining us. my name is nick anderson and i am a higher education reporter at the post and i've been writing about universities and colleges for seven years now. i am pleased to be here with two experts from academia who will talk with us about technology and globalization and higher education and some of the changes we see and maybe some of the goals we might have to open up universities in classrooms to new perspectives. right on my left ear is cynthia miller idriss. she's a sociologist at the american university in washington diest the. she's also the director of the international training and education program in the school of education. cynthia has a bachelors from cornell university and a doctorate from the university of michigan and is recently the co-offer of a book on the subject called, seeing the world, how u.s. universities make knowledge in a global era. we will talk a little about the ideas in the book. to her left is thomas nichols, tom is a professor of national security affairs at the u.s. naval war college in newport rhode island and is also on the faculty of the harvard extension school and he is notably also a five-time jeopardy champion. [ laughter ] >> he holds a bachelors degree from boston university and a doctorate from georgetown. he is a recent author of a book that is somewhat on point to are subject your called the death of expertise. a campaign against established knowledge and why it matters. so, thank you cynthia and tom for being here with us. i'd like to open our discussion the best oh, before i go any further, i want to encourage those in the audience or watching us online, to please tweet to us any questions you might think we should have during this discussion at the #post live and we will track the questions and try to work them into our discussion. >> now, i would like to begin by talking about technological changes but can you see it in your classrooms, there has been much made of the idea that classroom instruction is changing and technology is changing the way that professors relate to students. let's get specific on the ground. how has your classroom changed ? then we will get to your experiences and we can talk a little about the pros and cons of this . >> thank you for having me. it's a pleasure to be here. i would say i treat each professional seminars and when i first started teaching 16 years ago i was still using overhead, overhead slides and making those so obviously there are simple ways like powerpoint and things that make my life easier with skype sessions that can meet the author and have them show up on screen for 15 or 20 minutes and students can ask questions. i rarely receive hard copies of papers anymore, mostly submissions online discussion portals that students engage with. and, most of the reading materials except for hard copies of books, most of the reading materials are online. there is a fluid engagement for them with online materials and with tech in the classroom. when it comes to discussing its face-to-face . >> to have any distance- learning element? >> i have to go to a conference and it will and we will set up a class for that so in a pinch, if i'm out of town a couple students from the class will be with me in san francisco at the conference, we will gather there and the rest of the class will zoom in. it's not a hybrid class but that's a way to not have to make up a class where we can still get content and use the tech to get through the missed class . >> tom, what is your experience with how technology changes the way you interact with students? >> first, my views do not represent the war college. i think one of the interesting ways that technology has changed the experiences the impact it has on students rather than me. things like the difficulty, i've been teaching for over 30 years, getting students to walk into a brooks mortar library is difficult. the serendipity of accidental discovery now happens online, rather than in examining stacks of books. it's a subtle difference but it's important cynthia is talking about getting papers handed in a via online. all papers, i shouldn't say all but a lot of the papers are now automatically first draft because students are not drafting and typing and fixing but they put them on a screen and they look good and i think that has hurt writing and editing skills and created more work . >> in a sense, having the papers in front of me creates less work because i find i type faster than i write so i put more comments on papers now than i did when i had to scroll them with my dreaded red pen . >> but, i think it's also open to the students to a lot more possibility for information. i think it's a great thing and i'm a technophile, i'm not resisting the influence of technology, i'm just concerned about it. i like for example, the fact that students will not just settle for what's on the syllabus. there is a serendipity of a different kind with a start looking online. unfortunately i lose control over the process and you took me back with overheads. with overhead slides, it made me think of that i would think enough that i would finish class and have to wash my hands because they were covered in chalk. i think that's an improvement and i use embedded video and links that are alive. sometimes i hear there's something that and what you see and i pull it up out of a vast repository . >> people talk about flipping classrooms, do ever flip your classrooms? >> the naval war college has its own distance program and that's a separate issue. harvard asked tension school, the effective distance education on what i do there has been profound. i think like cynthia, i was initially escap taken now i've come over to that but it's also the way the world is right now. and there are good and bad aspects of that. i am old-fashioned. i want the students in the classroom with me and i'm a teacher and i want the more i can see them and where i can take the temperature and see their facial expressions and i find that the distance elements adds a challenge. but maybe in some ways makes me a better teacher and more conscientious but it is a level of challenge i have to overcome . >> that's interesting, a lot of people in higher education were thinking a few years ago that the distance elements 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 yourselves to foreign places. do you feel that this promise is still out there? that is still viable, are you a fan of the idea or a skeptic and let's talk about that . >> i would say i'm a fan of the idea. i think largely it's unrealized potential but it's a potential to democratize knowledge to create access to create better pathways the equity. we have, where i teach in the school of education, we've had fully online programs for about 18 months with a 200% increase in the master's programs. i think the latest figures are 26% of u.s. a masters level graduate students now enrolled in fully online programs. so we have to, even though that may not have changed my teaching much, it may not have changed tom's teaching, we have to acknowledge that there are large numbers of students who are learning this way and i will say, in our school, it has significantly diversified the student population, the online population is more diverse than that traditional population. the statistics again, they bearing out nationally ? is the has to be proven and it has the potential for first-generation students and working parents and people constrained on time can't physically get to campus, veterans, i think we have whole populations of students for whom online spaces can create more access . >> tom, you said you are a bit skeptical. let's talk about moves. this new sharon of massive online open campus, it was free now there are small charges people pay sometimes but massive was the idea and somehow a professor would reach tens of thousands of people and this was going to be a great thing. no not really on board with that idea . >> no . >> well, to go back to that conversation with cynthia, first, i think the technological optimism was overblown about this, always. i remember when the debates began in the 90s and sometimes we lose sight of the technology that's open-ended. we lose sight of the limitation on human beings. at some point were running up against the natural limitations on how human beings learn and the tech knowledge he can keep getting better but that doesn't change the way your brain is structured. when it comes to the democratization of education, moves that idea is that 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, and i first noticed this when i was teaching a course on cold war history and distance options made it possible for students in the former soviet bloc to join my class they couldn't come to the united states but suddenly someone says i live in poland and i'm a student here. that's great, it made the class better. for that student there is no other way to get there. i think the problem with distance options as it puts a huge responsibility on the student to be organized . >> students are not incredibly disciplined and organized and i think that promise of we will just put it all out there and you will approach it with the diligence that you are under the guidance, one of the problems with distance courses is one student said, it's online and i was gonna go to class but i will get it online . >> and then maybe they don't or they have a question that goes by that may have wanted to spur the class with. so, i think, for one group of students, especially people in less developed countries, this is great, for students who are going to have to rely on a huge amount of discipline and initiatives when it's available to them that has encouraged bad habit . >> i want to tap into the knowledge that both of you expressed in your books recently , cynthia, yours on seeing the world how u.s. universities make knowledge and local era. both of your books seem to me to be broadly dealing with a problem you see on the potential limits of we are putting on knowledge. talk to me about the lessons you learned from writing that and how they might apply to the universities as you see them . >> one of the things you learned in the book, the research council studying 12 universities, we found in how they organize knowledge in the world outside the u.s. is that social science is systematically discourage graduate students from engaging in empirical research overseas. they do that because of their perceptions of the best ways to secure a tenure-track position is by working on, there are lots of different reasons, so she'll just do that because they feel these positions are better secured through working on domestic issues. political scientists have other reasons in the economist were working globally but with the universal model essentially. but across the board, there was not real deep conceptual texture lies knowledge, the way i think when tom was strained and i was trained when there was a lot more rees doors and a lot more resources and funding going into graduate support for training overseas, those kinds of things were drying up and faculty were discouraging students from doing it and saying the best way to get a job is to work on a domestic issue. that was really a surprise but the data of the interviews were clear . >> that's really interesting because it raises the question, are universities playing lip service to globalization but actually -- >> yes, one of the things you find is the tension between specialized knowledge and cosmopolitan citizens. a lot of the push of the last two years has been , arise in study abroad has been predominately in short-term abroad courses and they can be real learning experiences but are often geared more towards creating cosmic bulletin citizens and advocate worldwide rather than developing public knowledge that is rich and deep and embedded in the local culture . >> it's not enough to buy a euro pass ? >> that's important as part of the process but not even a euro pass is at least two months, so you are already talking about a longer experience . >> your book is entitled the death of expertise, tom, i wondered, it probably had an audience in mind that was not just universities. talk to me about whether you see a death of expertise and universities also . >> universities, where the intellectuals have to bear their burden is related to the point cynthia was making that universities have become increasingly the province of jargon and specialized theory, rather than knowing and rather than no worse. i think a lot of universities the term public intellectual and something you're doing right now. part of the problem cynthia was talking about with mobilization and traveling, there was at least, and political science there was a strong attack on area specialists. the idea that you could learn to speak indonesian and studied the indonesian system is for saps. what matters is empirical high- quality scientific testable data for a particular model. so, a gap started to develop between the ability of the academics to talk about the area and what the public needed to know. i still put most of the burden on the public, the public doesn't ask these questions and they don't pay attention but, intellectuals and academics have to bear their share . >> they should play a greater role in engaging the public . >> yes. it's not fun. this is something, and a pleasant environment like this is wonderful but sometimes, giving a public lecture when you're talking about something controversial, it can be unpleasant. that i would argue, that is part of our obligation to society to engage in those things . >> i want to ask you both about a trend we have been seeing lately, the last couple years in international enrollment in the united dates. the data we've been reporting from the institute of international education shows that for at least two years, there's been a decline in the number of new international students coming to the united states. some people are speculating that perhaps this is a result influenced by president trump and the administration's policies on student visas and immigration. i wonder if you have concerns about the decline and the international enrollment and if you have theories on what might be causing it . >> i had some concerns obviously, i'm a proponent of global peace and scholars but one thing i would say is that i think there's a maximum capacity that we will always hit with in person exchanges, whatever they are. globally at something like 2% of students that are participating in some sort of in person face-to-face exchange. one of the things that's underexplored in the tech issue but the exciting new direction in virtual exchange. i think obama announced an initiative in 2015 to fund virtual exchange. now another has funded it as well which takes high quality, semester long courses for students and brings them together and rigorous raise, it's not just one week of learning. when we think about international exchange, we have to think about the point of it. we want deep engagement that house people cross boundaries and reduce polarization inside and outside of the country. ideally, international exchange can do that. i think that coming physically to one country is not the only way to do that. i have concerns and i think there is a connection to the band but i think there are other ways we can achieve some of the same goals . >> tom, do you have any thoughts on that trend of inflow being reduced into the united states? >> i'm not known as anyone who is steeped in criticism of the president's administration but i don't think that, i think at some point you reach a nap little topping out level and i will say something counterintuitive which may be that there's a positive effect underlying this. one thing i noticed when i was writing the death of expertise is how many small colleges had rebranded themselves as universities. in ways that made no sense. if you came from the academic world there's a huge difference between the college and the university, suddenly you had very small colleges or state colleges that were re-branding themselves as though they have a particle collider and are what i realized they were doing was rebranding to attract foreign students. foreign students don't want to come to a college and i'm not sure it's healthy to build programs at schools already on shaky academic ground, primarily organized around drying and on foreign money. if that starts to settle back down and student say they could get some courses by distance, that may actually be a good thing because i think the explosion of programs was unsustainable and i think we are seeing that and i don't think it has anything to do with trump . >> this could be a supply and demand issue that naturally would happen in any administration? >> we are social scientists so we don't have the data yet and going on the rule that and it does count as data, anecdotally i already saw this drop-off in some of my classes and i saw this drop-off long before trump was president . >> i will ask the magic one question of each of you. if you could wave one wave of the wand tomorrow to fix one thing in higher education, what would it be? >> easy. i have to tell you, i'm still signing approval forms on paper that has carbon copies. i can't tell you how many generations behind we are in terms of matching where students are in the seamlessness that their lives are outside of campus they can order a car from their phone, i think i bought a house from my phone with the docusign, but i can't approve a course through the form, we are so far behind technologically, if i could get a nap to approve student forms to let them register for the seamless life that exists outside of campus, if we could bring that tech and innovation to campus to make things smoke -- flow more smoothly we'd see much more resilience . >> it's about cutting the bureaucracy and innovation and a culture of change that will recognize that the way we work on campus is so far removed from how our younger generation is living their lives that it causes frustration for them in ways that lead to failure to persist another anxiety . >> tom, wave your wand . >> i will and with an argument, the virtualization of education including the virtual programs and all that stuff, the one thing i would waive my wand and say is, to the extent that this is based on the idea that everybody needs to go to college, i would stop saying that. we have propagandize multiple generations of young people into believing that the only path in life is to go to college and if you can't go to a residence college you go to a distance college and if you can't do that, take courses. grand that people demographically who have had some college or not really a college experience. there are lots of jobs and lots of past the happiness that don't involve college and we need to stop saying that expect that's controversial and a subject for another discussion. listen, i think we are out of time but this is a great talk, thank you cynthia and tom and thank you all for being here and have a great day. [ applause ] >> thank you. senate leaders have announced an agreement to hold two test votes thursday afternoon on government funding legislation. both need 60 votes to advance. the first would advance an amendment to fund the federal government through september 30 and includes trump's proposal for border funding and would temporarily prevent deportation of some illegal immigrants. the second vote would advance a democratic amendment to reopen the federal government through february 8 and also pay for disaster relief. roll call reports there's no indication whether either measure could reach the 60 vote threshold. as the shutdown continues, watch the house on c- span and the senate on cspan-2. sac c-span where history unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television company. today, we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress , the white house, the supreme court and public policy events in washington d.c. and around the country. c-span is but you by your cable or satellite provider. here's a look at life coverage when they as the partial government shutdown enters it 33rd day. on c-span, the house is back for legislative business at noon to consider a bill that would reopen the government through september 30. members also vote on another spending bill debated last week that would fund government agencies through february 28. on cspan-2, british prime minister, theresa may takes questions on brexit for members of the house of commons followed by the u.s. conference of mayors holding a news conference ahead of their winter meeting in washington at 11 am eastern time the senate returns to debate whether to include transporter wall proposal and a temporary dock affixing legislation to reopen the government and on cspan-3. there is a review of the selective service this them that maintains information of people eligible to serve in the military.

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