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GSD Episode 17: Phil Hill
42 Plays12 days ago
In this episode, Fritz, Kelvin, and Kevin sit down with one of the sharpest voices in education technology: Phil Hill, market analyst, consultant, and founder of Phil Hill & Associates. For more than two decades, Phil has helped universities, vendors, and investors cut through the hype and understand where higher ed is really heading — work you've likely seen in his widely read On EdTech newsletter or in those famous LMS market-share graphics that turn up in conference decks everywhere. We talk with Phil about what's actually working (and what isn't) across the edtech landscape, the real impact of AI on campus, and how institutions can make smarter decisions in an era of constant change.
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Transcript
Introduction to Phil Hill
00:00:21
Speaker
All right, well, hey, welcome to the Getting Stuff in Higher Education, Getting Stuff Done in Higher Education podcast. um I'm here again with Fritz and Kevin.
00:00:34
Speaker
I'm Kelvin and our guest today is Phil Hill. Phil has spent more than two decades doing exactly what this show is about, cutting through the noise to figure out what actually works in higher education.
00:00:48
Speaker
Phil Hill is a market analyst, consultant, and the founder of Phil Hill & Associates. And if you've followed EdTech at all, you know his work, whether it's his widely shared on EdTech newsletter or those famous learning management system market share graphics that seem to pop up in many conference stacks. For over 20 years, Phil has helped universities, technology vendors, and investors make sense of where higher ed is actually headed, working with everyone from Western Governors University, the California Community College System, to UCLA and Coursera, many others.
00:01:31
Speaker
He's built a reputation for honest, practical no-spin analysis, which as you'll hear fits right in around here with our podcast.
Journey into EdTech and Consulting
00:01:41
Speaker
So whether you're trying to understand the real impact of AI on campus, the shifting ed tech landscape, or just where the puck is going next, this is a conversation you'll want to stick go around for.
00:01:52
Speaker
Phil, welcome to Getting Stuff Done in Higher Education. Oh, thank you. i'm definitely looking forward to the conversation. Yes, and and thanks so much for being um today's guest. um We usually, you know, in our conversations with with our guests, we love to kind of just have you tell us more about your journey. how did you How did you get here based on, you know, the decisions that you made that shaped your educational background as well as your professional background?
00:02:24
Speaker
Well, the proximate cause of me getting into edtech is that it turns out if you do a hostile, try hostile takeover of a tech company, and if it fails, you don't tend to keep your job.
00:02:37
Speaker
And I'm thinking about writing a book about that just to let people know. But back during the dot-com era, I had ah was working for this company, and they had hired me back to reorganize engineering, and they were going to sell. And once I started working with them,
00:02:52
Speaker
ah It was clear that the owner had no intention of selling, so I tried to force him out. He had an outside finance partner. And as I said, it turned out, if ah even if it's right before Christmas, if you're trying to take over a company and he's able to block you, found myself out on the street. So, i just got in that's what got me into consulting, basically, to pay the mortgage.
00:03:13
Speaker
from an unexpected event. And I have an engineering background, electrical engineering. And so I just fell into consulting. but as I started doing it, I realized, oh, I enjoy this.
Becoming an EdTech Consultant
00:03:24
Speaker
It really let me look at new situations and what I like to do take a complex situation and find like, what are the real drivers, what's happening.
00:03:33
Speaker
how do you illuminate it? So I started falling in love with consulting, which probably sounds strange. But being independent or niche, I needed to find something where my clients and my prospective clients knew each other.
00:03:49
Speaker
And, you know, it wasn't just, random I was doing random markets. So I started looking around and asked, All right, out of the clients I've had, who's got feedback for market? And I was trying to figure it out. And essentially, higher education.
00:04:03
Speaker
You know, I had a client key client there that was saying, hey, what you do is unique, and this market needs this type of analysis. but So I basically fell into EdTech Consulting and Market Analysis as sort of my path of how I got here. i of course, didn't think through the prospects of just how difficult the sales cycle is in higher education, but I made that decision nearly a quarter century ago, so I just have to go with it.
00:04:32
Speaker
So initially, i was mostly, you well, you saw the list, mostly with universities. They were trying, it had to do something with teaching and learning. I guess that's how I try to manage my scope.
00:04:44
Speaker
So I don't do back office ERP type of work. It's gotta have something tied to students Although I've recently expanded, and you could argue that some of the regulations, regulatory stuff that covers not directly. So I violated up my own scope already. But essentially what I do is technology impacting teaching and learning, but it's about how do you improve teaching and learning. It's quite often about the strategy, the decision making, the
00:05:16
Speaker
the regulatory context, et cetera. I do a lot of enrollment analysis and you can't avoid the regulatory environment lately. So I've sort of expanded into that area as well.
Creating Popular Graphics
00:05:28
Speaker
I will share one story, and it sort of backs up this theme that I fall into things instead of thinking them through. Calvin, you mentioned that squid graphic from the LMS market analysis. That first came out in 2008, and the reason I came up with that graphic, it's a one-page graphic of the LMS market from the history to where we were today and how to understand the different vendors strategically.
00:05:57
Speaker
The reason I came up with it is all my clients, I was trying to say, listen, this is not a feature counting market. There's a handful of vendors. You need to figure out who's the best partner going in the right direction to match your university needs.
00:06:13
Speaker
And I got sick of giving the same message in every workshop I kicked off. So I came up with the graphic so I wouldn't have to talk about it again. And I would just say, here, go see this and read about this market, and then we'll talk about the bigger things.
00:06:29
Speaker
and Fortunately or unfortunately, that graphic took on a life of its own, and I ended up putting for 15 straight years. I kept doing updates, and people kept asking for updates. But to me, it's a little bit amusing because I came up with it, so I wouldn't have to do it. But then it became one of the things people knew me for, so I had to go with that. So a very winding route to get me to where I am today. Is yours also the Mad Max one?
00:06:56
Speaker
Yes. Yeah, did the Mad Max one. Yeah, the Mad Max is another story. I'll just tell you this quickly. And I guess this sort of frames who I am or how I think about things.
00:07:06
Speaker
Back in the late 2010s, people were talking about the online program management market. And the common thing is, this is a growing market, everybody's getting rich, and it was framed as companies just raking in cash and what's the risk education.
00:07:23
Speaker
I looked at that and I said, well, yeah, the market's growing, it was at the time, but it's a really difficult market, and companies are getting bought out, it takes a lot of capital, and so really, it's a survival game, even though there's a lot of money involved.
00:07:40
Speaker
And I was just I was tired of the narrative being wrong. That's why I came up with the Mad Max
Higher Ed Transparency Challenges
00:07:46
Speaker
graphics. This is more like a Mad Max where all these companies are sort of chasing online program revenue, but it's this hellscape they have to live through to be able to survive.
00:07:59
Speaker
so if someone used to watch Mad Max on, you know, local television probably once a month in the 80s as a 10-year-old kid. i love I thought that was awesome. No Hunger Games one coming? You got a Hunger Games version? No. oh That'd be a good one to do. May the odds be ever in your favor. yeah Yeah. i feel I feel like we need we need that we need another... like i feel like higher ed continues to be very opaque right in terms of like what's really happening behind the scenes. from Everything from like you know technologies and
00:08:33
Speaker
you know, new pedagogies. I mean, we we have some information, but it's still at times locked away in a white paper or a case study
AI's Impact on Higher Education
00:08:42
Speaker
that, you know, or or some type of final report that, of course, nobody reads.
00:08:46
Speaker
And so I've really appreciated your graphics because it really kind of helps to make our silos, I've said this before, leakier so that we could finally, you know, have at least more information than we typically do in terms of what's going on.
00:09:02
Speaker
And I appreciate that could that. That really gets to what I try to do, provide some clarity insight into how to understand what's happening in different parts of the market. So appreciate the feedback. Well, I mean, also, it seems like we don't have to dive into AI quite yet, but it just seems like AI, the potential impact, the real impact, the current impact in higher ed and obviously everywhere, but in higher ed is it's blowing those windows in a lot of ways, Kelvin, open. Like there's things that people are seeing because they're either experiencing it as students or in the staff side or faculty side that um are more
00:09:36
Speaker
ah disruptive say than the LMS was in the 2000s and 2010s. it's It's making those things, the impact more visible.
00:09:48
Speaker
Yeah, I've actually thought about one just even yesterday. like There's a lot of resistance to AI right now. You know you hear and all the graduation students booing when they mention AI. ASU GSV this year, there was a lot of talk of resistance to it.
00:10:05
Speaker
But something playing with the whole notion of you can't hold back the ocean. I mean, this is happening no matter how much you resist. That doesn't mean you don't have valid points. And here's what's valid, but you can't hold back the ocean. So I was actually in my head starting to think about that story as well.
00:10:23
Speaker
You know, we're we're probably going to dive into AI much faster than I thought we were we were
Higher Education: Business or Household?
00:10:28
Speaker
probably going to. But I mean... So we've said it on this podcast and I say it all the time, right? Like higher ed does a very poor job of telling their own story. And I think higher ed has also done a very poor job of not recognizing they really are a business, right? We, you know, we can say we're a nonprofit, we're state funded, like all these things, but at the end the day, we're a business.
00:10:52
Speaker
And so,
00:10:55
Speaker
to To not look at AI from a business perspective or what the impact is, how we can use it for our own efficiencies and those types of things is just lost on me a little bit that that we're so hands off and we're looking at it from more of an academic pedagogy type of thing rather than a way to improve business.
00:11:20
Speaker
Yeah, I think an important part of education is thinking about language, like what language will academics actually listen to? So quite often people will listen to a concept, but if you frame it in business language, they're going to be resistant to it.
00:11:38
Speaker
And I wish you could be more direct, but I have found in my career that it's a big issue. So back ah years ago, I was working with a Big Ten University CIO.
00:11:49
Speaker
well it's no longer Well, it's called the Big Ten, but it's not. And he actually pulled me aside. He said, Phil, you're talking about some lessons we could learn from industry.
00:12:00
Speaker
He said, but don't just say it's your own idea. and I said, but it's not my idea. and But he was saying, if you want us to hear you, you have to say it. And if you just pretend you came up with it, we'll listen to you.
00:12:12
Speaker
And i wasn't comfortable with it, but I do think there's a point there, which is there's language and ways to bring up subjects that are necessary in this space.
00:12:24
Speaker
Yes. um ah what i've So I worked in the ed tech space in an institution for 20ish years until I made this move over into the online program strategy market research side in 2021-ish. So i found, especially because i worked primarily with humanities faculty in that entire run, mostly,
00:12:48
Speaker
if you speak to mission, if you speak about the the capabilities of the technologies through a mission lens, then you, that really broke through. So speaking about, you know, these tools, i i try to frame it as we can, we can turn these tools to do what we want them to. You're not going to be co-opted by the tool. We're going to co-opt the tool.
00:13:10
Speaker
So if your goal is to teach language, look, here's a way you can teach. I helped an Arabic language professor. It's very difficult to teach. and he He would draw a lot. He's like, I can't, you know, students taking pictures of my chalk, my whiteboard, and they're trying to capture it. I found ah like a pen that would capture his motion.
00:13:29
Speaker
And so he could, and then students could watch in real, you know, the recording of it and watch it spool out as he drew characters and letters, are you know, the language out and was really helpful. So, you know, it's like if you if you speak to mission, so if someone's like, I don't want to teach online, well,
00:13:45
Speaker
you want to reach a whole lot more people who want to learn the language. Maybe they're part of your culture. Boy, that got some attention. And now that that guy, he's not even teaching at university anymore. He runs like some massive nonprofit that teaches Dakota language and other indigenous languages in North America across the whole continent. Cause he, it just, it got, you know, it it took off. So speaking through mission based or, you know, through their disciplinary language or mission language,
00:14:14
Speaker
which is kind of what you're saying. Speak in our language is what that, big 10 uh cio said if you do that like you you can cut through the noise of i'm just i'm i'm letting the tail wag the dog the technology tails wagging the hair dog so but the problem is why do we have to do that in higher ed like that's the and i i mean and i to me like i think that's the stuff that you do phil right like you you cut through all the noise and you're just like this is what this stuff is saying folks and you can either understand what it's saying what the impact is on you
00:14:47
Speaker
Or you can't, right? Like I go back all the way and, you know, you and I are in a lot of, I mean, we've at least dived in a lot ah lot of similar areas, right? So, yeah you know, doing the online data, reflecting what's happening in the online space.
00:15:01
Speaker
But I think you have a lot more voice in this space, right? And it really became, up you know, I think I really saw it a lot more around the time of COVID when we saw the dip.
00:15:15
Speaker
And there were many of us that were saying, it's like, you know, this spike is is a COVID spike. This is not, it's not really where we are, right? Like, come on, like like let's just get let's get the reality here of what's happening, folks. This isn't a big switch.
00:15:30
Speaker
And you were saying it, I was saying it, others were saying it, but but the way you just kind of bring things together and make, your presentation, I think, resonate, I think is so helpful in this space, right? Like to be able to say, here's actually the truth. Like if we would have had that COVID spike, we're actually still on the same trajectory of growth that we were on before.
00:15:51
Speaker
Forget about what happened in 19, 20, 21. Let's just look at where where things are. and And I think that's just... you know i don't You probably hear this a lot, and I'm just going say on this podcast.
00:16:02
Speaker
I think you've had it you're you're a great service to higher ed. um Of all the folks that are out there in this space saying things, I think you at least say things that higher ed can actually utilize and learn from versus other pundits that just tell stories and they're not necessarily all. Or or wag their finger, higher ed should do this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Well, I appreciate that. I mean, it's sort of getting to what I'm hoping to do, but I really appreciate your message. I will say on the COVID dip, I know quite a few investors that if they had listened, they would have saved themselves billions of dollars because
00:16:45
Speaker
it It cuts two ways. One is when things were going up, lot of investors and companies were investing as in this is a whole new world. where We're a whole new level. Everything's changed. That it was a break of some kind of adoption breakthrough, like we punched...
00:17:02
Speaker
Punched up a level and we're going stay there. online Online is now the thing. yeah So they lost tons of money. But then when it started coming down, you had the opposite. and People overreacting to it of, oh, you know, people hate online. It's like, no, we're going back to the normal trajectory or pretty close to it. So, yeah, it is ah Yeah, that was that was a very interesting moment, and it really called out the different parts of the ecosystem. It wasn't just like this group misunderstood what was happening. There were multiple groups that misunderstood it. And I will point out one other thing to our conversation about language.
00:17:41
Speaker
We do need to talk in a natural language and understand mission and go this way, but we're in existential times right now, and this tendency of higher ed in particular It's getting in its own way.
00:17:55
Speaker
Like this whole, we don't want to think like a business, we want to resist, we want, you know, this type of thing. Now we're in a set of times right now where they are getting in their own way by making it too difficult to confront reality. So that the two sides of that coin on speaking the language. I'm going to throw a little contrarian view in here.
00:18:16
Speaker
I don't think hire it as business. I think it's a household. You don't like my household is not a business, but I have to balance my books or profit. I need to, you know, I need a margin that doesn't sink us. um But it's, we're on a mission, right? My mission is to fledge my children and God who willing retire at some point.
00:18:35
Speaker
um So higher ed, you know, a mission based organization, a non, most are nonprofit. It's not a business in the same way ah that Amazon or, you know, the, the,
00:18:49
Speaker
car shop up the street is a business, I would argue. So it makes the, how you operate it. I mean, for example, yesterday our our office did a pilot of a reenrollment a re-enrollment approach for students who dropped out of the University of Minnesota pre-COVID.
00:19:09
Speaker
We did it, there was a, we our office did a report yesterday. My colleague, she helmed the whole project. So she ran the, you know, she ran the report and all the people supported was great. I did the backend financial calculations.
00:19:20
Speaker
That thing's going to break even. This is hundreds of thousands of dollars of investment. It's going to break even. There is no ROI really. The ROI is out there. What are these people who are able to complete their bachelor's degree going to be able to do for their own lives, their careers, their homes, whatever. And then the downstream effects, you know, they're going to be taxpayers, they're going to be etct cetera, et cetera.
00:19:43
Speaker
That's not like a business wouldn't want to invest a crap load of money and just break even. maybe you take a little loss. But, you know, the brass at the university, the president, the provost, like, we're happy with that. That's a good. That is a public good.
00:19:54
Speaker
So not that I want to spark a big debate, but that's not a business. That's um that's an enterprise. and And I don't disagree with you. And I guess when I'm saying like higher ed needs to think like a business is...
00:20:09
Speaker
you have to You have to adapt, right? So it's the same thing in a household. you know If we went through another recession, what are you going to do to change what you were doing? Are you going to still buy $6 coffees every morning? No, you're going to cut back on your... sickth that's That's my... like I just think there's a lot in higher ed that is just...
00:20:29
Speaker
We've done it this way for the last 15 years. And honestly, I think, and Phil, I'd love your thoughts on this. I think that's a lot of the enrollment cliff stuff. Like if you really look at the enrollment cliff,
00:20:40
Speaker
Yes, we're going to have fewer students, but we also have almost 40% more higher education institution options than we had 15 years ago.
00:20:52
Speaker
Right? If you get rid of those, and that's what happened during COVID, right? We lost a lot of the for-profits. And if you would take out the for-profit enrollments, we're we're no different from from the numbers than we were previously. And I think that, and again, and I think that's where we overhype things and people don't then look at it from the standpoint of, you know, like stopouts or other things. and And we just let, we just let the world tell us what we're going to do. It's like, oh, we can't get enrollments because there's an enrollment cliff.
00:21:23
Speaker
No, you got to think differently. I think that's an interesting point, but there's sort of a ratchet that's going on that people have assumed for so long in education that enrollments are going up. So it's ratcheting up, but you don't go backwards.
00:21:40
Speaker
Business principles, whether you're a business or a family or financial principles, are if things go down, you know ahead of time you're going to have to make some tough choices. In education, there's too much of a ratchet mentality and they find it distasteful and they reject the concept of making some of the choices that have to happen when your assumptions don't play out, when things go backwards. So I think a lot of what we're seeing right now is too often there's just a rejection of even the idea of being sustainable and making tough choices.
00:22:16
Speaker
And so to me... um
00:22:20
Speaker
those, those kinds of the ratcheting thing was, it was acceptable in a ever, ever expanding pool of potential students. I've said this in other ones, most universities for most, for decades, you put your sandwich board out on the curb.
00:22:33
Speaker
We're the, you know, we're the university in the middle of the state, you know, we're the, the, you know, the the pub, whatever you call them, like the, the regional or regional people came. yeah so you're like, yeah, we added a department of whatever.
00:22:45
Speaker
No, our moments great, but our moments are growing so we can cover that. Now we're in a different world. So it's sort of like the it's like music, you know, and the until Napster and the death of CDs and and album sales driving musicians, a lot of musicians incomes. Now they're all on the road all the time because you can't really make as much.
00:23:04
Speaker
except for some artists through just streaming or album sales. So they've had to adapt or die. So I think there's many institutions that dig in and say, look, we're not going to change. And there clearly are some. And some of those are the ones who've closed in the last six, eight, 12, 24 months.
00:23:21
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And but so it goes back to that question like business or family or whatever it is. But there are business principles that today you have to confront. Yes.
00:23:32
Speaker
yeah Now, there are obviously cases where somebody is confronting the pure cost cutting. And they're mismanaging how to apply that. you know So there are definitely bad decisions being made. But where I think the bigger problem is, is people rejecting even the idea that we've got to make some tough choices.
00:23:53
Speaker
It's just a difficult time right now. But it's a time of a lot of change. I've also told people there are a lot of things that we can talk about now and look at that we've talked about for decades, but now they're actually possible because some of the resistance to it is gone.
00:24:12
Speaker
And because of that, I think the existential crisis also presents a lot of opportunity to make improvements that we didn't have years ago.
00:24:22
Speaker
I think, too, a lot of those what we're hearing in the news of big budget cuts or big layoffs or big program cuts is, again, because institutions were not managing that five years ago, six years ago. Right. Like it's, oh, it'll change. It'll change. oh if we go up in enrollment, we'll be good. And and but but then also.
00:24:44
Speaker
there was a little bit of a federal government hit with funding cuts, yes certain grants and those types of things that I think, you know, so it was, I don't know, I guess your thoughts on, I mean, is like the last two years, almost like the perfect storm of financial headwinds for higher ed? Like, just I mean, just the amount of things that came at us at at one time Well, you have to throw in AI to that mix too, right? So you've got the enrollment cliff starting, you've got the financial headwinds in general, including people
00:25:24
Speaker
don't look enough at the change in interest rates starting in 2022, and therefore the cost of borrowing, therefore the cost of employees. That's created a lot of the financial stress.
00:25:36
Speaker
Then you have the Trump administration kind of kindly providing some other financial and existential threats to the market. And at the same time, AI and the potential threat to assessments, to academic integrity, mission,
00:25:53
Speaker
Yes, there's absolutely a perfect storm going on right now. And because of AI, I'd argue, it's not just financial. It you know it gets into like how we've had so many assumptions about how you educated scale and generative AI, LLMs, are really upending some of those assumptions.
00:26:16
Speaker
And part of what I've been arguing is ai is not really the problem. AI quite often is just you can no longer deny something that you've been sweeping under the rug for years and years. So, for example, assessments, way too many multiple choice assessments that are too easy to cheat on, but also aren't that effective in assessing what students are learning.
00:26:40
Speaker
Well, now you have ai to blame for, well, how do you do assessments when AI can create the assignment so easily? And I would argue, no, this is just we can no longer pretend that we can avoid changes to how we assess students.
00:26:55
Speaker
So when we say a perfect storm, it's difficult, but at the same time, it's also opening up, all right, now can we deal with this problem that we've been putting off for so long?
00:27:06
Speaker
So I guess I tend to, you can tell I sort of take an optimistic view of it, even though times are difficult. Yeah. know, Phil, in your opinion, like what um what will it take?
00:27:21
Speaker
i mean Because, we you know, for example, like we we talk about like higher ed as if it's this singular entity. Right. But there's so, you know, Paul LeBlanc, for example, a long time ago, used to say, well, we talk about higher ed, but it's really higher eds. Right. Like there's there's so many different flavors and we don't really.
00:27:39
Speaker
I mean, there there are certain guardrails, right, in terms of policies and things like that, that we have to abide by. But other than that, it's the wild, wild west, right? There's so many, maybe too many higher ed institutions, first of all. And then with the number, there's there's such variety in terms of how they're managed and what they pay attention to. And so, you know, I would love to hear some of your thoughts, too, about like,
00:28:07
Speaker
Given this storm that we're in this existential crisis too around the value of a degree versus employers wanting to to see yeah more skills versus you know how we talk about how we prepare folks for for for the workforce.
00:28:25
Speaker
Like what what will it take for higher ed or for certain higher eds to change and and to actually be more nimble in this, and you know, in in the crazy times that we're in right now?
00:28:39
Speaker
Sure. Well, first of all, one of the strengths of the U.S. higher ed system is that it's higher eds, that we have so many different institution types trying different things. So there's a little bit of a, well, as long as we're being distasteful, a little bit of the market dynamics that are are at play. You will have winners and losers, and that's part of it.
00:29:00
Speaker
And you look at the Western governors and Southern New Hampshire's and ASU's, you know, the fact that certain schools are not having enrollment challenges does signal to others, we need to do things differently.
00:29:14
Speaker
Um, But it what's happening lately is finances. When it's just we're out of money, that forces a rethink. Now, the ideally, you're doing that rethink based on projections five years down the road at least, so you have some time to adjust.
00:29:34
Speaker
But, I mean, the ah the immediate issue now is just people saying, no, we are out of money. and We cannot... Math is, you know, you can't argue with math.
00:29:46
Speaker
And so I do think that's already causing a lot of the changes. But higher education, even given the different types, they copy each other so much. um They look at, you know, their peers, too often they look at their peers and it's based on, well,
00:30:03
Speaker
I wish I were Harvard, so let's look at their processes. But then you look at Harvard and it's like, they will never have to deal with an enrollment challenge there. They will always have more applicants than, you know, so that's not a good example anymore. So it's almost like we need a different set of peers that we're looking at to learn from.
00:30:23
Speaker
and I think part of the challenge right now is we're still talking about the same ones. yeah Like we're still talking about Georgia State University and how they've done holistic student support. ASU has redefined so many things, but it's the same set of schools. yeah yeah that's ah I think that's one of our challenges now.
00:30:45
Speaker
The ones that are doing well now, the Western governors, whatever, they did things differently. They they took a different path. you know Southern New Hampshire was a, by all accounts that I know,
00:30:57
Speaker
it was a struggling school and Paula Blanc came there and said, we're going to try something drastically different. They took a big chance. Uh, Western governors was an entirely different model. So like you're saying, you got to try something different, not what the person next door is doing.
00:31:11
Speaker
And there's, you know, there's reasonable, uh, and defensible, risk-taking, versus silly risk-taking that's beyond, beyond the odds of success. But, um,
00:31:27
Speaker
You know, I i think those those are examples that you have to take a leap. I think that Southern New Hampshire might be an interesting story for people to learn from if they'll go back in history. So Paul LeBlanc loved the guy.
00:31:41
Speaker
He loves a good bourbon, which I respect. But keep in mind, it's the board, too. yeah Southern New Hampshire, small little private school. um They saw the writing on the wall that they were struggling, but they also saw that it was sort of struggling. We're not going to this won't work out five or ten years from now.
00:32:00
Speaker
So the board brought Paul in to make changes. Now, Paul came in and he applied sort of a holistic design to the school, but the board let him.
00:32:12
Speaker
So i don't know if I don't know all the dynamics of how he was able to make that level of changes. Maybe their finances were worse off than I realized at the time. But I'm just saying that's that's a recognition of a board that and their role in recognizing things and enabling leaders to make some pretty drastic changes. And then the way they redefined was fascinating.
00:32:38
Speaker
That might be better than Western governors and nothing against them. But as you mentioned, they started from day one with a different model. Right. yeah that And now the lesson from them is it took decades for it to work. So you have to be patient and persistent.
00:32:55
Speaker
I think the lesson on Southern New Hampshire might more directly apply to the times that we're in right now and that people should look for. And look at the role of online, but not just online, but how they rethought the functions of the university to make it efficient and to be able to handle whatever their mission was. that My understanding is they really, there was nothing that was no sacred cows. Like when they were making the changes,
00:33:23
Speaker
they were able to debate and redesign everything. And that's where I think a lot of their success is. That's still difficult, but it's easier to think of than, I wish we had been created from day one with a different mission.
00:33:35
Speaker
Yeah, but I think it does go to your point of how higher ed uses peers. Like a lot of times, you know, in my consulting work and even in my current work is, you know, we need you need to look at who you're actually competing with, not who these quote unquote peers are. Right. Like we can all say we want to be like Arizona State or we want to be like X, Y, Z or or or whatever. But at the same time.
00:33:59
Speaker
you're losing to other institutions because you don't see that institution as a peer. right like yeah I'm at Tuskegee now, and there is a there's an institution in Alabama that has 16,000 students enrolled online.
00:34:15
Speaker
But nobody's looking at them because it's not they're not they're not like us. They're not who who we see, but it's like but but they're gaining in enrollments. um So I think that's a little bit of a there's and again, I think that goes back to how you think about your operation of higher ed is who you're comparing yourself against. And there are, yes, there are aspirational peers, there's institutions we wanna be like for whatever reasons, but if you're if you forget about everybody else who's growing, Southern New Hampshire's, the Waldens,
00:34:48
Speaker
and I mean, University of Phoenix, we all thought we going to right, like years ago. It's still here. It still has over 100,000 students enrolled. um And I'm just going to ask you just real quick, do you think University of Phoenix will ever get sold?
00:35:02
Speaker
ah um Well, now that they're public again, i mean, they gave up the the the direct effort to sell themselves, so there's no effort, but then they went public.
00:35:13
Speaker
They've done a lot of the, keep in mind, it's not just that they've survived with the same model. They ditched associate degrees. They've- They ditched all their campuses. I mean, you yeah they used to have campuses in every freaking state and city. I mean.
00:35:27
Speaker
Yeah, so University of Phoenix today is very different than it was 10 years ago. yeah And I think they're benefiting from those long-term changes, even though they weren't able to sell themselves in Idaho or Arkansas or in the other places they tried.
00:35:42
Speaker
yeah Now they've gone public. My look at them is it's still an open issue. Is that the right capital structure for them long term? But it's just also important.
00:35:53
Speaker
They made some huge changes in the school. So if I had to guess, I think there will be another attempt for somebody to buy them. um But I don't think it'll be that nonprofit conversion type of state deal that they were attempting to do it as. I don't think that's going to work out, but I could see them trying some other method to go private in a different way. So not like an Arizona with Ashford and Kaplan or Purdue with Kaplan. i mean, do you think it'll be some other type of entity?
00:36:29
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. i say um Yes, I do think it would need to be some other type of structure. That whole idea that what I call Mitch Daniels envy, which is that, you know, when he wanted to get in, he well, first of all, he had a lot of control over Purdue that other leaders don't have. And he's a financial guy to the core, understands it.
00:36:51
Speaker
So he created a model that even though I saw, well, lots of people saw lots of flaws with the Purdue Global, However, they stuck with it. It's really break even. It's not like they're making big revenue from it, but it's alive and they made it work.
00:37:08
Speaker
And then you had all the others that were trying to say, hey Mitch did this. i I want to be at the same cocktail parties and be a giant online education, and I don't want to wait two decades to make it work.
00:37:20
Speaker
So you had the follow-ons and different approaches. But it almost seems like that's, that's I don't know that it's 100% gone away, but that movement has sort of petered out.
00:37:30
Speaker
And I think the benefit of the University of Arizona, my home state, They helped kill the model by showing just how difficult that can be. their Their purchase of Ashford and the political capital they spent to do that yeah and the financial mismanagement, they helped to kill that movement. So if you're against nonprofit conversions, you can help thank the University of Arizona for that.
00:37:57
Speaker
i mean, because you you really don't hear a lot about the University of Arkansas system purchase of Grantham, other than it's relabeled now, University of Arkansas Grantham, in IPEDS reporting. But you haven't there's not a lot of news, like you know the Kaplan-Purdue, Arizona, and Ashford. I mean, like there just doesn't seem like it's It's almost just like it was a cell and and nobody really cares.
00:38:24
Speaker
Yeah, it was much smaller. um And one thing I like in my understanding of what they did, they also did a lot more integration of integrating the Grantham and some of the stuff with their own internal online initiatives.
00:38:40
Speaker
And so to, but this, the lack of news sometimes for them is a good thing. That means they haven't completely mismanaged it. You know, they've actually made it work. But I i think that's an interesting model there and what they did. And you're right, people don't talk about it very much at all.
00:38:57
Speaker
can Can I totally switch topics? Sure. and And if you can't answer this question, i that's that's fine. um The proliferation of medical schools.
00:39:09
Speaker
the number of new medical schools that have been opening um you know in the last four, five years. um I just look at it from standpoint, so my son went to medical school and the number of residencies are not, there's not a lot of them Like there's a lot of students who still don't don't get placed into residencies.
00:39:31
Speaker
for whatever reasons. But now if you're growing more and more medical schools, because there's there's this perceived, we don't have enough doctors in rural areas and in yada, yada, yada. But there's also not enough residencies for all these people to go to, and not everybody wants to be in internal medicine.
00:39:47
Speaker
you know They want to be a surgeon, they want to be other things. I just, I'm just curious if if any of your research in in our higher ed world has kind of looked at the number, the you know, the growth of medical schools and the only reason it pops into my head is, um,
00:40:04
Speaker
in in in bentonville the the um walmart created basically a medical school um yeah and so that's that's another one and i and i know when i was at um eab i i talked to several institutions that were gonna be building medical school so i'm just curious what if you've looked at that or have have um Yeah, I'm i'm not ah expert with medical schools per se, other than it's been interesting when I do talk to a school a university that has a medical school, just how differently they're treated. Hey, they have so much money, they'll come along if they want to, but you can't tell them what to do. it's sort of that we're different.
00:40:47
Speaker
But I think more broadly, it's I'll relate it to a podcast episode I just released yesterday. with my daughter. And the idea I wanted to do was sort of, look, I've been critical of institutional accountability, the return on investment idea. However, I wanted to acknowledge that there is a concept there of institutions being accountable for students' earnings.
00:41:11
Speaker
So I just did a podcast episode with my daughter, who I realized she's a working adult in a medical field that's running into the challenge that you're describing, Kevin. What field does she use?
00:41:23
Speaker
So it's ultrasound tech. ah She's going back to school and finishing. So it's not medical school per se, but there's a similar issue there, which is there's been so much talk about, well, medical is constantly growing, including this is a great vocation. Ultrasound, there's a demand. We can't keep up with it.
00:41:43
Speaker
So she goes into a program, and but they're pumping out too many students. We've discovered this after the fact. <unk> And yes, it's growing, but there are only so many jobs and they keep pumping out students. Well, now that she's out in the market, she's having a huge problem being able to get a job in ultrasound in the majority of her cohorts in exactly the same position.
00:42:07
Speaker
And just like you were saying, there are only so many residencies. Here, it's there are only so many jobs and it is growing, but the market over index on medical the way to go.
00:42:19
Speaker
and never said, well, what are the limits of that? ah You know, and what are you have to move? You have to go somewhere else, right? Like, you know, it's like, oh, I'm gonna get a job and I want to stay where I'm at. And then it's like, well, no, there's no jobs within 150 mile radius. So you need to move.
00:42:34
Speaker
Yeah, one of her stories was one student had to move to Texas, and she has a great job, but she moved to Texas. But if you're talking, this is more of a vocational field. So you have working adults who are quite often tied to families, and most of them can't do that. That's not the assumption.
00:42:50
Speaker
Yeah, which changes the narrative of higher ed at times, right? As a working professional, come back, get an associate's degree or get this degree, and you can change your career, you can enhance your career, you can do something different. And exactly to that point, it's like,
00:43:06
Speaker
But not necessarily. It's almost like the push of hospitals. We want everybody to have a BSN, but then the accrediting bodies aren't behind people having a BSN. The community colleges will never go away from offering the ASN.
00:43:19
Speaker
So you're still stuck with graduating a whole bunch of ASNs, but are you not going to hire them? But then the same time, where are they going? Yeah. So again, let me take an optimistic take. This whole area of the connection between higher education and the workforce and sort of the blurring of the lines and we need to figure out workforce-oriented programs, matching supply and demand, that is one of the most interesting areas in ed tech these days.
00:43:49
Speaker
for a good reason. like This is an area where I don't think people are denying the problem. I think they're trying to figure out how to more directly tie you know outcomes of graduates with you know early workforce.
00:44:03
Speaker
I think there are problems. like We're taking too transactional approach, like everything can be measured in earnings, etc. However, I still think it's a that's where you see a lot of investment. That's where you see a lot of new ideas and people trying new things. So it is a challenge, but I also think this is an area that has some good innovation that's happening right now.
00:44:27
Speaker
Yeah, even if more schools could, to your point about the so supply and demand, there not being enough residencies, like, you know, we've we've been seeing, you know, research surveys from the Business Higher Education Forum around Estrada, right, trying to to to track the problem that we have even too few internships, right? And so if higher ed can work with their employer partners more to alleviate that gap, right? And then create more opportunities, even doing that, because i think they I think you're right. I think there's a lot of like creativity going on right now in trying to connect higher ed to to jobs better.
00:45:12
Speaker
Unfortunately, what I do see is that there's there's a lot of beating of the drum around apprenticeships, right, and apprenticeship degrees. and and And of course, you can do those things, but not everyone is going to want to sign up for those types of jobs, right, whether it's in education or nursing.
00:45:31
Speaker
um you know, other areas. And so how can we, just for everyone else, let's say you're a psych major, how can we ensure that you get some type of work-based learning opportunities that help you regardless of what you decide to do as a career?
00:45:47
Speaker
yeah. so yeah Yeah, actually, let me jump back into what was brought up earlier in the Kevin versus Fritz fight of business versus families. Here's an argument against the family concept. So much of what we're talking about here in terms of peer institutions and like my example of too many graduates coming out in this medical field, assuming that all the jobs are there to support them. There is a competition between organizations that usually you don't have in families. So you need to be aware of what your competitors are doing. And you do have competitors with a family mindset. um
00:46:27
Speaker
I don't know. i ah doubt you're looking around. well there are a lot of other families. My wife might leave me for another guy because you don't know my siblings, apparently just kidding. But I'm just saying, I think that you need to factor that into the middle mental model as well as there. You have to be aware at the minimum, you have to be aware of what your peers who your peers are and what they're putting out.
00:46:50
Speaker
And there is competition between them, but I guess there are competitions between families too. Um, so was I mean, so i um, I do market research and I facilitate market research for any unit across the five campuses of the university of Minnesota. Not that I'm not that our office is the only game in town in that ecosystem, but I will say that, uh,
00:47:15
Speaker
Looking at labor outcomes, career outcomes for programs and units that are like, hey, can we do this? Can we do that? Or we approach them with something that is right at the top of the the the first, it's one of the legs, the three-legged stool is what can people do with what you're proposing?
00:47:33
Speaker
not that it's just one-shot thing yes if you get a bsn or a nursing degree degree you're going to be a nurse if you get an md you're going doctor but there's so many degrees like me a history degree two history degrees you know i there's multiple things that i could have done and wandered into but um that that's right at the top of the process because if you don't address that or think about it first You could get in a situation where you're enrolling a bunch of people and you're sending them off the end of a cliff and you don't, you can't do that for so many reasons that are, there's ethical reasons. There's just a million reasons. So, but there is, there are units and there are spaces where you have to talk them through why, you know, you think you can get 20 students in your PhD program.
00:48:17
Speaker
No one is doing that that. And that doesn't mean there's opportunity that this, cause there's nowhere for these people to go with that, at least clear paths, they can go somewhere, but you're going to send them on a meandering path that you may not want to do. So, and I think that's one thing that's really changing is institutions that get that you have to connect these dots.
00:48:39
Speaker
You have to, you have to put learners on a path to ah hopefully add a a nice broad horizon of opportunities, not just one lane because the world is changing fast in every profession, it seems. So,
00:48:52
Speaker
um that's a good thing. in Institutions need to think about that. Not that it's just high job jobs, but you eventually, you gotta you got to point learners somewhere. Yeah. And I would argue that 10 or 15 years ago, the main schools who were doing that type of thinking were those distasteful for-profits.
00:49:11
Speaker
um Now, they got in their own way with growth and they put out too many students as well. I'm not saying that they didn't have issues, but they were addressing the Where are the jobs? How do we match it? That kind of thing.
00:49:24
Speaker
It's much more accepted now, the function that you're talking about within the mainstream of academia. And I agree with you. I think that's a good thing on on what's happening. At the same time,
00:49:36
Speaker
I think sometimes we go overboard with that job outcome aspect and we're shortchanging learning outcomes, actual learning and not just credentialism. So you have to address both, if you will. But it is a good thing that we're trying in so many places like you're describing.
00:49:56
Speaker
I say, but then we're stuck, right? Because... Talking about educational outcomes, learning outcomes, success of students is one piece. But then we have this push externally, aka the federal government, of gainful employment.
00:50:11
Speaker
Your graduates have to make so much money, right? Like... were we' Again, this kind of goes back to how do you how do you manage this as higher ed when we're pushed to do to tell our story to help people understand why higher education is so great, but then we have to to do these artificial...
00:50:31
Speaker
employment numbers that don't necessarily reflect, to to Fritz's point, what I can do with a history degree, right? And I think you just posted on this the other day, which was, it was just, you know, was interesting because you were talking about, you know, the numbers, the how we're having a report and how that data is not necessarily the the most accurate, but that I think is also, know,
00:50:54
Speaker
the issue sometimes with higher ed and i think why people question whether there's value in higher ed because we don't know what story we're supposed to be telling to stay on the right side of funding mechanisms oh that's brilliant i love it So the concept of we need to look at how graduates get jobs, do something with their degree, able to pay off loans, that's great.
00:51:19
Speaker
The problem is we also need to be honest about what the data supports and the assumptions we make on how to actually regulate it. And that's where I think the current efforts are falling down. I agree with the concept.
00:51:32
Speaker
But the way they're distorting the data and going with this earnings actually captures the nuance we needed to capture is just not there yet. So I wish, I think the flaw is taking a good concept and assuming it works and then ramming it through as opposed to the data only supports us so far.
00:51:54
Speaker
Let's be honest about it and make improvements. But change things over time. So the thing I've written about so often is in the earnings premium, you're it's forcing an idea of comparing the earnings of your graduates against a benchmark.
00:52:10
Speaker
But the data that we have for the benchmark is not measuring those students in that program. The earnings is measuring those students in that program, what do they make afterwards. We have no data broadly ongoing in. Therefore, we use a proxy.
00:52:27
Speaker
The proxy is national population survey data. It was never designed for this. So then we do aggregations and pretend that we can come up with, oh, here's what they would have been making if they hadn't done the program. And just that's all the flaws are right there.
00:52:46
Speaker
And there are additional flaws that saying, well, if you could measure four years after graduation, that represents that long-term thing. And that that just doesn't work in many fields.
00:52:58
Speaker
So there's an immense value And I want to ask some of the why questions, but I read your posts from a couple of the one, a couple of days ago about the comments. Yeah.
00:53:11
Speaker
Yeah. The comments. That's what I was referring. Yeah. And what I thought was really amazing is your method, you, you lay out the whole methodology about how you use AI to support what you did down to like, I use this plugin to do this kind of calculation and this and this and this.
00:53:31
Speaker
Not, I don't know how many, i don't know if I see anyone doing that. Maybe Brian Alexander does it, I don't know. But I'm not gonna say why are you doing that, but I appreciate you doing that because everyone else is trying to figure this stuff out, but what's the what's the advantage what's the value of doing that besides just trying to lift all the boats? Everyone trying to use these tools to to do research and analysis and work with AI.
00:53:57
Speaker
Because I like to add stuff that only a few dozen people, such as yourself, are actually going to read all the way to the bottom of the post. Which I did. All right, you're a weird one then. But I mean, the point is that um those are that type of detail that I quite often described, not many people look at it. But I also think there's a value ah case in case somebody who does, maybe it's only a couple dozen people who read that part of the post. Good.
00:54:27
Speaker
In this case, however, this specifically, looked at the public comments on the proposed rule that's going to become regulation affecting every college and university in the U.S. Part of the reason I started doing this line of thinking is a is a transparency argument.
00:54:45
Speaker
is Before, nobody looked at the broad set of comments and said, other than internal to the Department of Ed. And I'm sort of a believer in, no, that's public comments. There should be public reporting. So in this case, it's specifically about it's public. I want it documented. And if you want to understand where these numbers came from, here it is. Even if you don't read it, just having it out there. I think there's, like that's great.
00:55:13
Speaker
There's a credibility that, and correct I'm wrong, but by being a, you're a, you're a, so it's most it's not just you. i mean, I know there's Neil and Glenda, but that you collaborate with a lot, but if you were, if you worked for a big company in OPM or a research company that does research in higher ed, I don't think, i don't know, you, you've, you've created ah a perch of credibility. And I think that you can only do as ah as a consultant because while you are a consultancy and you, people pay you to do work institutions, organizations, um,
00:55:49
Speaker
You can say whatever you want to say. Like you can open the black box and people appreciate that, which it builds trust. And like, yeah, we can trust this person because I can see all of his, what was it? $9.87 you spent on Claude to run that, to run that work through.
00:56:05
Speaker
On top of the $100 monthly subscription. Don't forget that part. Don't forget that part. But I think it's really, big because there's a lot of distrust of consultants and the and the the big corporate consultancies in higher ed. I'm not gonna name names, but there's a weariness of them. I have my own weariness about some of them, institutions do.
00:56:24
Speaker
So you've carved out ah a niche of credibility that is really unique. And I can only think of a few others that I, mean, it's one of the reasons we wanted to have you on today is because, um you know, we wanted to hear about that. So I just wanna say, I appreciate how you're doing what you're doing in the higher ed space.
00:56:40
Speaker
Yeah. i've done and I agree with Fritz. I mean, I think it it's just like writing any research paper, right? Like you you have your references, you have where you had this. it your're your you are You're taking the guesswork out of how did Phil get to these results before anybody says, well, that's BS. There's no way he had the time to go through all of that and did that examination. But it also puts out there...
00:57:07
Speaker
this was ah This was an evaluation by AI. And as we all know, AI may or may not be totally 100% accurate, but this is what I gleaned from this information and this is how I got to that information versus you know just...
00:57:23
Speaker
Hey, I looked at all 1 million comments and this is, this is what I think. Right. Yeah. Like, I mean, it adds the piece to, it's just the credibility piece, I think, which I have always appreciated from you. And I think people in higher ed appreciate that from you.
00:57:40
Speaker
Well, thank you very much, although I'm feeling pressure that I keep ah needing to write some of these process pieces that very few people read other than you guys. But it is that is part of the reason I do it. It's it's a credibility.
00:57:54
Speaker
um i actually, on that article itself, it would have been interesting to better document the back and forth, because it wasn't plug it in go off, and do ai it would come back and it would give this result. And then I would say, oh, you didn't mention this comment that I know somebody did. So you misclassifying things? And there was a interaction. I wish I had better captured that part because it's an important part of where AI fits in and doesn't fit in.
00:58:23
Speaker
Yeah, the the validation part of AI is something that i two of my colleagues and I from our office, we met with a consultancy here in the Twin Cities, not to get a pitch to do work with them, but just to talk about AI, they, they're an AI forward first consultancy. So we want to just talk about how to use this and as an organization to do your work.
00:58:41
Speaker
And, um, that wasn't, that was one of the things I was expressing is that the validation, like I know valid results in the higher ed space and data, but I need to see under the hood. I'm under the hood. have these crazy spreadsheets and I write all the queries and all the formulas. I know when something's off, like I know what it's off and I know where it's off.
00:59:00
Speaker
if there's black If I'm using a black box, how the heck do I know what's right and wrong when I see something I know is wrong? So um I think the fact that you're showing people how, not only that your validation process, but your your your process, but how you validate that process is really important as everyone's trying to figure out how do we use this and what we do.
00:59:21
Speaker
Part of this is fear-based, to be quite honest, because I do recognize that the market treats me a certain way and trust is sort of the core of it, um but that makes me paranoid.
00:59:33
Speaker
So as I do things with AI, it's like I realize it's, you know, one mistake can blow up a lot of the trust that you've spent years doing. And so when I do AI type of work, there's a lot of yeah it's almost paranoia well could this be wrong i better go check that now i better get feedback and revise the results and but i think it's i don't know if if it's healthy or not it's the way i do it but a lot of it is that fear of losing trust which gets into the topic that we're talking about the validation you can't just hand something off you have to actually actively work with it and that part of the process maybe i'll write about that at some point but that iterative
01:00:18
Speaker
checking and getting into that. i Maybe I should write about that sometime as well, because I know other people are struggling with it. It does. I think it goes into the whole AI, it's the booze of AI, right? Like, oh, but it's exactly to your point is people use it and they're afraid to say that they use it.
01:00:39
Speaker
And or or to your point, the opposite side is let's be honest about how we're using it. And this is what I got from it. And and go forward. Right. Yep. And I, being an independent and you're talking about not working in a big company, I work for myself. It does simplify some of my metrics. And so one of mine ah it has to be, okay, it's my wife. I've got to pay the mortgage and have enough leftover money to take her to Italy. Right. And so I have to think about things such as I'm supporting myself. You know, I do have that accountability metric in terms of because I'm such a small firm and I'm answerable to myself and to my family.
01:01:20
Speaker
And at least in my view, it's not a, you know, I need to have more and more money. It's much more fear-based, to be quite honest. And I've got to protect things. And for me, trust is the coin of the realm.
01:01:34
Speaker
Yeah. That drives me on so much of this process type of issue that you have to deal with. And I think that is serving me well in the AI. I could never fully trust it. And I think that's a good way to approach AI. It's amazing what it can do. I mean...
01:01:50
Speaker
What I did in this common analysis is light years away from what I did in September and December. So on one hand, it's amazing the advances in technology.
01:02:01
Speaker
However, I always go into it with a, I've got to make sure that I don't trust it and I've got to make sure I don't screw something up type of ofva aspect. So a lot of your time is spent validating your, the the whether it's your you know agents or whatever you're using is a validation process.
01:02:21
Speaker
Validation or pushing back? Hey, yeah what about this? I know this example over here. So when I was doing this one, wait, what about this comment? I do know this group submitted this comment. Did you read this and do you understand how it might change things? So it's pushback as well as independent validation.
01:02:41
Speaker
yeah You know, it almost this would be an interesting conference topic or something. There's got to be a support group of people going through these types of things where it'd be interesting to share this type of information.
01:02:56
Speaker
Yeah, most definitely. I'm pushing you guys to create that conference. conference I mean, I think Apsia would love some sort of conference presentation on that type of thing.
01:03:06
Speaker
okay So much of the focus is on the impact of AI in higher ed. It's what is it doing to the academic integrity um and in the teaching and learning space that important critical work.
01:03:18
Speaker
But there's a whole administrative business process yeah use of it that is really important. I mean, um you know, in the same way that they wrestled with, what do we do with these personal computers in 1980 or 81? Every business and every institution, every organization, we we need to wrestle with that too. And that's, I'm not saying it's lost and it's no one wants to talk about it, but I don't feel like there's this broad ah discussion about that yet at the moment. Yeah. And that's gets to sort of my concern that we're talking about AI from two years ago and higher education as if the chat bot just got invented and that's the only thing AI does. There's a whole different set of agentic issues that are reality today. But they're not really getting debated and openly discussed in higher education circles.
01:04:11
Speaker
So it's it's almost like a time lag issue. I wish we would get more current in our discussions. Yeah. but But it's just like your your point of, you you know, you did an article, you explained how you got to your results.
01:04:23
Speaker
why not do an assignment for your students hey you can use ai but i want you to actually you have to explain exactly how you got to where you got to with the technology that you use to do it right like but it we're we're we're so averse to let's let's not do that because then i'll cheat versus use it to learn Yeah. And learn how to use it. And learn how to use it. Yeah. There's also a reproducibility. Like part of the reason I put it out at this specific post is if somebody else wants to do it,
01:04:55
Speaker
They could go, it's public data. I described my methods. You could go do you could go spend the $9.82 and see if you get the same results or similar results. Is it like GitHub? I mean, did you put your Python files out there? to No, I haven't done that. I'm debating that, but I'm i'm thinking of I have not done that yet. You heard it here first, folks. Yeah.
01:05:18
Speaker
Phil, I mean, we we really appreciate appreciated having you on. i feel like, again, with a lot of our guests, we we could have a part one, part two part 20.
01:05:30
Speaker
Because obviously with your background, storytelling that you do um both formally and informally, I think we can continue just to...
01:05:41
Speaker
um you know, hear from you in in a lot of different regards. um And, you know, one thing, for example, that we didn't get a chance to talk about is the instructor debacle, but we can always bring you back and and maybe have more of a conversation about about that. But we're we're just very thankful for your time today. And and again, thank you for joining us.
01:06:03
Speaker
Well, thank you for the invite. But more importantly, I had fun. So thanks for that. I enjoy this this podcast discussion. So thanks a lot. Yeah. Thanks so much, Phil. It's great to see you.
01:06:14
Speaker
Yeah, it's good seeing you. Thanks for coming on. Yeah, thank you.