Is College Worth It? Re-Imagining Higher Education | Janine Davidson | TEDxMSUDenver

Summary

In this TEDx talk, Janine Davidson, the president of Metropolitan State University of Denver and former Undersecretary of the Navy, challenges the current state of higher education and questions the accessibility of the American Dream. She shares her unique journey from being a C-130 pilot in the Air Force to becoming a university president, explaining how this path gave her a different perspective on education. Davidson emphasizes the importance of affordable public education and open access universities like MSU Denver, which provide opportunities for those from less privileged backgrounds. She argues that current societal and financial structures make it difficult for students to follow the traditional four-year college path without incurring significant debt. Davidson calls for reinvestment in public education, collaborations between universities and employers, and the necessity of creating flexible educational pathways to uphold the American Dream for future generations.

Highlights

• Janine Davidson's unique journey highlights the importance of diverse experiences in leadership. 🌍
• There is a growing gap in the accessibility of the American Dream due to structural economic changes. 📉
• Current college pathways often leave students with insurmountable debt and limited career prospects. 💰
• Educational reform is necessary to accommodate varied economic and social backgrounds. 🔄
• Flexible and supportive university policies are crucial for today's students' success. 📚

Key Takeaways

• Higher education needs reinvention to remain accessible and relevant. 🎓
• America's disinvestment in public education is alarming. 💸
• Non-traditional college paths should be embraced and encouraged. 🌟
• Collaborations between universities and employers can bridge education gaps. 🤝
• The American Dream's accessibility must be restored for future generations. 🇺🇸

Overview

Janine Davidson opens her TEDx talk by sharing her unique career trajectory that led her to become the president of Metropolitan State University of Denver. As a former Department of Defense official and C-130 pilot, her non-traditional path highlights the importance of diverse experiences in leadership roles. This journey provided her with insights into the challenges faced by educational institutions and the students they serve.

Davidson spotlights the disinvestment in America's public education, drawing comparisons to more successful models like Canada's. She argues that these financial decisions have pulled the ladder of opportunity up behind the previous generations who benefited from it. As a result, today’s students face enormous financial burdens that limit their educational and career prospects, questioning the sustainability of the American Dream.

To address these challenges, Davidson calls for systemic changes. She advocates for reinvestment in public education, collaborative efforts between employers and universities, and the adoption of flexible learning pathways. By doing so, she believes we can restore faith in the American Dream, ensuring it's a viable path for future generations. This mission requires innovative thinking and a unified effort from all sectors of society.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:30: Introduction and Personal Journey The chapter titled 'Introduction and Personal Journey' opens with a musical introduction and begins to delve into the author's unconventional background. It sets the stage for exploring the author's unique life experiences and perspectives. Although the transcript abruptly cuts off, the expectation is that this chapter serves as an introduction to both the narrator and the thematic elements that underscore the book.
• 01:30 - 03:00: Discovering Socio-Economic Issues in America The chapter begins with the introduction of the speaker, who has taken a unique path to reach their current position at Metropolitan State University of Denver. The speaker is presenting on a TED stage, sharing insights into their journey, which started with a career in the US Air Force, notably as a C-130 pilot at the age of 25, flying over the Pacific. This marks the onset of a significant career trajectory spanning approximately 25 years, during which the speaker aims to uncover socio-economic issues prevalent in America.
• 03:00 - 04:30: Challenges in the American Education System The speaker discusses their unique career trajectory, contrasting it with the traditional path of university presidents. Instead of moving from professor to university administration, they climbed into a different type of administration: the Obama administration. The speaker highlights their previous role as the Undersecretary of the Navy, explaining the significance of this position for those unfamiliar with military titles.
• 04:30 - 06:30: Cost of Higher Education in the 1980s vs Today The chapter discusses the career transition of a high-ranking official from the Pentagon to a new position. It explores the reasons behind leaving such a prestigious role in the administration and the motivations for taking on a new job. A humorous remark is made about getting fired, reflecting on the changes in career paths.
• 06:30 - 09:00: Re-Imagining Higher Education The chapter 'Re-Imagining Higher Education' starts with a personal reflection on the year 2016, which served as a wake-up call for the narrator. They had been focused on America's international role, but the election year revealed underlying changes in the country. The narrator acknowledges a group of economists, including someone named Raj, who had already been paying attention to these developments.
• 09:00 - 13:30: Call to Action for Educational Reform The chapter titled 'Call to Action for Educational Reform' presents research from Chetty at Stanford, highlighting a significant change in the American dream's viability. A chart is shown that confirms the real decline in the ability of subsequent generations to surpass their parents' financial success. The data particularly compares those born in the 1940s, with a 90% likelihood of out-earning their parents, and those born in the 1980s, who faced reduced chances. This shift underscores a crucial need for educational reform to address systemic issues and reinvigorate upward mobility.

Is College Worth It? Re-Imagining Higher Education | Janine Davidson | TEDxMSUDenver Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 [Music] I am what's known as a non-traditional
• 00:30 - 01:00 president that's right I took a very different path to get to where I am today at Metropolitan State University of Denver and this TED stage I began my career in the US Air Force this is me as a c-130 pilot I must have been 25 years old flying somewhere over the Pacific this is the beginning of about a 25 or
• 01:00 - 01:30 30 year journey of me climbing a very different ladder than most university presidents instead of being a professor and then climbing the ladder into university administration I climbed into a very different administration the Obama administration this is me a few years back as the Undersecretary of the Navy for those of you don't know much about the military that's kind of a
• 01:30 - 02:00 pretty high position one of the top positions in the Pentagon actually the number two position civilian appointed by the president for the United States Navy so you might ask you know why would somebody like that want to come here and have a job like this well the short answer is I got fired [Laughter] like all of us in the administration we had to move on but that's just why I left but why did I come here
• 02:00 - 02:30 the truth is 2016 was a bit of a wake-up call for me personally I had been climbing this ladder I had been focused externally on America's role in the world and what I realized during that year during that election year was that something else was happening in this country that I hadn't really noticed well I hadn't paid as much attention to but other people had been there was a group of economists led by this guy Raj
• 02:30 - 03:00 Chetty out of Stanford that put some research together to demonstrate that there actually was something happening in this country and it was the fading of the American dream now this chart shows that it actually wasn't just a fiction or something people felt it was something that was real if you were born in the 1940s the baby boomer generation had a 90% chance of doing better than your parents that was sort of the definition of the American dream if you're born in the 80s and those are the
• 03:00 - 03:30 Millennials today you had a 50% chance you can say well so you know the economy changed and you know post-world war ii era or whatever else but there's something else got my attention to that was in their report and that's the what I would call the big American dream the chance that if you were at the bottom part of the socio-economic scale if you were poor what are your chances of getting up into the higher reaches of our economy and in America today your chances are only 7.5
• 03:30 - 04:00 percent which sounds pretty bad but here's the kicker in Canada 13.5 percent so I'm not cool with that right I mean Canada is kicking our ass in the American dream like how did that happen right so I mean a lot of dialogue and debate over this issue ensued that I was reading about and a lot of people pointed to the elite universities in this country and they said you know
• 04:00 - 04:30 there are more people at those universities and the top 1% than there are in the entire bottom 16 that's not cool we need to get more people in to those schools so that they can achieve the American dream that's pretty good argument but I kind of took a different tack I came here instead MSU Denver is what's called a regional comprehensive University and it's open access and what does that mean it means that if you grew up poor if you
• 04:30 - 05:00 grew up one of those high schools that wasn't exactly college prep if your parents didn't have the kind of money to get to send you to those Gucci SAT courses so that you could up your scale and get into those so-called elite schools you could still come to a place like MSU Denver by passion by purpose and actually as it happens by law we will take you and what that means is that people like Theodore DeWeese who
• 05:00 - 05:30 grew up low-income first in his family to ever go to college didn't quite know what he wanted to do wasn't very well prepped came to came to this school he had to take remedial math he had to work hard in an outside job and an auto shop and it took him just over six years to graduate but he did magna laude so
• 05:30 - 06:00 it wasn't about that he wasn't capable and said he wasn't as prepared as he might have been because of his background and today he's the vice dean at Johns Hopkins University one of the top cancer doctors in the world so that's the kind of thing that happens at schools like this and these kinds of schools it's not just here there there are a number of them around the country and they're right under your noses that's the kind of thing that happens that can happen but there are some
• 06:00 - 06:30 challenges that I've learned as I've been told being a university president is the hardest job in the world and one of the things that makes it hard is what people say about higher ed okay so people say yeah it's getting expensive it's out of touch and here's the one I really don't like and you know college it's not really for everyone you know maybe not everybody knew what you know is that what you tell your kids I know
• 06:30 - 07:00 it's not what the rich people tell their kids no I know that because some of them are going to jail for spending five hundred thousand dollars to get their kids in the side-door those other schools now why are they doing that right because we know the truth as my dad likes to say you're entitled to your opinions but you're not entitled to your facts and it just is the fact that in today's highly globalized information
• 07:00 - 07:30 oriented complex economy and society you actually need a higher degree in order to make it not only that you are exponentially more likely to make more money you're gonna make by some research over a million dollars more in your lifetime you have better health outcomes you're gonna be much better off in your retirement so all those things lead to the obvious conclusion that you should go to school okay but it's also a good idea for you go to school for society
• 07:30 - 08:00 because let me so well I shouldn't have to pay for other people to go well it turns out that the Lumina Foundation has has demonstrated that not only is it good for you and your own economy you're an economic purpose but it's also good for America you are much more likely to pay into the system than to take from the system and here's a good one you're 4.9 times less likely to go to jail that's a big deal it's not trivial actually turns out Fitch you know we
• 08:00 - 08:30 spend a lot more money on jail than we do on college so our investment strategy is a little bit twisted now let me walk you through a little bit of the math okay in nineteen in the 1980s it costs 800 dollars a year to go to a university of public university at 3 dollars and 10 cents an hour which was the minimum wage that meant you needed to work 6.5 weeks in the year in order to pay your tuition or 8.7 part-time now that's a summer job folks and that's how a lot of us did it that's how a lot of the Fortune 500 CEOs
• 08:30 - 09:00 did it actually but they're kids twenty eighteen ten thousand two hundred thirty dollars a year $7.25 an hour means you got to work 35 weeks to pay just your tuition and nothing else so what does that mean it means there literally are not enough hours in the day weeks in the year to work your way through school like people used to do right those are the numbers
• 09:00 - 09:30 so how did we get here well it turns out that all of us who sort of thought we put ourselves through school in the 1980s we had an angel investor and it's called the American people paying 60 to 80 percent depending on your state of the tuition and the students paid the rest but today in Colorado its flipped that's the primary reason college is so
• 09:30 - 10:00 expensive today is the disinvestment the systematic disinvestment that we have made in our in our society I'm not okay with that either frankly and we also not only have we disinvested I mean it's but we basically pulled the ladder up behind us we achieved the American dream turned around pulled the ladder up on our own kids right and then we do something else that's even worse or not not even worse
• 10:00 - 10:30 but also it complicates it is that we tell them they still have to do it the same way we did it we still tell them there's this four-year path and you need to work really hard and it's not just people and parents it's policy the basically citizens in scholarship money that says you have to be in school full-time when we know like I just showed you that the math doesn't work so what we've are telling our kids our students and they're not just kids anymore we're giving them a false choice you can either quit your job so you can go full time or you can you know or or
• 10:30 - 11:00 you you you're not gonna make it in time well what is in time right four years or six years you can have a six year path and you can actually do pretty well you can work along the way right and then when you graduate follow me on this take a little bit longer than four years work along the way now you graduate with less debt and a job job skills or you go for years maybe
• 11:00 - 11:30 cram it into that mop that model forces you to take out more day that all works if the parents are paying right I know some parents in the audience we're saying wait a second I want that kid out in four years well if you're paying good for you and you're probably right get your kid out as soon as possible but that is not the reality for the vast majority of Americans today okay so what can we do a couple things number one let's fix this okay legislators taxpayer
• 11:30 - 12:00 let's reinvest in our future okay number two push back on this narrative that college doesn't matter College does matter we need it for our country to be competitive we need it for a civil society to be robust and healthy and everybody needs an opportunity because that's the American Way number three
• 12:00 - 12:30 calm down just breathe through your nose a little bit stop trying to cram these students into this four year model that doesn't work for them stop telling them that they're not doing it right they're working their butts off we're the ones that aren't doing it right we're the ones that aren't telling them the right way to do it we're the ones that make your guys so if you're an employer out there partner
• 12:30 - 13:00 with schools like ours get left of the graduation timeline and help students along their way give them two ition assistants give them flexible work hours and if you're a university craft different kinds of pathways we can do this if you're a donor we think that full-time requirement for your student because most of them are working 30 to 40 hours a week and why I just told you about how the math doesn't work so what I'm saying is join me on this mission
• 13:00 - 13:30 it's going to take all of us to toss that ladder back down for the next generation it's gonna take all of us to ensure that the American Dream isn't just a dream but that it's a possibility and that is what is worth fighting for thank you [Applause] [Music]