October 8, 2025 • 35 mins
The U.S. higher education system has been a primary source of research that fuels innovation in science and industry, provides students from low-income communities opportunity to escape from poverty, and enriches the lives of graduates. In this episode, Rebecca Winthrop joins us to discuss how changes in federal policy are affecting the U.S. educational system and, ultimately, our society.
Rebecca is a senior fellow and director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution, where her research focuses on education globally. Rebecca leads the Brookings Global Task Force on AI in Education and co-leads the Family Engagement in Education Network. In addition to her work with many other global education initiatives, Rebecca has served as the U.N. Secretary General’s Global Education First Initiative’s Technical Advisory Group and served as co-lead for the Learning Metrics Task Force with the UNESCO Institute of Statistics. Rebecca is also a lecturer at Georgetown University and, with Jenny Anderson, the co-author of The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better.
A transcript of this episode and show notes may be found at http://teaforteaching.com.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
The U.S. higher education system has been a primary source of research that fuels innovation
in science and industry, provides students from low-income communities opportunity to escape from
poverty, and enriches the lives of graduates. In this episode, we explore how changes in federal
policy are affecting the U.S. educational system and, ultimately, our society.
(00:31):
Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective
practices in teaching and learning. This podcast series is hosted by
John Kane, an economist... ...and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer...
...and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more
inclusive and supportive of all learners.Our guest today is Rebecca Winthrop. She is
(01:04):
a senior fellow and director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution,
where her research focuses on education globally. Rebecca leads the Brookings Global Task Force on
AI in Education and co-leads the Family Engagement in Education Network. In addition to her work with
many other global education initiatives, Rebecca has served as the U.N. Secretary General’s Global
(01:28):
Education First Initiative’s Technical Advisory Group and served as co-lead for the Learning
Metrics Task Force with the UNESCO Institute of Statistics. Rebecca is also a lecturer at
Georgetown University and, with Jenny Anderson, the co-author of The Disengaged Teen: Helping
Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better, which we talked about on an earlier episode of the
(01:52):
podcast. Welcome back, Rebecca.Lovely to be here. Thanks.
Today's teas are (01:56):
Rebecca, are you drinking any tea today?
I'm not drinking any tea because I'm at the office, beavering away, and I have a cup of
water next to me. But this morning, I had a turmeric chai tea, which was delicious.
That sounds delightful.… and ostensibly good for
me and my immune system. We'll see.I have a Tea Forte black currant tea today.
(02:19):
Oh, yum, black currant.I have a English afternoon,
because I need some energy. Oh, that sounds right. It is the afternoon
when we're recording, post lunch. Need a little boost.
We've invited you here today to discuss the rather dramatic changes that have occurred in the federal
government's relationship to U.S. education institutions at all levels. In a February 26,
(02:43):
2025 Brookings Commentary that you co-authored with Emily Markovich Morris and Sweta Shaw,
you argue that this administration's policies at the very beginning of the administration
were already beginning to weaken the United States global competitive edge through its dramatic cuts
to the US Department of Education, USAID and federal grants that support education. Let's
(03:08):
begin with the cuts to the Department of Education. What have been some of
the consequences of the funding and staffing cuts at the U.S. Department of Education?
Well, the big picture that I'm most worried about is the U.S. federal government, with
all of our tax dollars, who are US taxpayers, not necessarily even citizens, non-citizens pay taxes,
(03:32):
plenty of them… have traditionally invested a lot in research and development, which is educational,
enterprise and learning, and we have been for many years, and I have to say I have been very
proud myself, as an American born here and raised here, of being a beacon of inquiry, investigation,
(03:55):
creativity, innovation that is powered by our education system. Yes, our K-12 is a feeder, but
especially our higher education system, it's long been seen as one of the best in the world, and
that is really undercut by, I would say, a very, very chaotic and not well organized sort of plan
(04:17):
of sort of undermining the programs in closing or shuttering many of the offices in the Department
of Education, and it's been fascinating to see. It has just been very chaotic. So for example, early
on, the Department of Ed's Office of Technology was closed, and then shortly thereafter,
an executive order came out saying that we should push technology into schools. And oops, the
(04:41):
Department of Education, who actually that team was probably the team who knew how to do it well,
weren't involved because they were disbanded. It went to other sources. So I'm not sure there is
some master grand plan. Of course, there is the Heritage Foundation's blueprint, which is fairly
high level, but there's a lot of big things in there, but I think that the general approach is
(05:01):
to burn the house down. And I think the goal of burning the house down is to try to then come and
rebuild something else in a likeness in which the new Trump administration wants, or perhaps
it's the Heritage Foundation, because much of what they're doing is out of that, you know, has some
other vision of what they want to see. And it worries me that education, sort of an engine of
(05:25):
R and D and creativity across many institutions, if you think about Silicon Valley like that came
out of government money and Defense Department money and really laying the architecture and
building the platform for a lot of those innovations that we all use today, and I just
think that it's undercutting our competitiveness, our innovative edge. Certainly people are going
(05:48):
to be going elsewhere. You've got other countries that are just pleased to bits to attract talent,
students, professors. You've got Macron of France saying, “Choose France.” And frankly, we'll get
into this, I'm sure, but globally, it's China who really stands to benefit as the US backs away from
its investing in its own R&D and human capital development internally, as well as globally.
(06:12):
As you're talking about all these various pieces of institutions getting shut down, how
does this impact students? What students are most affected by funding cuts and departmental cuts.
You're talking about U.S. Department of Education, I think, but we can also talk globally. A lot of
the U.S. Department of Education funding, which is again federal tax dollars that largely went
(06:33):
to equity. So it's really a transfer from rich Americans to poorer Americans. In many ways,
it was a transfer from blue states to red states, and that is probably going to be maintained
in some way, shape, or form. And then there's, broadly speaking, the support to higher education,
again, equity… It's helping kids without a lot of financial resources get to college,
(06:55):
Pell grants and all that. And then there's the data piece. Information is power,
and one of the first things they've done is sort of actually take away a lot of data and some of
the ability to sort of track outcomes. So the argument is, “No, don't worry. These things will
stay alive in other places and forms in other parts of the federal government bureaucracy.”
(07:17):
Now, a number of programs have been shut down, that would normally have been continued,
things like community schools, et cetera, and all of those are really heavily focused on equity,
and the kids that are the farthest left behind.Along those lines, we've already been seeing a
decline in student performance on standardized test scores that had been going on for quite a
(07:38):
while, but became much worse during the pandemic, and most of the solutions for
this that are proposed involve spending more resources on education, rather than less. With
some of the cutbacks here, is it going to be possible to work very effectively to reverse
some of that downward trend that we've been seeing in K through 12 education?
(07:58):
Well, I think many, many school districts across the country are really worried about a
fiscal cliff. But it's not by any means, just the U.S. Department of Education. Actually,
the U.S. Federal Department of Education did not provide very much money. It was important,
it was strategic, it had R and D elements, etc. But it wasn't like all school districts
(08:22):
across the country are bankrolled by the federal government's Department of Ed,
so it's a small portion financially. So that is a piece, and certainly the process of sort of
uncertainty of, “Will we have a budget? Won't we have a budget?” There's been a lot of, “Oh,
you have your budget,” or “We've awarded your contract. Oh, never mind. We're not going to
(08:44):
spend the money.” I mean, it's incredibly poorly managed and chaotic and uncertain and amateur,
really. That piece has caused a lot of uncertainty with the small federal money that does get
distributed around for school districts. School districts are nervous about spending money because
they don't know what they're going to have in the next year or two. So that's one reason, but there
(09:06):
are other forces and reasons. One of them are big demographic shifts. There's just less kids,
and we fund often per pupil. And so we're going to have to think about how to get economies of scale
if you have more and more buildings that are less and less full as time goes on. And then another
(09:28):
sort of worry and cause of this fiscal cliff is the support that had come because of Covid. The
extra support to schools and kids in the education sector at local level is drying up, that had come
sort of under the Biden administration. So there's a mix of reasons that is by no means only the
(09:49):
federal government sort of chaos at the federal level, but the chaos does lead to uncertainty.
If you're a school leader or a district leader, you don't exactly know what's in your budget next
year. You're not going to spend the money. It makes it a very hard operating environment.
The lack of knowledge of funds, as well as lack of other data available, makes it really hard
to make all kinds of decisions or to look into different pieces of information and
(10:13):
understand what's happening in some cases. Can you talk a little bit about whether or
not the cuts in the Department of Education will result in less data being collected,
and how that's going to harm our system,We'll see where things ultimately pan out.
But IES, which is an important function in the U.S. Department of Education, has traditionally
(10:36):
held a wide variety of data that we all need as researchers, those of us in higher education and
research use these databases, but it's not just for researchers to write papers and get journal
articles. The real reason the data is important is so the leaders and the people doing the work,
and those of us who are helping and advising the leaders have an informed vision of what's
(10:59):
happening, and can make good decisions about where to spend money, what types of things should be
done, what works, how kids are doing, who needs help, who doesn't, etc. So that's a worry.
And one of the main uses of that data was to see how educational
outcomes differed by income, by race……and by geography, by rural versus urban.
(11:23):
I've interrupted you, John, but there's plenty of rural district leaders and principals and
caring people who are really concerned that they're going to be left out in the cold.
One of my concerns is that they're going to stop collecting data on those important
issues because of their attempts to downplay diversity, equity, and inclusion, and one of
(11:45):
the good ways to move that issue aside is just not make data available on all those issues.
Yes, it is a strategy that I've seen employed in other moments of time with other leaders
and countries we might not want to live in. If you remove the data, it doesn't actually
remove the problem. It just makes it a lot harder to track and have accountability.
(12:06):
And just a few weeks ago, we saw a satellite being crashed because it was being used to
collect weather data that they no longer wanted to collect. And we had that whole
issue with the BLS Commissioner being removed because the administration did
not like the data on employment trends.Yes, it's very, very worse, and from anyone
(12:27):
in higher education, anyone working in education, the core of education is knowledge and insight and
illumination. The opposite of learning and education is delusion and confusion, and that's
not what we want in education, and removing data doesn't change the actual facts on the ground.
(12:49):
It just makes it harder to really understand what is happening and to be able to have healthy
debates about best ways to proceed forward. USAID,an agency that long had bipartisan support,
was effectively shut down at the start of the administration, and you noted in your
blog post that roughly 85 countries received support for educational programs through USAID.
(13:13):
What types of programs were supported, and how expensive were they? What are these impacts?
First of all, the USAID budget, in terms of size of the federal government budget,
is tiny, teeny, tiny. I think probably just a couple Defense Department contracts make
up the entire USAID budget. And what you get from investing in international development assistance
(13:36):
is hugely beneficial to the United States foreign power, and frankly, our self interest. Now USAID,
The mission is very much to serve others in other parts of the country, but the USAID has always
doled out its funding in a way that was incredibly self serving. So we spent a ton of money through
(13:58):
USAID in Pakistan when we were fighting the war in Afghanistan, for example. There's always
been foreign policy interests and priorities closely aligned with our development assistance.
Now it is largely in countries around the world that are low income, or perhaps middle income.
The way USAID doled out its money, if you had put like the poorest kids to the richest kids,
(14:22):
it wouldn't have all made linear sense. It's not like the poorest countries got the most,
etc. So there's always been a really strong soft power argument through diplomacy and development,
which is usually considered in most countries around the world as the two legs of the stool
that sit around with defense. as sort of defense, diplomacy and development as sort of the three
(14:47):
legs of the stool for how you interact in the globe and advocate for your national interest.
Programs that USAID supported in education… again, it's a tiny amount of money compared to the US
budget, barely anything… but significant in terms of small countries in sub-Saharan Africa that have
(15:09):
lots of minerals that the U.S. wants, remember, to help with our manufacturing, especially chips
and technology. It's not an insignificant amount for countries that are small and have themselves
small budgets and have many kids who are out of school and not learning well. A lot of the
support and money from USAID went to helping kids get to school, build schools, give them textbooks,
(15:34):
and learn to read. That was a very large part of the financial support, and of course,
they did a wide range of other things too that were all worthy causes and really helped children
around the world. And virtually, Republicans and Democrats alike, for years, have seen that
when we helped other countries grow their human capital, if you want to use an economic term,
(15:58):
they will be more productive themselves. They will purchase more U.S. goods. So it's great for us to
create more trading partners. And in fact, USAID had always heavily supported U.S. product exports
through its development assistance, food, school meals, and also just hunger programs… helping
(16:20):
feed the world. USAID and other parts of the US government heavily bought U.S. agriculture, and
it was a really important part for a lot of local farmers. So we get a lot out of foreign assistance
through USAID. And in addition to all that, which sounds very, perhaps not aspirational or moral,
but in addition to all that sort of benefits the U.S. gets, we get something that is incredibly
(16:44):
hard to replicate, which is soft power. And I would say the Trump administration knows very
well how to use hard power… are very effective at it, but they are missing entirely the soft
power strategy and soft power is when you have development assistance programs, let's say in
(17:05):
sub-Saharan Africa, which is, by the way, going to house shortly here in the not too distant future,
the majority of the world's working age population and talent, as the rest of the world gets older,
U.S. companies are going to be interested in hiring in sub-Saharan Africa, and they might
want to be setting up shop, but that would have gone great with a foreign leader who
(17:27):
might want to create a partnership with perhaps an overseas office or a company, until the Trump
administration really abruptly, sort of pulled the funding. And I would say that some of the
countries would be okay having less funding. It was just the way it was done, really rude, abrupt,
not respectful. And those countries are thinking, “Hmm, China seems pretty nice,” because China just
(17:51):
walked right into the vacuum we created. “Oh, rather than letting a U.S. company come and set
up an office and recruit from our talent pool, etc., I think we're going to have a partnership
with China. And it could be higher ed partnership. It could be an Employment Partnership. It could be
an infrastructure project partnership,” which is largely what they've been doing, and might have
more favorable trading, including for minerals, with them. So it's a big misstep in terms of
(18:17):
thinking about US dominance, which is what the administration has said they care about.
And these cuts were made on the grounds of improving government efficiency, but it's
perhaps the most wasteful set of actions that I've ever seen or read about in the U.S. , because,
as you mentioned, these things were cut off very abruptly. There was a lot of food that was just
(18:40):
left to rot in warehouses and storage. And also you mentioned that historically, policies have
often been tied to political interests, but for the first time, they had a chief
economist there whose goal was to look at the most efficient way of improving economic development,
Dean Karlan, who we've had as a guest on the podcast in the past. His research basically
(19:01):
has been focused on coming up with the most efficient ways of achieving development goals,
and he was implementing a lot more randomized controlled experiments evaluating the
effectiveness of these programs, and all that just completely stopped. That's really troubling.
I would agree with you, though, John, because I think the guise was government efficiency,
(19:23):
but that wasn't really the purpose. Because if it had been government efficiency,
there is lots and lots of ways to make government more efficient, and in fact, we at Brookings have
spent a lot of time suggesting ways to make our government institutions, which are very important,
work better, more effective, faster, more efficient. Spend money on things that actually
(19:47):
are shown to work versus not. And there are lots of ways to make government more efficient, and you
would have had to go in and really look at what those are. And frankly, it could be across the
board. It's not that USAID was the only department that could do things better. Lots of government
departments can do things better, but I don't think that was the real goal. Because, frankly,
(20:09):
the idea was, we're going to be efficient, we're going to spend more money. That's was sort of
the narrative. And the truth is, it was just cutting things that didn't align ideologically,
and then funding things… lots of money has been spent. If you look at the big, beautiful bill,
I mean, the debt is higher than ever before. This is not fiscally conservative government
by any means, and a lot of it is boosting majorly in anti-immigration policies, staffing up ICE and
(20:35):
Department of Defense, absolutely, getting lots and lots of things, including contracts
for Elon Musk's company. So the narrative might have been this is about government efficiency,
but if you really wanted to do that, you would have had to kind of study and go slower. What
I saw was just putting money where you want stuff to go, and slashing and burning things
(20:56):
you don't like… it was basically the action.One of the things you mentioned earlier is the
global aging population, and where certain parts of the world have younger populations,
and they have historically wanted to come to the United States to study and U.S. institutions have
been trying to entice them to come, but we're seeing a lot of actions from the government to
(21:18):
slow that process down, revoking visas, making visa appointments nearly impossible to have,
searching social media accounts and things like that. Can you talk a little bit about the current
administration's policies on international student enrollment and how that's affected
the enrollment and the future investment that sometimes those enrollees have in our country?
(21:39):
Well, higher education is a really big industry. There's 1000s and 1000s of higher education
institutions across the United States. It's one of the wonderful things actually about the U.S..
We're a big country, but there's many pathways to higher education. We have a really robust
community college system. So if you maybe don't love high school and don't do great, it's not it,
(22:00):
it's not over for you. You have a second chance. I've always been extraordinarily proud of that,
because many other countries that I visit don't have that. You have to either get your
act together and be brilliant in high school and then you'll go into college, and if you don't,
that's it for you. There's no second chances. Higher education is itself a big part of the
economy. And then, of course, higher education institutions bring a lot of livelihoods to the
(22:24):
communities they're in. Their students, they spend money, they go to restaurants,
they need laundry machines, they have activities, not just the professors and teachers and educators
who are there to teach students, but there's a whole economy around them, and the U.S. has long
been a sort of star attraction for foreign students, for countries around the world,
(22:46):
in part because we have had such a deep, robust, innovative, sort of R and D engine,
heavily powered through universities and a variety of higher education institutions,
that there's a lot of excitement and opportunities and very interesting new insights and discoveries
being done in the United States in the higher education sector. And that for sure… I mean, I've
(23:10):
had conversations with people around the globe… that sort of sparkle has faded rather quickly,
because again, as you say, there's been a real clamp down on international students, revoking
J visas, which are very hard to get. And I think again, what it does is just the students aren't
not going to college. All these students who would have come to the U.S. are not going to stay home
(23:33):
and say, “Well, that's it for me. I'm not going to pursue my studies and try to contribute and
try to help solve society's problems and invent something cool. I'm going to stay home.” They're
not doing that. They're saying, “Oh, the US doesn't want me. I think I'll go elsewhere.”
They're going to Canada, they're going to China, they're going to Europe, even possibly India,
Latin America. These are losses for the U.S.. They're losses for higher education as a sector.
(24:01):
And I think it's very, very short sighted if the goal is American dominance and keeping U.S.,
and I keep saying, if this is the goal, I'm not sure that's my personal goal. I'd rather
us have a sort of co-equal, collaborative stance to try to have a better society,
but there is a stated goal by this administration, to have America be number one. This is the wrong
(24:26):
strategy to do that. It is absolutely reducing America's glory, sparkle, brilliance, attraction,
and going to be handing pretty much for free the competitive edge to some of the world's brightest
and best talent who are going to go elsewhere and boost the economies and insights and knowledge
networks of other places in the world.And in addition to the contribution these
(24:49):
foreign students make while they're in college, many of them stick around,
and that's particularly true in the STEM fields. And in terms of innovation. Immigrants account for
a relatively large share of patent applications. What are some of the implications of limiting the
number of top students coming to the US who have in the past played such a large role in innovation
(25:10):
and economic growth in our economy? This gets back to the previous point,
and it's specialized. We're talking about tech companies. We're talking about innovators. We're
talking about R and D, advanced robotics. This is the type of thing that you are talking about,
John. Now, those companies are desperate always to hire talent. They're always in a talent war.
They're going to have less talent, and they're going to need to find talent elsewhere, in other
(25:33):
parts of the world, where, as I said before, other parts of the world might not be so interested in
U.S. companies or doing sort of collaborative work with U.S. entities, because soft power is real.
When you're mean to your neighbor and then you go ask to borrow a cup of sugar,
(25:54):
they're less likely to give it to you. I mean, it's just as simple as that, it's human nature.
So one of the other things that we've seen happening is the federal government
targeting specific institutions like Harvard and Columbia, where they're cutting federal funding,
visa approvals and threatening termination of accreditation. What
are the consequences of threats like these? Well, it's a very frankly standard practice.
(26:17):
I've seen it happen, and I've worked in many countries around the world,
the standard practice for leaders who really want to dominate and control with a very tight fist.
The models I have of people who've gone after universities in the same way are authoritarian
figures. So you can make your own judgment there, but when you go after universities and higher ed
(26:41):
institutions, it's usually for a couple of reasons. It's like going after the press.
It's to dampen critical thought, and frankly, a lot of movements start with university students:
the civil rights movement, the movement for the entire nation of Pakistan, there's a lot of sort
(27:01):
of social movements that start with the university students. So it's not just also the freedom of
thought of the professors. It's also sort of going after an entire institution that usually is known
for new ideas and critique, and frankly, critique of any status quo, whichever political party
(27:22):
exists, that's almost the role of research and universities, is to look at what we have and say,
“How can this be better? What isn't working?” And I can't think of a single time in history that
there wasn't something to critique at some point. So yeah, I think it's a very straightforward,
obvious strategy. You want less critique and you want less dissent, go after universities. And I
(27:47):
would say to universities, don't expect it to stop after one or two high profile
cases. Most of the time, universities need to really band together and figure out what
their approach is going to be collectively.And we see some broader attacks on education
and expertise and evidence in general, and that's particularly troubling. One
(28:12):
of the things economists have studied for quite a while is the impact of human capital investment,
as you mentioned before, on economic development and research, going back to T.W. Schultz,
to Gary Becker, and many other people have indicated that investment in education is
one of the most important ways of encouraging economic development, and within a country,
(28:33):
it's one of the most effective ways of moving people out of poverty. And yet we're seeing
a general shift in public perceptions of higher ed, or education in general,
where the public perception of the gains from higher ed had been falling pretty steadily for
the last few years. And that's kind of troubling. Why has this messaging which is so inconsistent
(28:57):
with all the evidence, been so effective in changing public attitudes towards education.
So I'd be interested in your take too, because I see a couple of things mixing together. One
is the runaway costs of higher education. So when parents, who are voters, are doing the
cost-benefit analysis of helping support their kid go get a college degree. So let's talk about
(29:24):
undergrad here. For a long time in this podcast, prior, we've been talking about really R and D and
sort of graduate level, and really the sort of top-level research and innovation that comes
from higher education institutions, but at a pure sort of undergraduate level, this cost of
college is so burdensome. The fact that kids are coming out with undergraduate degrees and huge
(29:46):
loans to try to repay in a job market where they can't really sustain themselves and repay loans,
I think, gives people a lot of pause. So I would put that very much on the shoulders of higher
education themselves. That is something that a higher education sector needs to grapple with…
should have addressed long ago… and it's one of the reasons people are making the determination
(30:12):
that it's not worth it, because for many kids, it might not be. They might pay an arm and a leg and
not actually get a super top quality experience and come out the other side, not markedly,
massively better. Now, I would say, if they're reasonable students, and they go to a reasonably
(30:32):
good institution, they're going to get a lot of benefits. We know that. But the other piece I
think, and I think this is where we also can put this at the feet of the university and higher ed
institutions to grapple with, is basically a runaway woke-ism that was frankly silly, and
(30:53):
there's constant ridiculous stories of students in a classroom on Muslim art. I'm thinking of a
particular case, I think it was in the Midwest, saying they were triggered by a picture of the
Prophet Muhammad, and then the professor getting fired. And this is a class on Muslim art,
and you don't take the class. So that's really silly and ridiculous, and I think that is,
(31:20):
at least in my experience teaching at Georgetown University, I never really saw that much of that.
I think that these were sort of often the exceptions, but they are stupid, and it does
also undermine freedom of thought and discussion, and people got pissed, rightly so, and they were
used to create a narrative that our entire higher education institutions, or frankly, schools, were
(31:46):
sort of overtaken by radical, woke ideologies. And I have to say, having visited many, many
schools for the work that Jenny and I did, maybe in some elite, private, sort of top of the line,
suburb or urban schools, that might have been a problem. I did see that, but very, very rarely did
(32:12):
I run into any, any of these issues that people were theoretically so worried about in just your
run of the mill school in a rural community or an urban community in a sort of middle class
or lower income neighborhood, very rarely. And also, I would say the same for my experiences,
at least personal experiences, talking to students and visiting colleges at the higher ed level.
(32:37):
I think those cases were probably quite a bit the exception, that when you look at most courses,
courses in computer science, classes in math, classes in science, classes in art and in general,
just simply don't address many of those sorts of cases that made it to Fox News and that got so
widely disseminated. But going back to the other issue, the evidence that I've seen at least up
(33:00):
until the last few years has been that the rate of return to a college education is still pretty
much at historically high levels. Now that's partly because college graduates do earn quite
a bit more, but the other part of it is high school graduates and high school dropouts earn
so much less today than they did 20 or 30 years ago, relatively. So for an average student, the
(33:22):
gains to an education more than pay off. The place where the problems occur are for those students,
and that's a very large share of students who enter college but don't graduate, but still leave
with student debt. That's a nationwide tragedy.That is a very, very good point, and I'm glad you
corrected me, because you're totally right, and that's what we have to guard against.
(33:43):
So we always wrap up by asking, what's next? Well, I'm really hoping that we start connecting
with each other, and I mean that universities start banding together,
schools start communicating with each other and saying, “No, education is important.” Education,
obviously, I work in it, and I'm deeply passionate. I think education makes a huge
(34:08):
difference in your life trajectory. I also think it makes a huge difference in our societies.
Education is not just about math and reading, it's about how you learn to live with other people,
and how can we, especially now in a polarized community, make sure that
education is about forging bridges, connecting with others and solving real problems.
(34:30):
Well, thank you. It's always great talking to you, and we hope we can have future
conversations on these and other topics.Lovely to talk to you both too. Take care.
If you've enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on Apple
podcasts or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on
(34:56):
our Tea for Teaching Facebook page. You can find show notes, transcripts and
other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.
Editing assistance provided by Ryan Metzler.
The U.S. higher education system has been a primary source of research that fuels innovation
in science and industry, provides students from low-income communities opportunity to escape from
poverty, and enriches the lives of graduates. In this episode, we explore how changes in federal
policy are affecting the U.S. educational system and, ultimately, our society.
(00:31):
Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective
practices in teaching and learning. This podcast series is hosted by
John Kane, an economist... ...and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer...
...and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more
inclusive and supportive of all learners.Our guest today is Rebecca Winthrop. She is
(01:04):
a senior fellow and director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution,
where her research focuses on education globally. Rebecca leads the Brookings Global Task Force on
AI in Education and co-leads the Family Engagement in Education Network. In addition to her work with
many other global education initiatives, Rebecca has served as the U.N. Secretary General’s Global
(01:28):
Education First Initiative’s Technical Advisory Group and served as co-lead for the Learning
Metrics Task Force with the UNESCO Institute of Statistics. Rebecca is also a lecturer at
Georgetown University and, with Jenny Anderson, the co-author of The Disengaged Teen: Helping
Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better, which we talked about on an earlier episode of the
(01:52):
podcast. Welcome back, Rebecca.Lovely to be here. Thanks.
Today's teas are (01:56):
Rebecca, are you drinking any tea today?
I'm not drinking any tea because I'm at the office, beavering away, and I have a cup of
water next to me. But this morning, I had a turmeric chai tea, which was delicious.
That sounds delightful.… and ostensibly good for
me and my immune system. We'll see.I have a Tea Forte black currant tea today.
(02:19):
Oh, yum, black currant.I have a English afternoon,
because I need some energy. Oh, that sounds right. It is the afternoon
when we're recording, post lunch. Need a little boost.
We've invited you here today to discuss the rather dramatic changes that have occurred in the federal
government's relationship to U.S. education institutions at all levels. In a February 26,
(02:43):
2025 Brookings Commentary that you co-authored with Emily Markovich Morris and Sweta Shaw,
you argue that this administration's policies at the very beginning of the administration
were already beginning to weaken the United States global competitive edge through its dramatic cuts
to the US Department of Education, USAID and federal grants that support education. Let's
(03:08):
begin with the cuts to the Department of Education. What have been some of
the consequences of the funding and staffing cuts at the U.S. Department of Education?
Well, the big picture that I'm most worried about is the U.S. federal government, with
all of our tax dollars, who are US taxpayers, not necessarily even citizens, non-citizens pay taxes,
(03:32):
plenty of them… have traditionally invested a lot in research and development, which is educational,
enterprise and learning, and we have been for many years, and I have to say I have been very
proud myself, as an American born here and raised here, of being a beacon of inquiry, investigation,
(03:55):
creativity, innovation that is powered by our education system. Yes, our K-12 is a feeder, but
especially our higher education system, it's long been seen as one of the best in the world, and
that is really undercut by, I would say, a very, very chaotic and not well organized sort of plan
(04:17):
of sort of undermining the programs in closing or shuttering many of the offices in the Department
of Education, and it's been fascinating to see. It has just been very chaotic. So for example, early
on, the Department of Ed's Office of Technology was closed, and then shortly thereafter,
an executive order came out saying that we should push technology into schools. And oops, the
(04:41):
Department of Education, who actually that team was probably the team who knew how to do it well,
weren't involved because they were disbanded. It went to other sources. So I'm not sure there is
some master grand plan. Of course, there is the Heritage Foundation's blueprint, which is fairly
high level, but there's a lot of big things in there, but I think that the general approach is
(05:01):
to burn the house down. And I think the goal of burning the house down is to try to then come and
rebuild something else in a likeness in which the new Trump administration wants, or perhaps
it's the Heritage Foundation, because much of what they're doing is out of that, you know, has some
other vision of what they want to see. And it worries me that education, sort of an engine of
(05:25):
R and D and creativity across many institutions, if you think about Silicon Valley like that came
out of government money and Defense Department money and really laying the architecture and
building the platform for a lot of those innovations that we all use today, and I just
think that it's undercutting our competitiveness, our innovative edge. Certainly people are going
(05:48):
to be going elsewhere. You've got other countries that are just pleased to bits to attract talent,
students, professors. You've got Macron of France saying, “Choose France.” And frankly, we'll get
into this, I'm sure, but globally, it's China who really stands to benefit as the US backs away from
its investing in its own R&D and human capital development internally, as well as globally.
(06:12):
As you're talking about all these various pieces of institutions getting shut down, how
does this impact students? What students are most affected by funding cuts and departmental cuts.
You're talking about U.S. Department of Education, I think, but we can also talk globally. A lot of
the U.S. Department of Education funding, which is again federal tax dollars that largely went
(06:33):
to equity. So it's really a transfer from rich Americans to poorer Americans. In many ways,
it was a transfer from blue states to red states, and that is probably going to be maintained
in some way, shape, or form. And then there's, broadly speaking, the support to higher education,
again, equity… It's helping kids without a lot of financial resources get to college,
(06:55):
Pell grants and all that. And then there's the data piece. Information is power,
and one of the first things they've done is sort of actually take away a lot of data and some of
the ability to sort of track outcomes. So the argument is, “No, don't worry. These things will
stay alive in other places and forms in other parts of the federal government bureaucracy.”
(07:17):
Now, a number of programs have been shut down, that would normally have been continued,
things like community schools, et cetera, and all of those are really heavily focused on equity,
and the kids that are the farthest left behind.Along those lines, we've already been seeing a
decline in student performance on standardized test scores that had been going on for quite a
(07:38):
while, but became much worse during the pandemic, and most of the solutions for
this that are proposed involve spending more resources on education, rather than less. With
some of the cutbacks here, is it going to be possible to work very effectively to reverse
some of that downward trend that we've been seeing in K through 12 education?
(07:58):
Well, I think many, many school districts across the country are really worried about a
fiscal cliff. But it's not by any means, just the U.S. Department of Education. Actually,
the U.S. Federal Department of Education did not provide very much money. It was important,
it was strategic, it had R and D elements, etc. But it wasn't like all school districts
(08:22):
across the country are bankrolled by the federal government's Department of Ed,
so it's a small portion financially. So that is a piece, and certainly the process of sort of
uncertainty of, “Will we have a budget? Won't we have a budget?” There's been a lot of, “Oh,
you have your budget,” or “We've awarded your contract. Oh, never mind. We're not going to
(08:44):
spend the money.” I mean, it's incredibly poorly managed and chaotic and uncertain and amateur,
really. That piece has caused a lot of uncertainty with the small federal money that does get
distributed around for school districts. School districts are nervous about spending money because
they don't know what they're going to have in the next year or two. So that's one reason, but there
(09:06):
are other forces and reasons. One of them are big demographic shifts. There's just less kids,
and we fund often per pupil. And so we're going to have to think about how to get economies of scale
if you have more and more buildings that are less and less full as time goes on. And then another
(09:28):
sort of worry and cause of this fiscal cliff is the support that had come because of Covid. The
extra support to schools and kids in the education sector at local level is drying up, that had come
sort of under the Biden administration. So there's a mix of reasons that is by no means only the
(09:49):
federal government sort of chaos at the federal level, but the chaos does lead to uncertainty.
If you're a school leader or a district leader, you don't exactly know what's in your budget next
year. You're not going to spend the money. It makes it a very hard operating environment.
The lack of knowledge of funds, as well as lack of other data available, makes it really hard
to make all kinds of decisions or to look into different pieces of information and
(10:13):
understand what's happening in some cases. Can you talk a little bit about whether or
not the cuts in the Department of Education will result in less data being collected,
and how that's going to harm our system,We'll see where things ultimately pan out.
But IES, which is an important function in the U.S. Department of Education, has traditionally
(10:36):
held a wide variety of data that we all need as researchers, those of us in higher education and
research use these databases, but it's not just for researchers to write papers and get journal
articles. The real reason the data is important is so the leaders and the people doing the work,
and those of us who are helping and advising the leaders have an informed vision of what's
(10:59):
happening, and can make good decisions about where to spend money, what types of things should be
done, what works, how kids are doing, who needs help, who doesn't, etc. So that's a worry.
And one of the main uses of that data was to see how educational
outcomes differed by income, by race……and by geography, by rural versus urban.
(11:23):
I've interrupted you, John, but there's plenty of rural district leaders and principals and
caring people who are really concerned that they're going to be left out in the cold.
One of my concerns is that they're going to stop collecting data on those important
issues because of their attempts to downplay diversity, equity, and inclusion, and one of
(11:45):
the good ways to move that issue aside is just not make data available on all those issues.
Yes, it is a strategy that I've seen employed in other moments of time with other leaders
and countries we might not want to live in. If you remove the data, it doesn't actually
remove the problem. It just makes it a lot harder to track and have accountability.
(12:06):
And just a few weeks ago, we saw a satellite being crashed because it was being used to
collect weather data that they no longer wanted to collect. And we had that whole
issue with the BLS Commissioner being removed because the administration did
not like the data on employment trends.Yes, it's very, very worse, and from anyone
(12:27):
in higher education, anyone working in education, the core of education is knowledge and insight and
illumination. The opposite of learning and education is delusion and confusion, and that's
not what we want in education, and removing data doesn't change the actual facts on the ground.
(12:49):
It just makes it harder to really understand what is happening and to be able to have healthy
debates about best ways to proceed forward. USAID,an agency that long had bipartisan support,
was effectively shut down at the start of the administration, and you noted in your
blog post that roughly 85 countries received support for educational programs through USAID.
(13:13):
What types of programs were supported, and how expensive were they? What are these impacts?
First of all, the USAID budget, in terms of size of the federal government budget,
is tiny, teeny, tiny. I think probably just a couple Defense Department contracts make
up the entire USAID budget. And what you get from investing in international development assistance
(13:36):
is hugely beneficial to the United States foreign power, and frankly, our self interest. Now USAID,
The mission is very much to serve others in other parts of the country, but the USAID has always
doled out its funding in a way that was incredibly self serving. So we spent a ton of money through
(13:58):
USAID in Pakistan when we were fighting the war in Afghanistan, for example. There's always
been foreign policy interests and priorities closely aligned with our development assistance.
Now it is largely in countries around the world that are low income, or perhaps middle income.
The way USAID doled out its money, if you had put like the poorest kids to the richest kids,
(14:22):
it wouldn't have all made linear sense. It's not like the poorest countries got the most,
etc. So there's always been a really strong soft power argument through diplomacy and development,
which is usually considered in most countries around the world as the two legs of the stool
that sit around with defense. as sort of defense, diplomacy and development as sort of the three
(14:47):
legs of the stool for how you interact in the globe and advocate for your national interest.
Programs that USAID supported in education… again, it's a tiny amount of money compared to the US
budget, barely anything… but significant in terms of small countries in sub-Saharan Africa that have
(15:09):
lots of minerals that the U.S. wants, remember, to help with our manufacturing, especially chips
and technology. It's not an insignificant amount for countries that are small and have themselves
small budgets and have many kids who are out of school and not learning well. A lot of the
support and money from USAID went to helping kids get to school, build schools, give them textbooks,
(15:34):
and learn to read. That was a very large part of the financial support, and of course,
they did a wide range of other things too that were all worthy causes and really helped children
around the world. And virtually, Republicans and Democrats alike, for years, have seen that
when we helped other countries grow their human capital, if you want to use an economic term,
(15:58):
they will be more productive themselves. They will purchase more U.S. goods. So it's great for us to
create more trading partners. And in fact, USAID had always heavily supported U.S. product exports
through its development assistance, food, school meals, and also just hunger programs… helping
(16:20):
feed the world. USAID and other parts of the US government heavily bought U.S. agriculture, and
it was a really important part for a lot of local farmers. So we get a lot out of foreign assistance
through USAID. And in addition to all that, which sounds very, perhaps not aspirational or moral,
but in addition to all that sort of benefits the U.S. gets, we get something that is incredibly
(16:44):
hard to replicate, which is soft power. And I would say the Trump administration knows very
well how to use hard power… are very effective at it, but they are missing entirely the soft
power strategy and soft power is when you have development assistance programs, let's say in
(17:05):
sub-Saharan Africa, which is, by the way, going to house shortly here in the not too distant future,
the majority of the world's working age population and talent, as the rest of the world gets older,
U.S. companies are going to be interested in hiring in sub-Saharan Africa, and they might
want to be setting up shop, but that would have gone great with a foreign leader who
(17:27):
might want to create a partnership with perhaps an overseas office or a company, until the Trump
administration really abruptly, sort of pulled the funding. And I would say that some of the
countries would be okay having less funding. It was just the way it was done, really rude, abrupt,
not respectful. And those countries are thinking, “Hmm, China seems pretty nice,” because China just
(17:51):
walked right into the vacuum we created. “Oh, rather than letting a U.S. company come and set
up an office and recruit from our talent pool, etc., I think we're going to have a partnership
with China. And it could be higher ed partnership. It could be an Employment Partnership. It could be
an infrastructure project partnership,” which is largely what they've been doing, and might have
more favorable trading, including for minerals, with them. So it's a big misstep in terms of
(18:17):
thinking about US dominance, which is what the administration has said they care about.
And these cuts were made on the grounds of improving government efficiency, but it's
perhaps the most wasteful set of actions that I've ever seen or read about in the U.S. , because,
as you mentioned, these things were cut off very abruptly. There was a lot of food that was just
(18:40):
left to rot in warehouses and storage. And also you mentioned that historically, policies have
often been tied to political interests, but for the first time, they had a chief
economist there whose goal was to look at the most efficient way of improving economic development,
Dean Karlan, who we've had as a guest on the podcast in the past. His research basically
(19:01):
has been focused on coming up with the most efficient ways of achieving development goals,
and he was implementing a lot more randomized controlled experiments evaluating the
effectiveness of these programs, and all that just completely stopped. That's really troubling.
I would agree with you, though, John, because I think the guise was government efficiency,
(19:23):
but that wasn't really the purpose. Because if it had been government efficiency,
there is lots and lots of ways to make government more efficient, and in fact, we at Brookings have
spent a lot of time suggesting ways to make our government institutions, which are very important,
work better, more effective, faster, more efficient. Spend money on things that actually
(19:47):
are shown to work versus not. And there are lots of ways to make government more efficient, and you
would have had to go in and really look at what those are. And frankly, it could be across the
board. It's not that USAID was the only department that could do things better. Lots of government
departments can do things better, but I don't think that was the real goal. Because, frankly,
(20:09):
the idea was, we're going to be efficient, we're going to spend more money. That's was sort of
the narrative. And the truth is, it was just cutting things that didn't align ideologically,
and then funding things… lots of money has been spent. If you look at the big, beautiful bill,
I mean, the debt is higher than ever before. This is not fiscally conservative government
by any means, and a lot of it is boosting majorly in anti-immigration policies, staffing up ICE and
(20:35):
Department of Defense, absolutely, getting lots and lots of things, including contracts
for Elon Musk's company. So the narrative might have been this is about government efficiency,
but if you really wanted to do that, you would have had to kind of study and go slower. What
I saw was just putting money where you want stuff to go, and slashing and burning things
(20:56):
you don't like… it was basically the action.One of the things you mentioned earlier is the
global aging population, and where certain parts of the world have younger populations,
and they have historically wanted to come to the United States to study and U.S. institutions have
been trying to entice them to come, but we're seeing a lot of actions from the government to
(21:18):
slow that process down, revoking visas, making visa appointments nearly impossible to have,
searching social media accounts and things like that. Can you talk a little bit about the current
administration's policies on international student enrollment and how that's affected
the enrollment and the future investment that sometimes those enrollees have in our country?
(21:39):
Well, higher education is a really big industry. There's 1000s and 1000s of higher education
institutions across the United States. It's one of the wonderful things actually about the U.S..
We're a big country, but there's many pathways to higher education. We have a really robust
community college system. So if you maybe don't love high school and don't do great, it's not it,
(22:00):
it's not over for you. You have a second chance. I've always been extraordinarily proud of that,
because many other countries that I visit don't have that. You have to either get your
act together and be brilliant in high school and then you'll go into college, and if you don't,
that's it for you. There's no second chances. Higher education is itself a big part of the
economy. And then, of course, higher education institutions bring a lot of livelihoods to the
(22:24):
communities they're in. Their students, they spend money, they go to restaurants,
they need laundry machines, they have activities, not just the professors and teachers and educators
who are there to teach students, but there's a whole economy around them, and the U.S. has long
been a sort of star attraction for foreign students, for countries around the world,
(22:46):
in part because we have had such a deep, robust, innovative, sort of R and D engine,
heavily powered through universities and a variety of higher education institutions,
that there's a lot of excitement and opportunities and very interesting new insights and discoveries
being done in the United States in the higher education sector. And that for sure… I mean, I've
(23:10):
had conversations with people around the globe… that sort of sparkle has faded rather quickly,
because again, as you say, there's been a real clamp down on international students, revoking
J visas, which are very hard to get. And I think again, what it does is just the students aren't
not going to college. All these students who would have come to the U.S. are not going to stay home
(23:33):
and say, “Well, that's it for me. I'm not going to pursue my studies and try to contribute and
try to help solve society's problems and invent something cool. I'm going to stay home.” They're
not doing that. They're saying, “Oh, the US doesn't want me. I think I'll go elsewhere.”
They're going to Canada, they're going to China, they're going to Europe, even possibly India,
Latin America. These are losses for the U.S.. They're losses for higher education as a sector.
(24:01):
And I think it's very, very short sighted if the goal is American dominance and keeping U.S.,
and I keep saying, if this is the goal, I'm not sure that's my personal goal. I'd rather
us have a sort of co-equal, collaborative stance to try to have a better society,
but there is a stated goal by this administration, to have America be number one. This is the wrong
(24:26):
strategy to do that. It is absolutely reducing America's glory, sparkle, brilliance, attraction,
and going to be handing pretty much for free the competitive edge to some of the world's brightest
and best talent who are going to go elsewhere and boost the economies and insights and knowledge
networks of other places in the world.And in addition to the contribution these
(24:49):
foreign students make while they're in college, many of them stick around,
and that's particularly true in the STEM fields. And in terms of innovation. Immigrants account for
a relatively large share of patent applications. What are some of the implications of limiting the
number of top students coming to the US who have in the past played such a large role in innovation
(25:10):
and economic growth in our economy? This gets back to the previous point,
and it's specialized. We're talking about tech companies. We're talking about innovators. We're
talking about R and D, advanced robotics. This is the type of thing that you are talking about,
John. Now, those companies are desperate always to hire talent. They're always in a talent war.
They're going to have less talent, and they're going to need to find talent elsewhere, in other
(25:33):
parts of the world, where, as I said before, other parts of the world might not be so interested in
U.S. companies or doing sort of collaborative work with U.S. entities, because soft power is real.
When you're mean to your neighbor and then you go ask to borrow a cup of sugar,
(25:54):
they're less likely to give it to you. I mean, it's just as simple as that, it's human nature.
So one of the other things that we've seen happening is the federal government
targeting specific institutions like Harvard and Columbia, where they're cutting federal funding,
visa approvals and threatening termination of accreditation. What
are the consequences of threats like these? Well, it's a very frankly standard practice.
(26:17):
I've seen it happen, and I've worked in many countries around the world,
the standard practice for leaders who really want to dominate and control with a very tight fist.
The models I have of people who've gone after universities in the same way are authoritarian
figures. So you can make your own judgment there, but when you go after universities and higher ed
(26:41):
institutions, it's usually for a couple of reasons. It's like going after the press.
It's to dampen critical thought, and frankly, a lot of movements start with university students:
the civil rights movement, the movement for the entire nation of Pakistan, there's a lot of sort
(27:01):
of social movements that start with the university students. So it's not just also the freedom of
thought of the professors. It's also sort of going after an entire institution that usually is known
for new ideas and critique, and frankly, critique of any status quo, whichever political party
(27:22):
exists, that's almost the role of research and universities, is to look at what we have and say,
“How can this be better? What isn't working?” And I can't think of a single time in history that
there wasn't something to critique at some point. So yeah, I think it's a very straightforward,
obvious strategy. You want less critique and you want less dissent, go after universities. And I
(27:47):
would say to universities, don't expect it to stop after one or two high profile
cases. Most of the time, universities need to really band together and figure out what
their approach is going to be collectively.And we see some broader attacks on education
and expertise and evidence in general, and that's particularly troubling. One
(28:12):
of the things economists have studied for quite a while is the impact of human capital investment,
as you mentioned before, on economic development and research, going back to T.W. Schultz,
to Gary Becker, and many other people have indicated that investment in education is
one of the most important ways of encouraging economic development, and within a country,
(28:33):
it's one of the most effective ways of moving people out of poverty. And yet we're seeing
a general shift in public perceptions of higher ed, or education in general,
where the public perception of the gains from higher ed had been falling pretty steadily for
the last few years. And that's kind of troubling. Why has this messaging which is so inconsistent
(28:57):
with all the evidence, been so effective in changing public attitudes towards education.
So I'd be interested in your take too, because I see a couple of things mixing together. One
is the runaway costs of higher education. So when parents, who are voters, are doing the
cost-benefit analysis of helping support their kid go get a college degree. So let's talk about
(29:24):
undergrad here. For a long time in this podcast, prior, we've been talking about really R and D and
sort of graduate level, and really the sort of top-level research and innovation that comes
from higher education institutions, but at a pure sort of undergraduate level, this cost of
college is so burdensome. The fact that kids are coming out with undergraduate degrees and huge
(29:46):
loans to try to repay in a job market where they can't really sustain themselves and repay loans,
I think, gives people a lot of pause. So I would put that very much on the shoulders of higher
education themselves. That is something that a higher education sector needs to grapple with…
should have addressed long ago… and it's one of the reasons people are making the determination
(30:12):
that it's not worth it, because for many kids, it might not be. They might pay an arm and a leg and
not actually get a super top quality experience and come out the other side, not markedly,
massively better. Now, I would say, if they're reasonable students, and they go to a reasonably
(30:32):
good institution, they're going to get a lot of benefits. We know that. But the other piece I
think, and I think this is where we also can put this at the feet of the university and higher ed
institutions to grapple with, is basically a runaway woke-ism that was frankly silly, and
(30:53):
there's constant ridiculous stories of students in a classroom on Muslim art. I'm thinking of a
particular case, I think it was in the Midwest, saying they were triggered by a picture of the
Prophet Muhammad, and then the professor getting fired. And this is a class on Muslim art,
and you don't take the class. So that's really silly and ridiculous, and I think that is,
(31:20):
at least in my experience teaching at Georgetown University, I never really saw that much of that.
I think that these were sort of often the exceptions, but they are stupid, and it does
also undermine freedom of thought and discussion, and people got pissed, rightly so, and they were
used to create a narrative that our entire higher education institutions, or frankly, schools, were
(31:46):
sort of overtaken by radical, woke ideologies. And I have to say, having visited many, many
schools for the work that Jenny and I did, maybe in some elite, private, sort of top of the line,
suburb or urban schools, that might have been a problem. I did see that, but very, very rarely did
(32:12):
I run into any, any of these issues that people were theoretically so worried about in just your
run of the mill school in a rural community or an urban community in a sort of middle class
or lower income neighborhood, very rarely. And also, I would say the same for my experiences,
at least personal experiences, talking to students and visiting colleges at the higher ed level.
(32:37):
I think those cases were probably quite a bit the exception, that when you look at most courses,
courses in computer science, classes in math, classes in science, classes in art and in general,
just simply don't address many of those sorts of cases that made it to Fox News and that got so
widely disseminated. But going back to the other issue, the evidence that I've seen at least up
(33:00):
until the last few years has been that the rate of return to a college education is still pretty
much at historically high levels. Now that's partly because college graduates do earn quite
a bit more, but the other part of it is high school graduates and high school dropouts earn
so much less today than they did 20 or 30 years ago, relatively. So for an average student, the
(33:22):
gains to an education more than pay off. The place where the problems occur are for those students,
and that's a very large share of students who enter college but don't graduate, but still leave
with student debt. That's a nationwide tragedy.That is a very, very good point, and I'm glad you
corrected me, because you're totally right, and that's what we have to guard against.
(33:43):
So we always wrap up by asking, what's next? Well, I'm really hoping that we start connecting
with each other, and I mean that universities start banding together,
schools start communicating with each other and saying, “No, education is important.” Education,
obviously, I work in it, and I'm deeply passionate. I think education makes a huge
(34:08):
difference in your life trajectory. I also think it makes a huge difference in our societies.
Education is not just about math and reading, it's about how you learn to live with other people,
and how can we, especially now in a polarized community, make sure that
education is about forging bridges, connecting with others and solving real problems.
(34:30):
Well, thank you. It's always great talking to you, and we hope we can have future
conversations on these and other topics.Lovely to talk to you both too. Take care.
If you've enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on Apple
podcasts or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on
(34:56):
our Tea for Teaching Facebook page. You can find show notes, transcripts and
other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.
Editing assistance provided by Ryan Metzler.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.