 Again, let me welcome everybody to the Future Trends Forum. I'm delighted to see you all here today. We have a terrific guest who has written an astonishing book, a really, really powerful book, one that I think everybody in higher education needs to consider. The book that we're talking about called The Fantasy Economy is an extraordinary book and it starts with a premise that I'm going to try to recapitulate here, and Professor Krauss will tell me if I've gotten it wrong. The idea is that starting in the 1970s, the American economy started becoming more and more unequal. Wages and overall compensation began to plateau. And the idea came forth. The idea was that the responsibility for this economy was education. That if education, K through 12, higher education and grad schools, if only they did a better job, people would have more human capital and would get ahead in the economy. They'd be able to meet the economy's needs. Everyone would be able to make more money and the things would be just much better. And Professor Krauss is telling, this has been a huge driver behind all kinds of education reform from within higher education in K through 12 from school boards, but especially from corporations, nonprofits and think tanks. And he calls us The Fantasy Economy because it doesn't describe what's really going on in the economy. And he says that it's had pernicious influence on higher education and how we think about that reform. It's a fascinating and powerful charge. I should make you rethink a lot of what we know about higher ed. So before I say anything more about it, let me bring the author up on stage. Greetings, Professor Krauss. Hi, Brian. Very good to see you. It's good to see you. Thanks for having me. Oh, a pleasure. Where have we found you today? Is this your office? Oh, yeah. This is my office at the University of Wisconsin. Excellent. Well, if you're in Wisconsin right now, I have to ask the question, which is, how's the weather there right now? Well, we didn't really have winter this year. What? Not much of one. So it's like, I think it's like 50 degrees here. We're very close to Minneapolis, St. Paul. So at least, you know, in this part of the state, very, very little snow and quite a bit warmer than usual. So. Wow. Wow. Wow. That's extraordinary. Yeah. Yeah, it sure is. It sure is. Well, before before I start herring off after climate change, let me stay on the topic and say, we have a tradition of asking people to introduce themselves by asking them to describe what they're working on next. What does the next year hold for you? So, I mean, what projects, what ideas are top of your agenda? Well, you know, I'm spending a lot of time working to try to kind of preserve the University of Wisconsin system as we know it. President of the United Falcons, which is our local union here at UW-Refalst. We don't have collective bargaining because we're precluded by law from collective bargaining in Wisconsin and higher ed. But we do have a dedicated state AFT branch. And we have we have locals on pretty much all the comprehensive campuses across the system. And right now we're working very hard to try to essentially maintain the University of Wisconsin system that is such a great system of public higher education, but is increasingly under threat. So a lot of my my efforts revolve around that. And the book, of course, is is what got me into this whole discussion about not only K-12, but higher education. So it's really given me a foundation to to kind of better understand a lot of what's going on and a lot of the forces that are really trying to transform higher ed for the worse, in my view. Well, we're living in Wisconsin, teaching in Wisconsin for the past 20 years. That's quite a context for this work. Yeah, for sure. You know, we do have we've gone through, I should say, a number of changes. And, you know, in the last 10 to 15 years, the state funding has just been reduced in Wisconsin and all the states. Very, you know, gradually to the point where a very small percentage of our budget on campus comes from the state. And so we're tuition driven like like most schools are. And so that the forces of austerity are really kind of bearing down on us. And this is happening, of course, at a time when the state of Wisconsin and many other states are are enjoying record surpluses, which, you know, makes no sense. Right. I mean, it's not like there's some sort of shared sacrifice or something to the contrary, the state of Wisconsin. You know, we saw the what happened at West Virginia here, West Virginia University recently. I mean, West Virginia is another state that has a significant budget surplus. North Carolina, I read about some things that were happening in North Carolina. This stuff's happening all over the country. So, you know, we're we're just trying to work very hard to kind of maintain what what really has been built over a period of over 100 years in Wisconsin and and really, really must be maintained. I think if we want to if we want to, you know, be true to the Wisconsin idea and the role of education and maintaining democracy as well. And as you say that in the chat, our good friend and American historian, Phil Katz, just put in whatever happened to the grand Wisconsin idea. Well, that's a great question. It ostensibly still exists. But, you know, we're being squeezed so much on campus that it's it's almost hard to find it in many public discussions. You know, all we hear about is is belt tightening and more efficiencies and we need to maximize a number of students. And and, you know, with the assumption being that we can't be a public institution again, a truly public institution again. And, you know, I and many others reject that categorically. And this is a political choice that's been imposed on us and really public systems in 49 other states that that could be otherwise. And, you know, privatization, austerity does not benefit students. It does not benefit the public. It certainly does not benefit democracy. And, you know, that's what what AFT Wisconsin and I think unions actually across the country are standing up forcefully for public higher ed. As as as we should. And if folks, if you're new to the form, we've had some sessions on academic labor over the years, including a couple on union organization. So you can just take a look at the archive and grab some more. Professor Krauss, I have to say your your book is so fascinating. It's so cleanly organized, clearly argued, meticulously sourced. I mean, your your dissection of different pools of data about labor market, about academic outcomes, I think is essential. And I'm really glad to see you, you know, getting us to pay more attention to the Bureau of Statistics data, which is so solid and so important. But I want to start by asking a couple of general questions about this argument. I think you heard my my intro, where I was I was trying to trying to recap the argument as far as I can understand it. And I think a key part of this is this is this shift for education reform to think about education, all of education, cave her gray, as they say, right, as primarily about economic economic development, and that this is kind of the education's failures are why wage and compensation growth has stagnated for a generation and only only we could fix education. And then that could be better for the for the labor market. Am I doing a good job paraphrasing so far? Am I missing? Yeah, more or less. I think that's that's a fair characterization of what I call the fantasy economy. And and I know John Shelton was on your show last year, what, you know, John refers to as the education myth, that the education system can somehow magically overcome you know, inequality, wage stagnation and so forth. Yeah, I think that's a fair fair description. Well, it goes back in part to what both you and John, as well as Tressie Codham's site, I'm blanking on the author right now. Let's say it's Grubb, who came up with the the Education Gospel. Yeah, Grubb and Lazarus. And yep, yep, the faith and the book. Yeah, you go to education and it transforms your world, then it makes everything better. And if you do that, we don't need to worry about anything else. We don't need to worry about union membership. We don't need to worry about the minimum wage. We don't need to worry about labor laws or taxation or anything else that that education is the gleaming grail that will solve everything that will heal the land. Well, I was going to ask another question, but actually before I can even get to there, one of the participants asked the question I was going to put to you. So let me let me let him do it because it's much better that way. This is from our good friend in Florida, Glenn McKee. And he asks, what's your opinion of human capital theory? So Glenn has a book and I have. So I know I want you to cut this. No, that's a that's a great question. I deal with it in the book, not in extensive detail, but it is an important part of the story. John Sheldon's book actually deals with it in much more detail the education myth. Human capital theory has origins in the 1950s. Some economists basically, you know, formulate this theory that really tied income to individuals, education, formal education and skills. And as early as the 1950s, human capital theory was used to explain inequality, was it was used to explain more or less differences in wage rates. People that got more education would receive higher incomes and people who had typically lesser education would receive lower incomes. You know, in some respects, human capital theory is you know, has merit, but there are so many flaws in human capital. You know, we can't. And this is really one of the major points of the book. I mean, we can't create more jobs for people with college degrees or master's degrees or whatever by cranking out more people with college degrees or master's degrees. That's not how the economy works. That's how the labor market works. Yeah. So the idea that that that if everybody gets a degree of two year, four year, whatever and then goes out into the labor market. I mean, the reason I call the book the fantasy economy is because the real economy is still dominated by predominantly low education, low wage, low income jobs, largely non unionized jobs. And and so what we have in the United States today is the best educated population in history competing for what is still predominantly a low education, low skilled, low wage labor market, which results necessarily in large, you know, high levels of under employment. But then there's also a lot of people that work, you know, in jobs that require their degrees that are paid relatively low. And they're, you know, they got the same education they would have gotten 30 and 40 and 50 years ago. But if you are a teacher, if you're a civil servant today to give two examples and public sector wages have been held down over a period of decades, essentially, then jobs that used to be essentially middle class jobs are no longer middle class jobs, right? We see this throughout, you know, government employment and the education sector in particular, many nonprofit jobs, too. So human capital theory, I mean, if it would be great if it were, if it were actually true, if your education always, you know, if you've got the right education that it always led, you know, guaranteed, essentially, higher income, right? But there are so many flaws that empirically it's and yet it serves. I mean, we have to remember the context that some of the economists that were pushing human capital theory were basically opposed to the New Deal. We're basically opposed to the social welfare state. This is not simply an abstract, you know, theory that's created outside of history. It's created, you know, by a number of economists, some of whom are at least hostile to, you know, government policy. And so the idea to put it all in the education system, my book focuses, you know, largely on the Reagan administration to the president. But I mean, really, that that emphasis has been around long before the Reagan administration and dates, you know, at least to the 1950s. Well, one of the things that I admire about your book is that you you trace the influences behind these arguments where you you keep a steady eye on corporate funding and on foundations and on associations and you identify their own biases and their own interests, which I think is is very striking. I mean, I think readers won't be surprised to see the Gates Foundation come in for criticism, but there's there's there's quite a bit more. Well, Glenn, thank you for that perfect question. And Neil, thank you for the for the excellent answer. In the in the chat, we've had all kinds of comments, and I'm going to share them with you afterwards, because this is great. There's another question that comes up from our friends who might be in Scotland today. I'm not sure Donald is from Scotland, but he's a traveling guy. And he asks a question that kind of reverses the terms of the of the argument a little bit. Didn't higher education create neoliberalism? Well, is it the cause? Not the victim. It has its origins in the Hayek, the economists, but it was US academia who formulated it through Chicago with Milton Friedman and business schools. Um, that OK, that's a that's a really good question. So individual scholars, the field of economics certainly did play a big role in actually formulating this thing called neoliberalism, right? There's no question about that. I don't deal too much with that in the book. I deal with mainly the politics of it. And and what I argue is that that, you know, the 70s and 80s, well, 70s neoliberalism is still kind of hasn't been sort of fully adopted yet, really, until the election of Reagan. And that's kind of what really is a watershed moment in modern history, where where the government is seen as the enemy and free markets will save us. And what I argue in the book, and this is through basically an analysis of funded research, I mean, the Reagan administration was was was very well organized in terms of funding research. They funded research at Teachers College, Columbia University in an operation called the Institute on Education and Economy, which plays a major role in the book. And they also funded the Hudson Institute study Workforce 2000. So they fund and they funded research at by the way, a number of other major universities. But the theme of all the research was, you know, the workforce is is really inadequate because the school system is failing and to revamp and restructure the entire school system. And the argument is always because all these high skill, high education jobs are right on the horizon there. Before long, this isn't the 1980s, before long, you're going to need a college degree just to do anything. Is this is conventional wisdom. And I grew up in the 1980s. I remember these arguments, you know, these are like on the front page, literally on the front page of the New York Times. And that was mostly Reagan money and business money that was behind those claims. And this is when the skills gap is born and all the rest of it. And what I argue in the book is that really, the neoliberalism agenda is so incredibly unpopular that, you know, it's a major assault on unions. It's it's basically deregulating everything and lowering corporate taxes and offshoring of jobs and the loss of industry and all this stuff. You can't go to Ohio or, you know, Michigan or Wisconsin or any place in 1984 and give a speech and say, hey, this is what we're going to do, vote for us. It's not going to work, right? But what you can do is basically say, hey, there's a huge skills gap. There's all that we're in the information age that becomes the knowledge economy and the schools have to be fixed because pretty soon our students are going to need a college degree just to do any job. There isn't the knowledge economy never came there. That's the economy. Now, I argue in the book is not just looking at the labor market. It's not a knowledge economy. It's a predominantly low education, low skill, low wage economy in which really a minority of jobs require college degrees and certainly a very small minority require advanced. Um, you know, so I think the origin back to the question, the origins of neoliberalism certainly are in the academy. There's no question, right? But then, but then basically the corporate, you know, corporate interests in the Reagan administration kind of get together and say, you know, let's just change the debate. Let's not talk about the loss of industry and going after unions. Hope, you know, wholesale, rest of it. Let's talk about the schools as being the only, only, only source of economic opportunity. And that's really to the present day. That's really how we think about education right up to the present day. And so, yeah, the origins of neoliberalism are many and it does have philosophical independence in the academy. I would agree with that. Well, thank you. But thank you for the great answer, my very, very thoughtful answer. And Neil, excuse me, Donald, thank you for the excellent question. He adds in the chat, good point about the real economy, not being the economy, higher education thought would be AI will accelerate this. We can come back to that point, but just a quick kind of station identification moment here. This is the time for all of you to put forth your questions and your comments. So if you really have a question you want to put to us, that you want me to put to Professor Krauss, just hit the Q&A box. Again, that's the bottom of the screen, white strip, question mark. Or if your camera is on and you want to join us, you can tell from visual evidence that you do not have to have the beard to be on stage on the form. So just just hit the raise hand button would be glad to beam you up on stage. Also, if you haven't had a chance to read this book on the bottom left of the screen, you should see kind of tan colored box. That's just the fantasy economy. Click on that, that'll take you to the book's page. Chris Aldrich does a great job of sharing a book on the topic you just mentioned, which I don't know. It's by Orestes Naomi and Conway, the big myth how American business tossed a loath government love the free market. That's there in the chat. We also had an observation from my namesake in Michigan, Brian Dayo. I'm just going to read this from the chat. He says, after decades of privatization, austerity, the gutting of liberal education, public universities, extreme vocationalization, online education, the student debt crisis, the neoliberal university is looking more like a site of labor discipline these days. Do you want to respond to that? Or wow, there's a lot there. I mean, I certainly agree. I mean, that's the situation again, going back to what we face in Wisconsin and what many public systems face across the country. What I find is that austerity is kind of the vehicle by which you bring about these major policy changes, because you don't want to have a debate on the merits about whether or not we ought to have, you know, liberal arts majors across Wisconsin or across the country. What you do is you squeeze public higher ed to the point where certain programs are dropped and others, you know, STEM primarily business are propped up, even though the number of STEM jobs is actually quite small, it's been small for decades. It's not projected to grow very much. But yeah, and it really is, I mean, I think the last phrase, the questioner used a labor discipline, I mean, a huge percentage somewhere in the neighborhood of half, as you know, Brian, of all people who teach in higher ed are part-time or adjuncts or, you know, teach one, two, three courses, whatever are not on the tenure track, right? Have no job security, have no, you know, have no, in this day and age, you often don't have a job guaranteed the next semester, right? It's semester by semester at many institutions. And I was talking to a class recently, I said, imagine if you went to, you know, your doctor's office, and half of the MDs in the building were paid very low, had jobs at multiple hospitals, right? Maybe at multiple doctor's offices, and they were actually quite good and they were different ages, some were 30, some were 65. I mean, they were all different ages, but you couldn't tell as the patient, right? I mean, we wouldn't stand for that. We wouldn't stand for that. But in higher education, not only do we stand for it, we're often told, well, that's just how things are now. I mean, that's how austerity is pitched, right? It's not promoted. It's not sold, because it can't be. So it's just basically, well, sorry, public institutions are just so yesterday, right? I mean, yeah, I thought that was a great quote. And the more I think about it, I could talk about it for a whole hour, and then we have some other questions coming up. Well, we have a bunch of questions, and thank you for the answer. Brian, thank you for that question. Again, folks, the Q&A box is there for you. Just press that button or if you want to join us on stage. None of my cats have yet made an appearance, which is shocking. They may still, which may lure you all onto the stage. We have a question from a friend who couldn't be here today, and he addressed a particular point. Which was, let's see, this is from our good friend, Keele, who says that in your blog, I could deem, now I'm reading from him, you seem to come out against colleges issuing credentials, and he quotes you saying colleges and universities can't change the labor market by giving people as many possible degrees, including credentials, micro-credentials, stackable credentials. So then he asks, do you share his view that colleges should be relieved of their responsibility for credentialing and more job training shifted to employers? Yes, generally speaking, and that's one thing I don't deal with in the book, is job training. But yeah, I absolutely think that job training should go to employers. I mean, it used to be 30, 40, 50 years ago, a fairly significant part of many corporations, many business models would be, job training would be something that businesses would do. The whole notion about credentials and stackable credentials and all this terminology, I mean, when you look at the jobs that actually exist, there are very, very few that require, formally, typically require some kind of credential that's not, let's say, a high school degree or a two-year degree, or a four-year degree or whatever, right? So the market for this is essentially just non-existent, really, as I see it. I mean, you have these firms selling all this stuff to higher ed, which is because higher ed is portrayed as permanently in crisis. So we start creating these credentials, but then when you look at the jobs in the world and the certain requirements that are typically needed for different kinds of jobs, you don't see that stuff out there. There are some jobs that do require certificates. It's a pretty small percentage of jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks this as well. But yeah, I mean, in general, I think the questioner is correct that, yeah, most job training, a lot of job training should be done by employers. Absolutely, absolutely. Well, Keele, thank you. Thank you for that question. This is Neil Keele. Your name's almost identical. Sorry, Neil, this is the focus of Keele. And he's done great, great research on this subject. Thank you. Thank you for that answer. We have another comment that came in from, let's say, oh, the chat box is on fire now. This is great. We've got a quick question for the chat box. If I anonymize the chat box and lightly edit it, do you mind if I post the contents to my blog? Just quickly let me know. Usually people are fine with it, but let me know if you want me to skip something. Here's another question which addresses one aspect of your argument in the fantasy economy. It's from Karen Belnier, who says, as someone who is now working in professional learning and continuing ed, the skills gap doesn't seem to resonate with the business people I talk to. The business people I talk to are much more concerned with behavioral choices and skills. If you could speak to that. Yeah, I think of a couple things. One, the early research early in the story I tell, the National Center for Education and the Economy did a study, their first study, which was actually cited by the Sandia report, which was suppressed by the George H. W. Bush administration, found that a very, very small percentage of employers actually were concerned about not having sufficient skills, but some other employers talked about personal habits and things like timeliness or what have you. So that strain I think has been there for a long period of time. And there is a difference between and I didn't look at this in detail, but I read enough reports to at least comment on it. There is a difference between what individual CEOs would say and their trade groups, their interest groups would say. The interest groups, the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, there's never not going to be a skills gap. There can't not be a skills gap. It's a political position. Unemployment could be 20% and the Chamber of Commerce would breathlessly say we can't find enough skilled workers. But then if you went to managers or individual CEOs or bosses, you would probably get a different story. Some would say that, but others might say something different, but they're just speaking for themselves. And the interest groups are the ones driving policies. So that concern about employee habits, that's actually been around a long time. Yeah, which it's distinct from the skills that we would, I think, associate writing, speaking, organizational skills, certain language skills or those kinds of things. Oh, thank you. That's a terrific answer. Thank you very, very much. We have more questions pouring in. We have a question from a good friend who just stepped out. So I want to make sure he gets this in the recording. This is from Kendall Bryant who asks, quote, do you have any analysis on how all of this relates to systemic racism? That's an excellent question. One of the major themes of the book is that really since the modern education reform movement, which is basically the 1980s, education reform, first in K-12 and now in higher ed, is really pitched large, to the academy and to educators, is pitched largely in terms of being able to overcome racial inequality, racism, systemic racism, history of, you know, histories of legacy of slavery and of segregation and so forth. I mean, if you read education reformers today in higher ed, the Gates Foundation you mentioned earlier, Brian, they're framing their whole argument largely in terms of racial inequality and systemic racism. But the point I make is that, you know, you can't overcome systemic racism. We can't educate our way out of that. We can't educate our way out of poverty. Because no matter, you know, no matter how many, and I'm a, you know, I'm a strong supporter in absolutely sending everybody to higher ed who wants to go to higher ed. I would make public higher education free, absolutely. There's no question. But if we say we're going to alleviate poverty and, you know, blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately affected by poverty, by sending everyone, first by changing K-12 schools, and then by sending, you know, all low income students on for two-year degree, four-year degree, that's not going to do it. That can't do it because that won't change the jobs that exist. That won't bring people's wages up, right? So, I mean, I think it's, if we're going to, you know, focus on education to address systemic racism, it's not going to work. It can't work. Just like it can't address this, you know, structural poverty. I mean, poverty is about the amount of money that you earn, right? It's about the wages that you make and your standard of living. And we can change the education system any which way. We can have all the debates and we can make a million more, you know, charter schools and all the rest of it. That's not going to change the fact that down the street, a warehouse went up and there's 2,000 jobs. And by the way, Amazon is going to fight to the death and make sure that those jobs aren't unionized. And, you know, we just fixed the schools and that's the economy. That's the economy. So, yeah, systemic racism is a huge problem. But, you know, to get at it through, of course it is. To get at it through the education system is, it can't work. It can't work. It's more complicated than that for sure. Okay. Well, Kendall, thank you for the question. I hope you're hearing this in the recording. I really appreciate it. And thank you, Neil, for that reply. We have two questions that respond to this. So, I want to give them or respond to what you're just saying before that as well. So, I want to make sure we put them in now. And there's another follow-up from Glenn McGee who pushes back and says, so no 9 million jobs vacant? I'm guessing, Neil, you're going to say they're 9 million very low-skill, no higher education required jobs. That could be, Glenn, that could be the case. If I had some time, I would look it up. There's like about 164 million jobs, I think, in the United States. So, at any one time, there are several million job openings because people quit, they retire, they die, they change jobs. So, I mean, there are, at any one time, several million vacant jobs, for sure. But that number, again, is how many jobs are there? According to BLS, it's over 160 million. I forget the exact number. So, the vacancy rate, that's one of these numbers that's invoked quite frequently. But there's always a lot of vacant jobs. By the way, that's not a lot. Relative 9 million, assuming that's correct, out of 162 or 4 million. And it's about about half as many jobs as there are people in the U.S., roughly? About that, because there's about 335 or so million. Okay, good, good. Well, as usual, Glenn, thank you for the question. And that's a fun one to chew on. But we also had a response that came from Elaine at the University of Albany, SUNY, who is a library strategist, which means I just love her automatically. And she says, here in New York State, two colleges, Casanova and College of St. Rose, are closing, and many state schools are carrying significant debt. Can you elaborate on austerity, being an artifice, if this is happening? So Albany is special for me, because I went to SUNY Albany, so I certainly know that city well in the University. But there's different things going on, private schools versus public schools. And most of my analysis is on public schools, because over 70% of students do attend public institutions. So why private schools might be consolidating or closing in some cases, it's not an unrelated question, but it's different, right? Because they haven't relied on state funding the way public institutions have. And I think what's happened is over the decades, you know, states, all states really, it's happened everywhere. It's just to, it's a matter of degree, have scaled back the public contribution to public higher, right? So, you know, now states are being told to address, and this is a coordinated effort, by the way. This very clearly seems to me to be a coordinated effort across multiple states right now to make public universities address deficits, which many of them have had for many, many years, but all of a sudden just became pressing when so many states have budget surpluses. But when you contribute less over a period of decades, austerity happens one year at a time. Inequality happens one year at a time. So when you create over a period of decades basically tuition-driven institutions, which is what we have, then institutions are all sweating every minute of the year looking at the numbers. How many do we have coming in? How many do we have coming in? Oh, wait, the numbers are down. And then you ask a question, well, are the numbers always supposed to go up? I mean, a lot of people don't necessarily have an answer, right? But we've created this situation. It's kind of a perfect storm where states have scaled back their contribution and we are tuition-driven primarily. So if the numbers do go down, which the numbers for many institutions have gone down from basically an all-time high from 2010, 2011, 2012, then all of a sudden, a lot of things are on the chopping block that didn't used to be on the chopping block. And then you get programs that don't have real strong defenders in the business community or in the foundation community. Before you know it, I mean, they're just going to be eliminated. I mean, I have a whole chapter in the book on the politics of no child left behind and how we got to standardized tests in the United States. And one of the things I discovered in the pages of Education Week in the early 90s was that reformers knew how unpopular. They were very well aware of how unpopular standardized tests were. And so led basically by the Business Roundtable and Pew, they really kind of drove this effort, created a very public campaign that ultimately culminated and no child left behind, which by the way, wouldn't necessarily have even passed were it not for 9-11, which really changed the politics, right? Because it was in conference committee on 9-11 and it wasn't a foregone conclusion it was going to pass. But once standardized tests were imposed, that's how education is now, right? Even though they've done nothing for educational, in terms of mitigating poverty and lessening inequality has grown since no child left behind, right? Wages have stagnated for 60 to 80% of the population. That's my real fear about how austerity right now, which by the way, is a political choice during a time of prosperity, is going to be used to fundamentally remake higher education as we speak. I mean, just read the higher ed, higher ed press every single day. There are more stories around the country and the stories are always the same. They're always, well, there's a deficit and then you look the state up and oh wait, they've got, I mean, North Carolina has like a $33 billion surplus or something crazy, right? And yet public universities in North Carolina are fighting for their lives right now. Right? And once, you know, I mean, Congress tomorrow could pass a law and repeal no child left behind. It's just the law. It's not a legal question or a constitutional question. But that would require a whole lot of effort and I'm not, I don't underestimate the effort that that would take. But once a public system has changed, once we have English majors only available at the flagships and at private schools, I mean, that's it. That's it. And, you know, higher education itself, higher education administrators, leaders, I mean, they all accept austerity like it's God given, like it's gravity, you know? I mean, they, you know, it's just how it is now. Just how it should, you got to get realistic. You know, I hear that time a lot too. Well, we see where things are headed and it's, and in some places they're already there now. And, you know, I think it's time for education to turn up for education, right? Because austerity particularly, again, during a time of prosperity in most states is indefensible, is indefensible, particularly for all those interests and all those groups who are invoking, you know, a shortage of skilled workers and a knowledge economy and all this kind of stuff. I mean, which is it? Which isn't, right? So, no, that's a great question. Neil, do you, do you use Twitter at all? I do not. No, no. I'll just put this in the chat. There is a colleague who is at the University of California system. He is attending a California Assembly Budget Subcommittee hearing on higher education finance. And he's, he's live tweeting the discussion. And the first comment he says is, is the beginning of what legislatures, legislatures believe will be years of discussion around austerity budgeting, austerity budgeting, right away. I just put that in the chat right now. Oh, that's great. Thank you. Well, we have, we have 15 or 14 minutes left. So maybe we can take, we can spin from what you just said and start talking about some of the directions that we could go in, in terms of what we can do. We have a great, typically deep question from our dear friend, Tom Hames, coming to us from Texas who asks, well, how do we decouple education from being a dysfunctional employee pipeline and to being a citizen creator? That's a great question. I think for starters, what we need in the United States is a very different discussion of economic opportunity because we can't, we can't talk about education differently until we first talk about economic opportunity differently. Because once we talk about it, economic opportunity much more broadly and say, collective bargaining is important. The social welfare state is important. We have to look at the culture of business, right. Which again is, you know, you're mentioning books. I mean, I was just looking on my shelf this morning, this book, The Man Who Broke Capitalism by David Gells about Jack Welch. I mean, there are all kinds of books written by non-fiction authors about, hey, capitalism in the 50s and 60s and even into the 70s was quite different, right. Employees were seen as an asset and then they became a cost, right. So I think that back to the question, I think it'd be very difficult to redefine or reframe the purpose of education, which by the way, I think is absolutely essential. And I advocate that until we first talk differently and reframe the whole discussion about economic opportunity. And we say, we assert and we affirm that all work has dignity, that the minimum wage has to come up with inflation and the whole series of other policies. And I talk about them a little bit towards the end of the book. Anti-trust has to be taken seriously again and large corporations have to be broken up because that's making stuff cheaper for us, but it's also making the cost of labor cheaper as well. I think once we start, I mean, these two things can happen simultaneously, but I think that if we start trying to discuss education and the purposes of education differently, in the absence of a larger discussion about how more economic opportunity works, education is just going to get killed because 18-year-olds come to college and they say, they've grown up in a society that says, this is like, this is my ticket. So this is my ticket to, and so that's all they know, right. People our age know, most of the age of most of us, we know something different, at least somewhat different. And so I think the discussion of economic opportunity has to take place as well in order for us to talk differently about education. Okay, well, that's a key point, and you sound, maybe I'm reading too much into this, but you sound like the call that our good friend, Chris Newfield has for rethinking public higher education as a public good, and that should be part of a larger social transformation. Absolutely. We have, to expand on that, another friend of ours, the wonderful Giselle LaRose, who is hopefully coming to us from New Orleans. She's looking forward to reading your book, but also can you tell us more of what your call to action is at the end? So that would be your conclusion, not the epilogue. The epilogue is interesting, but the conclusion, can you add more about what we should be doing? I mean, I think that what I said just a moment ago is the beginning of it. I think we have to rethink, essentially, the last 40 plus years of the political economy that we all take for granted. I think we have to rethink and just take a look at, how has it worked out for most people when a third of the population used to be in a labor union and now that number is about 10%, right? It hasn't worked out very well. So we have to affirm very strongly our commitment to collective bargaining. We have to look very seriously at antitrust and break up large corporations. We have to raise the minimum wage regularly with inflation. We have to do whatever we can. And the Biden administration is trying, at least to do this in some ways, to give employers incentives to build things in the United States and not give them incentives to leave the United States. We have to do all the, and we also have to look very, very closely at the culture of business that we all take for granted, right? A culture that basically says that people at the top and owners and shareholders will be compensated very generously. And then the wages for the remaining, 97%, will be kept down as low, very intentionally, as low as possible. I mean, what Gels talks about in his book on Jack Welch is, that's not how large corporations used to be just a few decades ago. It's not ancient history, right? So I think we need to do all those kinds of things. And then I think we can begin to reclaim the many purposes of education in terms of creating citizens. And I don't dispute the fact that, I mean, if you want to become a teacher, if you want to become a doctor or a lawyer or whatever, you've got to go to school, you've got to get a four year degree for all those things and then more for other jobs. That's always going to be the case. I mean, I would never suggest otherwise. But this tight linkage between education and economic opportunity that we just, we take as a given, we take it for granted, that's what's killing education. That's what's killing education because we can't create jobs. We can't give people raises. We can't do any of those things. We can educate, right? We can educate students to the best of our ability and put them out into the world. And, you know, and then that's it. But if we're held responsible for people's livelihoods, which is, this is the paradigm. This is the fantasy economy. We're held responsible for your livelihood, right? So that's why we have austerity when most states have budget services because we're so weak. The assumption is, well, we're failing, right? We take that as a given. I think we can have those kinds of discussions. Again, once we, you know, once we look very seriously at all the things we take for granted, granted, excuse me, in real liberalism, in terms of policies, business culture, and so forth. There is, well, that's first of all, that's a terrific answer. You're giving us a whole set of marching orders, which is great, which is what we really that's what it was asked for. And I think that's what we need. Friends, if you would like to put in another question, this is your chance. So hit the Q&A button. Every time I say that, it seems like people beat me to it and they start off with questions, which is great. John Hollenbeck asks a very specific question, which is a really nice one. It kind of builds on Tom's question here. I'm humbled by the amount of change that is needed. Can existing higher ed systems really reclaim the citizen emphasis? Well, I mean, they could, I think they could, in a technical sense, right now, because of the discussion in education is basically so dominated by business. I mean, the language, the assumptions, the data. Unless there's a fundamental shift in how education is run essentially, then no, we really can't. Because much of the story I tell, so much of the funded research is directed at education schools. So you have education schools or public policy schools, right? Cranking out this research saying the education system is failing and the workforce is always inadequate. This stuff's happening within ed schools and within policy schools, right? So there has to be a huge shift in how K-12 and higher ed are run for us to get to that point. Because otherwise, what happens, right? Well, of course we should create citizens, but we just, you know, we have to get rid of this major because, I don't know, the local business down the street says they can't find enough employees for this and we have to create a major for them. I mean, that's basically what's playing out in towns across the country. That's how curriculum decisions are often made. Local business leaders say, well, we just can't find enough skilled workers and then before you know it, we're getting rid of departments and we're creating new ones and, hey, everybody has the right to advocate for their interests. I mean, I just think, I think education should advocate for the interests of the education system. And the public and, you know, if that were to happen, I think we could begin to have that larger discussion. Thank you. That was a great question by the way, John. I really appreciate that. And we've had a few more notes. I just, as a facilitator, I had a couple of last things to ask. One is, if you could look ahead, say, 10 years, and if a given state was to adopt your ideas, so, you know, pick a state, you know, New York, Arkansas, whatever, Wisconsin, they start to rethink the political economy the past 40 years, as you said. Start to change their, they start to take the public sector seriously. They reduce the price of colleges. And they, what is, if we just imagine that playing out for 10 years, what does that look like at the end? What kind of the higher education world results? I think that in terms of higher education, it would result in more of a system that was, you know, was truly comprehensive for students that it wouldn't be a higher education system that is increasingly specialized, because the labor market is increasingly specialized. You know, going on your question, I mean, if public funding were restored, it would become a lot less expensive. And I think that would open up greater access. And I think it would obviously have to, you know, it would have to be part of a broader sort of political economy shift in order to get that, you know, to happen. But I think it would be, it would be a higher education system that wasn't constantly under stress, right? That it was viewed as a public good in the same way that the parks and the police department and other agencies are looked at. They're not, you know, the police department is not crime driven, right? I mean, they're funded because we need law enforcement, right? You know, I mean, you wouldn't have to make public higher ed free to get to that point. You could simply restore a lot of the public funding and then make it much more accessible and much less costly. And also give students, you know, I mean, we have students, you know, if you, and this is again playing out around the country, if you, you know, you were going to go to a cool down the road and all of a sudden they got rid of all these liberal arts majors, but you wanted to major in sociology, you wanted to major in history. What do you do? What do you do? Right? 20 years ago, you had that school down the road, 10 years ago, maybe five years ago, now you don't. So it really does, it really does make education, make the things that we, much better educated as well. So you'd have that kind of overall leavening of thought. What a great vision. You know, we are at the end of our hour and we have to wrap things up and I'm amazed that this hour just flew by because you have, this book is so powerful and your charge makes us rethink so much. I really want to thank you, both for the book as well as for spending a wonderful hour with us. But what's the best way to keep up with you and your work, both your scholarship but also your work in the Wisconsin system, trying to undo all of this? Well, I mean, I think that AFT Wisconsin is pretty active in the public debate. These days, I mentioned John Shelton before, John is, John is on Twitter for sure, he's extremely active in the public debate. But that as well as John and I tend to write a lot of columns. I write a lot of columns for the Cap Times, which is a Madison publication, about sort of what's happening about austerity. So there's always something to talk about there, do that pretty regularly and yeah, and any other outlets that I can write for. So keep advocating for the system. Well, well, that's terrific. That's great work. Please keep fighting the fantastic fight. And we will have to check in with you to see where this goes. And I think we'd love to have you back now. Thanks very much, Brian. I really enjoyed it and I enjoyed the questions. And I think it was a great opportunity, a great discussion. Thank you. Oh, my pleasure. The forum is a truly special community. Absolutely. Thank you. Friends, don't leave yet. Let me just wrap things up for you. First of all, I just want to repeat what I just said. You guys are special. These were fantastic, fantastic questions and comments throughout the chat. If you'd like to keep this going on the socials, as they say, please use the hashtag F-T-T-E. You can hit us at Twitter, Mastodon, Threads, Blue Sky, or at my blog. If you'd like to look into our previous sessions, including the one aforementioned with John Shelton or any of our previous ones, touching on anything about the economics and labor of higher education, just go to our archive at tinyurl.com. If you want to look ahead to our other topics that we're talking about, go to the forum website, forum.futureeducation.us and you can see we're talking about everything from new paradigms in higher education, the Department of Education, to leadership from marginalized populations, to education abundance, to educational technology. Thank you all again for participating. It's wonderful to think together with all of you and I really appreciate all that you've contributed. I hope everyone stays well. Those of you who are in the North Country, I hope you get to enjoy the weird lack of winter and or stay warm. I hope everybody is well. We'll see you next time online. Bye-bye.