 So good to virtually see everyone. My name is Amy Layton and I'm the Director of Higher Education here at New America. And I'm really excited about today's event, which is our fourth annual varying degrees event. And it's been really interesting to see how public opinion has and hasn't changed over the last few years. So I just want to walk you quickly through what we're going to be doing today on our agenda slide. So what we're going to do today is we are going to go through our findings of varying degrees this last round that we've done and some key findings. And this is always a favorite for me because it's interesting to see as a sort of high red policy person to see where, you know, where the things that I think sort of are the same as those in the general public and where they're different. But that's pretty interesting for most of the audiences generally. And we're going to have a little interactive thing. So those of you who have been in our live events, know that we have some polling, we're going to have that as well this time. And then after that, we are going to have a panel discussion on love and the time of cholera, or basically a high red polling during the COVID crisis and what on earth does public opinion mean, given that so much is happening and so much is shifting. And then after that we'll go to Q&A, which Angela said at the top that we are, it's going to be conducted through the chat so make sure to put your questions in there. And if you are tweeting, use the hashtag varying degrees. And with that I'm going to kick it over to our deputy director for research, Rachel Fishman, who has been leading this effort this year and for the past four years. Rachel take it away. So today, like Amy says and thank you for that great introduction. I'm going to be talking along with my colleague and co-author Sophie Nguyen about about the findings for varying degree 2020. Our major thing that we want to talk about this year is that the data reflects sentiments pre COVID-19. So we fielded the survey at the very end of what I'd like to call the before times February 11 through the 24th, 2020. So this is really when we saw in, in, you know, we started hearing in Washington State about an outbreak things by the end of that period. We're starting to get bad in New York, but importantly, no state had shut down really. No higher education institution had shuttered. So this is a snapshot in time right before the pandemic hit. But this data is going to provide an important baseline to help measure how perceptions change over the course of the public health and economic crisis, especially as the dust settles from the public health crisis over the next year or two. It's going to leave a large economic crisis in its wake and so we're hoping that this data is going to help inform policy decisions over time as we see how people's feelings about higher education change over time. But what's really important is that even before the pandemic, the value of higher education from Americans is still seen as very strong where they have concerns is over cost access and affordability. And, and at the end of the day, they want any funding increase to be held accountable. A little bit of nitty gritty about the sample. There were, this is a nationally representative survey of 1500 US adults ages 18 or over. The NRC at the University of Chicago field of the survey using the America speak panel, which is predominantly online, but also has a telephone mix, our margin of error was plus or minus three and about a half percent. And we did over samples of African Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans. So if we go to the next slide. I'm going to present what Americans believe about higher ed in 2020. So on the next slide, we're going to first talk about how it creates opportunity. Americans believe in the value of higher ed, approximately four out of five believe it brings more job opportunities. Nearly 80% believe it offers a good return on investment and a staggering 92% they create upward mobility. I mean, these are public opinion numbers you rarely see. Americans are really positive about the value of higher education. When we ask how people would feel recommending various levels of education to a close friend or family member. Very few only 17% would feel comfortable saying to their child or close family member, you know what, just stop with a high school diploma and don't pursue anything after that. On the next slide. The good news is that this is where Democrats and Republicans agree. We have a bipartisan agreement. We're constantly hearing there's, you know, that Democrats and Republicans are very far apart but on higher education creating upward economic mobility and increasing job opportunities they are really aligned. I'm going to turn it over to Sophie who's going to talk about the next battery of questions about cost. Yes, so I'm Sophie. Thank you, Rachel for sharing with us all the good news about higher ed. And then it's my turn to bring you some of the so not good news so as much as Americans feel that they really still that still feel that they can believe in the value of higher ed. They still see a lot of problem with the system as it is right now only one in three American think that high ed is by the way it is. And when we ask the reason why the answer is that way, the most common respond we got was that it's expensive. We really have of American think that people can get high quality ed high education that is also affordable. And when we asked them, some of your questions about funding, they 63% of them think that the government should be responsible for funding high ed, because it's good for society. Only 35% think that the students and family should be the primary funding source because they personally benefit. And in the next slide, you will see that the funding issue is where the Democrat and Republican greatly disagree on 87% of Democrat think that the government should be the primary funder of higher education because it's good for society versus only 37% of Republican feel this way, feel this way. And most most Republican majority of them 60% of them to be exact think that the student family should be responsible for funding it because it's their personal benefit. And in this next slide you'll see that when we ask these questions in a way that then who should fund should be the largest sort of funding for low income students and low income student here we defy those students with family income of less than $45,000 majority. So most Americans do think that the largest funding source for low income students should be for often 30% of 37% of them think that way. But at the same time, a significant 21%, which is one in five American think that the student family should shoulder the cost shoulder most of the cost by borrowing. And in the next slide, you will see that this is where we see a huge disalignments between Democrat and Republican. 49% of Democrats, so half of them think that the largest funding source for low income students should be should come from federal funds versus only 23% of Republican think that way. 35% of Republicans so a third of them think that the students, the student and their family should shoulder that cost by borrowing. But regardless, if you go to the next slide, you will see that a majority of Americans, including Democrat and Republican want to see more government funding into higher education to make it more affordable. So in particular, more than 80% of American adult think that state and the federal government should spend on taxpayer dollars into higher education to make it more affordable. Democrat, more than 90% of them think that way. And 72% and 65% of Republican think that state and federal government should spend more to make higher affordable. Even though you can still see a gap between Democrat and Republican, 72 and 65% is still a majority of Republican think that way. So I would move to the next slide and switch it to Rachel so that she can talk about accountability issues. So like Sophie said, Americans want funding increased, but they also want that investment to be held accountable. On the next slide, Americans believe that colleges and universities should be held accountable for their educational outcomes. In fact, 9 out of 10 believe that colleges and universities need to be transparent about quality indicators such as graduation rates and employment outcomes. On the next slide, we see that most Americans believe institutions should lose some access to taxpayer money if they leave students with bad outcomes. In that regard, the outcomes that rose to the top would institutions should lose taxpayer dollars for low graduation rates, low rates of grads earning a living wage, and high rates of earning less than the average high school graduate. But still resonating with many people over low rates of grads paying down their student loans, so student loan repayment rates and high default rates for student loan repayment. I am going to turn it over to Sophie to talk about one of our very favorite sections that we run every year called perceptions versus reality. Yes. Thank you, Rachel. This is one of our favorite sections in the more than 50 questions we asked in our surveys. And in these questions we asked people to have some of their guesses about some of the facts about higher education issues. And we then compared those answers with the data that we have. I just want to create some activities for you today rather than like you just listening to us speaking by asking you some of the questions we asked people in our surveys. And if you go to the next slide with you will be able to see the first questions. So our first question our first questions for you today is what is the total percentage of you as a dose who ages 18 and above that has done that, and you able to see the questions on your screen and the options for you to choose it to choose from and give you like 10 seconds. Sorry. It's not a long time but hopefully enough time for you to submit your answers. You ready. I guess it's five, four, three, two, one. Yeah, so can we see the responses from our audience please. So I'm not sure if I can I'm able to see your responses. But here is the responses from the respondent about surveys so nearly half of the respondents in our surveys think that, okay, I'm able to see your response right now. So 35% of you think that the percentage of the US adult that had student loan that is between 50 and 80% 838% of you think that is between 30 and 50% and 20% of you think that is less than 30% is actually very close to what Americans respond responded to our survey so most of them 46% of them think that is between 50 and 80% and 30% of them think that is between 30 and 50% and only 16% thing that is less than 30% and in the next slide you will see that in reality, according to our survey conducted by the Federal Reserve Board in 2018 16% of American adults have student loan debt for their all educations. And if we also take into account the educations of the spell that children or grandchildren's the percentage become 21%. So, yes, you will see an over estimation there. In the next questions, so in the next slide please, this is a college graduate with a bachelor's degree who took out student loan what do you estimate is that average debt upon graduation. So, I also have five options for you to choose some and again you have 10 seconds to do so. So I'll give you five more seconds. So can I see the responses from the audience now. So, let's see some more than half of you think that is between 10 and $30,000 a third of you think that is between 30 and $50,000 only 5% of you think that it's $10,000 last on 8% thing that is between 50 and $100,000 and no one thing that is more than $100,000. Can we go to the next slide to see responses from the respondent of the survey. So in our surveys. Most of our respondents so nearly, nearly 50% of them think that the average student debt is between 50 and $100,000. 29% of them think that is between 30 and $50,000 only 1% think that is $10,000 less and astonishingly a percent of them think that the average that for someone which is a bachelor's degree is $100,000 or more. In reality, according to our surveys conducted by the according to a survey conducted by the Institute for college access and success, the average student debt for someone who just graduates from a private or a private nonprofit a public institution in 2018 is just nearly $30,000. So that's all the questions I have for you today. And I would like to switch it back to Rachel. Thank you everyone for bearing with us and for taking part in those live polls. It's really exciting to see people answer things like time and know that there are people actually working with us right now. We're going to transition now to our panel discussion. And so again, I just want to reiterate that this is just a really brief overview of the survey actually was clocking in at 20 minutes for the for the interviewee. So there is a ton of data, a rich amount of data to go over beyond the points that Sophie and I highlighted. We have the data tool on our website so you can look at all the cross paths by demographics just be sure to go to varying degrees.org. If you typed any questions to Sophie and I about the data we're going to answer them during the Q&A portion at the end of the panel so we are taking those but we want to give as much time to the panel as possible. And I'm going to introduce our moderator who's Eric Hoover, senior writer for the Chronicle of Higher Ed, and our panelists are Jill Dunlap, director for research policy and civic engagement at the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators. Can read director research and policy analysis at the National Association of College and University Business Officers, David Strauss whose principal are in science group, and Christine Wolfe Eisenberg, who's manager of surveys and research at the ISACOTSNR. So with that, Eric, I'm going to turn it over to you. Thank you very much, Rachel. Hello everyone. Greetings from Washington DC here on Capitol Hill. Thank you for joining us today. Talk about surveys and polling. If you can remember, back to late March, I know it seems like years ago at least right but in late March, I was sitting around one day and I was looking at my inbox and my inbox was blowing up with messages and I feel like maybe half of them were touting the results of surveys and polling data, small survey responses, large sets of survey data, trying to make sense of a world that had been turned upside down, right? And I've always got a lot of these news releases about surveys and polling data as a reporter covering higher ed, but all of a sudden I felt like I was getting three or four or five times as many as before and it kind of made sense, right? People were trying to make sense of an uncertain world and figure out what was going to happen next, right? So I decided to write an article that I was just rereading. It was called, for better or worse, it was called COVID-19, The Crisis That Launched A Thousand Surveys. And in this article, I asked people in higher ed, particularly in admissions and enrollment offices, what they made of this flurry, this avalanche of surveys that we're seeing even in mid to late March. And some people responded very cynically, skeptically. One told me, oh my gosh, I don't have time to possibly read them all. I read the first couple and they confirmed what I suspected. I'm really not sure of the value they're at it. Someone else said surveys taken today would likely be moot within 30 days or even 10 days from now because the world is changing so quickly. But I also got some other kinds of emails, very different responses from other readers, including one, a college president who said, Mr. Hoover, I think you are a big jerk. I depend on these surveys. I've never faced so much uncertainty in my 33 years as a college president. And anyone who's giving me any bit of advice, any kind of survey data, I want to salute right now because they're doing important work. I'm very disappointed in the chronicle in my story. So I mentioned those reactions just to say they all add up to something and I think that is that survey findings like we're kind of drawn to them. People tend to have, especially perhaps right now, strong feelings about them. But they're important, right? Because even if some surveys are more helpful than others, people are trying to understand what's going to happen next week, what's going to happen throughout the summer. And especially when it comes to higher ed, what is the fall going to look like, right? Well, the answer is going to vary from state to state, campus to campus, region to region. But we can learn a lot from surveys, right? And we should think hard about like how best to use survey findings to plan for the future, to guide our actions, right? As people who work at colleges and universities, especially right now are trying to do their best to adjust to a world that seems to be changing any minute. So I'll stop rambling and ask you to think about the mindset of a 17-year-old and 18-year-old high school senior just graduated. Nothing is really gone as planned as you were expecting. You probably didn't have an actual graduation. You had a virtual one. You had maybe no prom at all. And now you're thinking, wait, am I really going to be able to walk onto a campus as a first-year student and actually stroll around like I always expected? People want to know, for good reason, what are prospective students, incoming first-year students, especially thinking? How is COVID-19 pandemic and all the economic uncertainty in the country? How has that affected their plans, their thinking about college, right? And so this enrollment, Florida's enrollment surveys we've seen have tried to give us a sense of that. And I can think of no better expert to talk to us about what enrollment-related survey data is telling us right now about what students are thinking and what they might be doing this fall. So I'll turn it over to David, who can tell us about what he's finding. Thank you, Eric. Of course, it's a dissertation to talk about what any of us has been finding in such arenas, but I'll try to hit the top of the tip of the iceberg. One, what my colleagues and I do fall into three categories. We use the research methodologies we've developed and the predictive modeling techniques we've developed over the years to inform our consulting on institutional strategy. When an institution is trying to become and how it relates that to a constituency. We have for the last 25 years also done work in a vehicle we call student poll, international surveys of college-bound high school students looking at what's going on in their heads. We also sometimes do parents and other things like that. And then the third is over the course of this crisis over the last three or four months, we have fielded a lot of research for individual institutions again about what's going on in their constituencies very specifically around the COVID-19 pandemic and its implications for who's going to come to school in the fall anew and who's going to come back and who's not going to come back as returning students in different scenarios of what might happen on college campuses in the fall. And the first thing we find is one of the points that you emphasized, Eric, that there are national data, there are national means and there are national medians and absolutely none of them predicts what's going to happen to an individual institution. They are appropriate for context and they're appropriate for policymaking, but they're not appropriate for individual institutions figuring out what's happening to them and what they should do. These things vary by market, they vary by competitive set, they vary by the nature of the institution itself individually. What we've seen broadly then would be a couple of different phenomena. One is, as we've looked at students at different stages of their decision making even during this crisis, is that there's a threatening of a great deal of disruption from this crisis that still may not be over, by the way, even though May 1 is passed and June 1 is passed. And in a representative national survey of high school seniors college bound in the end of March, something very, very similar statistically unchanged when we looked just before May 1 the last few days in April. Then one out of six students who had seen him or her or themselves as bound to be a full time college student at a four year institution, one out of six of them were saying they didn't think they were going to be able to do that anymore because of COVID. We saw another two thirds of them saying they were concerned at one level or another, that they might not be able to attend the place they intended to attend. And what we observed then was that these phenomena played out in all kinds of different things who was depositing, who wasn't yet depositing, who believed that once depositing they were going to end up where they thought they were going to end up. All those kinds of things were up in the air and especially up in the air, and it shouldn't surprise any of us for members of underserved populations in our country. The inequities in our country are only exacerbated by what's been going on over the last three months. And that is evident not only in healthcare and not only in economic affairs it is actually traceable directly also to what happens to students deciding where they're going to go to school. And what we've seen among studies for individual institutions looking at returning students and and individual students who might end up matriculating and showing up in August and September. We see it's very similar phenomena but highly variable. We see institutions that can change their calendars a little bit and make sure they do online really well and help out students with a couple thousand bucks to help them through this crisis and they'll be fine. And we found other institutions that can throw 10,000, 15,000, 20,000, $25,000 that their students and still not be able to get them to come back to an online or largely online of experience. So there's an immense amount of volatility. There's an immense amount of difference between the experience of one institution and another in this crisis. The common elements, young people tend to be optimistic. They want to have what they dreamed of having or dreamed of coming back to over the course of this crisis when it comes to an on campus classic experience among those who were anticipating that. They tend to be optimistic, but they tend to predict that they will punish the institutions that don't give them what they want. They don't want to pay anywhere near as much. And don't forget, one of the data points that we've seen in our surveys of students nationally is fully half of them tell us that they have lost and a parent has lost a job or lost income. During this crisis on college bound students, 52% pretty serious stuff going on. Thank you, David. For sure serious stuff going on and that's affecting the thinking the mindsets the planning of students who haven't yet reached college right who are on their way. They, they hope they thought as first time for sure students. The same circumstances have also affected students who are already enrolled and, of course, and colleges have been leaning on institutional surveying and also some national surveying to get a sense of what their students who are already part of the campus and part of their community, what they needed, what they're experiencing what they're going through. As a result of this pandemic and all the disruption that that followed. How can we, what can we know better students and how can we help them Christine, could you tell us what some of the most meaningful themes or findings have been when it comes to surveying and polling students who are already enrolled on college campuses. Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Eric. I, I guess I'll just start out with a with a little bit of context so at Ithaca SNR were were research and advisory nonprofit and we very, very quickly adapted some of our survey instruments to roll out a COVID-19 student survey and a COVID-19 faculty survey focusing on research teaching and learning activities. The first kind of meta theme that I want to draw out that isn't actually about the findings but more about the process of getting these surveys into the field. And this this might go against what those who are attending here might might expect it certainly went against what I expected. We saw that response rates tended to really be up in our surveys across a number of audiences so I think when you when you give people a meaningful chance to weigh in when you show them that their responses will be acted on when you make it really easy for them to participate. We saw both for our student surveys and our and our faculty surveys that response rates were were up compared to what we what we normally see not during a pandemic. So far is what we've what we've seen in the the student survey results and we we actually coincidentally tomorrow we have a big report coming out from results across the surveys that we've fielded across a couple dozen dozen institutions of their students. As some of what David was was alluding to before many of the challenges that students were facing before the pandemic are the ones that they're they're now facing especially for certain groups that maybe I'll speak to a little bit a little bit later. So they have a whole set of new challenges adjusting to online learning and finding adequate space to do to do work. I mean I think about my own home setup I can I can only imagine what this looks like for for a lot of students that have have fewer resources or have have gone home to a place where they didn't expect to be to be working and taking taking classes at this at this point in time. It also makes me makes me the other big theme that's come out and I'll say that this has come out pretty clearly across two year institutions four year institutions. Students are really missing a sense of connection to to one another. They aren't just going to college, especially in a residential sense when they're actually going away and living at school, just to to learn they're looking for a social relationship with other students with their with their instructors and their their obviously was a lot of focus for for good reason no criticism intended on instructional continuity during during the spring. But they're all these things that happen of course outside of the classroom under normal circumstances that enhance the experience of of being a student so we're we're seeing that pretty clearly across the the schools that we've been working with. Thank you Christine so yeah I'm thinking about all that was lost right and not just the ability to sit in a classroom and talk with your professor and ask that one extra question on your way out the door but but exactly that that sense of connection that it's intangible perhaps so crucial to the college experience and Jill I'm going to turn to you I'm thinking about the vast vast umbrella of NASPA right of the vast world of services and programming that student affairs professionals are involved in every day right at least they were under normal circumstances and I'm also thinking of the vastness of the institutions that you're in touch with that your organization represents right colleges large and small and all different kinds. I wonder what you might tell us about what is folks at institutions that you're in touch with we're seeing hearing thinking about that loss of connection among students or anything else that was on the minds of students going through crisis. Over the last few months. Absolutely. Well and we get at a lot of the needs of students through surveys of our professional members who are, you know, in a vast array of students supportive positions on campuses as you mentioned Eric. I think, you know, I'm going to sound like a broken record here but I will echo what David and Christine said that what we're finding from our members when we survey them is that students who were already in precarious positions or at risk or at promise depending on the terminology you use. Those who were working adults or working to support families. Caring for parents or children or first generation who were, you know, potentially in those precarious positions before in terms of their continued enrollment at an institution are, you know, continuing to face those problems but their problems have been exacerbated and so we think about things like that. Well, we find that things that weren't working before are continuing to not work great. And so we think about things like, you know, students who were overwhelmed by the amount of emails that a campus sends right now they're getting, you know, sometimes double that amount because they don't have the opportunity to stop into a professor's office as you said, and have that in person conversation or, you know, with a registrar or an advisor. And so now they're managing all of the day to day workings of the institution in order to maintain enrollment but also as you mentioned engagement. So, you know, in some ways things haven't changed, you know, students who have caregiving responsibilities, you know, are still having those caregiving responsibilities. And, you know, maybe those who weren't is engaged because of those responsibilities are still not able to engage in in virtual ways, but I will say one hopeful thing and that is that we have heard from some of our members that due to the online environment what we have found is that students who maybe weren't engaged previously have been able to attend student group meetings. And so, because they're now being offered virtually. And so I think the hopeful thing that I would say that I've heard from my colleagues is that that this transition to online has opened up opportunities for engagement for some students who do the, you know, late night transportation issues to attending, you know, student club organization meetings late at night or childcare issues or job hours, that the ability to attend those to attend those via zoom and to make those connections. You know, you can make an argument about whether those are as meaningful as they are in person but that the opportunity to participate I think has opened up in some ways in the virtual environment for students and who maybe previously had not been able to participate so I think that's one hopeful take away that we've heard. Thank you very much Jill. Interesting to think about, you know, as we're thinking about all the challenges right that have risen. As a result of this, there are some moments of opportunity for engagement even if maybe they weren't the kind of engagement or venues for engagement that people would have been thinking of in on the first day of March this year. Okay, so come to Ken now. Anyone I've talked to who has any kind of job on any college campus since mid March is concerned about their institutions, finances, their financial picture, no matter how rich or not rich your institution is is certainly cloudy at best for sure. Ken, can you tell us what has struck you most in the last few months about what you're hearing from surveys from polling that I know your organization has been doing that can give us some sense of the financial picture for higher education here at the end of June. Sure. Eric, I want to go back to the original premise of your question. And that is, why have institutions been inundated suddenly with with surveys and I think you're getting a picture of why the benefit of that of that survey effort among the are for respective organizations and many others. We get in the Kubo. Obviously we do a number of annual surveys on endowments tuition discount etc. But we quickly realized with the changing landscape of COVID-19 that we would have to pivot and do more of a series of polls as opposed to surveys with our polls we weren't necessarily worried about the representativeness of the samples that we collected but we were worried about getting information to institutions as quickly as possible. They'll be meaningful and would tell a story. And so over the last couple of months since April and into May and now June, we've done a grand total of nine of these polls. We're looking at different aspects of institutional finance and probably I think for us, there's positive and negative obviously the positive has been how quickly institutions have been transitioned have been able to transition successfully to online learning. And nearly all the schools that we surveyed made that pivot within a two week period which from an educational standpoint I think is really good. What we don't know yet and I think what we'll need to find out as time goes on is his perceived or actual quality of that instruction relative to traditional campus based learning but certainly the core that has been a speedy and I think successful to the extent point of making that transition. But the concerns as somebody's alluded to we know that a good number of the people that is to say respond to our surveys on liquidity and concerns about cash on hand and where they were going to get the the funds to pay for those expenses. And is a big concern particularly particularly among the smaller private institutions and secondly I'm sure the regional public would say this as well that it has been very expensive. We know that more than a quarter of the institutions that responded to our survey said they spent an additional $50,000 or more making that transition. So where do you find those funds when money was already tight. So, but in general I think our polls, which I know we'll talk more about the survey strategy and other things later so I won't go too much into this but, but in general I think the polls have done has really painted a picture of one institutions are doing on the financial aspect to try to meet the needs of their students in a very resource constrained environment in an environment where obviously that the first concern is of course that the health and well being of of students and faculty as that they left campus and then hopefully at some point we return campus. And I'm going to stick with you for a minute if I may. You know, I was talking with an enrollment manager, Vice President for enrollment at a small resource constrained college, the Mid-Atlantic last week and, and he views on the the avalanche of data survey data that he's buried in he views it favorably so this is national survey data and also institution specific survey data. They're surveying the hell as he said out of out of their returning or hopefully returning students but he said you know I got to admit I'm supposed to sound smart here here but he said I've got all this data but I'm not I'm not sure what to what exactly to do with it and where there's disagreement perhaps on his campus about what to what to do and I feel like that's a that's a major question you know what to do with the data set and think well these are interesting findings these are revealing in some way. Okay, what what kind of action do we take how do we translate those polling or survey findings into practice you mentioned you know a couple things that institutions may be doing I just wonder. Can I start with you and then others please chime in. What what what might be some meaningful examples even small examples of institutions taking survey findings or student poll findings or just kind of institutional norming data findings and then doing something new or doing something different or making an adjustment right now what are those kinds of things look like. Well, I think you're right. It's where you know we haven't seen a pandemic like this in 100 years so trying to design strategies of what to do next. It's going to be hard for anybody, regardless of how much data they may have available. But I think there's some clues, at least from our surveys as to what institutions are trying to do. We did a survey for example on institutional use of the care of their CARES Act funds. And the one piece of information that we I thought was very revealing about what institutions have been doing are probably going to try to do in the future is that well over half of the schools that said that they had gotten their funds for CARES Act federal grants for students, were also very aggressively fundraising for additional funds on top of their federal funds to also provide aid for students to me that that points to the fact that institutions understand that the situation they're in is going to require a lot more. Not just aggressive fundraising strategies but strategies that are geared toward mitigating the effects of what's going on to help students. So to me that's an action that I think many campuses are clearly taking and probably will take in the future going away from what had in the past maybe looking for endowed funds and now looking for more toward unrestricted or immediate use funds to help students. The second thing I think I should mention is in a lot of ways, because campuses don't quite know what to do next is sort of this wait and see or sort of stable approach like, for example, we did a survey recently on endowments. And the one thing that we found revealing is that most schools said that, despite the loss of taking their endowments are going to keep their spending steady, in part because they're not quite sure when the next shoe might fall or the markets might suddenly turn positive and they're not understanding the long term nature of those kinds of funds so. So I guess for us it's been a little bit of a mixture but in general I agree with the premise of your question, at least from a financial standpoint, many schools are kind of saying well we know we have these issues. I agree with them in some ways by fundraising but in other ways we just have to see how things play out before we can really definitely take one action versus another. Thank you Ken I hear that. I wonder if what might strike you as a couple of meaningful ways that institutions have been trying kind of to capture data in the moment and then act on those findings what they're hearing from students I'm I'm really fascinated by the notion that students may be chiming in more so right in response to surveys and then they have in the past I know that's often a challenge for campuses. It kind of in normal times but maybe some ways that colleges have pivoted or adjusted on the fly would almost have to be on the fly during a spring of upheaval. Based on what they were hearing from their students that they pulled. Absolutely I think again I might echo some of the things that can set especially with regard to emergency aid. NASA has you know how to focus on that for a few years now and recently within the past couple of years issued a report on emergency aid, who was doing it how were students finding out that emergency aid existed. And so we have an entire website devoted to that but it it's it's interesting it's been interesting because you know with the influx of cares money it's it's been sort of a spotlight on those processes and so the students the campuses that had really well developed emergency aid you know protocols and processes I think were better served when this money came through because their students had places that they know that they could access that aid for support. In previous to COVID right like these were things like you know my my car broke down and I needed you know a short term loan to be able to get to campus and back. And so this you know the need may look very different under the cares funding and the students you know facing different crises as a result of COVID but the processes I think that were in place prior to that were really as I said you know the institutions I think we're really well served in doing that. We're hearing from our members again just that they when we surveyed them that one of the things that they want to focus on in the you know next two to three months is how to engage students in a meaningful way in a virtual environment knowing that you know some you know fall semesters or quarters maybe cut short if there's another outbreak or that they're starting early and then may have to leave early. And so how are we ensuring that community feel that we you know bill our campuses as in the virtual environment. I think for me one of the real opportunities here though is that I think faculty are also trying to ascertain that right so how do we engage students meaningfully recreate those sort of classroom community dynamics and so I think there's a real opportunity here for both student affairs professionals and academic affairs to really share data on what they are hearing from students so that we can reduce the overserving right or even using in a course evaluations to hear what students really enjoyed and as far as an online environment I don't think all the news is bad in that regard but how can student affairs professionals learn from what faculty have heard about what worked well in their classes and use that for student organizations civic engagement other types of service learning in a remote and virtual environment. And then finally I'll just say I think one of the pivots I see long term is that this has really highlighted the the different the sort of back burner status that online students get. And so I think in the future what we'll do is is we'll find ourselves in a much better position to serve online students in terms of engagement making sure that they have access to opportunities and internships and all of the ways that we regularly engage with our on campus students in the in the virtual world for those who never come to a campus so I have hope for that that that that population of students will be better served in the long term based on what we're learning now. Thank you very much Jill. Christina I want to turn to you so I know you have this kind of trove of data coming out tomorrow right. In a very robust report and and I found it very interesting to read and so I'm thinking though that data is going to arrive as colleges have been trying for months to act on other findings from your perspective what are some meaningful ways that existing data or data that your organization is going to drop on the on the world of higher ed tomorrow. What where does that fit in terms of college is trying to take findings, such as those in your organization's report and do something with them that might help students in some larger small ways perhaps. So first I'll just speak to some of the ways that institutions that we've partnered with to field those surveys have already taken action on the findings then I'll say just a word or two about what we what we hope folks will will take away from the report tomorrow so Our survey implementation process this past semester has been unlike what it looks like any other semester we developed a brand new set of surveys in a matter of weeks. We only left surveys in the field for two weeks at a time. And the institutions that we partner with have access to those results immediately upon when they're coming in it just it's it's not typically the way that we do things but it was. It was needed and will actually probably end up changing some of the ways that we do our survey we're going forward. There are two main ways that I would say institutions have used the findings so far. One has been to help shape outreach to students because they're getting all of these data back in real time, they're able to connect with with students when they leave their contact information to share more information let's say about about financial aid and organizing the kinds of support services that students are really looking to hear more from at this point there's, I mean, we've all been speaking about it but just a tremendous amount of uncertainty about financial and academic standing going going into the fall. One of the, I guess I'll just give away something that's in the report tomorrow but you know we're, we're not seeing the kind of relationship that we would like to see between indicators of students having the greatest need and being aware of those emergency challenges that you're that you were talking about. You would hope that students who have the greatest need are the most aware of those resources, and unfortunately that's not the kind of kind of relationships are doing doing that kind of direct student analysis is really important. The other way that that institutions have been able to use the survey findings is to pull some open ended comments pair them with some of the aggregate results and use that as as a few different types of types of data for for fundraising that's the other that's the other way that we've heard institutions using the results and again been able to use them in real time while the surveys are still still in the field. So to your to your question about what we hope institutions take take away from the aggregate findings across 21 institutions that we're going to release tomorrow. I'm thinking David back to what you were saying before about how different each each school is and I think that's particularly true around the extent to which they are financially dependent on tuition for for example like the the decisions that have been made that have financial implications for what the funding model looks like for for a certain institution is certainly true but I will say that there there are even across four year colleges and two year colleges. There are a number of themes that are really really similar so I know institutions that we work with for good reason are often looking looking for benchmark stats against other institutions. There are certainly areas where where institutions deviate from one another. Most often because of what the demographics of their student body look like more than anything else based on the kinds of questions we're asking, but there are there is a lot of a lot of overlap so I would hope that institutions that see this report tomorrow think okay maybe there's maybe there's some some things here that don't resonate with what I've heard from my students maybe we need to go field one of these surveys in the fall to dig into that further but I, I hope that they would take the results. Seriously as probably representing the experience of some set of their students if not if not the entire student body. And for that, David turn to you so okay so college is very by size and selectivity and wealth, but if I'm an enrollment manager at any of them. I probably have more gray hair or less hair and more sleepless nights than ever before, whether it's maybe a set of findings from your student poll, getting at some national picture of where students and families are. Or drawn from your work with individual institutions I wonder what might come to mind as an action or a reaction that institutions are taking to their sense of this new reality that strike you as meaningful or possibly instructive in some way or just interesting. How, how are colleges adjusting what what what are the changes in actions or strategy on the enrollment side that strike you as particularly meaningful right now. Eric, I couldn't help seeing your wins on your second or third sentence there. Those of you who don't who might have missed a chronic a chronicle article that Eric wrote three four or five years ago called the hottest seat on campus. That being the seat of the enrollment manager and no doubt it's become hotter in this in this hotter still in this era, though I think they're whole lot of hot seats and a whole lot of people scrambling to do the best they can. I would break this up into two parts and I, the answer my question, Eric and and one of them I will start and then probably table till later in our discussion. And that is the relationship between what's going on right now and how institutions are dealing with it right now. And what the relationship between, but the relationship is between that and the long term strategic thinking planning and action in which institutions need to engage and the data they need to be able to make the decisions that will carry them forward. And I would say there's a relationship between these things and I would like to come back to that, that point later on, suffice to say it's not the same thing to say that we're going to do a bunch of stuff online and that is our future salvation will actually maybe a piece of something you do or how you operate. It may have nothing to do with this with the necessary and sufficient test of what it takes to thrive over the long run. Come back to that. And then the short run. We see institutions acting from an enrollment management point of view from different ways, but also fundamentally in academic affairs as Jill and others have noted, and in student and in student life and all kinds of important ways, what do you do when you run a study using very dedicated modeling methods that are not just traditional pick ABC or D kind of polling. What do you do when you get a response that says the single thing that's going to drive students not to come back is the fact that they are going to miss community and social life. And if you're, if you're delivering online, and you need to do some real serious thinking to go back to a point Jill made earlier about how you build community and how you take social kinds of things that students are dreaming of have experienced or we're looking forward to experience that they suddenly go away and you have to find them in new ways. Those are fundamental substantive things that institutions are engaged in the short term. Enrollment managers. Excuse me in academic affairs. We've done studies where we're looking at what happens if we if we plow bunches of money into making individual courses, really sing online and using all the interactive and other techniques that are available and online learning, as opposed to doing what most institutions did this past spring which is slap you on the zoom and try to do your best to replicate what's happening in a normal classroom. Should we invest, what is for some institutions millions of dollars and intensive months and doing that or not. In enrollment management, there are questions about how you create virtual tours and how you build relationships with people that are that have not been done in the modalities that that are now being forced on these institutions. We find that the last piece of this that at least our research has been pointing to direct action on his price and a, and a lot of that is is driven by the mission informed motivations that several of our colleagues on the panel been talking about today. But some of these institutions are finding that there's been they're struggling between how do I serve students whose need is rising. And, and from a point of view of an institution whose revenue is shrinking in some cases dramatically. I mean, we, we've done studies, this in very recent times these flash studies I was talking about for individual institutions, or a modeling suggests if they have to be online. Some of these institutions could lose 4050 60% of their students others not not bad at all. But what happens when you try to balance these things. So, in a, we work in a sector that advances and disseminates knowledge. We work in a sector where strategy level decision making is often from the hip and not from the data. And that that tension is there is a real one but we're finding that the data are informing decisions across fundamentals. As I was describing them in student life and academic life and enrollment management and the fundamentals of what we charge and how we generate revenue even in this immediate context. Thank you, David. I'm, I don't know how some of these folks on college campus asleep. It's a, it's a, it's an incredible time to be running an institution. I want to just quickly flag an article today. I was in the Chronicle by my awesome colleague Allison Berg and she was writing a new story about a survey done another survey at Arizona State University. And part of the headline is low income students are disproportionately hit by the pandemic, echoing some thoughts that all of you have shared. And I was just struck by this wording that she used this the survey of students at ASU found that students were quote, I had quote suffered noticeably, but unequally. And just a reminder yet another reminder that that just as institutions are affected in different ways, depending on your socioeconomic status the luck of birth. You as a college student might be more or less affected by the pandemic and the disruption the economic challenges that have arisen and so just I mean obviously we know that but I don't think it can be discussed enough. And I wonder if that thought about students who are the most vulnerable being smacked kind of the hardest by circumstances right now relates to our conversation about surveying and how we do it and what are the ethical considerations of surveying and polling students particularly students who are vulnerable and might have the most need right now. You know, what, what, what do we need to keep in mind about students, particularly those. If there are enrollment people writing me saying that they are experiencing survey fatigue that is they're just on the receiving end of the findings of the surveys and polls of students. And it must follow that there are students out there who are in some way, dealing with survey fatigue themselves perhaps, and I wonder, particularly we're thinking about the fall arriving fast and colleges wanting to check in with their students and survey them and pull them about their needs about their wellness about their challenges. It's got to follow that there are better and worse ways of going about that and Christine I wonder if you might talk to us about kind of the ethical humane dimensions of survey. Thanks Eric it's it's a really a really important topic. You know, we've, my team has given a lot of thought to, to, what can people handle right now under crisis what what are they able to handle over the last couple of months. What are we willing to send out that potentially is going to burden a community at a time when they don't need another another thing on their plate. And so, maybe, maybe when I'm wrapped up what I'm about to say I'll drop a link to this into the chat. I wrote up a piece about a month ago feels like years ago. About a couple of strategies for humanely fielding surveys right now during during a global crisis and the first the first of the five strategies is just maybe you shouldn't field a survey at all which is, you know, kind of a funny way to start out the piece. I think maybe you mentioned earlier about, you know, working across student affairs and academic affairs so so consulting data that you already have on hand that, you know, maybe it was collected pre pandemic but as we've all been saying, there are issues that did exist before the pandemic that we can reasonably assume have, have just been been amplified now. What efforts are worth for going all together if are you conducting a survey or a poll right now that isn't about the pandemic. Maybe maybe you should postpone those efforts, your data are going to be tainted in some way in some way anyway. And kind of the headline that I would want to get across about what's what's guided some of our thinking. We've also just really focused on how easy we can make it to participate in these in these surveys. Every time I'm reviewing a draft I'm thinking how can I cut two or three questions out of here what's what's non essential how short can we make this. How quickly can we can we field the results back into back into action. Are there any questions here that are interesting or or nice to know we don't really have the the luxury right now of asking those kinds of kinds of questions it would be irresponsible to do so so those are some of the some of the guiding principles that have influenced the way that we've we've worked with institutions over the past couple of months. Thank you Christine. I had this question and put someone raise your hand whoever wants to take it can, can a what can we overreact to survey findings as we meaning institutions right of high red. I mean, I think just as sometimes people are overwhelmed by like well I've got all this data and I'm not sure what to do right. If anything, what to start doing or start doing differently but like could could a could a college or university overreact on or over adjust to a survey finding. David. I think institutions can and they have. There is there are some of the things I would add from an ethical point to be excuse me add to the ethical point of view that Christine was talking about earlier. There are practical considerations in all of this. I have alluded to this earlier, but I have found that we've spoken with leaders of institutions who see the current circumstances and see some data on what the current circumstances present to them and start to think of that as their long term futures. This is what we are we now are know this is what we are in the midst of this crisis. And it is in and I've counseled a lot of leaders to be really careful that some of what you might do it and might invest in now and might be in the center of the lives of your faculty, your staff, your administrator, your students are things that are relevant now, but he may either be insufficient over the long run or actually take you in the wrong direction in the long run. We find ourselves counseling leaders to think along three time horizons, the now the stuff that's on the tip of your nose, the stuff you have to deal with right now and then the stuff that's looks a ways out but is actually only two or three inches in front of your nose how do you create a revenue stream how do you, not just how do you operate how do you make sure that students are being exposed to things online that you're building some kind of student life online but how you're thinking about your revenue stream is going to be what you need to get to it those kinds of practical considerations. And then the third, the third horizon is the following. This crisis will eventually ease if not lift and the world we will function in when it lifts will not be any easier than it was when we were hit. It was more difficult still than we were thinking it was going to be going ahead. And the institutions that find themselves focus singly on dealing with the crisis are going to wake up to a harder reality for institutions that are well healed and high and selective and raising bundles. It'll be harder than it used to be to do those things won't be impossible it'll be harder. But for most institutions, these are going to become questions of real difficulty and real challenge and for many of them will be existential challenges. So we find ourselves counseling a lot okay focus on the now you've got to you better look farther far enough ahead of your nose to be able to see how you're going to generate an experience, and if you will a market. Looking not so far ahead to the fall and the following spring, but you better carve out a piece of space for figuring out what you're going to do strategically moving forward you're going to find yourselves coming out of one crisis and into a more prolonged one. Okay, thank you, David. Because a lot to that's a lot to think about it's each day seems to be its own kind of uncertain puzzle. But but I think there's wisdom there and what you say, we are at 114 and I know we're getting some really good questions. And I think we're going to get to some of them for sure so I think we should transition into hearing from some of the folks who are writing in with sharp questions. Now, and we'll start with a question that should go to Rachel and Sophie from New America. Someone asked, does the report tell how many Democrats Republicans attended and their children attended a public or private college. We don't have that data, but we do ask the battery of questions every year about how people feel about certain sectors of higher education so how do you feel about the public community college sector public for your private nonprofit institution and then private for profit institutions. So you can look at how people, how Democrats and Republicans feel about these institutions. We asked, like, you know, are they for people like me, are they using their money wisely, do they run efficiently. Do they help build America's workforce questions like that. There's actually quite a bit of alignment between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats tend to feel more positively about pretty much all sectors of education until about the for profit sector and that's when a lot of positivity sort of dies off. Both Democrats and Republicans do not feel that positive about for profit education. Interestingly, in the four years that we've done work in with this battery of questions about the public community colleges are always kind of like the darling of the higher education sectors where they're always viewed sort of the most positively overall, followed by public four year school, then followed by nonprofits and then how people for profit for the few years and I think that's most likely because we've seen a large for profit closures and and institution stemming from the last recession. Thank you, Rachel. For that next question. Let's see here comes from Helena. Helena asked a question that reminds me in my first editor told me that sometimes the best questions to ask as a reporter are short and kind of big. So, in that spirit, I'll relay Helena's question and someone please raise raise their hand to answer this one. What makes a good survey. I'll take a shot at not answering that question, which is fundamentally it depends what you're trying to find out about whom for what purpose. And there are there are kinds of things we need to understand that we need to understand in a very broad way. There are things that Ken was referring to some earlier where we don't really need to understand exactly the full census of the full population we're trying to understand, but we need to have a read on something. And, you know, those things can be good they can be useful they can also be useless when a television station shows you it's real time poll of course among those who felt like responding who are watching their shows. That's kind of silly stuff. There are other questions that require enormous amounts of precision. You're trying to call a an election. It's going to be one by something under a tenth of a percent we better have a really large sample so that you can narrow your your potential margin of error. There are others, most of the work we do is about institutional strategy you're not going to change the nature of academic life at an institution, because 1% of the people think this or 2% you're going to change you might change to 10 or 20 or 40 do. There are questions around sample size that relate to that and their samples around their questions around methodology. There are certain things we can ask people and you get an honest answer. If you ask a young person, why are you choosing institution A or institution B and you ask it outright and you take that answer as gospel. Then you don't have a lot of faith because you're not getting a real answer. So I might not answer to the question is all depends what you're trying to find out about who. That's I mean that's exact that is the right answer I know David you're saying that's not the not the answer to the question it is I think that is the maybe one of the only only ways to answer a question that's that big. I just add one of the one of the things that we've been trying to be just really asking our partner institutions as we're crafting these new surveys is are you prepared to act on the on the results from this from this question. Are you presenting a false promise by asking, you know, if you're an organization and you're you're surveying your staff. And you want to ask people about their is their home setup, you know, ergonomically friendly, are you prepared to take those results and and act on them what are what are you willing to provide staff as far as their their equipment and their and their home setup. So, I think the surveys are useful not only for for gathering data but also communicating about what's important to you and what you're willing to do with the findings and if you are certain that there's something that you can't actually act on there's it's you know beyond all possibility. Maybe, maybe just don't don't bother asking about it until you know how you might, you might move that forward. Thank you, Christine for that good thought on what to include in a survey and why being clear on on the why seems like good advice. If you're going to trouble students with a question. I wanted to get to a question from Laura, and I'm going to send this one your way can, if that's alright. Regarding university strategic planning. What are your thoughts regarding layoffs furloughs, etc for staff and faculty positions. Do you anticipate a shrinking of administrative staff in the short term, and potentially long term given the concerns regarding financing of a degree. And certainly others David, in particular, could chime in as well. I'll give a response based on clearly on what we know now as far as our surveys but but as David said there is the there is the other side to this. There is at some point the, the, the pentademic will end and institutions will have to deal with staffing issues long before long after that. So, with that in mind, the short answer is, we already know that a number of institutions have publicly already announced various strategies in terms of layoffs furloughs reductions in employee benefits. Those, those kinds of, of, of actions have already occurred. We know from one of the surveys that we did that number of institutions have have already either announced those plans or, or, or as of the survey date that we're considering that those plans, again, varying by size institution. And I guess the, the, the sort of the other side to, to, to this is, I think, what institutions will have to really be concerned about is not just making cuts, but, but being very strategic and and how what is what is cut, and what is grown. I mean, because campuses have strengths, some campuses, they may be stronger in their student affairs or, or other types of areas and want to preserve those and, and, and so I think that the tricky part to that question is not so much will it continue because it hasn't, it will continue. It's what do campuses do strategically beyond that, because as they, the quote, the cliche, you can't cut your weight, your way to grow. I'm certain you can't cut your way to improvement. So, but yeah, as I said, the short answer to that question is yes, administrative expenses are being reduced at all campuses at all types. And my guess is, depending on how the fall enrollments go, they certainly will continue on until we get to the end of the current pandemic and probably for some institutions beyond that. Thank you, Ken. I'm going to quickly just turn a question here into just a comment that I feel like I should, I should note here from Megan and she writes as a first generation low income student. I can attest to survey fatigue. Many are missing the role off campus housing is playing in regard to uncertainty and the inability to sign a lease that we may not be able to get out of if we completely move online in the fall. And that's definitely a crucial question. Housing and housing contracts that will affect many students, no matter what happens in the coming months. So a question for our panelists here that I'd like to just throw out to again, whoever might raise his or her hand first. Erica starts preparing the survey questionnaire for next year. What would the panelists like to know or what would be helpful to learn about Americans beliefs in higher education. Next year. Yes, I'll start and I'm sure others will chime in. Going back to this transition to online learning. I guess that the one piece that I think really needs to be emphasized. We know, and I certainly going forward, people still have support higher education writ large. They support online environments versus on campus environments back to the comment that Eric just read I think that it's clear to me that when people think of college they think the traditional Ivy covered buildings and dining halls and those kinds of things. And for sure that that didn't happen for for half of this academic year, and it may not happen for the beginning part at least of neck academic year. Does that change your perception, or is college just about the learning and the modality of learning doesn't really matter and and people like college, even if it's online, compared to the other thing so I think teasing that out. For me would be the next potential iteration of the next very inviting news. I'll just I'll throw it throw something in. I mean I think as a lot of students, especially those that maybe maybe live with their families are thinking about what they're going to do this fall. You know, I suspect that some large, large portion will be staying closer to home not going away, either taking classes online through the institution that they that they intended to enroll in in the fall, or perhaps with a local community college and I, I'll be really interested I don't know if, you know, the survey gets into the differences between perceptions around two year colleges versus four year colleges. Given the extent to which two year colleges tend to do a little bit more and maybe be a little bit more prepared for the online instruction. I'd be interested to see if that if that yields anything I mean I think it's, it's amazing. In some ways, I mean I can I can relate to the position that you all are in with having collected these data when you did we, we did this huge survey of academic library leaders right before the pandemic and had to completely reframe how we talked about what the results represented but it's it's such a gift to have this baseline so any kind of longitudinal analysis that you can conduct will be will be incredible just given when when the data collection occurred. I would add kind of a meta point I tend to tell me if it's way off base I apologize if it is, but picking up on Christine's earlier point about making sure the research you do actually leads to actions so that you, it's been worth people participating in a critical and a fatigue point of view. The work that we do is all about how we affect change how we how we how we work to change the decisions that people make of various kinds whether to apply attend give higher, we're looking at trying to change a behavior in a constituency. I wonder if as you look at a question that questions around general American adults perceptions around higher ed, whether there is an action you'd like to affect it. What that might cause you to focus in on in terms of questions or what it might cause you to focus in on in terms of the modeling one might do it's a little harder to do it post talk but especially sitting here in 2020, just itching to know not only what do people think but whether these things would affect their voting behaviors come November. That's a broad point but I think something that may be worth considering. Thank you. See we're almost at 130 and wanted to thank everyone for all these great thoughts and great questions from outside of our panel today so thank you Rachel turn it over to you. Yeah thanks everyone this is I was you probably saw me like shifting out of screen as I actually took my old session pen and took it to paper because we're thinking about what the next year is going to bring and and we edit this every year and so it seems like a great time to get people's thoughts on what we should ask we usually feel this in December or January and that's going to be a rocky time right no matter if we do it December or in January will have just experienced an election and all these thoughts go into like when you field surveys and how you're asking questions so this is this is a great help. I want to thank everybody for participating today and we hope to see you really soon in the future. Thanks to Eric and and all the panelists.