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Podcast

The College Crisis- Heads of Dartmouth & Berkeley Debate the Decline of US Universities

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg

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  • Universities Need New Funding Mix
    • If federal research funding falls, universities must diversify via industry partnerships and philanthropy.
    • Education funding similarly needs rethinking to protect access without creating unsustainable student debt. Transcript: Rich Lyons A lot to that question. I’ll start, and Sian will certainly have lots to contribute. You know, at the top level, if we think about, you know, how do we sustainably provide the fundamental and translational research that we’re so good at, that we’re built for, or the education, Really transformative educational experiences that many of you have had in these great universities. So, you know, one way to think about that is on the research side, if there is less federal funding coming in over time, and I think that’s a good bet, can we partner more with industry? Are there other sources? Is there a way to gear philanthropy even more toward the kinds of research that we need to make sure we’re doing? So we are thinking about what that bundle, that funding model looks like on the research side. And on the education side as well, you mentioned debt and an issue that that’s become. (Time 0:01:50)
  • Measure And Communicate Degree ROI
    • Do measure and communicate return on investment (ROI) for degree programs to protect students from unaffordable debt.
    • Hold institutions partly accountable for student economic outcomes and tailor financial aid accordingly. Transcript: Rich Lyons And on the education side as well, you mentioned debt and an issue that that’s become. I think what you would find, whether at Dartmouth or at Berkeley, that if you’re coming to one of these institutions from a lower income family, you’re probably paying no tuition. And many of them are leaving with very little debt. So to say there’s all these higher education institutions and then to talk about averages, I think you would be surprised at how much support lower income students are getting. Sian Leah Beilock Yeah, and I would just add to that that I don’t think education is one size fits all. And at a place like Dartmouth, which is, I would talk about it as a different kind of Ivy. It is cheaper to go to Dartmouth if you’re lower or middle income now than it was 10 years ago. And that’s because of the philanthropy that we receive from amazing alums and families. And that is what we want to do. We want to make institutions a place where anyone can go regardless of background, bring the best and brightest together and send them off without a huge debt burden we package without Loans a third of our students go for free and they come out on average making more than they would otherwise if they hadn’t gone to a school like Dartmouth but I think it comes down to the Institutions having some responsibility for pushing out students and making sure that they’re not serving them in education that then they can’t find jobs in. (Time 0:02:38)
  • Philanthropy Can Eliminate Student Loans
    • Elite institutions often package aid to eliminate loans for lower- and middle-income students.
    • That model shows philanthropy and endowments can make elite education affordable for many families. Transcript: Sian Leah Beilock If you aren’t thinking about the ROI and that is part of what you’re delivering, it’s a fair question to ask. And I also think that we’ve pushed too many people to think that college is the end all be all. There are different ways to be successful in this country. I certainly think there’s a place for an amazing elite education like Dartmouth if we are teaching students how to think and not what to think. But the idea that everyone needs to go to a four-year college or university, I think that’s outdated. Jason Calacanis Let me ask you about different degrees and loans and the risks that you take. I mean, $70,000 a year tuition, but you’re not on the hook for it. Students who take these loans are on the hook for it and their brains are not fully developed. Would you, I can confirm this, okay? Sian Leah Beilock Well the neuroscience data suggests that your front cortex isn’t developed. Boys a little bit later than girls by the way. Jason Calacanis
    1. I did okay. I went to Fordham, I did okay. The point I’m trying to make here is shouldn’t you, the university, be on the hook for these loans? And shouldn’t you be responsible for the outcomes for these students? And would you be in support of having the loans and the amount of the loans match the desirability of the degree and its ability to monetize in the post-graduation. David Sacks Or said differently, would you guys underwrite the loans? Sian Leah Beilock Yeah. Look, I think we do at Dartmouth because our students are packaged without loans. They don’t take out loans. And in fact, for a student in a middle income family, lower and middle income family, it’s about $5,000 a year to go to Dartmouth. So we do underwrite in that way. (Time 0:04:30)
  • Make Institutions Share Outcome Risk
    • Do assign institutions some liability for poor outcomes when students take on high debt for low-return programs.
    • Consider packaging aid and redesigning programs to better align cost with career prospects. Transcript: David Sacks Said differently, would you guys underwrite the loans? Sian Leah Beilock Yeah. Look, I think we do at Dartmouth because our students are packaged without loans. They don’t take out loans. And in fact, for a student in a middle income family, lower and middle income family, it’s about $5,000 a year to go to Dartmouth. So we do underwrite in that way. Now you asked the question about other institutions where students are coming out with high debt and low ROI. I think it is fair to ask what share of responsibility the institution should take. And I do think that that’s part of the reforms that we need to think about in higher ed writ large. So you’re in favor of it. I’m in favor of the institutions having some responsibility. But and at Dartmouth, we take that responsibility very seriously. (Time 0:05:56)
  • Viewpoint Diversity And Merit Coexist
    • Diversity of thought and merit are not mutually exclusive and can coexist in admissions and campus life.
    • SATs can act as an equalizer to identify talented lower-income students lacking other advantages. Transcript: Sian Leah Beilock You guys actually a question. David Sacks What is the correlation between DEI and scholarship? Is there one? Sian Leah Beilock I don’t think having a diversity of thought and thinking about merit are mutually exclusive. I think that’s a false dichotomy. We were the first Ivy League to bring the SAT back at Dartmouth and many of our peers followed. And the reason is we looked at the data and what we found was that it was a great equalizer in finding students from lower income backgrounds and higher income backgrounds who are succeeding In something that’s less actually susceptible to financial input, like letters of rec and what you did for the summer. And a better way for us to find lower income students who are excelling where they are, but maybe don’t have the prep or the background. So I think it’s a false dichotomy. David Sacks There was no impact to the quality of the actual scholarship, the professors taught, the language that was used, all this concept of like microaggressions, all this stuff that got In the way of teaching math and science. You don’t think that happened? Sian Leah Beilock No, I think that we have to focus on our core subjects and merit. But I think the idea that I believe in diversity, I think we should have a diversity of people at the table. (Time 0:08:03)
  • Teach Openness To Opposing Views
    • Do promote institutional neutrality and viewpoint diversity through curriculum and campus programs.
    • Launch and support courses and initiatives that teach openness to opposing views. Transcript: Rich Lyons We lift more people further up the economic ladder than any other university in the country. And so the caricature problem is very real here. Berkeley, I have been saying very publicly that we need to, I’m agreeing with what she just said, that we need to move in the direction of view of institutional neutrality. I’m talking about viewpoint diversity all the time. Do we have some getting better to do? You better believe we do. We were thinking we were so tolerant. I think we weren’t very tolerant of viewpoint diversity. And we have a new course called Openness to Opposing Views. It got launched this summer. 5,000 people have signed up for it. We have something called the Berkeley Liberty Initiative. (Time 0:11:05)
  • Admin Growth Mirrors New Compliance And Services
    • Administrative growth reflects rising compliance and student-service expectations, not just bloat.
    • Streamline bureaucratic burden while preserving essential services like scaled mental-health support. Transcript: Rich Lyons Will start. We, for years, and we have further to go, but we have been talking about bureaucratic burden. We actually have an initiative, and we just call it bureaucratic burden, and there is too much of it at Berkeley. Berkeley is a very, very large organization with lots and lots of people. So as we think about how do we make some of the hard decisions for making things faster, And we’ve been working very, very hard at that. The clock speed of the world is going up so fast. And the clock speed of these institutions pace for change. That gap is widening. And we need to get better at getting better. So I promise you with AI and many other things, it’s like, well, academic advising, how is that going to change with AI? It’ll change a lot. We’re going to always need human academic advisors, in my view, but that world is going to change a lot. How do you navigate what’s on campus? Last point is, you know, when you talk about the mental health of our students, I think if you went back to when you and I were undergraduates at our universities, the idea that the university Would help people with like scaled mental health services, they weren’t there. They are there now. (Time 0:14:30)
  • Trust Drops When Mission Drifts
    • Losing trust in universities stems from perceived mission drift into political advocacy.
    • Reclaiming institutional neutrality and clear values is key to rebuilding public confidence. Transcript: Sian Leah Beilock I believe in the fierce independence of our educational institutions. And I worry that if we are swaying in one direction or another based on who is in office, then we don’t have the trust of the American people. And I think we failed in some ways to show that we could self-regulate and do that ourselves. But the goal in my mind is to get back to a place where it’s clear that universities aren’t political organizations, aren’t taking a position, that we are focused on bringing the best And brightest to go out and contribute to our democracy. And we can do that ourselves. (Time 0:16:36)
  • Train Civics And Dialogue Before College
    • Do strengthen K–12 preparation in civics and civil discourse to equip students for college debate.
    • Train dialogic skills through repeated practice so students can engage with disagreement productively. Transcript: Jason Calacanis That’s a problem. That’s 1984. Going upstream, and I just want to go upstream with you guys for a second, where’s this coming from and what’s going on in K-12? Sian Leah Beilock Yeah, I think we don’t talk about K-12 enough. I think we really have to go back. Our students are landing on our campus without having civics, without having practice engaging in difficult conversations. I mean, I think we really have to move backwards and not just think about the university setting because we’re getting them much later. And we train all of our students at Dartmouth, go through Dartmouth dialogues to learn how to have conversations with people you disagree with. I believe it’s like a muscle. You have to train it through practice. David Sacks Are they showing up basically just unprepared? Sian Leah Beilock A lot of them through COVID didn’t have these skills. And we’ve seen this in different ways where you at one point when we were in school, if you had a fight with someone, you’d have it face to face, then it went to text messaging. Now it goes to you leaving a long voicemail on someone’s voice memo and then not even engaging. And if anyone who has teenagers out there, when I tell my 14 year old to pick up the phone and call someone, what are you talking about? We have to get those muscles back. And a university setting, a college setting is the place to do it. We’re not just about knowledge transfer. We’re about forming the identities of our future leaders. (Time 0:21:54)
  • AI Can’t Replace Residential Growth
    • AI will change knowledge access but cannot replace residential education’s human development.
    • Universities add transformative non-knowledge experiences that AI alone does not deliver. Transcript: David Sacks Teachers themselves don’t know how to add. Jason Calacanis Well, I think there’s a very, no, I mean, I think what’s interesting is there’s probably a very good teacher emerging, which is AI. How are you guys thinking about whether higher education should even exist and what the role of higher education and classrooms and teachers and textbooks are? In a world where I have a personal tutor available to me to walk me through the knowledge transfer at my own pace to think critically, AI seems to have the potential to play so much of the Role of what higher education and even K-12 education has played historically. Are you guys calculating for your strategic planning with AI and what does it do? Rich Lyons Absolutely. Well, I’ll start with that. So my daughter just graduated three months ago. I have two kids. She just finished college. And I’m astonished by how much she has developed. And I think most parents would have a similar experience. And I think if you stripped out sort of the knowledge, the part that you could easily access with AI, she would still astonish me in how much she has developed. That’s a residential university and all the interactions and all the things and the challenges and the overcoming them. And so, you know, the idea, people were predicting with massive open online courses, the death of universities 15 years ago. And I really think that when you start realizing that’s what makes it so darn transformative. And at least any AI I’ve seen so far is not getting close to what we’re able to do. (Time 0:25:04)
  • Teach Agency To Withstand Automation
    • Do prepare students for AI-driven labor shifts by teaching agency and adaptable human skills.
    • Focus curricula on uniquely human capabilities that remain valuable amid automation. Transcript: Rich Lyons I’ll start. I think categories of labor across the economy are going to be under threat. So it’s easy to start with thinking about organized labor, but not organized labor is going to be terrifically under stress. And I think that a lot of people are going to be pushing back on what’s about to happen. So I think that’s the larger frame. It’s really how jobs across white collar, in fact I think a lot more unrepresented jobs are going to disappear as a result of AI than represented jobs over the next 10 years. (Time 0:28:26)
  • Endowments Support Access And Research
    • Endowments fund scholarships, research, and infrastructure but don’t solely drive academic decisions.
    • Philanthropy sustains access and discovery while government partnerships remain essential. Transcript: David Sacks And as these endowments have emerged, there’s been a perception and then those things have been laid bare that there are side doors and back doors and all kinds of different ways in which To get into schools. Varsity Blues thing is like a perfect example of just the manipulation of the system that just, again, to your point, people lose trust. What role do endowments play? How much influence do they exert when it’s good? When they can’t fund a budget, what happens? Just walk us through that cycle where there’s a perception that they could be doing more. Harvard’s got a $55 billion endowment. But just walk us through that for each of your institutions, how reliant you guys are on this and the impact it makes on you being able to be totally meritocratic. Sian Leah Beilock Yeah, I mean, I will say very clearly that we are looking for the best and brightest students. Our endowment is a way that allows us to fund students regardless of their ability to pay. And our financial aid, from our endowment, hundreds of millions of dollars each year to support students so that they come out without loans and they’re ready to go. And that is because people believe in the institution. So it is a way, an important way that private citizens give back to support what they’re doing. And I think it is extremely important to what we do. It also funds our research. There’s a lot of talk about indirect costs and what those actually mean. We lose money on every research dollar we bring in. We spend our endowment to create the buildings, to create all of the compliance. You can’t make discoveries in the middle of Main Street. You’ve got to do that in a scientific enterprise where we are putting the skin in the game. And I think it’s great that people are giving back to be able to do that. But it doesn’t drive our decisions. (Time 0:31:45)
  • Bipartisan Student Political Union
    • Dartmouth hosts a bipartisan, student-run political union co-chaired by conservatives and democrats.
    • They stage high-profile debates to normalize uncomfortable but constructive political conversation. Transcript: Sian Leah Beilock Yeah, and I would say a few things. One, Dartmouth has the most rural medical center in the country. We serve a huge population of people not connected to the institution. And I’m excited about how we double down and make health systems better. I think that’s such an important part of what we do as universities. And the second thing I’ll say is that I am very excited about our students. Just one other thing that Dartmouth is doing that is so impressive is that we have one of the only bipartisan student-run political unions in the country, co-chaired by the Dartmouth Conservatives and the Dartmouth Democrats. And those students are changing the culture at institutions. Last year, we had a debate between Kellyanne Conway and Donna Brazile. We had Cornel West and Robbie George. They’re dealing with DEI, immigration. They are talking about the issues and putting it out there. And they’re creating a culture where it’s cool to have conversations and be uncomfortable instead of shout each other down. (Time 0:35:48)