January 4, 2024 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, the remarkable story of Arizona State University and its President, Michael Crow.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories and with someone
who's been named one of the world's fifty greatest leaders.
Michael Crowe is the president of Arizona State University and
has one of the most fascinating and unusual backgrounds for
an academic, although he thinks that he shouldn't be such
a rare bird. Here's Michael with his story.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
You know, I had teenage parents who had run away
to get married and ended up being a product of
that early love, I guess, And so my dad was
in the Navy. My mother just graduated from high school.
My dad was nineteen, my mother was eighteen. I lived
in a public housing apartment building. So we were what
was called Section eight families, you know, So we lived
(00:53):
on public assistance, public housing because even though my dad
was in the Navy, you know, they didn't pay people
in the Navy very much. And so was able as
a kid to grow up in a loving, caring family.
But we moved constantly, lots of stresses and strains, constant
moving twenty one times before I graduated from high school.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
When I was seventeen.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
We lived in Imperial Beach, California, and my dad was
at the time in Asia on the USS constellation. And
then she starts getting sick and I come home from
school in the third.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Grade and she has passed out.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
She's actually bled out on the floor from her cancer
that had cut some artery or something. She wasn't dead,
but she had stage four cancer that you come to
learn later. And so then eventually my dad comes back
from Japan. You know, my mother's in the hospital. She's unconscious,
she can't really talk to anybody. There's just ladies in
the neighborhood, these Mexican American families that just took us
in and a thing called Community.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Chest, which is what the United Way became.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
They took care of us, and eventually they flew my
mother's sister out from Chicago, and then she sort of
organized everything, moved my mother to Chicago, where she ultimately
died in the Rush Presbyterian Hospital from her cancer in
an experimental treatment that killed her. She would have died anyway,
but it killed her. Left behind four children. We got
all split up in that particular setting, got sent out
(02:13):
to her sisters lived in different places. And so then
a few months after that, my dad and I are
on a bench right on Lake Michigan, and he's crying
and upset and doesn't know what to do, doesn't know
how to take care of us. We're all split up.
I'm living in Chicago, two siblings that are living in
(02:33):
Long Beach. Another sibling is living in Iowa. We're moving around.
I'm living in a Ukrainian Russian neighborhood in the city
of Chicago, going to Chicago Public schools, and my dad
is sitting here and he doesn't know what to do.
I remember vividly saying to myself, if you don't know
(02:54):
what to do, I sure don't know what to do,
but apparently I'm going to have to figure out what
to do. My dad he's passed, you know, eighteen years ago.
But but I had never experienced anything like that.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
I didn't know what that meant, and so I didn't
have any realization.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
I think at that age, I didn't have a complete
realization that I was this independent creature.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
And so it was like a switch in my brain
that went off.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Relative to now trying to find some way to go ahead,
trying to find some way to move my my life ahead.
There was even some chance that we weren't even going
to be able to stay with my aunt and that
he was going to get shipped off to see. So
he was he was uncertain about where we were going.
And so he did say, you're just gonna have to
figure this out. He used to call me Bud. That
was my name, Bud.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
He says, Bud, You're just going to figure this out.
You're going to figure this out for yourself. There's just you.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Basically it was a childhood, you know, from my perspective,
wherein I, you know, experienced the country at lots of
different levels in basically working class neighborhoods.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
You know.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
So when we lived in San Diego more than once
several times, working class neighbor that were largely Mexican American,
North Chicago, Illinois, which was largely African American, so very
seldom were we the majority in terms of white families.
And so I experienced lots of different things, lots of diversity,
lots of arguments, lots of fighting, lots of bias every
(04:18):
direction that you could possibly imagine. Oh, here's the new kid,
So what are we gonna do with him? Oh, let's
just beat him into the ground. As we moved around,
I was in this old fashioned organization. I don't know
you know, I don't think they are what they were
in the past. But I was in a thing called
the Boy Scouts, and we were living in Lexington Park, Maryland,
(04:39):
which is in Saint Mary's County, Maryland, a beautiful place.
We learned how to crab for blue crabs, We learned,
you know, all the Chesapeake Bay stuff. And I was
working on my Eagle Scout project, which turned out to
be so we were working class family, eligible for public assistants,
eligible for not food stamps, but eligible for actual food
(05:00):
would give you food. So we got cheese, we got
powdered milk, we got cans of peanut butter that were
green said property of the United States Government, Department of
Agriculture on there, all that kind of stuff everything, and
that was just normal.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
We just thought of that as normal.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
So I'm doing this project with this other kid named
Randy Rupp, and I'm thirteen years old.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
I was a hard charger.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
I'd gone through my badges, you know, really really quickly,
so I'm not very mature. And so Randy and I
decided that we were going to collect enough food for
one family for one year.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
So we went to the Saint Mary's.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
County Maryland Welfare Department, and we got the name of
a family and then we were going to take them
the food on Christmas Eve. And so we started this
project in August and then we collected a twenty four
foot U haul truck filled with food. There were several
children in the family. We knew their age is not
their names. I think there were four kids, two adults.
(05:53):
And so Christmas Eve, nineteen sixty eight, that's the year,
So in nineteen sixty eight. I turned thirteen in October
nineteen sixty eight, so in the middle of this project.
So you may not know that there was a simultaneous
event that day. And so one of the simultaneous events
that day was that was the day of the first
broadcast of the first humans that had flown over to
the Moon. They didn't land, but they were orbiting, orbiting
(06:16):
the Moon, sending back live messages. I knew that this
was going on, and I knew that that night, Christmas
Eve night, we were going to be able to see
all this stuff. And so Randy and my dad and
I and a bunch of other people, we have this address,
this map to go find this family. So we're driving
and I don't know if you've ever been to southern Maryland.
But it's not like DC, Maryland, and it's not like Baltimore, Maryland.
(06:39):
It's a very very old fashioned kind of place. So
we eventually weave our way down a paved road to
a dirt road, to a two lane track road to
a tar paper shack in the woods south of Lexington
Park towards Saint Mary's City, towards Point Lookout was the
name of this place where the Patuxent and the Potomac
River comes together going into the Chesapeake Bay. And here's
(07:01):
this family living in a tar paper shack that we
then later saw had a dirt floor, no running water,
and a pot belly stove.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
And I remember being shocked that.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
One of the kids in the family was a kid
that I knew of.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
He was one of my classmates. And I remember just
being shocked that there.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Was George, you know, from school, and we didn't have
that much, but these guys had like nothing, and I
remember how happy they were. We gave him all this
food and it was really fantastic, and I felt good
about that. And then I go home and there was
like this lightning bolt. So for some reason, in my
little thirteen year old brain. I saw this tar paper shack,
and this is no joke. I saw this tar paper shack.
(07:43):
And then I watched Apollo eight orbiting the moon, sending
back live messages, and I said, I think I asked
my dad or my stepmother. I said, how is this?
How did these two things go on at the same time.
I didn't know anybody lived like that. I mean, you know,
we'd been around, we'd lived in every kind of neighborhood.
We never never had much property or anything. But we
(08:04):
had water, you know, we had heat.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
We didn't have a dirt floor.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
And from that moment, that very moment, December twenty fourth,
nineteen sixty eight, I started thinking a lot about this
what later became manifested in me, this this radical architect
I became almost obsessed with all notions of architecture and design.
(08:31):
I don't mean physical design, I mean institutional design. So
the United States is a design. It's a design that
varies from all previous designs, and it has strengths and
weaknesses and flaws. But net is an unbelievably powerful design.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
I forgot who it was.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
It might have been Buckminster Fuller or somebody who said
that even Einstein had some quotes like this, which were,
if you don't change the design, you're not going to
change anything. The machine will only do what the machine
is designed to do. So right now, we have terrible
outcomes coming from K twelve in general, on a national level,
particularly for students in the lower half of family incomes,
(09:07):
we have terrible. More than half the kids that have
ever gone to college never graduated. Half the kids more
than half that have taken pelgrams have no degree. And
so clearly we have unbelievable design flaws, but people don't
see them because at the pinnacle of the design are
these institutions which are unbelievably high performing because they use
(09:28):
selectivity as their measure of success. You know, they take
only the finest students from high school and they call
that a day. And so that turns out not to
be sufficient to allow us to continue to evolve socially
or culturally or economically.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
And you're listening to Michael Crowe tell his life story.
When we come back, more of this educator's story, more
of this disruptor's story, more of this innovator's story. Here
on our American stories, and we continue with our American
(10:11):
stories and with Arizona State University President Michael Crowe. Before
he gets to Arizona State University, Michael takes us back
to his time as a blue collar leader in an
Ivy League school at Columbia University. Let's return to Michael.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Ultimately, I designed this thing called the Earth Institute at
Columbia University, and then ultimately I needed somebody to run
it after I had started, and so we hired this
guy named Peter Eisenberger. And so Peter later was not
going to be the director any longer. And one of
the things that he was not very happy about was
somehow me being involved in him moving out of that job,
(10:51):
and did comment that he wasn't quite sure where us
blue collar PhD guys really came from him, and I said, well,
you know, Peter, they come from libraries, public libraries that
were allowed to go in and read. And so, so
what I learned at Columbia, I mean, was that there
(11:12):
was this unbelievable intellectual.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
Powerhouse of an institution.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Which was only going to be available to a few people,
and that there was some bias even built into it.
And I don't mean religious bias, but class bias. And
that's probably true in almost every institution. And so so
you get into UVA. So UVA calls itself a public ivy. Well,
that to me is that's that's like an oxymorn. You know,
(11:43):
why would you be a public ivy at public university
is supposed to be an institution, and I'm not I'm
not going to you know, Lambast University of Virginia, which
is a fine university with fine faculty and fine students
and so forth. But the notion that somehow it's better
because it only lets in a plus students from Saint
Ignatius in Chicago, or I think they're down now to
(12:04):
so many kids from Fairfax and so many kids from
Alexandria and so forth and so on. In the minds
of so many people, that's perceived to be well, that's excellence,
when in fact it's my view that then that leads
to this perversion in the rankings. And so the rankings
are almost all about inputs, and so they're about how
(12:25):
much money do.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
You have per student?
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Well, if we'd like to control the cost of a degree,
then you may want to have less money and do
more with less money and be more efficient and more
effective and produce more efficacious outcomes. It's how many students
did you admit versus how many applied? What's your percentage
of applicants admitted? And then it's also what's your graduation rate? Well,
(12:48):
graduation rate is heavily dependent on who you admit. So
if you admit only A plus students from high school,
guess what they all graduate. If you admit B students
and large numbers of B students from high school low
income families, that's a harder pathway. And so what you
have now in the ranking system is the ranking system
is biased to selectivity and bias to extra resources, and
(13:13):
so that's not a good outcome. I just felt that
we needed to help create a new kind of a design,
what I ultimately called the new American university model. We
should have a university that is, at the same time
in one egalitarian in its access, in the truly democratic way,
admitting every student that's qualified, and then unbelievably excellent, not
(13:37):
suggesting that you could have universities that were one or
the other, only excellent or only egalitarian, which was is
basically the system as it exists today. So we started
with a vision that then has later become our charter.
The charter has three core elements. One element is that
will measure our success based on who we include versus
who we exclude and how they succeed. The second is
(13:59):
that we'll do research benefits the public, not just benefits
of the academy. And third is that will take responsibility
for the outcomes of our community. So a lot of
fact they are concerned about underperformance in K twelve Elements
of Justice, and I say, well, that's what we're here for.
We're here to take responsibility for these outcomes. So for us,
it's been all about a full recognition that a person
(14:24):
qualified to do university.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Level work, which is who we admit. We have the.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Admission standards of the University of California from the summer
of nineteen fifty. So if you admit those students and
you create an environment for them to be successful, and
you have tools and assets and resources and a dedicated faculty,
you don't want a faculty that says, well, who's this
riff raft you're sending me B students from high school.
I'm not going to waste my life teaching B students
(14:49):
from high school. I'm here to teach students that are
just like me. I was always an a student, so
I only want to teach a students and it's just
so we don't have that faculty. So what we found
is that if you're dedicated to to innovation, if you're
dedicated to the student, if you create a research and
scholarly environment, if you have tremendous resources, tremendous technologies, tremendous assets,
(15:09):
tremendous advising, if you have all those things, it's unbelievable
what you can do. So we have seventy five thousand
students on campus with US and we will probably grow
that to around one hundred thousand. We have an entire
campus that we believe can be very applied and very practical,
what we call the polytechnic campus. So we're going to
(15:29):
be growing on campus full immersion enrollment, but what we
say technology enhanced, so we're using technology everywhere. Then online,
which is our second realm of education. Online for US
this year is eighty three thousand discrete students over the
year timeframe, and it's accelerating rapidly. We think that there's
(15:50):
lots of momentum for growth in that because it turns
out that once you have a high quality university faculty
led real degree that we don't say issue online degree.
We say ASU History degree, ASU Philosophy degree. You're with
our faculty taking our courses. So we see that growing robustly.
(16:10):
We now have a third learning realm that we call
ASU Sync. You know, we've taken all of our classrooms.
We'd zoom eyed them all. We spent millions of dollars
allowing anyone to zoom in and zoom out of everything.
We think there's whole degrees that could be taught that
way for people that can't be physically here with us.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
But they don't want to do online.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
They want to talk to the student's live, they want
to talk to the faculty live. They want to be
in the lab, they want to work on different kinds
of things. So that's a new realm for us. We
have ISSU Prep Digital with forty thousand high school students
in it now, which is a massive increase over even
over last semester. So then now you have this much
broader set of perspectives. You've created a much more socially
(16:50):
complex and therefore robusts or this boolea base of a university,
and then that then begins to work to everybody's advantage
because they're learning from the other students there make things
happen in ways that are unique to a very diverse
student body, and it turns out that in the right setting,
you can make all that work and it becomes tremendous
in terms of all outcomes. So we have increased the
(17:13):
number of graduates by about.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
A factor of four.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
We've increased our research activity by a factor of five.
So we now do more non medical research than Stanford
or USC, more total research than Carnegie Mellon or Caltech.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Or any of those schools.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Yes, we have a big faculty, so we've greatly expanded research,
greatly expanded graduation. We've built the largest engineering school in
the country with twenty five thousand engineering students, up from
six thousand just a few years ago. We have a
socioeconomically diverse student body matching the socio economic diversity of
the state and the country. You know, we have half
of our student body coming in to the university from
(17:48):
Arizona are not white. We have you know, forty percent
pell give or take, which is a very large percentage,
large numbers of first generation students. And we're now we're
almost doing ninety percent retention rate across all students, freshman
retention rate, first year retention.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Rate, that's everybody.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
We've been able to drive up all graduation rates across
all groups. We've been able to drive up everything associated
with success and outcomes. We've got tremendous Fulbright Awards, tremendous
Martial Awards, tremendous Rhodes Scholarships, Truman scholarships. So we are
basically as competitive as any other school in the country
(18:28):
in all the things that universities do, with as diverse
and as broadly scoped and as representative of student body
as has ever been constructed.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
And you're listening to Michael Crowe, the president of Arizona
State University, working on his plan to make a college
more egalitarian and also hold on to excellence. And these
were either or propositions at college as before that was
the paradigm. But picking kids who aren't a students and
teaching them up and bringing up students who well, it's
(19:02):
harder for them to get through based on socioeconomics, based
on class status. Michael's working on all these things simultaneously.
And when we come back more of this remarkable story
an education innovator. In the end, what a thing they're
building at Arizona State University, a new way of thinking
about college. Michael Crowe's story continues. Arizona State University story
(19:25):
continues here on our American story, and we continue with
our American stories and with the final portion of Michael
Crowe's remarkable story. The Arizona State president has led the
(19:46):
university in almost tripling enrollment. Let's return to Michael on
how Arizona State University used to be thought of.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
There's all kinds of jokes, including in The Simpsons and
all kinds of television shows about ASU, and so at
one point we were, you know, a very rapidly evolving,
fast moving palm tree laden swimming pool empowered also known
as being the world's largest and best party school.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
A parent is the one person who is supposed to
make their kid think they can do anything. Says they're
beautiful even when they're ugly things, they're smart, even when
they go to Arizona State. But the rest of the
world tear your kid down. Your job is to support
him no matter what what.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
It's a miracle. The Lord is drowned, the wicked and spared,
the righteous isn't that Homer Simpson looks.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Like Heaven's easier to get into than Arizona State. And
so now we are a palm tree laden, swimming pool, empowered,
great university that's no longer viewed as a party school
because we're serious and we have serious students. And that
doesn't mean we don't have parties, but we have serious
students and serious programs and serious ambitions for our students.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
So we've done away with the silly notion.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
I don't even know if it was deserved at the
time of quote unquote party school. We're an empowering school,
whatever you want to call it. I could come up
with all kinds of catchy little phrases. We're not that anymore.
And so I remember when I first got here, there
was a lot of rhetoric about party schools, and I
think Playboy magazine had called us, you know, the best
party school. And so I didn't know the publisher of
(21:19):
the Arizona Republic at the time, but I got a
meeting with her and I said, are you kidding me?
Speaker 3 (21:23):
I don't know you. She later became my friend. I said,
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
You, but you just ran an article that we were
the number one party school on the front page of
your paper. One, you don't even know what that means. Two,
it's basically by vote. Therefore, bigger schools do better than
smaller schools. And so it's a self assessment. There's no
method to it, there's no rigor to the analysis. And
I worked really hard to convince her to, you know,
(21:49):
at least take the time to learn a little bit
about what we had done, what we were doing, and
what we were going to do, and eventually we worked
our way out of that classification. The thing that I
really like about the innovation ranking that we've been ranked
the most innovative in the country.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
For six years in a row, for whatever that's worth.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
But I was at the Stanford football game a couple
of years ago and there were asu kids at the
Stanford football game wearing white T shirts with red letters
that said number two in innovation Stanford, and so I
was just really impressed by their creativity.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
We have to figure out this cost.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
You know, you can't make colleges and universities cost more
than anyone can hope to pay except the most rich families.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
I mean, that's just not going to work.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
I was in a conference years ago with the former
president of Harvard, the former president of Princeton at the time,
the sitting president of Tulane, and we got into this
conversation about the cost of education, and Derek Bach, the
former president of Harvard, told me that people that talk
about cost containment in higher education don't really understand the
(22:58):
importance of higher education.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
I'm like, I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
And so we've worked on, you know, making our institution accessible.
You know, we're producing four times the graduates, doing five
times the research, have twenty times the learners.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Our faculty is about the same size.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
So we've also greatly changed the economic efficiency and effectiveness
of the institution. We kept our out of state and
international student tuition at sort of the average level, and
we basically say, for in state students, will make it
work for you. And we have massive financial aid to
help people to be able to attend the institution. So
our net tuition after grants no loans for in state
(23:41):
students is under four thousand dollars for a year and
we think that is, you know, to use a phrase
common here in Arizona, as close to free as possible.
And so we've worked really hard at that to make
that work. And then if you come from a family
with no income and you have no way to pay
to go to college, well we're.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
Going to find a way for you to go to college.
So forty percent of our.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Undergraduates graduate with no debt. Our average debt is less
than the cost of a Honda Civic. Then Honda Civic
is not an investment the way that a degree from
ASU is an investment. We get a lot of.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
I don't know what to call them other than, you know.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Skeptics or naysayers, and they say, well, you can't be
any good if you're big, Like, okay, how do.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
You know that?
Speaker 2 (24:23):
So our graduates in the marketplace have no market outcome
differentiation from UCLA, Texas, University of Washington, and USC any
of the big research versus none. There no, there's no
there's no income difference, there's no lifespan difference. You know,
we participated in the big survey that was done of
h the Gallup produced survey of students.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
We participated in.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
That, so we did, you know, thousands and thousands and
thousands of our graduates and compared it against their graduates,
and we know life outcomes and so forth, and so on.
We also know the the financial outcomes of our students.
So we've done elaborate ROI return on investment studies of
our graduates who have unbelievable returns on the investment twelve
percent average return on investment.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
Year per year, year over year over year.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
We've also done learning outcome assessments. We also have the
income tax returns, not by name, but we have all
the income tax returns of every graduate that's in Arizona,
and we also have them ready in the US.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
And what we know then is life outcomes.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
So we have a lot of information in income tax
return When does somebody die? What's their philanthropy? How are
people more philanthropic less philanthropic? Do they have higher wages
lower wages? And so what we have found is that
not only are our graduates doing extremely well in the market,
which is proof a substantial proof of our concept, but
(25:41):
also in rankings by companies hiring our graduates, we do
unbelievably well.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
In fact, it's where we are like off the charts.
People love our graduates.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
They love the team experience and the transisciplinary experience, and
the grit and the drive and the pluck and the
ambition that a lot of our graduates come with. So
we're seeing great outcomes. So a lot of the kids,
by the way, that aren't employed within just a few
months of graduation, well they're off to graduate school. So
we're also a huge producer of graduate school outcomes, you know,
(26:12):
medical school, law school, science school, other kinds of things,
and so on the product side of the institution. We're
exceedingly proud to be a part of helping, you know,
these lives to be empowered. So one day, I'm I'm
with a group of students and we're over at the
union student union. We're having lunch, and we're talking about
these students, and I'm talking to this one young woman
(26:33):
and she says, I got a four point zero average.
I'm double majoring in nursing and biochemistry. That's great, and
she says, and I've got a full scholarship and so
forth and so on, but it's really hard for me.
I also work forty hours a week, Like, well, why
do you work forty hours a week? He says, Well,
I'm the main breadwinner for my mother's family, my god
(26:57):
and so and so.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
I have been floored.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Over and over and over and over by by all
these kids that are at this school and where they
come from and where they're going. And it's not just
about kids that come from families of meager means. It's
just that it's just that we have become so wrecked
by thinking that.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
All the smart.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Kids are at these other schools and everybody else they're
just you know, lesser humans. It may be human nature
to think that way, but it's one of the most
destructive things imaginable. There's nothing lesser about anything here. There's
nothing lesser about the students that are here. I was
a facult member tenured factive member at Columbia University. There's
(27:42):
nothing lesser about the faculty here. There's nothing lesser at all,
except that we're a public university serving this broad demographic
of students, and that in our present system, in the
eyes of some, makes us lesser. I think my background
makes me more determined to not be defeated. I think
that's the main thing that comes out of my background.
(28:02):
I think the main drive for me, relative to our
focus on diversity and our focus on completion, is that
our society is not fulfilling its potential, our democracy is
not rising.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
To its potential. We have all these problems, and we
think that what we see is the problem. It's not
the problem.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
The problem is we got millions of high school dropouts
who are unprepared for the economy in which we're living.
The problem is that we've got all these people that
went to college and got disappointed and now are angry.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
The problem is that we've got lots and lots of
really upset and.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Angry people who want to be a part of the
new economy as it's evolving and feel that they're being
left behind.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
The problem is we've got all.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
These people who feel that they're being disadvantaged or that
others are getting advantage over them.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
The problem that.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
We have is we've got educated people who are snobs,
who are looking down their noses at other people. And
my background won't allow me to look down my nose
at somebody else, because I know, I know what it's
like to be a normal, regular human being in a
regular job, doing regular things, and I hate academic elitism.
(29:10):
And so that's one thing my background I think empowers
me with. I think my background allows me to understand
what it's like to feel that you just.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
Want a little bit of help, just a little bit
of help.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Just let me have access to that class at a
time when I can take it.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
You know, my.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Stepmother had like two jobs, my father had three jobs.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
We all worked.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Every kid in the family worked multiple jobs all the time,
paid for everything. I didn't get one penny to go
to college from anyone, no one, not one cent. And
so being able to be flexible and adaptable and engageable,
I mean, I think that's what my background helps me
to see.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
And great job to Alex and Gregg for bringing us
that piece the story of Michael Crowe. His family's story
deeply embedded in his and Arizona State University's story. Here
on our American Stories
And we continue with our American stories and with someone
who's been named one of the world's fifty greatest leaders.
Michael Crowe is the president of Arizona State University and
has one of the most fascinating and unusual backgrounds for
an academic, although he thinks that he shouldn't be such
a rare bird. Here's Michael with his story.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
You know, I had teenage parents who had run away
to get married and ended up being a product of
that early love, I guess, And so my dad was
in the Navy. My mother just graduated from high school.
My dad was nineteen, my mother was eighteen. I lived
in a public housing apartment building. So we were what
was called Section eight families, you know, So we lived
(00:53):
on public assistance, public housing because even though my dad
was in the Navy, you know, they didn't pay people
in the Navy very much. And so was able as
a kid to grow up in a loving, caring family.
But we moved constantly, lots of stresses and strains, constant
moving twenty one times before I graduated from high school.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
When I was seventeen.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
We lived in Imperial Beach, California, and my dad was
at the time in Asia on the USS constellation. And
then she starts getting sick and I come home from
school in the third.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Grade and she has passed out.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
She's actually bled out on the floor from her cancer
that had cut some artery or something. She wasn't dead,
but she had stage four cancer that you come to
learn later. And so then eventually my dad comes back
from Japan. You know, my mother's in the hospital. She's unconscious,
she can't really talk to anybody. There's just ladies in
the neighborhood, these Mexican American families that just took us
in and a thing called Community.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Chest, which is what the United Way became.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
They took care of us, and eventually they flew my
mother's sister out from Chicago, and then she sort of
organized everything, moved my mother to Chicago, where she ultimately
died in the Rush Presbyterian Hospital from her cancer in
an experimental treatment that killed her. She would have died anyway,
but it killed her. Left behind four children. We got
all split up in that particular setting, got sent out
(02:13):
to her sisters lived in different places. And so then
a few months after that, my dad and I are
on a bench right on Lake Michigan, and he's crying
and upset and doesn't know what to do, doesn't know
how to take care of us. We're all split up.
I'm living in Chicago, two siblings that are living in
(02:33):
Long Beach. Another sibling is living in Iowa. We're moving around.
I'm living in a Ukrainian Russian neighborhood in the city
of Chicago, going to Chicago Public schools, and my dad
is sitting here and he doesn't know what to do.
I remember vividly saying to myself, if you don't know
(02:54):
what to do, I sure don't know what to do,
but apparently I'm going to have to figure out what
to do. My dad he's passed, you know, eighteen years ago.
But but I had never experienced anything like that.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
I didn't know what that meant, and so I didn't
have any realization.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
I think at that age, I didn't have a complete
realization that I was this independent creature.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
And so it was like a switch in my brain
that went off.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Relative to now trying to find some way to go ahead,
trying to find some way to move my my life ahead.
There was even some chance that we weren't even going
to be able to stay with my aunt and that
he was going to get shipped off to see. So
he was he was uncertain about where we were going.
And so he did say, you're just gonna have to
figure this out. He used to call me Bud. That
was my name, Bud.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
He says, Bud, You're just going to figure this out.
You're going to figure this out for yourself. There's just you.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Basically it was a childhood, you know, from my perspective,
wherein I, you know, experienced the country at lots of
different levels in basically working class neighborhoods.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
You know.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
So when we lived in San Diego more than once
several times, working class neighbor that were largely Mexican American,
North Chicago, Illinois, which was largely African American, so very
seldom were we the majority in terms of white families.
And so I experienced lots of different things, lots of diversity,
lots of arguments, lots of fighting, lots of bias every
(04:18):
direction that you could possibly imagine. Oh, here's the new kid,
So what are we gonna do with him? Oh, let's
just beat him into the ground. As we moved around,
I was in this old fashioned organization. I don't know
you know, I don't think they are what they were
in the past. But I was in a thing called
the Boy Scouts, and we were living in Lexington Park, Maryland,
(04:39):
which is in Saint Mary's County, Maryland, a beautiful place.
We learned how to crab for blue crabs, We learned,
you know, all the Chesapeake Bay stuff. And I was
working on my Eagle Scout project, which turned out to
be so we were working class family, eligible for public assistants,
eligible for not food stamps, but eligible for actual food
(05:00):
would give you food. So we got cheese, we got
powdered milk, we got cans of peanut butter that were
green said property of the United States Government, Department of
Agriculture on there, all that kind of stuff everything, and
that was just normal.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
We just thought of that as normal.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
So I'm doing this project with this other kid named
Randy Rupp, and I'm thirteen years old.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
I was a hard charger.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
I'd gone through my badges, you know, really really quickly,
so I'm not very mature. And so Randy and I
decided that we were going to collect enough food for
one family for one year.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
So we went to the Saint Mary's.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
County Maryland Welfare Department, and we got the name of
a family and then we were going to take them
the food on Christmas Eve. And so we started this
project in August and then we collected a twenty four
foot U haul truck filled with food. There were several
children in the family. We knew their age is not
their names. I think there were four kids, two adults.
(05:53):
And so Christmas Eve, nineteen sixty eight, that's the year,
So in nineteen sixty eight. I turned thirteen in October
nineteen sixty eight, so in the middle of this project.
So you may not know that there was a simultaneous
event that day. And so one of the simultaneous events
that day was that was the day of the first
broadcast of the first humans that had flown over to
the Moon. They didn't land, but they were orbiting, orbiting
(06:16):
the Moon, sending back live messages. I knew that this
was going on, and I knew that that night, Christmas
Eve night, we were going to be able to see
all this stuff. And so Randy and my dad and
I and a bunch of other people, we have this address,
this map to go find this family. So we're driving
and I don't know if you've ever been to southern Maryland.
But it's not like DC, Maryland, and it's not like Baltimore, Maryland.
(06:39):
It's a very very old fashioned kind of place. So
we eventually weave our way down a paved road to
a dirt road, to a two lane track road to
a tar paper shack in the woods south of Lexington
Park towards Saint Mary's City, towards Point Lookout was the
name of this place where the Patuxent and the Potomac
River comes together going into the Chesapeake Bay. And here's
(07:01):
this family living in a tar paper shack that we
then later saw had a dirt floor, no running water,
and a pot belly stove.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
And I remember being shocked that.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
One of the kids in the family was a kid
that I knew of.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
He was one of my classmates. And I remember just
being shocked that there.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Was George, you know, from school, and we didn't have
that much, but these guys had like nothing, and I
remember how happy they were. We gave him all this
food and it was really fantastic, and I felt good
about that. And then I go home and there was
like this lightning bolt. So for some reason, in my
little thirteen year old brain. I saw this tar paper shack,
and this is no joke. I saw this tar paper shack.
(07:43):
And then I watched Apollo eight orbiting the moon, sending
back live messages, and I said, I think I asked
my dad or my stepmother. I said, how is this?
How did these two things go on at the same time.
I didn't know anybody lived like that. I mean, you know,
we'd been around, we'd lived in every kind of neighborhood.
We never never had much property or anything. But we
(08:04):
had water, you know, we had heat.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
We didn't have a dirt floor.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
And from that moment, that very moment, December twenty fourth,
nineteen sixty eight, I started thinking a lot about this
what later became manifested in me, this this radical architect
I became almost obsessed with all notions of architecture and design.
(08:31):
I don't mean physical design, I mean institutional design. So
the United States is a design. It's a design that
varies from all previous designs, and it has strengths and
weaknesses and flaws. But net is an unbelievably powerful design.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
I forgot who it was.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
It might have been Buckminster Fuller or somebody who said
that even Einstein had some quotes like this, which were,
if you don't change the design, you're not going to
change anything. The machine will only do what the machine
is designed to do. So right now, we have terrible
outcomes coming from K twelve in general, on a national level,
particularly for students in the lower half of family incomes,
(09:07):
we have terrible. More than half the kids that have
ever gone to college never graduated. Half the kids more
than half that have taken pelgrams have no degree. And
so clearly we have unbelievable design flaws, but people don't
see them because at the pinnacle of the design are
these institutions which are unbelievably high performing because they use
(09:28):
selectivity as their measure of success. You know, they take
only the finest students from high school and they call
that a day. And so that turns out not to
be sufficient to allow us to continue to evolve socially
or culturally or economically.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
And you're listening to Michael Crowe tell his life story.
When we come back, more of this educator's story, more
of this disruptor's story, more of this innovator's story. Here
on our American stories, and we continue with our American
(10:11):
stories and with Arizona State University President Michael Crowe. Before
he gets to Arizona State University, Michael takes us back
to his time as a blue collar leader in an
Ivy League school at Columbia University. Let's return to Michael.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Ultimately, I designed this thing called the Earth Institute at
Columbia University, and then ultimately I needed somebody to run
it after I had started, and so we hired this
guy named Peter Eisenberger. And so Peter later was not
going to be the director any longer. And one of
the things that he was not very happy about was
somehow me being involved in him moving out of that job,
(10:51):
and did comment that he wasn't quite sure where us
blue collar PhD guys really came from him, and I said, well,
you know, Peter, they come from libraries, public libraries that
were allowed to go in and read. And so, so
what I learned at Columbia, I mean, was that there
(11:12):
was this unbelievable intellectual.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
Powerhouse of an institution.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Which was only going to be available to a few people,
and that there was some bias even built into it.
And I don't mean religious bias, but class bias. And
that's probably true in almost every institution. And so so
you get into UVA. So UVA calls itself a public ivy. Well,
that to me is that's that's like an oxymorn. You know,
(11:43):
why would you be a public ivy at public university
is supposed to be an institution, and I'm not I'm
not going to you know, Lambast University of Virginia, which
is a fine university with fine faculty and fine students
and so forth. But the notion that somehow it's better
because it only lets in a plus students from Saint
Ignatius in Chicago, or I think they're down now to
(12:04):
so many kids from Fairfax and so many kids from
Alexandria and so forth and so on. In the minds
of so many people, that's perceived to be well, that's excellence,
when in fact it's my view that then that leads
to this perversion in the rankings. And so the rankings
are almost all about inputs, and so they're about how
(12:25):
much money do.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
You have per student?
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Well, if we'd like to control the cost of a degree,
then you may want to have less money and do
more with less money and be more efficient and more
effective and produce more efficacious outcomes. It's how many students
did you admit versus how many applied? What's your percentage
of applicants admitted? And then it's also what's your graduation rate? Well,
(12:48):
graduation rate is heavily dependent on who you admit. So
if you admit only A plus students from high school,
guess what they all graduate. If you admit B students
and large numbers of B students from high school low
income families, that's a harder pathway. And so what you
have now in the ranking system is the ranking system
is biased to selectivity and bias to extra resources, and
(13:13):
so that's not a good outcome. I just felt that
we needed to help create a new kind of a design,
what I ultimately called the new American university model. We
should have a university that is, at the same time
in one egalitarian in its access, in the truly democratic way,
admitting every student that's qualified, and then unbelievably excellent, not
(13:37):
suggesting that you could have universities that were one or
the other, only excellent or only egalitarian, which was is
basically the system as it exists today. So we started
with a vision that then has later become our charter.
The charter has three core elements. One element is that
will measure our success based on who we include versus
who we exclude and how they succeed. The second is
(13:59):
that we'll do research benefits the public, not just benefits
of the academy. And third is that will take responsibility
for the outcomes of our community. So a lot of
fact they are concerned about underperformance in K twelve Elements
of Justice, and I say, well, that's what we're here for.
We're here to take responsibility for these outcomes. So for us,
it's been all about a full recognition that a person
(14:24):
qualified to do university.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Level work, which is who we admit. We have the.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Admission standards of the University of California from the summer
of nineteen fifty. So if you admit those students and
you create an environment for them to be successful, and
you have tools and assets and resources and a dedicated faculty,
you don't want a faculty that says, well, who's this
riff raft you're sending me B students from high school.
I'm not going to waste my life teaching B students
(14:49):
from high school. I'm here to teach students that are
just like me. I was always an a student, so
I only want to teach a students and it's just
so we don't have that faculty. So what we found
is that if you're dedicated to to innovation, if you're
dedicated to the student, if you create a research and
scholarly environment, if you have tremendous resources, tremendous technologies, tremendous assets,
(15:09):
tremendous advising, if you have all those things, it's unbelievable
what you can do. So we have seventy five thousand
students on campus with US and we will probably grow
that to around one hundred thousand. We have an entire
campus that we believe can be very applied and very practical,
what we call the polytechnic campus. So we're going to
(15:29):
be growing on campus full immersion enrollment, but what we
say technology enhanced, so we're using technology everywhere. Then online,
which is our second realm of education. Online for US
this year is eighty three thousand discrete students over the
year timeframe, and it's accelerating rapidly. We think that there's
(15:50):
lots of momentum for growth in that because it turns
out that once you have a high quality university faculty
led real degree that we don't say issue online degree.
We say ASU History degree, ASU Philosophy degree. You're with
our faculty taking our courses. So we see that growing robustly.
(16:10):
We now have a third learning realm that we call
ASU Sync. You know, we've taken all of our classrooms.
We'd zoom eyed them all. We spent millions of dollars
allowing anyone to zoom in and zoom out of everything.
We think there's whole degrees that could be taught that
way for people that can't be physically here with us.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
But they don't want to do online.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
They want to talk to the student's live, they want
to talk to the faculty live. They want to be
in the lab, they want to work on different kinds
of things. So that's a new realm for us. We
have ISSU Prep Digital with forty thousand high school students
in it now, which is a massive increase over even
over last semester. So then now you have this much
broader set of perspectives. You've created a much more socially
(16:50):
complex and therefore robusts or this boolea base of a university,
and then that then begins to work to everybody's advantage
because they're learning from the other students there make things
happen in ways that are unique to a very diverse
student body, and it turns out that in the right setting,
you can make all that work and it becomes tremendous
in terms of all outcomes. So we have increased the
(17:13):
number of graduates by about.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
A factor of four.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
We've increased our research activity by a factor of five.
So we now do more non medical research than Stanford
or USC, more total research than Carnegie Mellon or Caltech.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Or any of those schools.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Yes, we have a big faculty, so we've greatly expanded research,
greatly expanded graduation. We've built the largest engineering school in
the country with twenty five thousand engineering students, up from
six thousand just a few years ago. We have a
socioeconomically diverse student body matching the socio economic diversity of
the state and the country. You know, we have half
of our student body coming in to the university from
(17:48):
Arizona are not white. We have you know, forty percent
pell give or take, which is a very large percentage,
large numbers of first generation students. And we're now we're
almost doing ninety percent retention rate across all students, freshman
retention rate, first year retention.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Rate, that's everybody.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
We've been able to drive up all graduation rates across
all groups. We've been able to drive up everything associated
with success and outcomes. We've got tremendous Fulbright Awards, tremendous
Martial Awards, tremendous Rhodes Scholarships, Truman scholarships. So we are
basically as competitive as any other school in the country
(18:28):
in all the things that universities do, with as diverse
and as broadly scoped and as representative of student body
as has ever been constructed.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
And you're listening to Michael Crowe, the president of Arizona
State University, working on his plan to make a college
more egalitarian and also hold on to excellence. And these
were either or propositions at college as before that was
the paradigm. But picking kids who aren't a students and
teaching them up and bringing up students who well, it's
(19:02):
harder for them to get through based on socioeconomics, based
on class status. Michael's working on all these things simultaneously.
And when we come back more of this remarkable story
an education innovator. In the end, what a thing they're
building at Arizona State University, a new way of thinking
about college. Michael Crowe's story continues. Arizona State University story
(19:25):
continues here on our American story, and we continue with
our American stories and with the final portion of Michael
Crowe's remarkable story. The Arizona State president has led the
(19:46):
university in almost tripling enrollment. Let's return to Michael on
how Arizona State University used to be thought of.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
There's all kinds of jokes, including in The Simpsons and
all kinds of television shows about ASU, and so at
one point we were, you know, a very rapidly evolving,
fast moving palm tree laden swimming pool empowered also known
as being the world's largest and best party school.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
A parent is the one person who is supposed to
make their kid think they can do anything. Says they're
beautiful even when they're ugly things, they're smart, even when
they go to Arizona State. But the rest of the
world tear your kid down. Your job is to support
him no matter what what.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
It's a miracle. The Lord is drowned, the wicked and spared,
the righteous isn't that Homer Simpson looks.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Like Heaven's easier to get into than Arizona State. And
so now we are a palm tree laden, swimming pool, empowered,
great university that's no longer viewed as a party school
because we're serious and we have serious students. And that
doesn't mean we don't have parties, but we have serious
students and serious programs and serious ambitions for our students.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
So we've done away with the silly notion.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
I don't even know if it was deserved at the
time of quote unquote party school. We're an empowering school,
whatever you want to call it. I could come up
with all kinds of catchy little phrases. We're not that anymore.
And so I remember when I first got here, there
was a lot of rhetoric about party schools, and I
think Playboy magazine had called us, you know, the best
party school. And so I didn't know the publisher of
(21:19):
the Arizona Republic at the time, but I got a
meeting with her and I said, are you kidding me?
Speaker 3 (21:23):
I don't know you. She later became my friend. I said,
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
You, but you just ran an article that we were
the number one party school on the front page of
your paper. One, you don't even know what that means. Two,
it's basically by vote. Therefore, bigger schools do better than
smaller schools. And so it's a self assessment. There's no
method to it, there's no rigor to the analysis. And
I worked really hard to convince her to, you know,
(21:49):
at least take the time to learn a little bit
about what we had done, what we were doing, and
what we were going to do, and eventually we worked
our way out of that classification. The thing that I
really like about the innovation ranking that we've been ranked
the most innovative in the country.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
For six years in a row, for whatever that's worth.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
But I was at the Stanford football game a couple
of years ago and there were asu kids at the
Stanford football game wearing white T shirts with red letters
that said number two in innovation Stanford, and so I
was just really impressed by their creativity.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
We have to figure out this cost.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
You know, you can't make colleges and universities cost more
than anyone can hope to pay except the most rich families.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
I mean, that's just not going to work.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
I was in a conference years ago with the former
president of Harvard, the former president of Princeton at the time,
the sitting president of Tulane, and we got into this
conversation about the cost of education, and Derek Bach, the
former president of Harvard, told me that people that talk
about cost containment in higher education don't really understand the
(22:58):
importance of higher education.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
I'm like, I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
And so we've worked on, you know, making our institution accessible.
You know, we're producing four times the graduates, doing five
times the research, have twenty times the learners.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Our faculty is about the same size.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
So we've also greatly changed the economic efficiency and effectiveness
of the institution. We kept our out of state and
international student tuition at sort of the average level, and
we basically say, for in state students, will make it
work for you. And we have massive financial aid to
help people to be able to attend the institution. So
our net tuition after grants no loans for in state
(23:41):
students is under four thousand dollars for a year and
we think that is, you know, to use a phrase
common here in Arizona, as close to free as possible.
And so we've worked really hard at that to make
that work. And then if you come from a family
with no income and you have no way to pay
to go to college, well we're.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
Going to find a way for you to go to college.
So forty percent of our.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Undergraduates graduate with no debt. Our average debt is less
than the cost of a Honda Civic. Then Honda Civic
is not an investment the way that a degree from
ASU is an investment. We get a lot of.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
I don't know what to call them other than, you know.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Skeptics or naysayers, and they say, well, you can't be
any good if you're big, Like, okay, how do.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
You know that?
Speaker 2 (24:23):
So our graduates in the marketplace have no market outcome
differentiation from UCLA, Texas, University of Washington, and USC any
of the big research versus none. There no, there's no
there's no income difference, there's no lifespan difference. You know,
we participated in the big survey that was done of
h the Gallup produced survey of students.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
We participated in.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
That, so we did, you know, thousands and thousands and
thousands of our graduates and compared it against their graduates,
and we know life outcomes and so forth, and so on.
We also know the the financial outcomes of our students.
So we've done elaborate ROI return on investment studies of
our graduates who have unbelievable returns on the investment twelve
percent average return on investment.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
Year per year, year over year over year.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
We've also done learning outcome assessments. We also have the
income tax returns, not by name, but we have all
the income tax returns of every graduate that's in Arizona,
and we also have them ready in the US.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
And what we know then is life outcomes.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
So we have a lot of information in income tax
return When does somebody die? What's their philanthropy? How are
people more philanthropic less philanthropic? Do they have higher wages
lower wages? And so what we have found is that
not only are our graduates doing extremely well in the market,
which is proof a substantial proof of our concept, but
(25:41):
also in rankings by companies hiring our graduates, we do
unbelievably well.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
In fact, it's where we are like off the charts.
People love our graduates.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
They love the team experience and the transisciplinary experience, and
the grit and the drive and the pluck and the
ambition that a lot of our graduates come with. So
we're seeing great outcomes. So a lot of the kids,
by the way, that aren't employed within just a few
months of graduation, well they're off to graduate school. So
we're also a huge producer of graduate school outcomes, you know,
(26:12):
medical school, law school, science school, other kinds of things,
and so on the product side of the institution. We're
exceedingly proud to be a part of helping, you know,
these lives to be empowered. So one day, I'm I'm
with a group of students and we're over at the
union student union. We're having lunch, and we're talking about
these students, and I'm talking to this one young woman
(26:33):
and she says, I got a four point zero average.
I'm double majoring in nursing and biochemistry. That's great, and
she says, and I've got a full scholarship and so
forth and so on, but it's really hard for me.
I also work forty hours a week, Like, well, why
do you work forty hours a week? He says, Well,
I'm the main breadwinner for my mother's family, my god
(26:57):
and so and so.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
I have been floored.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Over and over and over and over by by all
these kids that are at this school and where they
come from and where they're going. And it's not just
about kids that come from families of meager means. It's
just that it's just that we have become so wrecked
by thinking that.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
All the smart.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Kids are at these other schools and everybody else they're
just you know, lesser humans. It may be human nature
to think that way, but it's one of the most
destructive things imaginable. There's nothing lesser about anything here. There's
nothing lesser about the students that are here. I was
a facult member tenured factive member at Columbia University. There's
(27:42):
nothing lesser about the faculty here. There's nothing lesser at all,
except that we're a public university serving this broad demographic
of students, and that in our present system, in the
eyes of some, makes us lesser. I think my background
makes me more determined to not be defeated. I think
that's the main thing that comes out of my background.
(28:02):
I think the main drive for me, relative to our
focus on diversity and our focus on completion, is that
our society is not fulfilling its potential, our democracy is
not rising.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
To its potential. We have all these problems, and we
think that what we see is the problem. It's not
the problem.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
The problem is we got millions of high school dropouts
who are unprepared for the economy in which we're living.
The problem is that we've got all these people that
went to college and got disappointed and now are angry.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
The problem is that we've got lots and lots of
really upset and.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Angry people who want to be a part of the
new economy as it's evolving and feel that they're being
left behind.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
The problem is we've got all.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
These people who feel that they're being disadvantaged or that
others are getting advantage over them.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
The problem that.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
We have is we've got educated people who are snobs,
who are looking down their noses at other people. And
my background won't allow me to look down my nose
at somebody else, because I know, I know what it's
like to be a normal, regular human being in a
regular job, doing regular things, and I hate academic elitism.
(29:10):
And so that's one thing my background I think empowers
me with. I think my background allows me to understand
what it's like to feel that you just.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
Want a little bit of help, just a little bit
of help.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Just let me have access to that class at a
time when I can take it.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
You know, my.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Stepmother had like two jobs, my father had three jobs.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
We all worked.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Every kid in the family worked multiple jobs all the time,
paid for everything. I didn't get one penny to go
to college from anyone, no one, not one cent. And
so being able to be flexible and adaptable and engageable,
I mean, I think that's what my background helps me
to see.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
And great job to Alex and Gregg for bringing us
that piece the story of Michael Crowe. His family's story
deeply embedded in his and Arizona State University's story. Here
on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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