 Again, let me welcome you welcome everyone to the Future Transform. I'm delighted to see you here today We have two guests who are just brilliant and talking about an incredibly important subject I'm really looking forward to our conversation We have two wonderful scholars wonderful academic leaders and now consultants Chuck Ambrose and Mike Nitzel They have written a recent book which you could see in the bottom left of the screen called colleges on the brink We're based on their experience in presidential offices and based on their research They talk us through what financial exigency means for colleges and universities It's an incredibly clearly written book with lots of lavish details that really works you You know walks you through all kinds of ways that Campuses can come to the financial brink if you haven't had a chance to read it I strongly strongly recommend it now without any further ado Let me bring them both on stage First I'm gonna start off doing this not for medical order. I'm gonna bring up Chuck Ambrose and greeting, sir Hello Brian good to be with you. So thanks for the invitation. Well, it said I'm so glad you could join us and Like I said, I'm really grateful for your book Listen Chuck on the forum. We asked people to talk about When they introduced themselves what they're gonna be working on for the next year. No, I'm curious What are the projects that are top of mind for you? And what ideas are really most important for you looking into the rest of 2024? You know, it's a great question, Brian. Again, you know, I think our planning horizons have shortened, right? We used to think about five-year horizons It'd be great if I could tell you what I was doing for the next year. I'd like to know what I'm doing next month But you know without question, I think this conversation and all of The people in it could agree that we're here if we're in an inflection point, right for what is higher education? I think You know, the next year will be focused on two things, right? Where are we in our current state and how can we do best for our students our faculty our staff our communities? To see drew the storm, right? We're very much kind of in the eye of the storm over this next year though, and I think you know, obviously with Kind of the sunset of her money and a lot of other factors I think we're going to be considering what's next at a speed and accelerated purpose That maybe I haven't experienced in my administrative lifetime. It's gonna be very exciting, right? Because The future is going to help us create what's possible. It's gonna be different. I think the difference in the change management is not easy But helping institutions from where they have been to where they're going is my primary focus using Again, 25 years as a CEO of tools and experiences. Hopefully To lock arms and consider what's next Excellent excellent. Well, I hope the forum can help with those kind of conversations as we try to work through this inflection point And I'm really looking forward to hearing from your wealth of experience and insight before asking any more questions Let me bring your colleague on board and Let's see if we can get Mike. That's all No, Mike. I've been teased before about having bookshelves in the background But I happen to refer to you because your bookshelf game is definitely higher than mine Greetings, sir and welcome to the forum Brian. It's good to be with you. Thanks for the invitation. Hello Chuck Good to see you again We're looking forward to the conversation Brian. Thanks again. Well, it's definitely my pleasure now Mike You heard the question that put the Chuck. How about yourself in so far as you can glimpse the rest of the year out What are you going to be working on and what topics are going to be up at your uppermost in mind? Well, Brian is as you know and and some of the participants may know as well I'm a senior contributor for Forbes Writing online about higher education and I plan to continue to do that on a regular basis I think as Chuck suggested, there'll be a particular focus on budget issues and Unfortunately, there is no shortage of news being made on that front almost daily It seems we encounter an institution that is having to go through Considerable finance is going through considerable financial turmoil and making Significant budget reductions as a result of that so that's going to continue to be focus in the writing and the occasional consulting I do and you know, we'll see what this next year or two brings as far as There has been a small recovery and enrollment for colleges in universities, although most people think that's probably a temporary bump rather than a Reversal of the downward trajectory that's been with us really since almost 2010 So that I'm going to be monitoring that and writing about some other interesting topics for for Forbes on higher education Excellent. Well, your Forbes columns are a real pleasure to read And I'm looking forward to what you get to say But I'm also more to the point looking forward to what you get to say today Both of you your your book is admirably clear I found that it was just It's Pollucid is glass. I could see what your points were you back everything up with solid research I mean, I just wish I could send you after quite a few writers So they could learn how to do this well from you and at one point you have this fantastic Line where you describe exactly what you're going to be talking about. I just want to read from this really quickly What does it mean for campus culture morale? Excuse me, excuse me. We describe a set of tools which when properly used can help colleges step back from the brink Reassess their finances restructure their academic programs rebalance their budgets and forge a more sustainable future We concentrate specifically on financial Exigencies scenarios when colleges are forced to employ every tool of transformation at their disposal We discuss the proper steps as well as the common mistakes that colleges take either when they declare financial Exigency or when they attempt a large-scale restructuring without formally declaring exigencies so if if and this is exactly what you do and I I'd like to start off by asking you I Thought financial exigencies was a pretty clear term of art But you actually you broke this down and said that the term is a little fuzzy It's changed over time and some institutions have come up with their own different versions of that What's what's your working, you know street level definition of financial exigencies these days, you know, Brian I want to say one thing as we start because Just your comments about our book if I would have an encouragement to anyone who's got a book in them out into the future it is defined a good co-author like Mike Knitzel who Can take complex thoughts Build on them and then state them with clarity, right? So I've got to say up front that this was a friendship bound out of our work together in Missouri over a decade ago, but at the same time As people read the book they they need to recognize Mike Scott One of those gifts, right of clarity to to communicate And you know, there's a lot of people who communicate the definition of exigencies But it may be one of the more misunderstood terms Mainly out of fear that you hope you never have to use it, right? Some translation to bankruptcy in the corporate and business sector, which has some commonalities, but some some real differences and You know, it's kind of a confluence of the a up and others Moody's who has a regular circular or on financial restructure review structuring that says Exigencies can be defined for those who have waited too long Or who fail to act? That puts the survival of the institution at risk It is not a I mean it's more than a third rail, right? I'm going to say that when you say that the survival of the institution Is at risk You're really talking about some of the hardest decisions that leaders have to make Up against the risk of closing an institution, right? So It's Stakes are quite high And again, Mike and I and Mike Contributed significantly to this the near exigencies You know, that's a discussion that happens on many campuses Why are we really doing this? and If my dog did that my shoulder would fall off But that's uh That's the definition from a practitioner standpoint that I It's certainly leaned in when we had to to utilize the tool I I might just add a couple things to that brian. Um, the term itself goes back 100 years and typically People begin with an early definition by a a up So it was it was a faculty driven Conceptualization at least initially Now a a up has its own definition has gone through several iterations As it tries to deal with different kinds of institutions and different kinds of severity of financial crisis But basically it's a financial crisis that threatens that's so severe That it threatens the mission the overall mission of the institution as chuck as chuck suggested a number of colleges and universities have come up with their own definitions and those often involve Something a little less formal or a little less dramatic than what a a up envisioned with their definition And often the intent of that is to short circuit some of the procedural Requirements or recommendations that a a up had in place for declaring financial So when you talk about near-exigency or a financial crisis Interesting financial emergency. Those are all things you'll see institutions talk about They're often trying to kind of have their cake and eat it too Is to signal how bad The budget has become without necessarily declaring and going through all of the Procedures that a formal declaration of exit requires. Why does this all matter? Frankly, one of the biggest reasons is because Exigency is the tool that institutions use to terminate the contracts of tenured faculty Now as our guests know, there are other reasons that can happen for cause But for an institutional reason Exigency is the trigger that can Result in tenured faculty losing their contracts Well Both of you. Thank you for for taking us But Chuck, you know the story of your experience Bringing a campus back from the brink is a very very moving one a very very important one and and mike I love the history of this. It's just it's just fascinating to see the term Broken down in such a in such a scarly way. You should also know mike that in the chat Uh, as you were speaking, uh, kate belinye says is it fair to assume that declaring some kind of crisis allow schools to break existing contracts? And you immediately answered her. Um, and so it was it was just perfect. Uh, almost telepathic communication Um, what uh, what are some of the other come? Well, let me let me back up In your book you discussed something like 10 15 percent of american college and universities might confront this kind of um financial brinksmanship in the in the near future What's what's led us to that point is is it the end of the federal covet dollars? Are there other structural forces behind that kind of economic fragility that we should be aware of? Well, of course a major contribution to it Has been enrollment declines steady enrollment declines in the loss of tuition revenue associated with that But you also have other factors you clearly inflation in the past five years increasing labor costs the fact that universities In some cases have borrowed too much money To go ahead and build physical structures in the hope that that can help attract students And so that we highly leveraged as far as the debt that they've brought on board You probably have greater subsidies for non-academic activities like athletics Then universities can't afford So it's a confluence of forces um Coming together particularly although not exclusively but particularly at regional public universities Small private liberal arts colleges that are not particularly selective in their admission practices and community colleges I think what has been shocking to people however is to see that begin to Creep into institutions that you would not have thought it to be likely Uh To see for example, you've had four big ten universities with significant financial Crisis, you've had uh, the paul the largest catholic university of arizona west virginia university Your your participants will all recognize these are have been multi million dollar budget holes That universities are trying to plug um So I think you have all of those coming together you you mentioned kovat kovat clearly was um A stressor on these financial problems But our book tries to clarify that in fact during kovat universities saw Three pulses of federal money totaling about 76 billion dollars And that's the hearth the higher education relief fund About half of that had to go directly back to students But the other half universities and colleges could use to plug budget holes Unfortunately, what a lot of them did was they plugged the holes, but they kept on with business pretty much as usual Those those hearth dollars are gone now And the cushion that they provided no longer present So I think you're seeing a post kovat sag And the fact that those uh hearth funds are no longer They're providing the buoyancy All be a temporary that college has had for a while What else chuck well Brian mike and I are pass actually crossed first In missouri in the summer of 2010 and I would as mike knows I take perhaps a a little different perspective on most things, but In the midst of the recession I was president of small, uh, you know, i'd method this college outside of charlesmore, carolina And uh, I actually attribute most of our systemic challenges solely based on our college costs You know with with college competing with healthcare the last several decades is the fastest increase in cost of american families consumer-based economy writes how much do we have our pockets to spend And uh as privates discounted right tuition aggressively for 30 years to to drive enrollment Uh when the recession hit, you know, I actually thought we would have some rebalance of Uh value right that we we couldn't continue to accelerate costs beyond people's means But of course we also had another infusion of federal dollars Uh and at the same time, uh in the midst of transitioning from the private sector into the public sector Uh public institutions began to discount their tuition Uh, how many states give uh in-state tuition out-of-state students which would be a roughly 50 discount And as mike was governor advisor, uh at that time governor j nixon We shouldered together in missouri to try and this was governor nixon's agenda To try to keep our cost increases the lowest in the country and we did right? But again as we go through covet Uh inflation and all those factors that that mike pointed out Uh the only way that institutions had to generate more resources with either grow enrollment But they utilized tuition discounting uh and the more students we recruited the less cash we had right so Uh, there's actually three structural deficits that I would contend that most senior leaders and most campuses recognize exist Uh, but it's both the will and uh the how to fix That serves as a challenge, right? We know the margins have been diminished on the basis Of discounting our costs where students are willing or able to pay There's a significant completion In college outcome gaps that again covet kind of ripped the band-aid off, but When our completion rates and our graduation rates still do not meet the needs of underserved students First generation call eligible students of color Uh, you know, we are again utilizing title for support for students who are not staying including their degrees And then the last is the just the cost of building programs and delivering them And that's something our book really does focus in on is instructional Outcomes and instructional performance. You have all three of those deficits up, right? And do it year over year with uh compounding Operating deficits And uh, just like sometimes we do in our own homes. We run out of our savings We're not bringing in enough income to cover our monthly expenses. Uh, and now we've got a cash problem Brian Add one other thing for your for folks to chew on you mentioned 10 to 15 percent of institutions facing Financial crisis in the future. I just want to clarify. We we're not saying 10 to 15 percent will go through exigency We're we're anticipating 10 to 15 percent are going to face some pretty serious financial shortfalls That they're going to have to grapple with exigency may or may not be necessary for all of those And and chuck and I have a little split among even among ourselves in terms of the severity of that Uh problem. I think he predicted to be a little higher. I would a little lower But just to be sure we're not saying 15 percent of institutions are going to face exigency in the next Thank you. Thank you both. This is a seminar level description of of these problems And I really appreciate hearing from from both of you Friends, I'm going to ask another Quick question and then I want to turn this over to all of you So please prepare your questions And if you'd like put them in the q&a box so I can flash them on the screen or if you'd like to join us on stage It's pretty clear that there is no hair requirement to be on stage here And and and no necessary animal requirement either. So please, you know press the raise hand button if you'd like to join us We have a question from our dear friend george station out at california state university Who couldn't make it today? And he asks a kind of Good overall question What does it mean for campus culture? morale and retention When the administration sees financial exigency as the right path And he then goes on to define campus to equal students faculty and staff So what does it mean for campus culture morale and retention when you go down the road of exigency? You know, I that's a wonderful question and it's one that we actually deal with quite a bit Because so much of the cultural consequences of a financial crisis depends on how the university addresses it And I think we try to be pretty clear That we do see a problem with staff and many faculty and students Not really understanding The financial situations that colleges and universities are in they don't understand the budget And that is The responsibility of a president and a provost a vice president for administration to make Those implications as clear as can be and we talk pretty specifically brian about What every president should know about the budget and then what? Members of the campus should know and if they're not equipped with that information I think exigency is going to be a very destructive process. It's hard under the best of circumstances. Let's Let's acknowledge that and chuck is in a great position to talk about that more personally having taken an institution through it It's always going to be painful and emotionally traumatic But to not have the main constituents of a college know what's going on and understand the need for it I think can be quite destructive to the culture Yeah, and um brian, I think it'd be helpful to know that uh, you know, I volunteered in the fall of 2021 to go to hinderson because in in many ways the hinderson state university story mirrored some of Well, I don't say mirrored some I also mirrored all of the structural deficits that most private and public colleges can face In a worst case scenario, right? So the the hinderson state story only applies to everyone the In terms of scale, right? So when things go bad when bad is bad and You know most campus cultures when colleges feel distress Know right that they're in a position of challenge and I'll just give you Probably the most prevalent example is if you're slow to pay your bills if you're sliding on your payers A coach turns in a receipt. Why did this not get paid, right? Well, if that happens long enough over time then you start thinking perhaps that we don't have cash, right that we're Or if students can't pay the bills, right if they're leaving and not being able so You know two simple data points, right? Where are you and your payables and where are you your student account receivables can tell you? And I actually And Mike helped us communicate this. I think every campus should understand How they are operating on a modified cash budget. How much you bring in every month? How much goes out every month? And what's the surplus? Uh I will say this rather strongly. I'm not really sure why campuses don't understand They're operating integrity better than they do many of them. They've got huge balance sheets and they don't But that neglect right is not just in terms of crisis It's how you allocate your resources, right? So if you can improve your financial performance Uh an example I've given many times We had over a hundred programs at the University of Central Missouri, but we had 11 11 programs That serviced over 40 of our students. Wow They were our signature programs, right High demand high outcome meeting community-based needs But do you think we really changed the the allocation of resources to those programs to help make them better over time probably not so it's uh Campus culture can be significantly enhanced With the stewardship of your resources Because everyone benefits but over time and again these don't happen overnight an exigency Does not accumulate in one bad enrollment cycle Uh it's years of having to discount tuition to You know and and and then your margins begin to shrink and then be available Or as Mike said external factors that you can't control which we're in that type of inflationary environment right now Assuming too much debt right you go on a In pretty well documented the University of Chicago just the the burden of capital debt that has Accelerate right so these don't happen overnight most campuses Aren't surprised many will say somebody's got to make the hard decisions Uh now when those decisions affect me then that's when it gets to be personal Yeah, it's hurtful and impactful and human. Yeah. Yeah You know, there's a there's a very good example right now that you are uh that folks could look at That I think illustrates how a university is trying to go about a pretty significant financial restructuring In a way that really respects shared governance and does it in a Planned full way and that's marquette In in milwaukee recently marquette said we're going to have to shave 31 million dollars off our budget the result of Enrollment losses inflation. We're going to do that over six years And we're going to have it be a campus-wide process To arrive at the decisions that will allow us to do that Um, that's what you need to see and it begins to help people understand that And this is a misconception that I can say I know exists on college campuses Budgets budgets are not money but budgets are plans and uh Universities that get in trouble treat budgets as if they're they're cash. They're not uh Marquette I think is a institution to watch as it goes about this Process in a pretty deliberative and at least initially it looks like thoughtful way And they also reinforce one other point checkmate, which is they explicitly acknowledge That too much tuition discounting has gotten them Uh to be in some of this trouble really where they have used Institutional aid and many universities use their institutional aid Not for need-based financial aid, but for so-called merit Discounting the amount of tuition that many students could pay Without that financial aid uh, of course, it's a it's a Scramble to keep your enrollments up, but at some point it actually begins to lose your money And marquette has acknowledged that Well, that's a really really good pointer. Thank you. Thank you. Um marquette has been in the news off and on for various reasons And it's really good to to have that focus Thank you both for that very very detailed answer to this question Chuck you you mentioned uh debt and I just wanted to quickly throw out a question from maryland smith maryland asked Can you comment on public confidence in colleges and how that's affecting revenue? And also if you could say a bit more about deferred maintenance and technical debt No technical debt, right is uh, what what a great question maryland because uh, you know, it's the investment that schools are making especially in ai and Where that the technical amenities, right? They're starting to talk about is going what students are going to expect. It's it's incredibly Incredibly high Um So brian, you know, I'm going to go back to a point. I made earlier and I uh I think I feel more strongly today about this You know students really hire us to do three jobs Uh, first is to open the door of access and opportunity to make college possible Uh, the second is to get us across a finish line with a degree Uh, and then the third is to make sure that degree makes us competitive in both life and work for purposes Uh, and over time I believe the escalating cost of college when people have to either borrow or Can't reach their aspirational sense of place with where they would hope to go to college When people cannot access college, they're going to devalue Uh And uh in july the department of education is going to require us to consider a financial transparency value That basically will allow institutions to post on their website a debt earnings ratio to say That what I expect to earn out of a program equals what I've had to pay and borrow to access it Now, you know, I'm going to assume responsibility for that Because I have pushed right the cost of a college degree By virtue of how we fund higher education To a place where students are having a very difficult time accessing and the natural question from very smart students and their families Who are astute consumers is it really worth? Uh, and if it were me and it's not so You know, I I I'm not sure I've got the answer to this question, but to crack the the cost Discount value equation Uh, we we simply have to stop raising tuition by thinking that's going to generate the needed resources to continue to operate our institutions We've blown through the elasticity to a point where people have under You know wise consideration questions in time, right? and not to mention and as maryland considered aging campuses aging facilities You know, if we think we have a different kelp time keeping up with operations What about capital? Just maintenance and repair or duty to care duty to maintain a safe environment for our students Uh, and uh So again, you know a bit of an inflection point to say that whether it's consolidation Whether it's a merger whether we actually do have tuning institutions and we need to make the ones we have better right by virtue of Kind of the process by which we have to make those hard decisions Uh, that that really is the inflection point, right to say that current state will be sustainable to to present and Mike and and brian you're you're you led about the 10 to 15 percent I mean moody's and the rating agencies pitch would say That as many as 70 of private colleges aren't presenting up operating revenues to pay for their operating expenses Wow Right, how many seven 70 Wow So depending on the strength of your your balance sheet, right and your your endowment and your other assets That's how you make it work. But again, we've run out of savings so So I I think part of colleges on the brink is not only to say and again, Mike and I were the perfect balance Of it's not a sky's falling It is a We need to do things differently right Yeah, I think marlin's question is as a terrific one and the sagging confidence in higher education Comes at a time when you have Uh, a lot more alternatives to traditional college and university for advanced education that students are beginning to take I think more seriously Whether it's companies providing Training programs, whether it's new online institutions, whether it's for profits, the competition is growing additional college student enrollment and That has contributed. I think to some of the soft enrollment numbers that we've seen for Years here on deferred maintenance, you know, it's it's much easier to get a have a donor Give you money for a new building Then it then it is for the yeah, the maintenance of the buildings you have But that's a significant problem I think you'll you'll see in the next couple weeks There's going to be a report coming out that estimates The magnitude of deferred maintenance at american colleges and universities and it's going to be staggering It has been staggering it but it's going to grow because it's the easiest thing to put off Even when as a leader, you know, you're being penny wise and pound foolish to do it Marilyn thank you for the great question And thank you both jack and mike for that incredibly detailed answer We have we have more questions coming in I want to make sure people get a chance to ask them and friends if you haven't had a chance to yet Just use the q and a box And in fact, let me just show you an example of one of those this comes to us from Elaine lasda at the university of albany where she's a library strategist and she asked this question about an example Are you are you guys familiar with the college of st. Rose and albany? They tried to go big essentially and the school is shutting down after this semester Are you saying retrenchment is a wiser way to go? uh, I am somewhat familiar with the the st. Rose situation, uh, and um I I don't want to make a blanket statement that retrenchment is the smarter way to go Um for every institution But I would say that I don't think most institutions are going to be successful With a strategy of trying to grow their way out of this um It you know Yes, try to improve your enrollments the best that you increase your enrollments the most effective way you can um But the traditional way of doing that by giving more financial institutional financial aid is a is a financial loser for institutions so I don't want to make a blanket statement, but I think retrenchment ought to be serious more seriously considered by institutions Like a st. Rose that are facing the financial difficulties that they are And brun, you know, I would commend an article that karen fischer wrote um year ago fall called the shrinking of higher education and was the It was the lead for the fall kind of uh focus for where colleges work and and she wrote that I uh Matter of fact since I've had a chance to talk to several graduate classes in higher education and uh You know again had to confess as a college president. That was the only thing I was trained to do That's how we that that's how we led right was to to grow enrollment to grow revenue to raise money to build buildings and um It's it's deep culture, right? Uh in regards Whether you attribute it to the recession and the reset on cause whether you think about kind of the the systemic being pulled off with Uh changing demographics Alternative ways of learning changing nature of students learning all of these things coupled together It's just that those strategies As mark said will not work, right? And so there is We need to learn to shrink And if you're on an institutional campus and you start thinking about academic program review if you think about retrenchment if you think about uh Program viability all of those are steps towards a restructuring to thinking about being more net productive that if you If you utilize you can improve your performance if you wait too long, then you may end up in an exigencies Within the book, uh, we had a good friend sarah chamberlain that did some graphic works for us that put kind of the steps towards exigencies And you can feel it on a campus and you know it as a leader the the things Again, I I used to say that you know on one side of our brain We knew where the problems were on the left side of the brain We knew that there was all these tools that we hope we never have to use If you work every day Try not to cut someone's budget trying not to You know limit your positions and say that we can't hire people or invest or you know bill But the more that we did those things the more we push that target of financial viability away Thank you. It makes me think of uh, you know break glass In case of fire, right? We had uh earlier earlier in in our discussion We had a question from our good friend lisa durf and I wanted to share this She asks this is a general question. I think this applies to almost everything So in what ways must institutions change to not go over the brink? So I I think she's talking about not not being at the brink of the break glass moment But but you know, what should we do to not approach that uh that terrifying zone? You know, I would start brine and it's again something that we describe in the ways whatever campus You know the questions that need to be asked, right? And um And there are some fundamental and kind of basic tools that are available to campuses That present kind of a transparency of where you are how you're doing and how can we improve? And I'll give you one example. I have a huge bias. It's not logged on most campuses by virtue of governance structures and other things but how contend today if you're not utilizing A good academic performance portfolio some unit-based cost analysis of your delivery of instruction That you simply do not know how you're doing So how many programs you do have do you have how many faculties that take to staff them? How many students are enrolled? How much tuition do they generate? And most of my friends in strategic finance would hope that you'd have 40 percent or maybe perhaps in the range of 40 to 60 percent of your programs Presenting enough net revenue to pay for the cost of instruction Now I would give you an example at Henderson. We had no programs Enough net revenue Now you're saying well check it's all about money or no, it's not all about money It's how well do we do in helping our students succeed? Are they attractive and are they of demand? Eat them long enough to complete their degrees and from a philanthropy standpoint Do they appreciate their degrees to perhaps give something back even as a long time? Yeah Well the answer is all those are yes, then and if you can do that With your most challenged students So your graduation rates for your pal eligible students, right? Your graduation rates for first generation students your persistence rates from first to second year students The better you're doing right in helping those students be successful in college The better your performance is going to be fiscally with your overall institutional performance, right very very simple so campuses Can utilize tools and data-informed decisions to really not Go into exigency retrenchment cost cutting, but just simply do better And if you do better over time, it's the same thing is doing poorly over time Right, it accumulates to being a much better institution in the value that you're presenting to the students to answer that value You could say it becomes a structural advantage I think transparency about an institution's finances are are essential on a on a regular basis That's why I believe it's important to have campus-wide structures in place That monitor the budget and the financial condition of the institution So that it it isn't something that arises in a crisis. It's part of the way you do business Yeah When I had budget hearings at Missouri state the deans and the vice presidents had to make their budget requests in front of each other So there were no secrets. It was an open book as far as the budget was concerned And that that doesn't happen at all universities. I I know Yeah I also think as chuck was suggesting when you do your academic program review You at the same time have to inspect the non-academic parts of the university administrative And and staff levels For a couple of reasons one is there there is some excess there and second it's it's just Asking for trouble To only put academic programs under the microscope and not do it for administration and athletics and Yeah support and all the other Aspects of the university that's part of transparency is to make sure Those offices are subjected to the same budgetary Overview as academic programs even though academic programs account for most of where the money is spent It's essential that you bring everybody to that same table Thank you. Thank you We I'm friends. I'm conscious the fact that we're coming close to the end of our hour And I want to make sure we get to share as many questions as possible And you could see that chuck and mike are so fantastic with answers that I want to make sure that everyone gets a chance We'll stop filibustering Oh, you're not filibustering I was hoping somebody would come on stage on this shindig platform I like so me too. That's always my favorite part Uh, but let me ask one from uh, Dmitry Zhakarov, who is at with toffler associates He asked a very good question and this comes up in your book as well Do you expect to see institutions trying to tap new non-traditional revenue sources? Technology commercialization intellectual property is one that comes to mind, but there are plenty of others Oh, absolutely and uh You know, there's many examples of institutions who are doing that and then Not only uh monetizing in regards to diversification, but bringing it right back into the classroom and instructional outcomes for uh Means of really thinking differently about right not only competencies, but but experience you know, I've Very much valued Some friendships at Arizona State, right and of course they're very easily identified But there's many arizona state examples that are happening every day on a lot of different campuses Uh, you'll see uses of campus assets for mixed-use developments. You'll see opportunities for Um p20 programs that extends directly to talent pipelines for corporate partnerships That there's there's many many new ways and again, I think that's what I led with that's that's really creating the future Of what college is going to look like Uh, and that's pretty exciting Uh, that that's where I think demetri That especially for young professionals to start to think differently about what college is and and maybe perhaps flipping the model As we were reimagining henderson We said the first requisite are You know, basically is what's what's the most pressing needs for skills talents and capacity in the community How do we align our programs to meet those needs? And I think the more that you do that the more you have opportunities to diversify outcomes as well as Uh potential sources of resources Thank you. Thank you. Uh, it's a great question Um, and thank you for the for the solid answer We have a more futuristic Looking question and by future. I mean looking ahead to say june And this comes from our good friend charles finley at northeastern And who asks a question dear to my heart Which is um, excuse me. I'll just press the wrong button here Speaking of deferred maintenance, how does or will operational costs associate with climate crisis such as heating and cooling impact the brink Brian you ought to answer that one. That's right Well, I I have done and at length and uh and uh more more examples of this keep keep coming up. I'm afraid But uh, it seems, you know that we have all kinds of costs around this depending on where you are geographically You know your exposure to cold, but also your exposure to not just heat but heat and humidity Uh, so, you know the exposure of school in arizona is very different from one in georgia But I'm I'm I'm curious. I mean, I'm I'm just facilitating right now I I don't want to be the the speaker here I'm curious chuck and and mike what you're seeing in your consulting work As you're talking to uh campus leaders of all kinds. Are you seeing any any, uh, planning or awareness Of how people should look ahead five 10 15 years out for the impact of climate change So I'll I'll give you a today example Uncanny that the question and I would like to say something about northeastern and what are great kind of creating a future they've got in their applied learning space and You know contemporizing that co-op model to a whole other level and obviously their response students and Potential perspective students are giving to that institution. So you're you're in a great place But I had a in honor of march madness I'm a firman grad and this time last year we were upsetting Virginia in the first round. It was the biggest thing that ever happened, right? But a young man who was an alum Uh, member of the alumni association contacted me a couple weeks ago. I said, hey, can we do a call? I'm working for uh a environmental sustainability company in new york Uh, I And my group does uh assessments, right to assist institutions in reducing carbon footprint and contemporizing, right because of the enrollment uh Encouragement that this next gen of students are looking for sustainable campuses that it's it's an enrollment driver And this is a relatively recent graduate Who has found this space wants to be in higher ed And is broken relationship quite effectively to come in and do campus-based assessments to build out and Uh in the old days prime, we would have called mesco projects, right where you Leverage the utility savings to do the the campus improvements, of course, they're going much further than that now with alternative energy and Uh other options, right that brings in lots of tax credits and potential p3s and other things But here's a young man who Is just out of school a former student athlete Who's found this path to be really a great Economic mobility driver for himself, right? So I think you know the more that we engage our students and learning outcomes in those types of objectives that You know again, it'll benefit the institution. It'll also benefit our our graduates Mike, you know, you can probably have another take on that No, I I I think you're going to see school's experiment with four day Week work weeks We're seeing that in k through 12 as a way to save some Money so you may see some some of that They're going to try to shrink some of the physical footprint and So you're going to see residence halls Perhaps shuttered particularly as enrollment declines smart schools will be looking at some at least intermediate steps like that, I think You've given us both a very solid glimpse of of what's to come Um, I I think we have time for one last question And this is from our european friend, uh, philip lingard Uh, who asks It's a very polite question. I think it goes a little further than that So I'm going to take a moderators privilege to expand on it a bit Our institution is looking to expand their income by recruiting internationally And I think the expansion is to is to say that recruiting more internationally But also with some of the problems that are attending on that right now I'll take a first run at it chuck wrote quick Absolutely, uh, and we have seen international enrollments in us institutions rebound a bit from a low point Three or four years ago Frankly, uh partly in reaction to what was perceived as some pretty hostile policies by the then trump administration um Usually for the public institutions international students pay a premium over the in-state tuition Um that residents students provide so you're seeing that I think you're seeing that increase and you're seeing In terms of the efforts you're also seeing more universities begin to partner in contracted relationships with institutions where They're they're arranging for transfer programs first two years at at the host country school and then you come and finish your degree in finance your accounting or whatever At the us institution One last thing some institutions even do a cohort discount or students from international institutions so that rather than paying The full Load tuition students if they're 20 that come from a given school their tuition might be discounted down to 80 Um something like that, but yeah, it's heating back up particularly as you're at least currently Students perceive the u.s. Is being a little a bit more open to them and receptive to them than they were a few years back The only thing I would add brian relative to this conversation and I have lived experience with expansive international enrollment uh a contraction uh and then Seeing it expand again, which is is excellent for students and institutions because it just incredibly increases the diversity of our campuses overall Just intellectual capacity, but institutions need to value it but not Reliable right because there are external factors beyond many institutions controls That it can perhaps not be as consistent As you would like to think for long-term capability, right so Use it wisely invest in it But also always keep your contingencies that things can happen that either narrows or broadens that opportunity Yeah, that's a very good point You want to be careful that Your your resident parents and families don't think that their children are being displaced by too much of a emphasis on international or non-resident students Which I think some flagship universities may be risking these days indeed indeed Well, I think ending on a point of wisdom is the best way for us to conclude I'm afraid we're at the end of the hour and we we need to put a bow on on all of this Chuck might thank you for being just a fantastic pair of guests Well, what's the best way to keep up with your work and and your thinking? Should we wait for the next book or are there other ways that we can keep an eye on you? I'm glad you mentioned that because I'm I'm bending my arm for the next book because I I can't write one without it, but We can share Appropriately brine whatever conduits for contact information as possible. We would be glad to Extended in the chat or Certainly would like to make connections and always willing to to learn from each other, right? So we'd love to do that with and thank you for the thoughtful questions Well and and and check we can we can keep an eye on you through a hush blackwell, right? You can and and mike we have to Keep on you to keep pumping out those forms pieces, right? We'll do Thanks again brine for hosting us today. Thank you both I I can't recommend your book highly enough and I can't recommend the two of you highly enough Thank you so much. Thanks to everyone to listen. Yep. Thank you brine But don't go away everybody yet. I need to Just point to a couple of things but I want to thank you. Thank you both or sorry Thank all of you for the wonderful questions We've really covered a wide range of territory everything from debt to strategy to classrooms Thank you all Listen if you'd like to keep talking about this You can do this across all social media Here are some of my handles as well as using the hashtag f tte If you'd like to go look into our previous sessions where we've talked about campus strategy and campus finance since the beginning Just go to our archive at tiny url.com slash f tf archive If you'd like to look at our upcoming sessions Just head to the forum website and you could see some of the topics that we have coming up And again, let me thank you all for your great questions and comments This has been a real pleasure and I think a really great way for us to think about how higher education might advance Until next time everyone take care be safe and we'll see you next time online Bye. Bye