Understanding the Crisis of Confidence in Higher Education:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 235 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guests Dr. Courtney Brown

Transcript: Changing Higher Ed Podcast  235

[00:00:30] Introduction and Guest Welcome

[00:00:30] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: Thank you, David.

[00:00:31] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: Today, we welcome back Dr. Courtney Brown, Vice President of Impact and Planning for Lumina Foundation. Lumina is an independent, private foundation located in Indianapolis, that’s committed to making opportunities for learning beyond high school available to all. As Lumina’s Chief Data and Research Officer, Courtney oversees the foundation’s efforts in the areas of strategic planning, learning, impact, and effectiveness.

[00:00:58] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: Courtney is an expert in post-secondary strategy, student success, data driven decision making, and evidence-based practices. And she joins me today to talk about how higher ed and its perception needs improving and gives us some great ideas on how to do that.

[00:01:14] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: Courtney, welcome back to the show.

[00:01:17] Dr. Courtney Brown: Thanks. It’s great to be with you.

[00:01:19] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: Great to have you back as well. Oh my gosh, how long has it been?

[00:01:25] Dr. Courtney Brown: Not that long. I actually have no idea. months, weeks, days.

[00:01:30] Dr. Courtney Brown: I’m

[00:01:31] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: thinking it’s been about a year since your last study came out.

[00:01:36] Dr. Courtney Brown: That sounds about right, if we were talking about the Gallup State of Higher Education, probably.

[00:01:40] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: Exactly. So today we’re going to talk a little variation on that. There’s been so many rumors going out. Of course, with the election just happening, everybody’s concerned about what’s going to happen with higher ed, but I don’t really want to go there. What I want to do is talk about higher ed reputation. This is something that you’re very familiar with, so if you would kick us off, tell us a little about yourself.

[00:02:07] Dr. Courtney Brown: Let me tell you a little bit about Lumina and why I’m interested in this, and then I could fill you in on who I am.

[00:02:13] Lumina Foundation’s Mission and Progress

[00:02:13] Dr. Courtney Brown: So, at Lumina Foundation, our mission is pretty straightforward. “To make high quality learning beyond high school, accessible and successful to everybody who wants it.”. So we’re a national foundations or headquartered in Indiana, but we work across the country and we’ve been working toward this national goal since 2009, that we want to see at least 60 percent of people in the U S with a degree, certificate, or high quality credential by 2025. And then, this is where we put all of our efforts, and so when we set this goal. In 2008, we were at about 38 percent as a country. And today we’re just over 54%. So we’ve made tremendous progress as a country, to, help fulfill, more of our workforce needs, personal successes, to help people get good jobs, have good lives.

[00:02:59] Dr. Courtney Brown: So that’s where we put our efforts. And so as part of that, we’re really interested in how do we help more people access and succeed? And, part of that is having confidence in higher ed and what it can deliver. That’s who Lumina is and why we’re interested in this topic.

[00:03:17] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: That’s. An incredible goal, 60%. How soon are we going to get there?

[00:03:24] Dr. Courtney Brown: Ooh, you’ve asked the million-dollar question. So what’s interesting is when I look at the younger population, the 25 to 34 year olds. When we set the goal for the nation, they actually had a lower attainment rate than the general population, which is not a great look for a country, thinking about its future. Also where, across the globe, every other country was beating us. They were focusing all their energy on the younger population. So they were under, or about that 38%, and they are now over 56%. So that younger population, that 25 to 34, that’s really setting the future up for us. They’re going to probably hit it in the next couple of years, which is great news for the United States.

[00:04:04] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: Oh, it certainly is. And now when you talk about higher education, you’re talking about community college, college, university, et cetera, or is there a broader definition?

[00:04:16] Dr. Courtney Brown: So we’re really talking about all learning beyond high school that provides a credential of value, meaning it leads to a good job and a good life. So it could be definitely a bachelor’s degree, an associate’s degree, a certificate. So many community colleges offer certificates or even a certification, an industry based certification. If you think about welding or IT, there are a number of nursing certifications. These types of credentials that allow somebody to get a good job.

[00:04:40] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: Okay. Well, credentials are exploding right now, and that’s probably something we’re gonna touch on a little bit today. But tell me a little bit about you, Courtney, as a person.

[00:04:52] Dr. Courtney Brown: Ah, so, I am pretty much a data geek. I love numbers. I love, not just numbers, but I love what they tell us. And interestingly enough, my doctorate is in research and evaluation, but my master’s is in linguistics. So I love understanding words and how they come together and the perspective on where they came from give us. And so I think my interest in data and numbers is not just the numbers, but really looking into them and understanding the story and what goes behind them.

[00:05:23] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: Okay. So give me an example of how you do this.

[00:05:27] Dr. Courtney Brown: How I pull things together?

[00:05:30] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: Yeah. See, I’m a qual guy, I’m not a quant person.

[00:05:33] Dr. Courtney Brown: I think it’s both. It’s the quant and the qual. I used to, tell my colleagues and my staff that numbers without a story are nothing, they don’t mean anything to people. And to make a story come to life, you need some data, some facts in there. And so we try to use both pieces to tell the full story of what’s going on or somebody’s perspective or somebody’s experience.

[00:05:57] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: So with that, why is, I’m going to just jump right in. Here we go. Forget the segue.

[00:06:05] Understanding Higher Education Confidence

[00:06:05] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: Looking at that data, why is there a decrease in confidence in higher education? If the numbers are going up, if people are getting more and more education, how can they say there’s a drop in confidence?

[00:06:17] Dr. Courtney Brown: Yeah, it’s really interesting. We are seeing this drop in confidence. So just a little bit of background. Gallup has been measuring confidence in institutions in the U. S. for many years and in 2015, they introduced higher education. So they were asking the public, “what is your level of confidence in higher education?” And, the vast majority of people had a great deal of confidence in higher ed. This is just in 2015. A great deal of confidence. Only 10 percent of people had little to no confidence. And most recently, in 2024, we see that has changed dramatically. So only about a third of people now have a great deal of confidence in higher ed and worse, a third of people now have little to no confidence.

[00:07:01] Dr. Courtney Brown: Remember, I just said in 2015, only 10 percent of people have little to no confidence. And now we’re over 30 percent of people that have little to no confidence in higher ed, which is shocking in such a short time that you can lose so much confidence. Especially, you know, for a, an organization that’s working so hard to really increase attainment, and higher ed is a much-needed piece of that. People need to have confidence in higher ed so that they will go, so they’ll get the credentials they need so they can get a good job and have a good life.

[00:07:32] Dr. Courtney Brown: So these are all really important things.

[00:07:33] Challenges and Perceptions in Higher Education

[00:07:33] Dr. Courtney Brown: And, before I talk a little bit more about that, I want to say the reality is that Americans are losing confidence in about everything. Like it’s not that it’s just higher ed. Unfortunately, in most institutions, Congress, Supreme Court, the President, Americans over the years have lost more and more confidence.

[00:07:52] Dr. Courtney Brown: So, it is a pattern that we are seeing, but this dramatic increase in no to little confidence, is troublesome for people that work in this field.

[00:08:02] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: So let’s dissect that a little bit, okay. You’ve got 54 percent of people with a advanced degree, of some sort of degree, credential. They’ve got schooling beyond high school. You’ve got 33 percent approximately have little or no confidence in higher education. How do you reconcile that?

[00:08:27] Dr. Courtney Brown: Yeah. The interesting thing is that people that have degrees have lost confidence in higher ed. Older Americans have lost confidence in higher ed, people that have degrees aren’t as likely to lose as much confidence, but they have lost confidence in higher ed.

[00:08:42] Dr. Courtney Brown: We also see that this is crossing political lines. Both Republicans and Democrats are losing confidence in higher ed for some different reasons. Republicans are losing confidence at much higher rates, but both are going down and have been going down. But again, they’re both going down and they’re going down for different reasons. So one of the things that we did this year, we partnered with Gallup, so Gallup’s been doing this confidence study for years, as I said, but they’ve never dug deeper. They asked what the level of confidence is and then they move on. So what we partnered with them is to follow up and say. “Why? Why are you losing confidence in higher ed?” And, the data were interesting to me when we asked that question. And three areas were really loud and clear.

[00:09:27] Dr. Courtney Brown: So, of Americans who lack confidence in higher education, 41%, it’s a lot, 41 percent mentioned colleges being too liberal, trying to indoctrinate or brainwash students or not allowing students to think for themselves, as reasons for their opinions. So they are saying, “I don’t have confidence in higher ed because of the political agenda” that they perceive it has. So that’s the number one reason.

[00:09:51] Dr. Courtney Brown: The second reason that people are losing confidence, and this is almost 40 percent just over a third of people, are critical of higher education for not teaching relevant skills. They believe that college degrees don’t mean much, and they don’t believe that graduates are able to find employment.

[00:10:09] Dr. Courtney Brown: And the third reason is probably the one that’s least surprising to all of us and that is affordability. They’re concerned about the cost. The biggest surprise to me was that wasn’t number one, because we hear about that all the time. The cost of college is going up. But still, just under 30 percent do mention the cost concerns. They’re concerned about the high debt levels. So that’s interesting to me.

[00:10:30] Dr. Courtney Brown: And then we asked, ” Do you think higher education is headed in the right direction or the wrong direction?” And we asked this of all respondents. And 68%. So 68 % of everyone who responded believe higher education is headed in the wrong direction. So these aren’t great. These aren’t great numbers. And while all groups, as I said, are losing confidence, the largest are definitely among Republicans, older adults, white people, and those without a degree. Those are the places where people are losing the most confidence.

[00:11:03] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: Yeah, that’s interesting. I want to come back to that, not teaching relevant skills. Because I can pretty much figure it’s Republicans and again, this is apolitical, this is just my reading the news. The Republicans would probably say it’s too liberal.

[00:11:20] Dr. Courtney Brown: Yes,

[00:11:21] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: As a majority.

[00:11:22] Dr. Courtney Brown: You’re right.

[00:11:23] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: Not teaching relevant skills, I would say probably more Republican than Democrat, but maybe not. Cost and affordability would be across the spectrum, I would think.

[00:11:36] Dr. Courtney Brown: So Republicans are much more likely, as you said, to say the political agendas, that colleges are too liberal. You’re absolutely right, that’s their number one reason. Democrats number one reason is affordability. The skills touched on both, maybe a little bit more Republican than Democrat, but they touched on both.

[00:11:52] Dr. Courtney Brown: So that’s really where the distinction is. Democrats are really concerned about the debt levels, the cost of college. And Republicans, are worried about what’s being taught or not taught,

[00:12:00] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: And it makes me wonder that “not relevant skills”. Businesses for years have been saying, “We need to retrain people when they leave college. We need to train because they’re not getting that.” And students are starting to say the same thing as well, which is why colleges have moved to internships and externships to help give some of these relevant skills.

[00:12:25] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: So it seems like the colleges are making a effort to do these types of things, but it’s still not a direct workforce development degree. It’s more of a liberal arts balance, give you the critical thinking skills, working in teams, et cetera. We all know that the big five or the big six from AACNU .

[00:12:47] Dr. Courtney Brown: Right, right. And, these are people’s perceptions, which are real, and I want to get to that a minute, how we actually see this show up in other data. But we know that. Over the course of time, these liberal arts degrees pay off and they pay off we know a lot of most CEOs have a liberal arts degree. So we know that they’re really important and they help individuals become more nimble and whatnot, but, people are concerned that they see people making a big investment in college. And then, the day after graduation, they don’t see them getting these jobs. And you are right that colleges are they are trying to do these internships, externships, work experiences, but the reality is there aren’t enough to go around and often many of them are unpaid. And if you think of who today’s students are, many of them are working already. They have kids, their own dependents. They’re living paycheck to paycheck, and so working for free is really not an option. Taking an internship where they’re not going to get paid, it’s great work experience but you know if they’re working they actually need to be making money so they can pay for a car to get to campus or like pay for child care and all of these other things so we’re making strides toward that, but we have a long way to go.

[00:13:57] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: I’m curious, and I don’t know if you know the answer to this or not. How many students fit the traditional mold versus the non traditional mold? Cause we’re talking specifically transportation to campus, childcare, working a job. Those are typical non traditional students. Do you have any guesstimate on what that might be?

[00:14:19] Dr. Courtney Brown: So I think it’s really hard when you say who are traditional students, because I don’t know what that means anymore. We talk a lot about today’s students and think about who they are. So today’s students, about a third of today’s students are over 25 years old. Over half of students today are students of color. 78% of today’s students work. About a third of those work full time. So a third of today’s students are working full time jobs. 20 percent have dependents and interestingly enough, 44 percent are financially independent. One of the problems that we have is when most people think of today’s students, we think of college kids.

[00:14:57] Dr. Courtney Brown: Oh, those college kids. They graduate from high school, their parents are paying for them to go live in a brick building for four years. They’re going to come out and they’re going to get a job for life. Well, that is not the reality. And very few students fit that description, but it’s still, when we think about a college student that’s how we think about them.

[00:15:16] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: That is fascinating because I never knew that those numbers were so high. And it tells me that the traditional, this explains a lot why online education has exploded. Southern New Hampshire University, Maryland Global Campus, et cetera, et cetera, have just taken off. When you’ve got so many different responsibilities and you don’t fit that quote traditional model, graduate from high school, go to college in the brick building for four years, et cetera. Colleges have to change to be able to stay relevant for the majority of their students.

[00:15:58] Dr. Courtney Brown: Absolutely And they’re gonna have to think about that even more moving forward as you know We’re about to hit this demographic cliff. And the demographic cliff is about to happen I think in 2025-26, where the number of high school graduates is going to start to decline. The number of that age is declining, and so that’s problematic. Colleges have all these seats available and there won’t be as many students. They have to rethink their business model to think, “how am I going to serve these adult students? How am I going to serve these students who need to come back and re skill, up skill, and create opportunities for them.

[00:16:30] Dr. Courtney Brown: I’ve been talking a lot about confidence and the decrease in confidence, but the reality is people do value a credential. They want a credential. We saw over 90 percent of our respondents in the Gallup study, the higher ed study, over 90 percent believe that having at least one credential has value, at least one credential.

[00:16:50] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: And when you say credential, you don’t necessarily mean a credential. You’re talking about associate’s degree, bachelor’s degree, the whole gamut

[00:16:58] Dr. Courtney Brown: Certificate or certification. Yes, they believe having at least one. But 75 percent say a college degree is as important or even more important today than it was 20 years ago. So they understand that it is important. And so the interesting thing to me is people want it, they need it, they know it leads to a good job. They know it’s going to help their family, but they don’t have confidence that the system can deliver what they need. The system isn’t speaking to people like them. The system is too expensive. The system isn’t leading to a good job. They want that credential, but it’s really tough for people to say, ” I’m going to get an ROI. There’s a return on investment here. I’m going to get what, I put in out of this and more on the other side.”

[00:17:41] Dr. Courtney Brown: So I think that’s the kind of issue that we’re facing right now, people want it, they need it, but they’ve lost trust that our current system can deliver on it.

[00:17:50] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: So what does higher ed need to do?

[00:17:54] Dr. Courtney Brown: So higher ed,

[00:17:56] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: Not, just a small question

[00:17:59] Dr. Courtney Brown: I mean, you higher ed needs to do what all of us need to do. We need to do more listening. We need to stop being so defensive. And I’m a party to this also. Cause I’ll bring out the data and say, no, a college degree is worth it. You’ll make a million dollars more in your lifetime than you would without, you’ll live longer. You’ll, all these great things. But the reality is that’s not how people are experiencing it. So higher ed has to listen. What’s going on. I mentioned the demographic cliff that’s coming. Enrollments are going down, we have over 42 million people in the United States that started college and whatever reason stopped out. So how does it working for them, for whatever reason. And it could be because they were working adults or they had kids or they didn’t have access to aid or scholarships that they could get because they didn’t hit the traditional mode.

[00:18:46] Dr. Courtney Brown: So it’s something is wrong with the system. It makes sense people have lost confidence if 42 million people in the U S tried it and whatever reason we’re not able to , successfully complete it. So we need to better understand what’s going on with this system. Listen to people.

[00:19:02] Dr. Courtney Brown: And the second thing I would say is actively tell people and really actively try to change that system. So it’s not enough to just say, “I hear you”. That’s important, we need to do that. But then we have to demonstrate that we’re actively changing the system to better fit today and tomorrow’s students.

[00:19:19] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: What I’ve typically seen is when a president gets put on the hot seat about this type of thing, they get defensive. It’s but we’re, we’re doing this. We’re doing, it’s ” listen”, There was a reason God gave us one mouth and two ears, to be very funny about it. But yeah, listen, more transparent, and affordability is so critical because when someone leaves college, they have an expectation to be able to get a good paying job. My generation, that was generally what happened was you’d go out and you get a good paying job, you wouldn’t move into the C-suite in the first five years, and I think there’s a lot of folks out there who have that expectation, they should move up very quickly. You need experience. But one of the things that drives me crazy, why are there quote student loans? Why aren’t people given a grant? Why aren’t people given a, if it’s a loan, a zero interest loan that they can just pay off? Why are people making money off student loans?

[00:20:28] Dr. Courtney Brown: That’s a whole nother topic student loans, but you did touch on something that I want to go back to, and that’s transparency. I think you’re absolutely right that we need more transparency in the system. We need more transparency about what it really costs. It is hard to figure out.

[00:20:41] Dr. Courtney Brown: As a mother of four children who all went to college, I had no idea what it was going to cost every semester. It was different constantly, and I had no idea, there was no transparency into this is how much it’s going to cost. There were different fees and other things that were coming and going constantly.

[00:21:00] Dr. Courtney Brown: So if somebody who this is my whole life, higher ed, and I can’t figure out the system, I can’t imagine how other people who have much better and more interesting work and interest than I do, trying to navigate and figure this out. So we need more transparency up front about what it’s actually going to cost. Because people are confused, many of them think it’s going to cost way more than it does, and state universities, state community colleges, while not cheap for, many people who can’t afford it, they’re much less expensive than most people are aware. So transparency to that.

[00:21:34] Dr. Courtney Brown: And the second one is transparency about what is this credential going to lead to? More advising needs to happen. We don’t have the resources or colleges don’t have the resources to provide the mentoring and advising that they really need for all their students to put them on a pathway to success so they can actually complete that credential, and the student knows this is what that credential can do for me in the future. I think that’s really important on both those, transparency into both.

[00:22:01] The Role of Faculty and Institutional Support

[00:22:01] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: The best colleges that I’ve seen have got Incredible student support services. They’ve got the structures in place, they’ve got the advising, they’ve got professional advisors who understand the curriculum. They know where the job is going to lead them and through the professor’s network they should be able to help them navigate that type of thing. I see this in really good schools. But not all schools are like this.

[00:22:30] Dr. Courtney Brown: It’s hard. And, I understand the dilemma that many college presidents and boards are going through because when you’re trying to cut costs, you know, oftentimes these are the first things that get cut are these individuals that are providing the advising and the mentorship, but they’re so important for our students.

[00:22:48] Dr. Courtney Brown: We know that students have that have those opportunities are more likely to stay and succeed, and then get those jobs that align with their credentials. So we definitely need more, but I get it, it’s an expensive to offer, but a really important one.

[00:23:02] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: And especially with the changing demographics, like what we talked about earlier, you’ve got folks, they’re first gen students, never been to school, parents never went to college, et cetera. They don’t understand what the experience is going to be like, and a lot of these folks without the support are going to drop out.

[00:23:23] Dr. Courtney Brown: Absolutely. They have no idea what’s going on, it’s confusing. Again, it’s confusing for me. I’m sure it’s confusing for them to try to navigate it on their own. So we definitely need many more supports moving forward and, like nowadays, nobody’s going to college just for fun, just to sit on a lawn and read poetry and then take over the family business. That’s not the reality anymore. So people are going because they want a credential to get a job, a better job or promotion, whatever it might be.

[00:23:53] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: I can remember, the three reasons people went to college to get a job, to get a better pay raise or to upgrade their skills so they get the pay raise.

[00:24:02] Dr. Courtney Brown: Yeah, absolutely. Still today, that’s what people want.

[00:24:05] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: So what are some of the specific things that a higher education institution could do, or they need to do to keep that relevancy, to keep people wanting to apply to their school?

[00:24:18] Dr. Courtney Brown: Yeah. A couple things. So know who they’re serving.

[00:24:22] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: Critical.

[00:24:22] Dr. Courtney Brown: Understand who those students are. Also understand who they’re not serving. So in who they’re not serving are the people that stopped out, who first enrolled and stopped out. They’re not serving those students. So what happened to those students, and let’s stop putting the blame on the students. 42 million people were not to blame. The system failed 42 million people in the United States. Who they’re serving, who they’re not serving because they stopped out and who in the community they’re not serving that they could serve. What do those people need? What are the jobs in the community? How can they better align with those jobs? How could they think about partnerships to offer internships, externships, whatever it might be, or mentorships even with those employers. So those are some things that, they need to do first and then act on that. What can they do? How do they want to define themselves? Not right now, but into the future, really thinking about that business model with a changing demographics. With really thinking about who the students are and what the credentials are going to be of tomorrow,

[00:25:18] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: Couple of things come to mind with this. One, I was working with one institution who wanted to attract more students of color. When I took a look at the administration, when I took a look at the board members, there were zero people of color on the board and the administration. Why would students want to come here when they don’t have anyone they can relate to?

[00:25:44] Dr. Courtney Brown: Right, it definitely helps with belonging when you see people that look like you in different areas. And that doesn’t mean working in the cafeteria, this means people of leadership. So making sure that you have, as you said, people on the board, faculty positions, people in the administration, people that they can look up to.

[00:26:02] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: The other thing that came to mind was faculty attitudes. Many faculty, unfortunately, take the tack, the students need to get up to my level and that’s not the way it is any longer. Faculty need to be able to reach down. A great example of this is Madeline Atkins, the director, the president of Mary Cavendish College, part of the University of Cambridge.

[00:26:29] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: They had a goal to bring in 90 percent of their students, and now we’re talking Cambridge, 90 percent of their students from public high schools. It required the faculty to go out and work with promising students during the high school years. They helped them with their entrance examinations. They did multiple things to really bring that student population up to where they were ready for a Cambridge experience. I think we need to change the way faculty interact.

[00:27:02] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: And the last thing I’ll say on this was, when I think back to my experience, cause I jokingly tell people I didn’t have an education, I had technical training, I went to the Naval Academy. What I remember is obviously my classmates there, cause that’s a huge thing, but I remember Herr doktor, professor Kalam. He was my physics professor. He was German, did his PhD work at Harvard. He had, German accent overlaid, with a Boston accent. I remember him. We remember our faculty more than anything else. And that’s why I’m saying, I think the role of faculty needs to change.

[00:27:41] Dr. Courtney Brown: Yeah. You’re right. Like most students, faculty are the front line defense. They’re the people that students interact with. They don’t interact with many other people on campus. If they do, there’s usually a problem why they’re interacting with them. But faculty, they are interacting with on a regular basis.

[00:27:55] Dr. Courtney Brown: I don’t envy faculty. They’re in a tough position right now where people are questioning what they’re doing, how they’re teaching. They want to, be involved in that. They need to be on multiple committees. If you are a faculty of color, you’re often taking on that mentorship role for hundreds of students, much higher than, than a white faculty member often, because there aren’t as many faculty of color in there, they take on an incredible responsibility. Unless we rethink what that job looks like and what the, what they’re going to get rewarded for, because in most places, they don’t get rewarded for that mentorship, they get rewarded for how many times they publish. Our system needs to take a hard look at the role of faculty because we can’t just keep putting more and more responsibilities on faculty and awarding them for something completely different.

[00:28:43] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: Yeah, I think it’s time to have a hard look at that 40, 40, 20 rule for tenure. There are certain people who are not researchers. There are certain people who are great with students. So let’s make sure that we’ve got faculty working in the areas of their expertise, all focused on what’s best for the student.

[00:29:03] Dr. Courtney Brown: Yeah, they’re definitely a really important piece to this.

[00:29:06] Future Directions and Final Thoughts

[00:29:06] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: Courtney, as always, just an incredible conversation. What else should we talk about?

[00:29:12] Dr. Courtney Brown: We have talked about a lot, but it’s, it’s exciting. The biggest message is, That I think we need to continue to pay attention to and listen to people is that they want a credential. They really want to get that bachelor’s degree or certificate, and they need a system that can deliver it for people like them. And right now they’re losing confidence in that. And it’s not just on paper that they’re losing confidence or just because it was a survey methodology issue. We can tell they’re losing confidence because they’re not enrolling, and they’re not re enrolling, and they’re not completing. So the data pretty much confirm, what they’re saying to us in these surveys.

[00:29:51] Dr. Courtney Brown: And I think that’s really important to pay attention to again, listen to this and think about what it means now and into the future.

[00:29:58] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: People are voting with their feet. You’ve got 42 million who have voted with their feet.

[00:30:03] Dr. Courtney Brown: Absolutely.

[00:30:04] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: It’s time to make a shift on how we do higher education. Three takeaways for presidents and boards.

[00:30:12] Dr. Courtney Brown: Well, I mean, I think, not to repeat myself, but I’m going to. Let’s listen. Let’s listen to students, the current students, past students, the students who we failed, and hear what they are up against. Let’s think about what that means for us as institutions. Where do we need to change? What’s working?

[00:30:31] Dr. Courtney Brown: So there, there’s some great things working out there. So I don’t want to be all doom and gloom. Many institutions are trying to take this on and, they may not have the resources or whatever. But double down on the things that are working and explore things that aren’t working and try to change that and actively show people that you hear them.

[00:30:48] Dr. Courtney Brown: Let’s stop yelling at people that, “no, this is, we know what’s best for you”. Let’s listen to need, and act on that and create practices and policies. It’s going to help more people succeed in higher ed.

[00:31:00] Dr. Courtney Brown: That

[00:31:00] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: reminds me of what Philly Mantella is doing up at Grand Valley State University in Michigan with her Rep4 Initiative. I know you’ve heard of it, Rapid Education Prototyping for Change. They’re talking to students prior to getting into college, the high school students, saying, “What do you want from your college experience?

[00:31:20] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: They’re having incredible success there.

[00:31:22] Dr. Courtney Brown: That’s excellent. Yeah. There are a number of things across the country that are really working.

[00:31:27] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: What’s next for you? What’s next for Lumina?

[00:31:30] Dr. Courtney Brown: So Lumina as I mentioned at the top, we have this 2025 goal, and as you may notice we’re on the heels of 2025 right now. So we’re really thinking about what’s next. What does the nation need? The goal that was set in 2008 was really a goal for the nation. It’s not Lumina’s goal, it’s a national goal. And so what is the nation need as we look forward? And so we’re really considering that and hope to release that new goal, that new vision, in the spring of 25.

[00:31:56] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: I look forward to having you back on the podcast, talk about that and how we’re going to get there.

[00:32:01] Dr. Courtney Brown: Excellent. Can’t wait.

[00:32:03] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: Courtney, thank you so much. It’s always a pleasure chatting with you.

[00:32:07] Dr. Courtney Brown: Thank you. Same to you.

[00:32:09] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: Thanks for listening today, and a special thank you to my guest, Dr. Courtney Brown, and for her sharing with us her perspectives on higher ed. Courtney, it’s always a pleasure having you on the show, I look forward to the next time we get a chance to talk. Next time, I welcome Dr. Tia Brown McNair. a consultant at SOVA and former VP at AACNU to talk about the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Toolkit that, according to AACNU’s website, complements existing campus climate assessment tools and offers reflection based and action oriented guidance, strategies, and tools informed by the TRHT approach to support institutional transformation efforts.

[00:32:55] Dr. Drumm McNaughton: Thanks for listening. I look forward to talking to you next time.