 Let me welcome everybody. Welcome to the Future Trends Forum. I'm delighted to see you all here today. We have a pair of fantastic guests talking about a really, really important subject with some great research. I'm looking forward to bringing them on stage for our conversation. We've been thinking about higher education in terms of public higher education for a long time. We've been focusing on public universities and what they do and how they can help us and what they mean. We've also been looking at public attitudes, but we haven't had a session quite like this. We have two different people to welcome. One of them is Professor Steven Gavazzi, who is at the Ohio State University where he is a researcher, a faculty member and instructor, who is also a very active scholar, producing quite a few bits of material that we should be looking at. Let me just bring him on stage first so that we can see what he is up to today. Hello, Professor Gavazzi. Hey, Brian. Good to see you at Ohio State University. Thank you. Yes. So let me first of all thank you for coming. Thank you for joining us. And also we introduce ourselves by talking about what we're going to be doing in the future. What lies ahead for you for the next year? What kind of scholarship? What kind of teaching? What kind of projects are you up to? And what topics are top of mind for you? Two big things. As you'll also hear from President Guy, there's going to be a third book in our efforts. The first one, of course, was back in 2018 when we did the land grant universities for the future book. The book that we're talking about today, what's public about public higher ed, also published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2021. And the book that we're working on with our friend Dave Rosowski from Kansas State University, we hope will be called The Great Reset and in fact will be taking into account a lot of the changes that have been occurring as a result of actually multiple pandemics that we've been experiencing over the years, not just COVID, but also the demand for racial justice, the greater divide politically in terms of our nation's landscape politically and other things that have come about have had a tremendous impact on higher education. And we would like to share our thoughts about that. That's the climax of this book is about The Great Reset. That's right. And in fact, that's that we left it there exactly for our editor, Greg Britton, to pick up on and hopefully give us the green light for book number three. Very good. Very good. Your previous two books are very important. I'm really looking forward to that. David Rosowski is also a friend and does great work. So I'm really looking forward to all of you putting the band together and seeing what your trilogy looks like. Thank you. The other major project that I'm working on right now is an attempt to pull the 1862 land grant universities into some sort of national conversation about the debt that we owe to the tribal nations whose land many of you may or may not know has been had been taken and sold in order to fund the beginnings, the establishment of 52 land grant universities in total as a function of the Morrill Act. And so we're really hopeful that one of the ways that 1862 land grants can begin to pay back that debt is by looking at our 1994 tribal college partners and seeing whether or not we can help them to begin to achieve some of the same kinds of fortunes that the 1862 land grant universities have been able to do. So that's another big part of the work ahead for me in this next year. That's a huge effort. What a great attempt to redress a historical wrong. Bravo. Yep, we're fortunate. We have some money from USDA from the National Institute for Food and Agriculture to put on a conference this fall. Actually, we're going to be putting on a post conference that will be connected to the first Americans land grant consortium known as Falcon, which is actually part of AHEC, which is the American Indian Higher Education Consortium. Well, I would love to follow up with that. And if possible, to host a session just on that topic itself. That would be great. And I think several colleagues of mine would love to join me on that. Oh, I bet. I bet. I'd be glad to give as much publicity as we can. Well, while we're working on this, and that's definitely not filler, quite the opposite, let me and while we're while we're working on getting President Key on board, let me ask, you know, your book is so important. By the way, if you're having a chance to buy the book or look at it on the bottom left of your screen, there should be a kind of orange or mustard colored button, which will take you. We click that button to link how to purchase the book, which I'm holding right here in my hands. The book is based on a very powerful survey that the two of you conducted going through and asking Americans what their attitudes are towards public higher education. And this is broken down by a whole variety of demographics, but also the questions you asked are very interesting. For me, one of the key questions was if you had $100 to spend on higher education, public higher education, where would you allocate it in terms of research, in terms of teaching, in terms of community service? And you had all kinds of interesting findings from that. Why don't you tell us a little bit about those findings? Well, to me, actually, this is the most interesting question of all that we asked, just in terms of getting the answer, which was across the board. Folks felt that about half of that funding, $50, should be put towards teaching. And also interestingly, the remainder of that money was split almost uniformly between research and community engagement. And the thing that was most shocking about this finding was that, since we were asking about people's political affiliations, we asked that a couple of ways. So we asked it first in terms of are you a Republican, a Democrat, an independent, or other? So we tracked all different aspects of the political party landscape. But we also asked people to put themselves on a continuum from extremely conservative to middle of the road to extremely liberal. And in all cases, regardless of political strife and regardless of where you were on the conservative, liberal continuum, everybody thought the same thing. So really remarkable in an age in which we can't get Republicans and Democrats to agree on anything that they all uniformly agreed on how public money should be spent by universities. And again, primarily on teaching, and then the research and the community engagement split rather neatly. One of the things I think that's most remarkable about that is that most public universities want to brag about their research dollars expenditures. And so, you know, that really in many ways is it's the equivalent of a 10-year in terms of not understanding what it is that the public wants to hear from us, which is first and foremost that we are excellent teachers. And then where we are leaving off from the teaching that they want equivocally to understand not only what we're doing in terms of impactful research, but how that in fact is benefiting the community. Well, that's fascinating. And one of the points of your book is that public universities have to do a much better job at actually listening to the public that they serve. And it seems like the public here is saying something very, very clearly. And this doesn't really map on to actual public university spending, right? Well, yes and no. So when we're looking at the dollars that actually flow from typically from state government coffers, what we see is that most of the budget formulas are in fact based on butts in seats, right? On the amount of credit hours that are being generated. So there is some consistency in terms of how universities are actually utilizing those dollars where that falls down much more, whether it's much more of a misalignment is the amount of dollars that are spent on research versus the amount of dollars that are spent on community engagement. That's Brian, where I think real big mismatches because it's pennies on the dollar that universities are spending on community engagement versus what they're spending on research. That's a really, really big gap. And you found as well some differences in terms of different people within the survey results. Some differences by gender, some differences by political party at times, some differences by level of education. Yeah. And in fact, let's jump to if you don't mind another finding that I thought was equally important, but also somewhat vexing. And if you can hold that for one second, because I think we've just managed to land President Key. Hang on, let me bring him up on stage. There I am. I don't know why I wasn't on there. Well, it's all good now. Good to see you. Thank you for coming. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. I apologize. I was busy was doing a great job. I could hear you, but I couldn't see you. So here I am. Well, for some people, that would be an ideal state, but for most people, well, most people who work with me, it's an ideal state not to be able to have you on board. President Key, thank you so much for making the time to meet with us. Professor Gavazzi has been explaining your research before we get into that. I was just wondering if we could ask you to introduce yourself in terms of what you're looking forward to for the next year. Oh, well, you know, this is my 42nd year as a university president, which is wild, which is wild. It really is. So I started, I actually started at West Virginia University in 1980. That made the tour left here for the University of Colorado. Then the Ohio State University, Steve, you got to be able to say that. And then I dropped that. And then I moved to Brown, then I moved to Vanderbilt, then I moved back to Ohio State. And here I am again. I've come a full circle. I think the issue that I'm looking at is the real, is the post pandemic dynamics of the fact that we understand that universities did become quite agile almost immediately, contrary to what we believe that we can do, number one and number two, is the fact that we know that change is inevitable. And the question is, and Steve and I ask this question all the time, the question is, how do we capture the notion of change and make it a reality within universities? Because we have no choice. I describe it this way. I think we have kind of three types of institutions. We have those that will not survive. I think that a lot of institutions are on life support. We have kind of the red ocean universities, those are the ones who want to go back to the way things were. And so therefore they're all gathered around the seashore, biting and scratching at each other. There's a lot of blood in the water, and then there's going to be the blue ocean universities. Those that don't want to distinguish themselves, differentiate themselves, and learn to be able to move forward in a very differentiated and agile way. And that's where I think that our book is really also saying, because we've got to become really engaged in our public. It's not only as land-grant universities. Our first book really was the fact that land-grant universities have lost their land-grantness, so to speak. The second book is, how do we really engage with the public? Because in my 42 years of university president, when I became university president, 95% of people thought that the universities and colleges were really good, so they were great. Now it's about 50%. Yet at the same time, universities and colleges are more important to the economic, social, and cultural fabric of this nation than ever in its history. So we have lost public support at the same time that we have become more important, and that is a trend that is devastating to higher education. And that really leads us to the third book called The Great Reset. So how do we reset all these issues? How do we recapture the importance of universities? And part of it is really what Steve was talking about, which is the engagement, the return to recognizing that we work for other people, that the people of our states, our bosses there are stakeholders, and the arrogance and isolations of universities have been a great downfall. And now we are preaching in this kind of woke environment that we know better than the general public does. Well, we may or may not, but we have to listen carefully, and we have to make sure that we are important, that in our in the hearts and minds of the people who love and support our institutions, that we're viewed as important. If not, then we have lost the battle before we ever started. Well said. Well said. Thank you. Thank you, President Kee, both for laying out that argument as well as for introducing yourself in this work. Friends, I have one more question I want to fire at our co-authors, but let me just remind you that the future transform is for you. This is a place for you to put your questions to our guests. So if you have any comments that you'd like to make, if you have read the book and you would like to draw attention to a particular chapter or finding, or if any of our discussion has raised thoughts for you, please either click the raised hand button so you can join us on stage, and you may or may not be wearing a bow tie. I could be wearing a bow tie and no one could tell. Or if you want to just type in your question or comment, please feel free to. The forum is open for you. The question I would like to just put to the two of you, if I could, is a major problem that you articulate so well and so passionately through the book is that higher education, public higher education, doesn't listen very closely to its communities. That we're good at pushing stuff out. You have a really nice section on extension programs, for example. We're good at going to the legislature. We are good at publishing content, but we're not very good at listening. In terms of the great reset you hope for, how can colleges and universities actually listen better to their publics? Dave? I'll tee it up and then you can drive it home. So one of the things that has happened since President Guy and I wrote this book is that I've become the director of CHRR, which is the Center for Human Resources Research here at Ohio State. And it is, in many ways, our center on data and survey excellence. And so one of the things that we've done over the past 50 years, we've been in existence since 1965, primarily doing work for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a set of studies that are mostly known as the National Longitudinal Studies. We've done that so well that we've decided to begin to branch out and look at other ways that we can tap into state and regional concerns. So we've developed something called the American Population Panel, which Gordon and I used in our book, which was meant to be a go-to panel where we could ask about the questions of the day. And in fact, what Gordon and I found was that this was the very first time that anyone had ever approached the American Population Panel. And to our knowledge, any other panel that's out there to ask such explicit questions about higher education. It's my belief that every university should be doing that, that we should be in regular contact with our stakeholders and that we should be not only asking our stakeholders that we know are our cheerleaders, but also the ones who might be our biggest critics. And opening the door to conversations about the kinds of things that they like and do not like about what we are doing as a public university. Because again, as Gordon himself said, the public are our, they are our bosses. And yet I think that we oftentimes not only turn a deaf ear, but in many respects, actually almost go out of our way to make sure that we don't ask questions that we may not want the answers to. So I really think that a big part of what the public universities of the future need to do is they need to be front loading the kinds of surveying that we had promoted in the book. And I think that they need to find ways to be able to show the communities that we serve that not only are we willing to ask those questions, but we're also willing to act on the answers that we're given. Thank you. Thank you, Stephen. President Gould, did you want to... Gordon, you did something like this, right? Because I prompted you. I said, what's West Virginia doing in this... Yeah, no, I... You knew you were going to get that one. When I came back, I did a survey to get a sense of the public's perception of the university. And then we worked like crazy to influence that in positive ways, becoming really inextricably intertwined in the life of the institution. Brought McKinsey in to talk about how does the university change itself in order to become the economic engine of the state. I go to every county in the state every year and hold forums. I get our faculty on the road and what we call a country roads tour to get them outside the box. And we bought 23 hospitals to become the health provider of the state. We now can impact about 80 to 85 percent health-wise of the population. The state built new hospitals, children's hospitals, and no one has to leave. And then created a remote worker program to get bright young people to come and populate to West Virginia. And then focusing on our assets among those are the fact that we have some of the finest outdoor recreation facilities in the country, if not the world. And we're in the Eastern time zone. So all of that, then we did a survey years later and about 90 percent of the people in the state said that we were either critical or very important to the future of their lives and that of the university. It was much lower than that or that of the state. It was much lower than that eight years ago. So you can impact the you can impact the public's perception, but it is not impacting. It's not by marketing. It's actually by doing it. It's actually by getting involved in the life and livelihood and culture and understanding the state. And it's also making certain that you listen carefully and that you have humility about that. Which is vital. Thank you both. That's a really solid answer. And I personally would be great to see much more of that in other states as well. Friends, while you're thinking of questions, please just remember that we're all very friendly. We won't bite. And even though there may be a terrifying animal behind President Key, I'm sure he'll be very, very kind to you. One of the findings that impressed me a great deal was the sense about international higher education that you were expecting that when polling people that they would tend to see, that they tend to express the desire from public universities to focus on their state or a sub-state region. But instead, you found a lot more appetite for universities to serve the world and to be a kind of global presence. Can you speak to that a bit? Because I seem to surprise you too as well. What can we learn from that finding? Greg, Gordon, take this first. You have your expert, William Bruce, being on staff. Yes. Well, you know, I think that first of all, we face a demographic cliff. I think that there's that reality. And secondly, while we face the responsibility of making sure that our students understand that the world is very small and that we have to expose ideas from a variety of cultures and a variety of areas to our institution. Third, it's a learning and it's a living learning experience. And so I think that for us, first of all, let me just step back. I think that the notion of building campuses in foreign lands is probably not a wise thing to do. I think it is a bit jingoistic. We know what you need. And I'm not certain that that's what we want to do. I think that the best thing to do is to create very strategic affiliations with institutions that fill your gaps or like-minded that you can work with for us because we're in a small state. And we're taking a look at affiliations with areas where you've always had strength. We have educated a vast number of the petroleum engineers for Ramco. So we need to be in the Middle East. And we have a broad base of interest in India. We picked out a country in the southern hemisphere, Paraguay, because we happen to have an area of real interest there. I mean, who else is going to Paraguay but me? That's the whole point. The whole point is that again, it's finding your niche and differentiating yourself. And then obviously with the demographic international students are going to be ways for us to make certain that we continue to have a viable and creative population. What I would add to that too, just to keep in mind is although there was in fact that surprise in terms of a slight majority being interested more in international affairs than impact that was closer to home, we have to remember there were some huge significant differences such that I'll just paraphrase the older that you were, the more that you had better education, higher level of education, the wider that you were. These are all indications that there is in fact another kind of divide here that splits along education, that splits along age, that splits to some extent on race and ethnicity, because people who were younger, who were more likely to be people of color and people who had higher education levels, all were the ones that were driving the findings about there being a majority of folks interested in, more interested in international affairs. So we do need to keep that in mind. So again, the trap that I would not want to see public universities falling into is saying, oh, well, that gives us license to just talk about our global footprint and not recognize that there are many people, may not be a majority, but many people still would be expecting closer to home impact. So we should get too carried away with a slight majority saying that they were perhaps a little more interested in international. Well, thank you. That's quite a balance, quite a straddle for people to attempt. Thank you. Like I said, friends, if you haven't read the book, the book is extremely clear and based on this survey. We have questions that have come in. I'd like to begin with the one from Abbas. And Abbas asks this, given that public higher education relies heavily on state funding. In states with Republican governors, public institutions have had to follow the political directives rather than public health guidance, e.g., vaccines. How do you make sense of this? Well, I think that what you do as a university and what we did is we started off in the very beginning. We did not require vaccinations. But what we did is we had pop-ups. We congealed. We talked about it. We developed an educational process. I think that one of the mistakes some institutions made is the fact that they immediately jump to requiring or mandating. And as you know, mandates often backfire, and I think backfire on a number of institutions. One of the reasons we have some of these states making these particular rules is the fact that the university is led by panicking. And I think that what we do is we cause our own problems and then we blame it on other people. We need to be smart about how we lead as institutions. And yeah, not everyone in certain parts of the country wanted to be vaccinated, but guess what? Be educated. If they don't want to be, then what you do is you make certain that the vaccine or whatever it is, is available to those who want to have it. And then you do a great educational form for people to get them to understand why it's wise for them to do it. Yeah, I don't want to make this out to only be about vaccinations. I think this is a larger issue that's embedded inside of that question. But I will point out that Ohio State University exists in the state of Ohio, which does have a Republican administration and we did require vaccines. So I actually don't think it splits neatly around red and blue governorships. I think that this split more around how well the president of a given university and that administration has a prior track record of working together. And actually this is, I think that Christina Johnson's job here at Ohio State and Michael Drake's before that who was the successor to Gordon Gee owed a great debt of obligation to Gordon Gee because of the relationships that he had established with it then Governor John Casey. And I think that actually for many years Ohio State was the envy of the rest of the nation precisely because there was such a strong relationship built between the universities again led by the flagship University of Ohio State. But it was also because Gordon was bringing in the other presidents of the other universities and in fact was also working with the community colleges at the same time to create an open dialogue that I think made things very different when it came to the pandemic here in Ohio than in in some blue led states where I think there was actually more consternation and more conflict about what was supposed to happen. Gordon would you agree with that? Well I think that it is important for the university to to work very closely with the legislature you know what I what I what I know is that when when our legislative friends our colleagues get to know us they they learn a lot about what we're doing but but it requires us to be very transparent but also to make certain that we don't do stupid things you know universities are as with very smart people who do stupid things and I think that that's one of one of the lessons that I've always learned over 42 years is the fact that we tend to we tend to always believe that we have the answer when we when the answer is that we ought to listen and then determine how we best proceed. I see. Abbas thank you for that question. I'm really glad if you want to follow up please please do and thank you both for those very practical thoughtful and experience-based responses. Steven were you thinking of Michigan? No don't answer that don't answer that. I have I was I was no just kidding. I'm always I'm always willing to tease people from Ohio about this but we have more questions coming in I want to make sure everyone has a chance to fire them off and this is a very very practical one from Lee Nichols who who asks it seems to me that many faculty and leadership at a university are not from the physical region of the university but many staff are how does that relate to universities listening to their public? Well that is a great question I think it requires you know that that's true first of all you know I'm not a native West Virginia and I'm a native of Utah I've been here long enough that I get to understand the place but both both in Ohio and West Virginia I really work very hard to understand the culture of the place I think culture is the driving force and should be the driving force of positive constructive culture within the university but if you come in and and try to try to develop a culture that is the one that you like rather than the one that is is is embedded in your communities you make a you make a huge mistake secondly of all you need to listen to your staff I mean we and to our students you know it's uh there there are three elements to a university faculty staff and students when you think about it that way and for for too long for too long we think that there's a pecking order faculty then then then students and maybe then staff I think that that is wrong I think that we I think our culture should require that we are all children of the university and that we all need to listen carefully to each other and learn from each other I learned a great deal from our staff I meet with them every month and with our staff council and I and they really do give me an insight into what our staff and what our communities are thinking oh that's yeah I'll echo that I think that this is probably this is a great question by the way and I think this is probably one of those places where there's some low hanging fruit for I think especially university leaders to understand that there may be resources and assets especially from an informational capacity that staff have that administrators and faculty and students should be listening to I think that there is also an interesting split between students who are from the area and students who are coming in from outside of the area and I think there's something there that I learned when I was the dean and director of a region campus which was to not make the mistake of thinking that my student body was the same that there were I think huge differences between people who were within a 20 mile radius of our campus and had historically been coming to the regional campus at Ohio State Mansfield versus those that increasingly were coming from outside that circle were coming from the Cleveland area coming from the Akron area they had a very different viewpoint of the campus and I think that those different viewpoints had to be respected but they had to be differentiated and so I actually had separate student groups that I listened to in terms of those who were from the local area versus those who were coming from further away so I think that that's critical and so I think in the same way thinking of staff in the same in that same way staff who are indigenous to the area are going to have I think a greater appreciation for the local feel than anyone is going to have coming from from much farther away that's excellent thank you both for those great answers Lee would a terrific question and I love how you both ran and two complementary directions with that well friends if you're new to the forum that's a text question from you know you can type into the q&a box now let me bring up someone with a video question this is our friend Charles Finlay from Northeastern University and let's see if his video is on hello Charles oh hello hello see if I can press this on here and get it all done maybe maybe you look a little cloudy right now but there you are okay yeah the question that came up in my mind was following up on the vaccine issue and you had mentioned that you had made your own decisions about that but there are other states where certain political leaders have limited the free speech in the classroom and limited discussion of certain issues of grouting race GLBT issues and other controversial topics that might offend the learner in some way and I'm just wondering how public universities respond to those challenges as an edX well I can't exactly how I respond I believe I think that universities are places of free speech period I think good ideas by the ideas I think controversial ideas I think irritating ideas I think ideas that may not feel very strongly I think that I think again there's this action reaction universities if in order for us to have free speech as designated by our by our by our legislatures we've got to allow free speech on our campuses and the truth of the matter is is that we have with the with the cancellation with the with the fact that we don't invite a lot of people on to our campuses the fact that we don't truly have a robust conversation in the marketplace we've brought this on ourselves and so we need to we need to deal with it very clearly and so as a public university president my my view is that anyone can come on my campus and say any damn thing they want to and I'm going to support them being able to I may not agree with it but I believe that that is very important and the minute that we the minute that you that you have people canceling the minute you have people not invited the minute you have people saying that gee you know this person offends me then that's the minute we lose being a university and we become a political entity yeah I think it cuts both ways I think that's the thing that we need to be really acknowledging here which is that if if we're going to allow the left to speak but not the right or vice versa if in more conservative areas or more conservative institutions they're letting the right speak and not the left speak that's where you run into the problems Gordon and I have written about this actually in several different places that universities need to be running to the middle and we have to be the marketplace of ideas and we really have to be adopting the mantra that Gordon talked about here which is you know let the speech happen and then let people make their minds up about whether or not it's a stupid idea and I think that art the history of our country has been we allow that to happen and I think the more that we move universities away from that role the more dangerous it's going to get for those universities because they will begin to have control exerted from the outside I do think that if universities were seen again as a marketplace of ideas where they were agnostic they were neither left nor right I think it would take care of 99% of what we're seeing right now in terms of these legislative efforts to push things forward now that now saying that we also exist in a climate where there are a lot of cultural wars going on people are trying to score points politically we see certain governors who think that they are probably going to be the next candidate for either the left or the right and so they're positioning themselves by creating legislation that it is what it is we know it when we see it but I honestly think that that's still the minority I think that universities have been given great room for movement towards the middle and I think we need to continue to see that happening or we're going to get more of what you've mentioned we're going to get more legislative actions which which don't make sense unless you understand the larger context okay thank you for your response yeah thank you Charles thank you Charles and and so if you're again if you're new to the forum that's an example of video question so please raise your hand if you want to follow Charles and ask more questions gentlemen we have still more text questions coming up and so I want to share one of these from our our longtime friend Keel Doomsch and Keel asks many students attend college because degrees are required by employers shorter cheaper alternative credentials are threatening this business model I would like Gordon Stevens view on this what do you think well I'll I'll start off I'm a great believer and first of all I believe the community college is in many ways the building block of higher education I think that I think that you know what we've done is we've made it made a pecking order in higher education which I think is unfortunate I view I view education as pre-k through life and that the one thing we need to do is we need to encourage everyone against to continue their education not everyone is going to want to come to university not everyone is going to want to study Byzantine Byzantine cultures whatever they may be but but we know that everyone needs in a very fast forward role needs to have an education I believe that one of the important things is the stackable credentials and universities need to be much more confluent with with accepting and and working closely with the stackable credentials someone comes out of the Navy who's had four six eight years of training in in a certain area we ought to certify those we ought to create ways for for for people to bypass the English 101 and do some other kinds of things and at the same time we need to recognize the value of the community college and it's and what it does and the and the technical schools and others because they they're they're enormously value added to the to the life of the you know to the life of our culture and of our educational stability thank you thank you yeah so you know you can you can quickly generate a really heated conversation by making the following statement not everybody needs to go to college and and what I would add to that to make that true at least in my heart in my mind is the way colleges and universities are currently structured not everybody needs to go to college and so I I think that one of the criticisms one of the major criticisms that I have of higher education right now is that they have failed to move out of an increasingly archaic model where they believe that education for education's sake is everything as opposed to getting back to really what are the land grant routes of a practical education where you can begin to provide people with opportunities to immediately apply the learnings the teachings that they're they're getting and in that respect we have fallen woefully short except in the professional fields so I think we see this in engineering I think we see this in licensed degrees like social work but we don't see this in many many other areas and I think that that's really unfortunate because I think it's possible we just don't spend the time we don't spend the energy thinking about how to make that practical in a 21st century environment and and we're going to create a we're going to create competition for ourselves I was at the I was on the campus of the university since 90 yesterday one of the homes of the co-op assistants in engineering our friend charles was just uh at north at northeastern you know what what they figured out is the fact that businesses want to have relationships immediate relationships and our students want to have that also these cooperative programs these these applied programs I think are very very important when I was at brown I I tell the story and and it's not meant to be negative but there is a negative aspect to it and that is that that we went through a process of determining who would be members of the AAU and I would happen to be the the chairman of the AAU at that time and and it became very readily apparent that and I called the AAU the College of Cardinals I do that with affection but but uh their whole thing was certain they defined research in a very limited way and for those land grant universities for the University of Nebraska Iowa State has just quit the AAU because they realize that the AAU does not really recognize the value of applied and agricultural research which by the way feeds the world and so I think that I think that we we need to start redefining the value of the educational programs based upon a real applied approach that I think is much more conducive to the world in which we find ourselves now well in in your book which manages to cover a lot of ground you talk about this this pendulum in American educational history between you know research and teaching that's more theoretically oriented and versus that's more practically oriented you mentioned the Grange movement for example which pushed and pulled on this thank you this is this is a terrific answer we have another giant question for you that's when it comes to that we can handle many more you've about exhausted it's just kidding oh I don't imagine that for a second our good friend from California George station asks how might our guests work evolve in the light of recent supreme court decisions and their impact on the shape of funding the public university now George picks out a few and he says please address whichever of these you'd like the the end of rovers is Wade the EPA decision that came out this morning and the decision changing the historic relationship between US courts and Native American tribes so he says and you're all the above as appropriate please well I'll you know I'm a lawyer by training I actually spent some time at the United States Supreme Court so I can I could speak to that a little bit so you know everything everything is a pendulum we talk about this in our own book for example the headline screaming across the the front pages of the major newspapers is that the United States Supreme Court the Supreme Court the United States did away with abortion they did not they they sent it back to the states where it has been for 150 years you know we've got to be very we've got to be very clear about these conversations the EPA issue was a West Virginia issue we're right where I'm sitting right now that that was West Virginia versus the EPA well the truth of the matter is is we have we have when you over regulate you have over we you have over responses and I think that that is that is always the issue with the courts the courts have to be the great modifier here and and unfortunately we have tried to criticize the courts I think that that I think that that is is is going to nerd to our detriment so I think first of all with any with any court decision you have to listen carefully you have to read it carefully I I read the I read the opinion very carefully um you know uh Justice Thomas made a had a throwaway line and people latched right onto that we're going to do away with with all of the other rights have been granted it just simply was not the case and so let's let let's be let's be teachers as university leaders let's teach people to listen carefully and to read carefully and not to um you know no not to gain uh congratulations by jumping to conclusions and immediately getting off the reservations now all of these have implications and they're very serious implications as to how I feel personally um I have I have personal views on all of them but but right now as a university leader I want to make sure that we have we have we take all of these as educational teaching moments and then learn how we deal with them on our campus well so well I appreciate your perspective both as the as the lawyer so I have to call you counselor Guy from now on also in terms of turning this into pedagogy thank you thank you Stephen did you want to jump on that as well yeah so I think this is another way of getting back to the point I made earlier which is that universities run need to run to the middle on all of this if we are seen as somehow lamenting what the Supreme Court has done without allowing for the uh the side that says this was a great thing on any of these um actions I think we're going to put ourselves again in increased danger of seeing being seen as being one-sided as opposed to being a generator of the marketplace of ideas and so that I think more generally I would say that that's that's the case the other thing I would want to point out is that in some ways at least some of those Supreme Court actions that George had mentioned there's a reality to this which is the Supreme Court is pushing things back to the states and one of the beautiful things about the land grant system itself was that we never made it a system that looked that looked the same across all 50 states and so that's very different than what happened in Germany that's very different than the Japanese model for instance where there's great uniformity across institutions what we have the ability to do I think as public and land grant universities is to shape that pedagogy that Gordon talked about to shape the scholarship that's going to come out of this that will be tailored to the needs of each of the states that these public universities find themselves in and so I think that there's actually there's a silver lining in a lot of this in terms of what it's going to force states to do and I think that universities can help lead the way in the dialogue about what's going to happen between the public and the governance of that particular state the only thing that I'll say a little bit different and it gets back to some of the filler I was trying to add at the at the beginning Brian which was about the Native American issues I do think that there's something very different that universities are going to have to come to grips with with regards to Native American issues and the debt that's owed to them and I think what has happened is the Supreme Court has pushed that back to a state level too and said in essence although there are many federal actions that have taken place historically this is now up to states to remedy now in this case the Supreme Court ruling was about criminal activity and who could prosecute so it's a very limited case of Native sovereignty and tribal sovereignty but nevertheless again I think that there's a reality in front of us that universities are going to have to come to grip with their own lack of relationship between their institutions of higher learning and tribal nations before they can really get to a place where they can say that there's something they can do for the states themselves because they've got to clean their own house before they're really going to be able to comment on other things it hadn't occurred to me but it sounds like you're between the two of you that and you're you're you're supporting a kind of federal approach in the sense of of the US is a federation where states have more and more determination over public higher education and less so the federal government but they they always have they always have the only the only control the Fed has had over us until recently was has been through through funding models with Pell grants and a variety of other things but but the federalization of higher education is not in the best interest of higher education I can I can tell you know and it's there's so many of those issues it's it's like the rules on title nine and right other things I mean you know the universities get really caught in the middle on this one administration makes some rules the next administration makes other rules what we need to do is as universities we need to come up with fair standards about how we do some of these things and and the regulatory the regulatory folks need to need to back away from this as a matter of fact most of the people in the department of education in Washington are really never had an opportunity to run a university or a college I think that we got to require all of them to have that opportunity before they can start telling us how to do things same same thing with our legislature and others you know I think that these are unique institutions powerful important and most important thing that we do in this country is to educate our citizens and and right now what we're doing is we're we're fighting too many battles and not getting to the education issue unfortunately it is three o'clock and I have another I have to go to so I understand completely and we are out of time ourselves could I just ask both of you what's the best way to keep up with the the two of you and to find out what you're up to besides the Johns Hopkins University Press catalog besides that so we have that brand new article that just came out Brian I think you posted it on the website that came out in state local government review Gordon and I have a number of other articles and op-ed pieces that are in the work so I think just following us on Twitter and staying in touch for those of you who are interested in the native stuff there is something called land grant truth land grant truth is a blog website if you're interested in reading more about that but we also hope to be getting out some pieces between Gordon David and myself on the great reset as well so in some way some teasers before we actually have the next book come out and then we'll figure out what we're gonna do after that well thank you both for spending an hour thinking about that we're very much Brian we appreciate appreciate it yeah thanks thanks very much for this offer have a great day by now bye bye president key and thank you thank you Stephen but don't go away friends let me just point to where we're headed next and let me thank you all for the great questions that you've been given today if you're interested in continuing to talk about this everything from the connection between land grant universities native americans to the politics of public higher education please you know just use the hashtag ftte on twitter or tweet at me brian alexander right chinding events or check out my blog brian alexander.org for more conversations about this if you'd like to look into our previous sessions including on public universities go look at tiny url.com slash ftf archive and you could find our recordings they're going back six years if you'd like to look ahead a bit to our upcoming sessions just go to forum.futureofeducation.us and you can see more and more of our sessions and if you'd like to share some of your own work be it with public universities or otherwise please just shoot me a note so that i can share it with everybody thank you all for spending a great hour with us thank you for sharing your thoughts your questions your comments it's summertime in the northern hemisphere it means we're super hot so for those of you in the north please stay cool as you can for those of you in the south be as warm as is appropriate above all everybody take care and be safe we'll see you next time online bye bye