 My name is Kevin Kerry, I'm the vice president of education policy here at New America. Welcome. Thanks so much for joining us this afternoon for what I know is going to be a very, very interesting discussion in partnership with our longtime collaborators and partners. Washington Monthly Magazine, which has recently published its annual college guide, which every year through rankings and long form journalism, asks different versions of the question, what can colleges do for our country. This has been a relationship that has been in place for many years. And the newest edition of the college guide which you can now read online is one of the best. So I know you'll, you'll get more information about that as the, as the event goes on. We're very pleased to have some of the authors and subjects of those articles join us today for this panel discussion. It's a really interesting time in American higher education the campuses have been open again for a couple of years now, but changed in ways that I think we're still struggling to understand. We have brand new federal higher education policy and student loan forgiveness, potentially given the various legal issues that still surround that we have new ideas out there, some of which have advanced some of which have not. And meanwhile, millions of students enrolling in colleges and universities around the country. We have a great panel discussion here today, including Paula Glass, the editor in chief of Washington monthly magazine. We have Jim and Deb Fallows. Jim Fallows longtime board member at New America Deb Fallows several time fellow and journalists here at New America. We have Dr. Pam Edinger, the president of Bunker Hill Community College in Massachusetts. And Chris Gomez, a student at the University of North Texas at Denton. But before we get to the panel, I want to introduce our opening speaker, Michelle Asher Cooper, who was until very recently the deputy assistant secretary for higher education at the US Department of Education and prior to that the president and CEO of the Institute for Higher Education Policy. Michelle is now the vice president for public policy at Lumina Foundation, which I should also note is a generous supporter of our higher education work here at New America, and of the Washington monthly college guide. So again, on behalf of New American Washington monthly thank you to all of us for joining, all of you for joining us at this event. And with that, I will hand the virtual microphone over to Michelle. And then for that intro, I want to thank Washington monthly and New America for this opportunity to join in partnership. As you heard, I have just joined the staff of the Lumina Foundation in fact this is only my seventh day on the job lucky number seven. Although I am new to this role I have been a grantee and partner to this organization for more than a decade. The track record with Lumina is long because fundamentally the organization and I have a lot in common. For example, luminous mission of making opportunities for learning beyond high school available to everyone. The equity first focus on facilitating the success of students were black and brown adults and low income is something that I believe in so deeply that it has been reflected throughout my entire career. I believe that our nation urgently needs to increase the college attainment of all Americans, and we need more people to have degrees and credentials that confer real value in the labor market. Another thing that Lumina and I have in common is our belief in facts and the importance of having journalists advocates and other professionals who share and speak to college and university leaders responsibility and addressing the needs of today's college students. That's why the Washington monthly and today's event is so very important. Through its rankings the Washington monthly highlights colleges that have a commitment to serving students and serving their local states and communities. As Kevin Kerry wrote in the introduction to this year's rankings, America needs a new definition of higher education excellence, one that measures what colleges do for their country, instead of for themselves. Through this year's 2022 college guides, the Washington monthly explores the vital role universities can play in their communities, and the innovations that ensure that learning and earning are well aligned. After all, access to good colleges and good jobs should go hand in hand. Quality, quality, value, equity and affordability are key words for higher education, but they mean absolutely nothing without action. Throughout this issue of the Washington monthly I was pleased to read articles that spoke to real authentic actions where students were centralized. I applaud the colleges that are featured because they are truly what Jim follows described as engines of individual mobility, social responsibility and national cohesion. I believe these are the defining characteristics of institutions that offer the most value to students and society. This when we talk of college rankings, we need to make sure they are about more than just bragging rights or institutions patting themselves on the back. As it stands so many college rankings do nothing more than simply hold up institutions that Xerox privilege. That's something I got from Dr. David Wilson Xerox privilege. Instead we need rankings that point the way toward creating a better society. Washington monthly I applaud the good work that you continue to do on college rankings and I challenge all institutional leaders to not be so fixated on the rankings. Instead be fixated on the words that are featured on the cover of this year's college guy. What can colleges do for the country. This question is so important now at a time when people are questioning the value of higher education. And at a time when we are still moving through a period of pandemic recovery and navigating inflation and economic instability. The question of what can colleges do for the country is one that I actually think about often. And in my most recent position at the US Department of Education. These were the types of questions and issues that were front and center of my work, each and every day. In my education I had a number of responsibilities and three different titles, but all of them led up to supporting a number of key priorities for the administration. For example, I led the work around the pandemic recovery efforts that were made possible by the American rescue plan. The American rescue plan kept many colleges from financial disaster. The faculty and staff of those institutions employed. It kept millions of students in school and help them with food and housing costs, and it provided academic help and financial supports to help reenroll and re engage many of those who stopped out during the initial phase of the pandemic. In addition to the department we also helped to mitigate the financial harm of the pandemic by delivering targeted financial lead to student loan borrowers at the highest risk of falling behind on their payments are defaulting on those loans. We did all of this while also working with college and university leaders, like Dr. Edinger who's here today, we were eager to work with them to raise the bar and embrace evidence based practices to increase student retention and completion. Now that I'm here at Lumina. I hope to extend the good work and early wins me saw coming out of the pandemic. The pandemic showed us that higher education is not the slow moving enterprise that many believe that it was college leaders showed us that they were flexible and adaptive. They showed deep care and sensitivity toward their students and their faculties, and they moved with swiftness and urgency. Now even though we have disposed of mass mandates, we cannot dispose of the urgency and the can do spirit that characterize those early days of the COVID-19 crisis. In general, the crisis for many of our students did not start in March of 2022. The pandemic simply put long standing challenges under spotlight and infected millions more. I believe our actions and the speed of our actions have helped millions of students and institutions survive this crisis. What we take now will determine how well we learned our lessons and whether institutions will commit to serving our students and our society, instead of just serving themselves. Thank you for the opportunity to greet you all today. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Michelle. Thank you, Asha Cooper. I, for those kind words about the Washington Monthly. Michelle and I know each other for a lot of years, but including her leadership of the Gates post-secondary education commission that I served on. And I was just delighted to have you here and hope you'll stick around for the discussion later. It is my pleasure now to introduce another old friend, Dr. Pam Edinger. Dr. Edinger since 2013 has been president of Bunker Hill Community College, which in 2017 the Washington Monthly picked as one of its 12 best colleges in America for adult learning. Dr. Edinger, when you came to Bunker Hill in 2013, you inherited a nascent program called Learn and Earn. And when you got there, you said you were going to double it. So Learn and Earn is an paid internship program. Tell us, let's just begin the story of this program that we wrote about. Laura Calruso wrote about Abley and the Washington Monthly. Why did you want to double the program? Why is paid, why are paid internships at community colleges important? Right. So, well, it's absolutely my pleasure to come back, Paul, to have a conversation with you a second time. It's about internships. When folks have internships in their head, they think about, you know, students who are in their senior, junior, senior year in college, 17, 22, very traditional, and they do this for free, right, in order to get experience. But when you look at the sort of background of community colleges or students don't have the ability to give up the jobs that they're doing to support their family or support their schoolwork to give up some free, right, to give somebody else free labor. So when my predecessor started this program, she insisted that the program must pay more than minimum wage. $15 an hour back then was a lot of money, but also a transportation stipend. For our students, not only do they experience poverty and over three quarters of our students are living in the lowest to quintile income. A ride out to their internship site would cost them $3-4 and it's close to $10 round trip. I mean, that is no longer going to school money, it's food money, it's money for the children. It just eats into their ability to maintain their everyday living. So we insisted that it would be paid. And because these are adults, we said to our partners, you must treat them as if they're adults because they come with skills that our younger people don't. They're not coming to you to learn how to come to work on time or learn how to be, how to be, how to what I call calendar integrity, right, to know when to show up and how to work. So the program is slightly different. Our students go to these internships to experience what it feels like to be in the corporate environment. They're generation students and going to college is not in their family background, right? You're children in mind. They learn about these things sometimes around the dinner table, they go to work with mom and dad. They get a sense of what it feels like in the office and in the professional environment. That's not always the experience of our students. It is something different and we borrowed the traditional, I guess the traditional template of an internship and basically turned it on its head. To me, the social capital and the knowledge capital that they gained from the internship is important, but the system was not designed for my students. And if I want to double it, it is to be able to serve the 16,000 students that I have. Right, right. And, and, and let me just point out that there are paid internships out there, but they tend to be at pretty elite four year universities like Northeastern University with its famous program. And, and those often lead at these schools to job offers, right. And, and, and they also lead to job offers for our students. In fact, I have to confess we stole the Northeastern model, right, we just stole it from the road. It just sort of made it a community college thing. I think the more common issue is that these companies that we're approaching right so we're close to like 100 companies now. When, when we approach them, they don't know anything about community college students, they understanding of a college student as traditional rates, 17 to 22 mom and dad who works and they have they have all kinds of different backgrounds. But our students need the same type of cultivation asset as folks who are going to four year colleges, because we're going to be a huge part of the future workforce. Right, when you think about the jobs that are out there three quarters of them requires a college degree. And since the community colleges have half of the undergraduates in the United States. Students don't have that kind of training. We're not going to be able to stand up a workforce that would help economic development around the country. Right, so that's the corporations understood that but, but you discovered something a couple of years in about the type of students at Bunker Hill, who were getting the internships. It was, it was meant to be a way to to take away privilege and and you discovered something a little, a little off. Tell us about that. Yeah, it was, it was one of my deans came to me you know we had we had some iterations of this program and one day you know I get a knock on the door. And they said, Well, look at the data Pam, you are 75 we are 75% diverse right a quarter white quarter black quarter lot next 15% Asian, a beautiful beautiful, you know, sort of mosaic. My numbers, coming out of that program, they were white they were international students and they were young. The way inadvertently done by the way that we have marketed this program is the skim the top. And that's, that's, that is not okay. And it's also the way that the jobs are posted right so the job would pose, let's say assistant to the CEO or whatever it is. So the way that it's written the language itself on these postings are not what our students are used to. Right and therefore, the students when they look at these postings they don't recognize themselves in it. So they see, they see the Northeastern model or if they see the same students that one with stereo typically see in their mind. So what we did. Because I because I just want to, you know, a little spoiler alert what you did work. Right, we looked at the numbers and you know you achieved over the course of a few years. Pretty much an internship that reflects the diversity that's cool. What are the two or three things that you did that made that happen. Okay, so so we took away the fear of the unfamiliar language. Instead of saying to students you got to try you got to try you got to risk everything you got to come try. We literally went to went to classes in which students or let's say studying accounting or studying, whatever it is that they're studying and we say the outcomes of this class that you just talk matches the competencies that this job description look therefore you're qualified because you got an aimless class or you got to be in this class. So that's the way to convince and they need to hear that because they didn't see themselves as qualified right. Absolutely and the flip side of that too, is that the employers that we're sending students to or a first skeptical about how to support these non traditional students post traditional students, but once they have the students with them. The work ethics of these students that I call I call it, you know the emotional intelligence of these students who been in the workforce. Once they have the content skills, they excelled, and you know they get job offers in the same way that the other, you know that the other more typical students would. Yes, this is a success but we really had to be mindful, right about looking at that data and say, yeah you've mimic something that people say are good but are you doing it well for your students. So, so you were able to pull this off because you had corporations willing to put money into the pay of these students and also I believe you got some foundation funding for that right. So, initially because of the way that internships are marketed what the business partners came right away right the corporate business partners came right away, but then folks knocked knocked on our door and said well how come you don't have any internships for civic organizations or cultural organizations was because they couldn't afford it. They couldn't afford to do the $18 an hour deal so what we did at the colleges, we went out and we fundraised with foundations, so that we can, we can do cost matching. Right, we would pay for half and then the museum would pay for half, so that we could bring these students into an environment that you know typical internships at a corporation will give them not everybody wants to be a business major. One of the reasons why you got a more diverse student body taking advantage of it because not everybody wants to go work for Goldman Sachs or, or partner whatever. Right, and you know, we had some amazing partners that the Isabelle Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston gave us all of their internships, every single one. We did over 1015 internships, and it changed the way the museum sees students and it changed the way our students see the museum. Those students and their family would never have gone into that museum of their own accord right. So the museum has this diversity agenda, they want to do good to I work and we are a partner, so that they develop a new audience and serve the community. We would have a whole new window of cultural offerings for our students that they would never would have found. Okay, that's great. You guys have done a great job. Most community colleges are not located in wealthy cities like Boston don't have inspirational innovative leaders don't have the capacity to get that kind of foundation money. What do we need at the federal policy level because we like to talk about federal policy here at Washington Monthly in New America what do we need to make the program that worked for Bunker Hill work for every community college in America. Well, I think the, the, I think the Department of Education to think about partnering either with the Department of Labor or whatever the procurement work that they're doing for the federal government, and make sure that that in their work they put aside money for internships is no different from apprenticeships, or any of the other sort of work study kind of in, you know, programs, so build it into build it into the, the economy or the, the normal economic workings of a city. Yeah, not everyone has a Raytheon in their backyard, but every city has a city hall, every city has a historical society, every city has a health has a health department. So it is, it is really opening up on the idea that these jobs that are out there that are that are just regular paying jobs could be an internship experience for somebody, they can hire them. So, so we seem to think the internship is just tight little ball in a corner but it really isn't every job Paul you need an intern at the Washington Monthly, and you know take a take a community college student everywhere can use internships I don't think we need to restrict it but build the money into the normal streams of grants and procurement is not difficult. Well, it, I like the idea that it's not difficult I hope that Washington listens to you. Thank you, Dr Pam manager. I think we can probably just go straight to Elias Gomez. So Elias Gomez is the subject of a, a wonderful story by one of our key writers, Jamal Abdul Alim. And this was a story about a kind of a similar program. So, Elias, you have a story to tell about this program and what it did for your life you were, you were in high school. And I want you to just start from the beginning. What happened. When you were in high school, and somebody came along and said hey, there's a program for you. Tell us a little bit about that. Okay, so it actually starts before high school and kind of into elementary actually. So this is a long term thing. In elementary, we had took a field trip to UNT density. And one of the Torah guides had mentioned that they were doing high school and college at the same time. And this is roughly like around 30 grade for me. And it stuck with me. I remember going back home and telling my mom that I want to do something very similar to that I would like to go ahead and do college and high school and high school at the same time. That's called dual enrollment right and they had this program dual enrollment at the Dallas schools. Yes, and you're you're you're in third grade at the time. Yes. So this is still something new at that moment back then it was something new. So as time went as time continued, and my mom worked for the city of Dallas, and she had mentioned to me that the DISD Dallas Infinite School District was having this program where they're allowing high school students starting their freshman year also become college students for community college. So I had told her my plans of me wanting to make video games, and she have found one of the schools that was offering that program the dual enrollment. And their, their field of study was video game technology. So it was almost lined up perfectly for me. So you're in high school now. I'm in college now. So when this video game opportunity came about taking a course in video game technology you were in what grade. I was in middle school going into high school. Gotcha. And so then you go to high school, and you're involved in dual in this dual enrollment program. And over the course of your high school years, you're in high school, but you're taking college courses right. Yes. And what else did the program provide. Not only did the program provide no college hours, but as well as plenty of internships and shadowing. The internship that I received the first one I received was a game testing internship from a small company known as Magnet and Associates. And he is a game developer who works real closely alongside my school. And he is known as an industry partner for us. And so he would come every Friday and I remember one of these meetings that he had went to it was during the peak of COVID, or all doing online classes. And I remember just having plenty of questions for him just asking him like, how's the gaming industry going to continue to move forward how has COVID impacted the gaming industry and he liked that I came with so much enthusiasm that he offered me an internship on the spot. And this was a paid internship. Yes, it was a paid internship. And so then you're continuing to take that job. And then was it in your senior year this is by the way the program is called P tech right. Yes, P tech and and your senior year you get a different job with IBM tell us about that. Yes. So from my junior year going into my senior year that summer break, we were giving a IBM internship for that for that summer. And I went ahead and applied and, you know, luckily I received it. And from there, I was being, I was an intern for IBM as a consultant being paid 2115 hour. And I remember, like, it was something completely out of like, nothing I never thought I would be doing. I never knew what a consultant was beforehand I didn't think that was like the best paid job you'd ever had like before all this. I was working at Olive Garden cleaning tables and greeting people and I was being paid $10 an hour. I was thinking that was like money at the time I was going out and buying food and buying clothes. And then whenever I got the IBM internship, it completely changed my mind on how money works. It really opened up like $10 wasn't nothing. It was just a lot at the time because I didn't know how money works, and I was still very young. So you're going into your senior year, right? And the IBM, you had this job with IBM, and you graduate with a high school degree and a community college degree. Is that right? Yes. I have my associates and applied to Arts of Science and Video Game Technology and Computer Science. And you were how old? And I'm 18 as of right now. You're 18 now. So you were 18 when this happened? Yes. Yeah, that's a little ahead of the curve, young man. Yes, and I always love to bring up that I worked for IBM as well as having my associate's degree while still being 18 because a lot of people find that real fascinating that I'm still so young yet have so much experience that, you know, people my age are fighting to get as soon as they leave high school while I was getting it before I even graduated high school. And what I also find super interesting is that I actually had my college graduation before my high school graduation. So I even finished my college classes before my high school classes. And didn't you tell our writer Jamal Abdulalim that your mom was impressed and it changed her life, right? Yes. So she noticed how well I was doing in college compared to high school, because to me I felt that the courses as well as material and college is not only a lot more beneficial but as well as it's a lot more easier to digest compared to high school. So you were not the top student in your high school. No. So before that, my middle school years, I was in a whole different district. I wasn't necessarily the best kid. I would get into a lot of trouble. So going into my high school year my freshman year I was still acting up was in the best grades and almost immediately like the college classes, like turned me around, and I ended up from being like a C average students of being high, high being a low average student. Amazing. And now you're at the University of Texas at Denton, is that right? Yes, University of North Texas at Denton. University of North Texas. And what grade are you in? I'm considered a junior. And so I'm on track of graduating next year. I'm an incoming freshman with junior credentials, and I'm on track of graduating next year as long as I take five classes per semester, which is nothing compared to what I was doing in high school where I had eight classes. And that's not even including my college classes. So what are you going to do if you get that degree? What is your aim for a career or do you have one yet? So for the longest, I've always wanted to have my own gaming studio. I would like to create my own video games, but in a different way than other traditional game developers. Well, I have very little doubt that you are going to do precisely that. Yes, thank you so much for sharing your story with us. Good luck with your junior year. It's amazing. I want to turn to our next set of panelists. Jim Fallows is a legendary journalist, a long time writer for the Atlantic Monthly for the Washington Monthly. He is the author of about 12 books, has traveled and written throughout America and the world, National Book Award winner, and many, many other honors. And Deborah Fallows, a very distinguished writer and linguist, author of a couple of books of her own, former as Kevin Carey said, fellow at New America and research fellow at the Pew Research Center has written for just about every publication from the New York Times to Slate to the Washington Monthly. And I got to say, both Jim and Deborah old friends and mentors and colleagues and was delighted that they each wrote stories for the Washington Monthly's College guide and ranking. And so I'm just delighted that they could be here with us today and the themes of their stories really define the theme of this discussion we're having today with New America. And that is the importance of defining what higher education excellence is, in terms of its return to the country, what it does for society for our economy for upward mobility, the things that the Washington Monthly rankings try to measure. But in particular and this is the new thing that Jim and Deb have sort of added to our discussion it's always been implied but they've really articulated it in a, in a bold and beautiful way that part of the return that American taxpayers want for the hundreds of billions of dollars in tax dollars. We invest as a society in the higher education system. Part of what they want is for universities and colleges to to attend to the needs the economic and civic life of their local communities. And so that's what I'm going to ask them about today. And Jim your story kind of paints the frames the, the issue so I'm going to begin with you. And I have to say, for people who know the fallows as they probably know them these days best for their, for their book our towns a, a fantastic tour of America by small plane, look at the resilience and renewal of small forgotten communities all over the United States. And Jim, and also a great HBO series if you all haven't seen it, and you all have started a foundation the our town foundation to, to propagate this idea of, of renewal of, of different communities around the country and how it can be done. So Jim, begin with you. How did the story that you wrote about a particular college in America and its work for its local community. How did that emerge from the work you and Deb did for your book our towns. Thanks for asking and thanks for, for having us as part of this wonderful college issue and as part of this wonderful webinar. I need to spend 30 seconds on sort of origin stories here. All you and I and Deb are friends of long standing as you know and we've worked together at us news, the name that we don't want to discuss, trying to clean up college rankings in those days. The Washington Monthly is particularly dear to my heart as the first magazine job I ever had my life this was 5050 years ago when I was part of an early cadre of staffers the Washington Monthly Deb was there as part of the reserve army to and so to be able to make full circle also to New America where I was part of the founding of New America as well is particularly heartening this the origin story of the, the, the articles of both Deb and I have in this current great college issue is that we've been traveling around the country, doing reporting for our book our towns and the Atlantic articles and other things. And one of our recurring themes was how much was going on that nobody had ever heard about that there were things that people are paying attention to. In their communities in their colleges in their public schools in their libraries that we had, you know, traction in their own areas, but that nobody in the next county, let alone the next state or the nation as a whole, had ever known about and this had two destructive effects one was it left people feeling kind of atomized around the country when they were doing things together. The other is that gave people a disproportionately negative view what was happening in the US as a whole, because everybody knows about the things that are destructive and people don't know about the efforts to combat them. So, in brief, we were in Muncie, Indiana, a home of Ball State University about two or three years ago. We saw lots of innovative things that were going on there we began writing about them. And so that was how we came up with the stories I was doing. We were doing I about the way that Ball State has taken responsibility for the public school system in Muncie, and Deb about way the way the student newspaper there has taken responsibility for community news again it's important renewal information that had never been written about on a national level. Deb, Jim mentioned your story and I want to want to go to that now. Tell us about the Muncie press like Muncie is a kind of classic American town. And we know that the local press around the countries come on hard times. What happened to coverage of Muncie. And, and then tell and then what did the college do, because that's the essence of your story, but, but it's start with what happened with the coverage of government and and the life in Muncie Indiana. Great, I will. Thanks, Paul. And thanks to the Washington Monthly and New America who are part of our extended family, we're really happy to be with both of you today. So when we were. So the story of, of the Muncie newspaper is a pretty typical story in America about the year 2000. The star press was acquired by Gannett papers. We know what happens after a case like that. This, the staff shrink, the coverage shrink. It became a kind of shadow of its former self, and the depth of the staff in the paper was not able to, to cover local stories in the way that they used to. It became a kind of vacuum and a gap in local coverage. When ball state took over the directorship of the Muncie public schools, the news, the student newspaper, the daily, the ball state daily saw this as an opportunity to increase their coverage and they were they, they were very, you know, professionally run student newspaper at the time, covering mostly student affairs, and also a little bit of the town affairs like they did. But they thought this is a real opportunity to step up to have the student journalists go in depth into the school system that their university was taking over and to report it not just in nuts and bolts but to go into the classrooms and see what it was like in a in a bilingual classroom for the teachers and in the context of what that meant to bilingual education around the country to go into changes that were happening in the state government like I think that would civics be something taught in middle school that was a state decision. So they decided to cover that and, in, in fact, what it meant to the Muncie public schools themselves. And it, it's really interesting in the context of both the internships that we've just heard about and Elias a story that these student journalists saw themselves as having an opportunity to be real journalists as they called it, and we're very excited to hear the advantage of this and said, once they started writing these stories, they, they appreciated that they were dipping their toes into the big time, and providing something for the town that that wasn't there anymore. And, you know, providing something for themselves and opportunity to really operate at a different level from what most student journalists can do. And so suddenly the people and so if you're living Muncie and you know that the schools are struggling and but they've got promise and do you go to the, do you literally go to the student newspaper website to read about, you know, teacher pay and, and you know other things is it something that the local folks in Muncie take advantage of and appreciate. Yes, it is is the answer and the students on the paper and their marketing divisions and their advertising divisions worked very hard to make that happen. They, they hit the pavement handing out copies of their newspaper at local meetings. They published online and once a week they also publish a print version and also you know occasionally special editions as well and print. So they kind of infiltrated themselves into the, into the radar of people around the town and handed out their free papers. They just started reading beyond the nuts and bolts in the in depth stories. You know, not only did they go there but they saw, they began to see their understand what was happening in their school system in a different way, because the student paper had the resources to do that reporting in a different way that the local papers no longer had time to coverage. I don't know if you know the answer to this. Is there any other student newspaper that has done something like this. It happened once before it wasn't the public university like Ball State it was. So, I think he's talking about newspaper newspapers are taking over the civic role. Oh, newspapers taking over the civic role. What's what Jim, I can't, I can't think of an example there may be one but but I think it is quite unique now. You know that the framing circumstances are unique to and that was there's, you know, there was one other case where a university had taken over management of public schools, and that was in Boston a couple of days ago when Boston University, a private school took over the Chelsea schools in Boston, what made the ball state circumstance unique is it's a public university, and they're conceivably there are other instances in public records but everybody nobody we spoke with had ever ever heard of them. And I think that that that positioned the, the ball state newspaper the daily news take over this responsibility. Some other college papers we've seen recognize they have some peripheral duty to where where they are but I think there's what makes Muncie and ball state unusual is this frontal decision by the university and its leadership, including Jeffrey Burns the president whom I talk about extensively in the story of thinking that the university's welfare depends on the community's welfare. And the university took over the schools, when and why and how. Five years ago, the Muncie schools had been any sort of downward spiral familiar to urban schools around the country and the Indiana legislature had put two school districts in the state into receivership one was Gary Indiana. The other was the Muncie community schools, and Jeffrey burns who is being hired as the new president told the board that was hiring him the president of ball state that he wanted to have this job only if it involved taking responsibility for the community more broadly and not just having a town administration. So he and the university came up with essentially a surprise plan for the legislature saying, give us responsibility for running the public schools and we will take that responsibility. And they had an extraordinary process over the next year or so of involving the entire community, which is racially very diverse economically separate and polarized to have people from all different parts of the community represented in the school board and that was approved by the legislature and it's now it hasn't made the Muncie community schools like the richest public schools in the country but the trends have all been positive. That's fascinating and and so when you look, Devin Jim at at what's happening at in Muncie with ball state. Is this a one off. Is this a lovely example of a good thing that a university did and, you know, good for them but it doesn't really tell us much about the role of universities or, or there's no trend there it's just a kind of a unique moment. We asked exactly that question. One reason why you and I can get along so well to the people at ball state and other places and they said that lots of people around the country are trying to turn sort of episodes into a trend of recognizing that that community welfare really does depend on both. It depends on community welfare, and there's leverage for community welfare so I mentioned in my piece, a couple of sort of episodic examples for example in Dayton, Ohio, which has had very various sort of spelt challenges. You have a very large community college, Sinclair, working with a fairly prosperous private university, University of Dayton, together to invest downtown and to say that we are Dayton we are moving ahead across the state of South Dakota, very ambitious community college called Lake Area Tech is really just transforming sort of the work, the work's working face of South Dakota mentioned Colby College up in Maine which 100 years ago was saved by the mill workers of their town of Watertown, Maine, and now they're funding to say that okay the welfare of Watertown depends on us at Colby so I think we are seeing and trying to make a movement of colleges at all level researching universities private colleges, two years four years of thinking, our future is together. So, this requires a kind of boldness on the part of a university leadership. We do not live in an age where university presidents like to be bold. And as you mentioned Jim, this is a walking on eggshells time for university presidents that we had a one false move, and they can they can be hung up to dry for for the for the wrong statement. Why now. So, why now because the need is great, I think as the Washington Monthly in New America and their different ways of chronicled for years. One of the great problems of the US is place based inequality of having opportunities being such a handful of places and trying to, you know, spread that opportunity colleges and universities are ideally placed to have a fairer distribution of place based opportunity around the country. And so we think while there are a lot of universities and colleges where you would never want to be the president because you have to deal with the students and you have to deal with the faculty and you have to deal with the trustees you have to deal with the donors and they all, you don't have control over any of them. So being president of the US is hard, but at least you have some control being president of a college is really hard. We think it's important to call out those presidents and leaders of universities or saying, we're going to take these risks we're going to do these we're going to say we can make a mark and this can be an era of some university leaders who recognize this need and opportunity for their institutions to help remake America in the places and for the people who need it most. I don't want to hog this discussion I think that there are some others here with us who want a piece of this and want to ask you some questions you might want to do the same of, of them so if it's possible for Michelle Asha Cooper and Kevin carry to rejoin the discussion. I want to open it up. First of all, Kevin want to give you the opportunity to maybe ask the first because you're my partner and, and I really appreciate it of Jim and Deb and what you heard. I mean, it's again I everyone who's watching online I really recommend you take some time to read the article that Jim and read Jim and Deb wrote it's a fantastic and really interesting I'm a former resident of Indiana, and enjoyed my time we still work for the Senator from Muncie. So, yeah I think the question I would, I would kind of, there's this question of leadership that comes up a lot. And I think as, as journalists, or people who are involved in journalism as I might like to describe myself. You know, there are compelling stories to tell that are often leader driven. And you find, you know, this person or that person and implicit in the storytelling is if we only had another, another 500 pan managers or another 1000 of these guys or women. You know, we could, we could turn this ship around but of course, exceptionality is often a bias that's kind of built into the stories that are told. And I wonder if, if the subject of your story was reflective about that at all. And I mean, and there are like 15 other public universities in Indiana alone, some of which are many of whom I'm sure are particularly the regional institutions are dealing with the some of these same issues and so you know how to how to manage that would be a question I would ask. So that that is a very important question and thank you for raising it and we've thought about this a lot, because there is, as, as you all know from New America and from the Washington Monthly and everybody who's on this seminar understands, there are very few things in life that are purely leader driven and leaders really matter when they can have followers and the million people who are never going to be the subjects of magazine stories and people who feels if there isn't us. You know that that that's what leadership really means. So on the one hand, that is true. And stories about warfare that are only about generals are not really not fully accurate. On the other hand, generals do matter and leaders do matter in setting a tone. Paul and I everybody involved with the Washington Monthly has often reflected in the difference that Charles Peters, the founder of the magazine now in his mid 90s made by force of will and force of example. So I think that the trick is so for us, you know all of us broadly and writing about these trends I think the challenge is to recognize both sides of that that there are leaders but they matter when they can inspire others that when they can create a movement and not just themselves and certainly I know that Jeffrey Mearns and his wife Jennifer at Ball State and their team in the community and the university recognize this as a profoundly community project for them of trying to make sure all parts of the community are represented and that they are trying to think of what are the ways to have a to have a movement and there are various ways in which, you know, Michael crowed Arizona State who has gotten a lot of attention himself has been talking about the new models of of education around the country and other people have done other things so Kevin I'll throw this back to you. My sense is the point of writing about leaders is in is hoping that one create can create some examples, some movement, some people who are moving in the same direction. What do our other panelists think about the ways you can use leader stories to create a movement. Well you know I'm going to ask that question of Michelle because she's not only been a leader she's been working with leaders, you know in government and in the nonprofit sector, and I'm curious, Michelle, what your experience has been it you know that is, is this, you know, do you see innovations like this do you see really breakout cases of colleges doing the right thing, without kind of one of a kind leaders, really. I think you're, I think you're spot on leadership matters and and there's leadership at different levels, you know, oftentimes when we hear about the stories we hear about the president, as you just said. But you know they're they're the deans and the vice presidents and the RA it's like leadership matters at every level to move these types of campus changes that we that we're talking about here. There's a level of leadership that I don't think we talk enough about that's that's critically important and that is trustees and board of Governors like they matter a lot. Often, and many cases these individuals do not have deep higher education background some do and some don't. Some are from business and industry, some are from communities and so it's important to have people on those campuses who can help fill in those gaps and really help them understand what are the realities of today's students. Many of them are far removed from you know college days and so relying on their own experience might not be reflective of the needs of the students that are on the institutional campuses today. But overall, do I think leaders matters I absolutely think so but Paul you mentioned something in your comments earlier your Q&A discussion, it is a very challenging time to be a good leader. And I think we need to also be thinking about not how not only about how we uplift those who are showing that they care and celebrate their successes but we need to find the supports and resources to keep them in those roles, doing their work, because they have a very challenging, incredibly difficult 24 hour on job, and we need to make sure that we're putting them to on a path of sustainability. You made a great point I'm going to, I'm going to jump on it but I want to just say to the audience today. We're having a discussion work we're happy to talk all for forever but we would like your questions. So feel free to fill them out in that sligo box and we'll see him and and we'll ask the we'll ask our distinguished guests. Some of your questions. Michelle, I wish Dr. Edinger was here. Yeah, because that program that she talked about learn and earn was the brain child of a trustee. It was John Johnson, who was the CEO of Ray Theon, and about the only CEO I've ever heard of who started out at a community college. That's right. And, and he knew what community colleges could do and should do. And he put that thing together so your point that you get leadership, you know, from the bottom to the top is a good one. Well, Jim, you and I have talked about this. So it's great to have leaders, but sometimes you need you need some kind of a. Oh, what other point I wanted to make you talked about Charlie Peters, Charlie Peters is watching today. Hi Charlie. I'm assuming we were able to help him log on so Charlie Beth, great to have you. There's leaders, and then, and, and maybe they're rare, but there's things that can be done to initiate action to inspire action or to threaten with that if there is no action there will be consequences. And that can come from that can come from the trustees that can come from the state legislature that holds the, the reins of the budget of a public university, and it can come from a college rankings. You know, let's talk a little bit about college rankings, and, and, and Jim, and, and, and Deb also, you, is it possible to measure a college's contribution to their local civic and economic life in a way that we can rank ball state against you against Mizzou against Harvard. That's, that's a great question I'm going to buy some time for Deb to have her answer Deb of course as a former admissions officer at Georgetown University has that part of her, her background, by saying I want to respond to one thing that Michelle said that and something else you were saying Paul, I agree entirely with Michelle about the role of trustees, and again something that is really remarkable in a lot of the universities I was mentioning, notably at ball state, but also in Dayton and some of the other places is the way the leadership of the university has called it of trustees to to have a, a shared commitment and, again, using the military analogy a successful military force needs civilian command leadership at needed Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. It needs inspired generals. It also needs the lieutenants and the sergeants and I think all these things its leadership thoroughly is all these these things together of the outside stimuli, I think it is really true that you can see the distorting of the last generation plus of bad college rankings, where people will have billboards saying we're number 12 on the regional rankings for us news and this or that way. And you can see that that drives things they do in a in a pernicious way. I think a better sort of ranking which the monthly has pioneered over the past a dozen years or so has really made a difference and can in this regard. It's hard to have a measure of civic engagement that's as precise as endowment totals or incoming test scores or whatever, but you can think creatively about if you're going to measure this, what would you do, and you can come up I think with some signs of do they have that does the student newspaper cover this or that, you know, in the town, dude does the Board of Trustees have representation from community members, are there, you can think of a dozen or more metrics that would give people some incentive to move in that direction. I'm not going near college rankings pub. That is, that is your, that's, that's up to you right now. But I wanted to go back for a minute to to the leadership question. You know what we saw it in Muncie and in other places I think, besides ball state is is the spillover effect of having a really strong confident leader. And that also means turning over that sense of inspiring and turning over that sense of confidence and ownership to other people in the university. There's a, there's a very creative, growing strong internship program in at ball state where just a huge proportion of the kids go out into Muncie, you know, to extend the footprint of what the university is doing in the town, and kind of cementing that relationship between the town and the university. Likewise, similarly, it probably wasn't an accident that when Muncie to when bossy took over the Muncie schools that the university that the students in the newspaper thought, maybe we should do something here it was that inspiration of strong leadership, and that, and that spark of, well, we can do something to that spills over in and creates a whole ecology of the place. I just a little bit more on the rankings. One of the three ways that the Washington monthly measures colleges is, you know, it's upward mobility. Are they allowing students to stay in the middle class or enter the middle class by providing reasonably priced degrees that mean something in the market bring it over turn it's research are they creating the scholarship and scholars to drive the economy and economic growth and innovation and service are the students giving back to their society by participating in ROTC by participating in the Peace Corps by casting ballots in elections. And, you know, one of the measures that we have that I think is a is local in nature is we, we look at the percentage of a colleges work study grants that they use for community service. Most colleges think of work study money as just free money that they can put students to use in service of the university. But when the enabling legislation for work study was done it says right there, a portion and they didn't specify which how much a portion should go for community service jobs. And so we hold them to it would love to consider continue to talk about how we can add more measures of the local. But, but you know, I want to, I want to ask Michelle, put Michelle a little bit in the hot seat. You've just Michelle come out of the, the, the, the administration. And I was very interested to hear of the work that you did. I had, frankly, underestimated just how much the Department of Education and the Biden administration had to do just to get over coven we've all kind of put that out of our minds. But they're going forward, going forward, what is the, what is in your opinion in your informed opinion, the agenda of the Biden administration when it comes to the issues we've been talking about today, the upward mobility the openness to finding new ways for students of modest means to succeed in the job market as well as at school to, to enable, you know, more civic engagement. Tell us a little bit about what you think where the Obama administration has had. So, as you know, I'm not, I'm no longer there and between that job and this job I took a little time off. So I am no longer privy to insider information about where the strategy is going but if I know something about president and our secretary of education and our under secretary as well. I know that there's going to continue to be a commitment to students, and especially those students who have not been well served by our society. There will continue to be a commitment to work with colleges and universities about how to reimagine education and to see this moment as we come out of the pandemic, as an opportunity for long lasting change you know as I mentioned in my remarks. The challenges that we see in COVID, we're not new for many students, you know there were many students who were already facing food and hunger insecurity. Now with COVID, there are many more. There are many students who were struggling academically. Now with the learning loss of COVID, there are many more. So those are issues that are going to continue to be front and center for our college leaders, and we are hoping, you know, at Lumina and I'm sure in the administration that we can figure out ways to continue to keep the momentum that creativity and that urgency front and center, so that students can reap the benefits of this moment like that you know people use this statement you shouldn't waste a waste of a tragedy or wasted a bad moment like this is a moment. And really how well we do now will define what we look like years from now so I suspect that there will continue to be a commitment to supporting colleges and students and pandemic recovery. There will continue to be an interest in uplifting and celebrating institutions that are using evidence based practices to support retention and completion. There will continue to be a commitment to helping make colleges accountable to students and making college more affordable for students and helping to mitigate the harmful effects of student loan debt for so many Americans. And I suspect that that will continue to be top of mind for those in the Biden administration. But one thing I want to say that is related to the comments we talked about earlier about rankings and how we can look at it and think about, you know, it's sort of bigger moment bigger than just sort of some of the things we've been thinking about. And I don't necessarily know the nitty gritty metrics that we should be using per se, but I do know that as the stories in this in this issue reflect you know universities have tremendous power to influence and improve their communities colleges are often the economic engines of their towns and they really have a stake in how well those communities flourish and vice versa. The success of a college and the students at that college cannot be mutually exclusive from the success of the broader community. And so to the extent that we can think about rankings in that regard I think it presents an opportunity for a win win for the institution for students and the civic mission and broader, you know the greater good of many of our communities. So, Paul, could I possibly just follow on what Michelle you all should ask anybody any question I'm stepping out is the lead guy here. So I wanted to follow on number one, Deb and I entirely agree with what Michelle was saying that that of the various engines of opportunity improvement renovation etc around the country. Institutions of higher learning are one of the most important I think yes everything that we all can do to foster the sense that a college is welfare depends on the community welfare and vice versa is really important and changing the incentive structure. One or the really important example that maybe we can all learn from in trying to change the way we measure all this is happening in our nation's most popular state. My original home state of California where one eighth of all Americans live where there's a cabinet department of volunteerism in California. And I've really innovative a climate core there which the Washington Monthly has written about, and a brand new college core, they've written about to sort of the best examples of the GI bill and local service where people get significant, you know, benefits for for making college more affordable in return for service, you know in their communities in the regions and so I think that's an important model that we can look at expanding, you know, expanding at least awareness of that and how could be applied elsewhere. Right in that college core model in California. There are a couple dozen colleges at all levels of higher education who've signed on to this, whereby their students can be the recipients of scholarships and do this, the internship work. At the same time so it's it's getting on the bandwagon among colleges and universities there to to move that that kind of effort forward. It's a new thing. Yeah. So, Kevin, feel free to jump in at any time here but I want to pose a slightly uncomfortable question. We all know the politics of the United States and where it's headed. And we all know that higher education policy higher education generally didn't used to be a particularly ideological thing. Most individuals most citizens didn't know what the Republican Party's position on higher education was versus the Democratic Party's position. It's becoming less and less true. We now are seeing not only ideological differences, but in general we're seeing public opinion. Looking at universities looking at a college degree with a more jaundice die. Asking the question is college really worth it. Is it serving my community is it serving my family is it serving the country. How important. Well, let me pose it the way, can the kinds of things we're talking about. What about this last hour and a half hour and 15 minutes from paid internships to taking over and supporting public schools can actions like this, if done at scale, change public opinion, and provide more cohesion, more of a connection between the parties on higher education for anybody. Open any question. I mean I think this is a very present question. To what extent are these broad issues that we've been talking about both today and for some time going to be impacted by sort of changes in the ideological construction of the electorate which as we all know is has been and continues to be fairly rapidly shifting very specifically around educational lines. This this appears to be the, the, the thing about someone that is like most predictive of whether they've changed parties or one of the most things over the last, say 10 years, where Republicans with college degrees are becoming Democrats and Democrats without college degrees are becoming Republicans. There used to be more concerns, I guess I don't know if I've stopped being concerned but I had a concern that the, the sort of very durable cross ideological bipartisan consensus around supporting public higher education which exists in all of our states and as at the federal level might come apart at the financial level, like I worried that the Pell Grant would get categorized as a welfare program for the other and not not and therefore, you know thrown in with other other federal, you know, poverty based programs that have been marginalized or in some cases just disappeared. That hasn't happened what seems to be happening instead is that the more kind of purely cultural and ideological battles are now kind of piercing what had seemed like a very strong set of defenses around our public higher education institutions, directly into the realm of instruction and curriculum, and you can see that with efforts of Governor DeSantis in Florida, and in other states, you know, the, the recent bands on teaching of so called critical race theory are, you know, very much now having a direct effect on the ability of educators to teach in classrooms. In a different way in another direction. I don't mean to be like a downer when I say this but I think this is a new and growing and serious problem for addressing a lot of these communities because these are hard issues to tackle even if everyone generally agrees on on the outcome, right. It requires build vibrance effective higher education institutions that have an egalitarian purpose and serve lots of people. It's a lot of work. It requires resources it requires various institutions coming together. It requires leadership. It requires looking beyond the sort of elinist perspective on the purposes of higher education that we've been kind of fighting against. I think it would be harder if if the local institution is now viewed as a source of radicalism or, or, you know, wrong thing for things like that. All but just to say I just think that those issues need to be kind of confronted and communities need to rally around these institutions and the educators who work there. I don't think it can be shied away from I think it's, it is unfortunately just another part of the, the solution set now but it can't be wished aside. I don't know what what Kevin was saying which I think is very important and and I agree with what he says about the tensions and the, the importance of them. I think they're also I think of the general worth itness of college and of higher ed in a couple of layers. I think for, for individuals, there's been a continually changing calculation of what is worth it or not. During the big college education boom after World War two getting any college degree was a huge ticket to a different economic stratum. Now there's there's all kinds of different calculations of what kind of degrees are most worth it for the individual, the way that technical degrees are suddenly much more remarkable than others so that's one ever changing calculation for regions and localities I think the message actually is clearer and clearer that an alliance with your college really matters, whether it's a research university or a land grant or a private school or regional community colleges or whatever that that is becoming one of the markers of whether regions make it or not. I think it's worth recognizing that for there's a very long standing tradition in the US of the quote college boy versus regular Joe tension American culture that certainly before World War two when so few people have been to college. You can think of a million movies and novels or whatever on that tension between the college snobs and the average people so we're seeing a particularly inflamed version of that. And, and I am uniquely old enough on this conversation to remember the 1960s and I was in college of all the different cultural strings, involving Vietnam and the free speech movement and all the rest between colleges and communities. I think the particular to come back to the question you asked Paul and what what Kevin was saying the particular challenge of this moment is to keep the poison of national level culture where warfare from seeping into the management of colleges, colleges and universities who have the potential to do things that have broad local trans party appeal and that's one of many battles to be joined now. Please, please. You know, I don't know the, the right answer to your question. Certainly there are ideological tensions and they're very real, no matter where you are they're very real. But one of the things that I have just decided to not deter me is ideological tension. And really stay focused on what truly matters most and that is the students. And for students, when it comes to college, you know, yes we do hear more about you know is it worth it, you know, is that people say that there's a declining value. I think that means we got to tell our story better. What we know for sure is that college does reap benefits for students when they are able to enroll in good colleges, graduate from good colleges and move into good careers and there's decades of data and research to show us that what we need to do is make sure as we're opening up the doors of opportunity to millions more students who have historically been shut out that we are making sure that that pathway still works and works well for them. And so that means that when they are in classrooms that they are actually learning, and that we have good data to show what those outcomes are, and certainly we need to do a better job of being able to talk to that those outcomes and to show that data and that shows a need and a weakness in our infrastructure around data and really being able to speak to that. We need to make sure that when our students graduate, or we need to make sure that they do graduate. That's number one that they need to graduate, and they need to graduate and get into a job that pays well and puts them on a track of long term mobility. So just that first job out of college, that's not sufficient that the first job after getting that credential that's not sufficient is whether or not you can be on a sustainable pathway, take care yourself to take care of your family to contribute to community. And you know, as I said before, you know, access to good jobs and access to good colleges they really do go hand in hand, like the data also showed that right, but we need to make sure that the students who have been sort of in, you know, not in access to these things actually do have the opportunity and that they had the opportunity to be successful. And the other thing you know the elephant in all these rooms that we don't always want to talk about is the cost the affordability piece. A lot of times when people are talking about is it worth it. They are that is a gut instinct reaction to the costs and the debt and the burden and some feeling of debt. So I've been thinking about this a long time and, and, you know, many of the issues that when you hear people say it's not value. This is about a pocket this book issue is like how does it affect my finances. And if you are paying off student loan debt for 2025 years and still seeing the interest accrue, then yeah you're not going to feel like that was really worth it. You're not to fix this affordability infrastructure. Yes, student loan debt cancellation is one thing and that's a good thing I think it's going to help millions and millions of students. But we've got to think about what happens beyond debt cancellation and how we're going to hold colleges and systems and states accountable for doing their share for making sure that this is affordable. We can do that, because there was a time when we did that, that we can get back to that, then I don't think you're going to hear as much about, you know, is college worth it, I think we're going to be able to prove that it's worth it, because we'll show that people are learning, we'll show that that earning, and we'll be able to show that in terms of how it affects their pocket books as a net positive, instead of a long term net negative. Picking up on what Michelle just said, accountability, cost, and connecting up to what we were talking about before, which is, you know, partisanship. Do you see a path in the next few years for the federal government or state governments but the federal is what we know best and talk about most to do something about accountability to do something about cost. You know, Joe Biden is famously a fan of community colleges he's married to a community college professor, he put a promise to put a lot of money into community colleges and to Pell grants that didn't happen. And you might want to remind our readers why and why it didn't, but I know you all did, I know you all did we covered it in the Washington Monthly. Do you see a path for some progress on this. I certainly see a need. I think it'd be a confidence, confidently seeing a path that changes a dangerous assertion to make, particularly these days here in DC but there's definitely a need in particularly in light of the strange kind of way I think more so in light of the recent movement to large scale forgiveness of student loans here just one fact I've been reminding people of, it's only going to take five and a half years for all the student loans to be forgiven to regrow back to the same level that they're at now so whoever wins the 2024 presidential election will also have $1.6 trillion and outstanding student loans on the books for the Department of Education that he or she is in charge of. So I think we should do something to interrupt and disrupt and change the kind of pretty much structural dynamics of why debt happens and how much students charge. I don't think that the lot I think so and so I think this is a, a mostly a matter of politics and this is actually an insolvable policy challenge to figure out how to properly subsidize and regulate colleges and universities to control prices. States have been doing it for a long time, some of them are still doing it now, some of them have kind of advocated that but some of them have not, you know, and, but, you know, when the decisions were made over the last, you know, 13 months or so. This was not the priority and you know there are a lot of other things that this country needs and I understand why and the administration did fight hard for it so I think those proposals can be that be bought brought back to the table. I would love to see them expanded to include regional public four year institutions like Ball State, for example, you know, many of which serve a pretty overlapping purpose with community colleges many of which provide associate's degrees and, and many community colleges are providing bachelors degrees now so these, these definitional distinctions are lapsing as the industry continues to evolve in different circumstances. One other thing that I'll just know that I think is relevant to how we're thinking about going forward. The number of freshmen graduating from high schools in this country is going to start to decline a lot in four years. This is the so called enrollment cliff that is an after effect of the Great Recession birth rates American birth rates to started going down rapidly after 2008. So, 2008 plus 18 is 2026 four years from now. That's not something anyone can do anything about can't go back in time and change how many people were born 18 years ago. Higher education leaders are definitely aware of this and they're starting to plan for it in some parts of the country enrollment is already been going down. I was talking just last week to a couple of college presidents who in Pennsylvania, one for a private college one for a regional public four year institution. And they said versions of the same thing, which kind of gets back to, you know, what, both what Jim said about the ever changing calculus of the return on investment and what Michelle said about making this case for the long term. Like their biggest competition is interstate 81, which is actually one of my favorite Washington what the articles was about interstate 81 and why we essentially shouldn't have it we should have great freight rail in this country but we didn't do that so. So, an enormous amount of commercial traffic in the Northeast goes up and down 81 truck traffic. And so this one college that I was that I was, I went to like you literally get off the exit and there's an enormous proctor and gamble warehouse like a two million square foot distribution center off the exit, you go one exit up there's an Amazon warehouse. And these guys are paying $22 an hour right now. The labor market is pretty hot at that level because these are also they are in competition with colleges for the same people. Young men and women who for a variety of reasons are not just locked in to the college track which is most people, not people who live here in DC to do stuff like this, but most people are not locked in right they're making choices. So $23,000 an hour is not bad, particularly if the alternative is debt. If the alternative is uncertainty around whether you're going to graduate from college if the alternative is uncertainty about a good career path, not just a credential of some kind. Because Michelle said I really, really think the onus is on everyone to strengthen that value to strengthen the quality of education and then do a better job of communicating to students what the choices are. And also in a lot of ways find partnerships with local employers so it's not actually a binary. You don't have to choose between making money in your the early part of your adult life and getting an education getting on a career track I think there are lots of ways and we heard one of them. And I think we heard one of them earlier today to do both of those things at the same time. Yes, we did. And it sounds like we have a work cut out for us there's no easy. You know, easy compromises to make in the next 12 to 18 months, but I think the work of the Lumina Foundation New America, the Our Towns Foundation that is now joining the joining the cause and the Washington monthy. The work cut out for you. I want to thank New America for partnering with us on the college guide for putting on this show. I want to thank my colleagues at at the Washington monthly all of them. We all, everybody did a spectacular job with this year's issue. I want to thank the audience for for joining I want to thank the Lumina Foundation for for its support and we'll be back doing this next year after the 2023 college guide we'll see what kind of progress we made. Kevin any last words. Just thanks so much to our panelists for joining us today. And for the audience for tuning in it's been it's been a great conversation.