March 26, 2025 • 31 mins
What happens when college becomes financially out of reach for an entire generation? Kristin McGuire, Executive Director of Young Invincibles, pulls back the curtain on America's broken higher education system and why it matters to all of us.
McGuire shares her personal journey from high school activist to leading the nation's largest youth advocacy organization, revealing how her experiences as a first-generation college student inform her fight for educational equity. With striking clarity, she articulates why the "starving student" stereotype should never be normalized and how the skyrocketing cost of education creates barriers that ripple through young lives: "The cost of growing up is exponentially higher than it was for generations before us."
Despite these challenges, McGuire makes a compelling case for why college remains the most powerful vehicle for economic mobility. Through her organization's work advocating for expanded Pell Grants, affordable housing, and student basic needs, she demonstrates how policy changes can create meaningful pathways to opportunity for all young Americans.
Perhaps most revealing is McGuire's insight into how higher education institutions often fail to engage with their primary consumers – the students themselves. "You'd be surprised how many conversations I'm in where I say something profound like 'have we talked to the students yet?' And a lot of times, the response is no," she explains, highlighting a fundamental disconnect in how universities operate.
Through it all, McGuire maintains what she calls "radical optimism" about the future, drawing inspiration from the resilience and determination of young people. Her perspective reminds us that investing in accessible, affordable education isn't just about individual opportunity – it's about nurturing the leadership potential of an entire generation ready to transform America.
Ready to join the movement for educational equity? Follow Young Invincibles on social media or visit younginvincibles.org to learn how you can get involved.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
So I'm very honored to be with Kristen McGuire.
Kristen, you've got thisamazing career that has been
advocacy policy, highereducation reform.
You do some really interestingwork.
Can you just give us a quickintro about who you are and how
you ended up doing theincredible things that?
Speaker 2 (00:19):
you're doing?
Sure, so I'm Kristen McGuire,I'm the executive director at
Young Invincibles and I getasked this question a lot how
did I end up doing the job thatI'm doing?
So, fun fact, I think that I'vealways been doing this kind of
work.
I just didn't know that therewas actually a formal structure
(00:40):
to get paid for trying to changethe world, to get paid for
trying to change the world.
So I have memories, even inhigh school, before I was even
able to vote, that I remember Ilive in California and I
remember there was a law thatadults were having to vote on to
try juvenile offenders asadults and I felt very strongly
(01:02):
that that was the wrong thing todo, that kids needed some other
type of intervention.
So I went to my high school.
I was registering the18-year-olds to vote.
We got to change this guys.
Unfortunately, we were notsuccessful.
That did pass in California,but it was really, I think, the
first time I started to thinkthat young people had something
(01:23):
to say and we had to figure outhow to do it.
Now that was a long time ago,back in 2000.
But I think my career trajectoryjust kind of followed that to
where, when I got to college andstarted to learn that my
ability to kind of mobilizepeople and teach them about
(01:43):
issues was a strength that justI always thought was just
something I could do.
And then it became really clearwhen Barack Obama was running
for president and I found outthat what I was doing was called
a community organizer.
I had no idea.
I also didn't know you couldget paid for that Not very much,
(02:05):
mind you, but it was a job.
It was a job and so I changedmy major in college from
psychology because I failedpsych 101 and it was so easy in
high school I didn't understandhow I couldn't pass it in
college.
(02:25):
But I found a major calledpublic administration where I
started learning about likegovernment structures and I
think I just I went from there.
I've worked across a variety ofadvocacy issues, all which were
very important to me publichealth, education, and so when I
started working at YoungInvincibles back in like 2015,
(02:47):
it was almost like a dream cometrue, because I didn't know an
organization like this existedand I was very selective about
where I wanted to work and ithad to be issues that were
aligned with me personally andmy personal beliefs, and so I
just felt like the work that wedo across all of our issues, but
especially in higher education.
(03:07):
We're deeply, deeply alignedwith my own experiences
navigating higher ed as a firstgeneration college student, and
I've been here ever since I'mthe truest millennial.
This is the longest job I'veever had.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Very cool.
Can you contextualize what theInvincibles are and what you do?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Absolutely so.
We are actually the nation'slargest policy and advocacy
organization committed to youngadult issues.
Our issue areas are highereducation, health care workforce
and finance and civicengagement.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Yeah, very cool.
What are the biggest financialchallenges that you see young
people facing today?
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Well, when we think about financial challenges of
young adults, I can start withyou know, you hear young people.
This is the generation whereyoung people aren't moving out
of their parents' homes, right,and we kind of hear that as like
a tongue in cheek, maybe even apassive insult.
But what I would like tocounter that with is there's
(04:10):
actually no young person in theworld who doesn't want to try to
move out.
Our economy is in a state nowwhere young people cannot move
out of their homes, right, rentis high, the cost of living is
high, the cost of highereducation is skyrocketing and
wages are not following suit.
So young people in thisgeneration are in a precarious
(04:32):
situation where they're havingto delay adulthood for a variety
of economic factors, and so Iwould say the largest challenge
to young adults is that the costof growing up is exponentially
higher than it was forgenerations before us.
Long gone are the days whereyou can hear folks say, oh, I
(04:53):
worked a part time job, paid formyself to get through college
and then bought a house at 22years old.
That's, that's just notpossible in today's America.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
It's not, I mean just looking at.
I went to school at universityof connecticut and I was looking
at the tuition costs of that Ipaid relative to what they're
paying today and it was justlike it's down for me, um, like
the, the amount that you sort ofsee, but you know it leaves, I
think, young people in this likereally precarious situation
where it's like we know that ifyou go to college, you know the
(05:24):
data is going to bear us out,your earning potential goes up
so much over the course of yourlife, right, but at the same
time the cost of actuallygetting there is not financially
viable for the vast majority ofyoung people.
How do you sort of hold thosepositions and with, like you
know, the business model ofcollege essentially, potentially
(05:45):
, like you could argue, isbroken in some ways, right, in
terms of sort of cost of things?
How can institutions or how canyou know policies sort of
really sort of direct us in away that, like we can make it
more affordable?
Speaker 2 (05:57):
or gettable and, you know, and work better for young
people, absolutely, and it's notthat one could argue that it's
broken.
It is broken and I think whatwe need to.
Everything you said is correct,mike.
So having a college degree isstill the number one way to
increase one's earnings overtheir lifetime right, it's the
(06:20):
best way to create a pathway toeconomic mobility, especially if
you come from a working classor a low income family, right?
So, again, these are thechallenges, because these are
the same people.
When you think about the crisiswe have with student loan data,
these are the very student loandebt.
These are the very people whocarry the highest burden of debt
(06:42):
load in our country.
Who carry the highest burden ofdebt load in our country.
So there, right, there is theproblem where we've opened up
our school systems but haven'tnecessarily opened up pathways
to finance our education.
So, when we think about accessand affordability under higher
ed, those are two of the mainpolicy buckets that we focus in
for higher education.
(07:04):
There are a lot of pathways intohigher ed when affordability is
a challenge.
Most states have access systemswithin the state.
So for California, for example,we have our UC system, which
everyone knows, but our accessinstitution is the Cal State
system, so they were studentslike me.
(07:24):
I attended a Cal State.
The school is a little moreaffordable and you don't have to
have over 4.0 GPA to get in,and so these are the schools
that you know.
If you graduate high school inCalifornia, you'll likely have a
seat there, and a lot of stateshave those types of access
institutions, which is a veryviable pathway.
(07:46):
Community colleges are also aviable and affordable pathway
into a four-year degree, and Ithink what we really want to
focus on is assuring that, iffolks want the high school to
four-year pathway, that we havea way for them to be able to
afford it.
It's been our premise for verylong that if what we value in
(08:08):
our country is an educatedcitizenry, if what we value is
being able to plant the seedsfor our future leaders, our
future teachers, our futurepublic service workers, then we
need to make sure that theeducation pathway is affordable,
and this also segues intostudent debt right when we have
programs like public serviceloan forgiveness.
This should be our government'scommitment that we value these
(08:34):
professions, these career fields, and we want to make sure that
we can maybe even on the backend, make sure that education is
affordable for them.
So those are like the keytenets of affordability.
We need to ensure that ourgovernment works with the
institutions so that the folkswho need the most help
(08:54):
navigating higher education areable to receive it.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
I think about the.
I think one really massivechallenge to me is that with the
costs continue to go up forboth private and public state
institutions, especially theplaces that arguably could have
better outcomes.
(09:19):
To sort of come to that, areyou sort of more focused on
let's make sure that we haveequitable, accessible sort of
spaces and places, versustackling this sort of big thing
that is really out of ourcontrol, which is sort of like
private state kind of thing?
(09:39):
How are you thinking aboutthose two different things,
knowing that they're kind ofdifferent?
Speaker 2 (09:44):
So both ways.
Federally we advocate for aPell Grant to be expanded,
because Pell Grant will allowstudents to receive funds that
don't have to be repaid, and sowe work to have that expanded
every time it's possible.
We also work with stategovernments to increase
state-based aid.
(10:05):
So we have, for example, theMAP grant in Illinois or Cal
Grant in California.
So we kind of look at studentsbeing able to couple the grants
in order to kind of ease thecost of attendance.
And then there's a whole otherbucket when we think about basic
needs, where we're working withinstitutions and state
(10:28):
governments to be able to helpstudents be able to afford
things like food or expandinghealthcare systems so that
students have better access tohealth insurance coverage.
So we look at the cost ofattendance in a variety of ways.
Some ways requires a policy atthe federal or state level.
Sometimes we can work withinstitutions and get
(10:50):
institution-based change, butwe're always working on
affordability by any meansnecessary.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Well.
I really appreciate theholistic approach that you all
take, because it's I mean, it'ssuch a complicated picture like
all of these pieces, and hereyou are sort of working on sort
of these connected issues that Ithink sort of you know sort of
drive, long-term, you know ROIfor both individuals, but also
sort of community station, etcetera.
Where do you see the biggestgap between, like what students
(11:21):
are looking for, what employerneeds, and then like how
colleges structure theirprograms?
Speaker 2 (11:28):
So we talk with students extensively.
We actually have asemester-based leadership
development program called YoungAdvocates where we train them,
we educate them on policyadvocacy but, most importantly,
we get to listen to young peopleall the time.
It's a constant feedback loopand so when we hear from
(11:49):
students they're really lookingfor OK, we're in college, we're
getting this degree, but what'sthe next step?
How do we actually connect thisto a job?
Right, I can be a politicalscience major, but what does
that mean for a job?
So when we're thinking about ourfirst generation college
students specifically, wetypically don't have those
connections and we also don'thave the privilege of
(12:13):
circumstance to be able toparticipate in unpaid
internships so that we can dothat career exploration.
So what's important is that wework with institutions to create
more pathways so that studentscan have, you know, experiences
in the workplace, so they cankind of see what careers could
(12:33):
possibly look like when youngpeople enter the workforce,
wanting them to be able to comein and maybe have access to
understanding a little bit aboutthe career.
(12:54):
And I think really what it isis having to create partnerships
between campuses and employers,even if it's based on
geographic location.
These are the top employersnear this campus campus and then
creating partnerships fromthere.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Yeah, definitely, definitely.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Where do?
Speaker 1 (13:12):
you find that students feel that they're the
most let down from colleges likewhere their expectation just
just wasn't wasn't met.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
You know, I think for the most part again, when we're
talking about first generationcollege students, I really think
it's the affordability piece.
I think students are completelyunprepared for how much college
has started to cost.
Also, the cost of attendance isnot set for the four years that
(13:42):
they're supposed to be there,so they can go in thinking
school costs this much and ayear or two later tuition is
raised, the cost of housing israised, and so when you leave
your family with a four-yearstrategy to get through college
and everything changes, it doescreate a bit of a crisis.
And again, I can speak to thatfrom experience.
(14:04):
When you come from a workingclass family, you're the first
person to go to college.
I sat down with my mom, we madea plan on how much this should
cost us, how much she shouldgive me, and, and then the cost
of tuition changes and so that'sthat's only you know increased
over the years.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
So what I paid to go to college pales in comparison
to what students today arepaying to go to college that
every institution should bethinking about whether you're a
community college serving youknow members of you know your
(14:50):
community or you're a you know anational private university
with selective admission, likewhat are things that you would
say like really be focused here?
Speaker 2 (15:01):
So I think there's a few things that we could really
focus on.
One would be career pathwaysplanning help young people be
able to connect their degree topotential employment after
graduation.
Two I would say this is now.
This one's a little crazy, butlike some fixed costs so that
(15:22):
students don't have to feelsurprised when things change.
And then, lastly, being able toincrease the amount of aid that
does not have to be paid back.
A lot of our privateinstitutions have endowments and
the ability to help studentspay, and I think we need to look
(15:43):
at those formulas.
I just read yesterday, Ibelieve, that Harvard raised the
threshold for tuitionassistance, the family income
for tuition assistance, andthose are the types of signals
that I think students need tosee from all institutions.
Now, the funding structure forour public universities is a lot
(16:03):
different from our privateuniversities, so that actually
requires federal statepartnerships to ensure that our
institutions have the funding tosupport these first generation
and lower income students.
Yeah, completely.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Are there trends that you see sort of playing out
from your perspective, justbeing an expert that's, so you
know, deeply baked in policy andhas, I think, a real holistic
view of the sort ofinterconnected challenges that
young people are facing.
Are there trends that you seehigher education not paying
attention to that you wish theywould?
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Well, I wouldn't say that higher education isn't
paying attention.
I think higher ed is in tunewith what students need.
I don't know if they are veryreactive to what students need.
What I'll say here is we have agrowing trend of students not
(17:02):
having access to the basicthings that they need, to the
basic things that they need.
We now have a nationalcoalition on advocacy for
student basic needs becausethere are so many students who
don't have key things likesomewhere to sleep or enough
food to eat to sustain theirhealth.
That's not okay.
The little joke I remember whenI went to college the starving
(17:25):
student and I always wonderedwhy was that funny?
Why is that a rite of passage?
To have to go hungry to go tocollege?
And I think that's justsomething about us in our
country that we almost admirestruggle and hardship and I
(17:46):
actually don't believe that youhave to be hungry or couch
surfing or homeless to have avaluable college experience.
I would never want that tohappen to my daughter and I
don't think as a country, weshould trivialize that when it
happens to other students, and Ibelieve that higher education
(18:06):
and our government needs to feelthe same way and do everything
we possibly can to ensure thatour students can thrive while
they're in college Again,because we're depending on these
students and these young peopleto be the next generation of
leaders in our country.
Another thing I think I wouldfocus on would be that we ask
(18:32):
campus leadership to reallylisten and take heed to the
leadership of the young adultsand the students.
I think that's something thatdoesn't happen enough On some
campuses.
I can kind of see it changing,but how remarkable would it be
if we're able to transformhigher education by the very
consumers of higher education.
And then another national trendthat's a little alarming is
(18:56):
this overall plot of is collegeworth it?
And people using theaffordability piece and equating
it to a value.
The affordability piece andequating it to a value and we
know all the data points show,we know that college is
(19:17):
absolutely valuable, we knowit's absolutely worth it and we
know, if you're someone whowants to have higher wages, as
you projected, higher wages asyou move through life, that
college is the way to do it.
So I think we definitely needto begin to talk about higher
education just as what it is,and it's a vehicle for economic
mobility, and I think thosewould be the top priorities.
(19:38):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
I couldn't agree more with.
I mean, if you just look atlike a community college and the
economic impact it has overlike a 10 year period.
it's incredible, I mean, it'sbillions of dollars of economic
impact that that one single, youknow well-run community college
will actually have.
And you know, when you sort of,you know, think about the
(20:03):
flywheel sort of generationaldebt and things that sort of
happen, you know, as a result ofpeople actually sort of going
through that completing theirdegree.
It's a remarkable, remarkablething.
You said something else reallyinsightful around the you know,
higher ed not really leaninginto feedback of their consumers
(20:25):
.
Enough, can you say, becausethat's that is near and dear to
my.
Enough, can you say, becausethat's that is near and dear to
my heart.
Can you say more on that?
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Yeah, you know, when you think about any other
product right, you can think ofanything you visit a website,
you I don't know you buysomething from Amazon.
The seller is going to send youa survey and say how did we do?
Did you like this thing?
Did it work, you know?
And so if we think about thattype of longitudinal data from
(20:55):
students, I think this issomething that higher education
as a system could absolutelylean into.
We have alumni networks.
We ask students to come backand give money, but have we ever
asked them did this work outfor you?
If not, why?
What can we do to change it?
And so, when you think aboutstudents as a consumer of
education, they're absolutelythe number one clientele that
(21:18):
institutions of higher educationshould be speaking to.
You'd be surprised at how manyconversations that I am in where
I say something profound likehave we talked to the students
yet?
And a lot of the times, theresponse is no.
How should we do that?
(21:38):
And I think that's somethingthat, since we are always in
community with students oncampus, we maybe feel like
there's a feedback loop there,but I think we need to be a
little more intentional on howwe collect that feedback from
students and then changes thatcan be made as a result.
(21:59):
I recently took a group ofstudents over to the
chancellor's office the CalState chancellor's office.
They didn't even know they wereallowed to schedule a meeting
there to speak about it.
Now, that's not the fault ofthe chancellor.
I think that's a larger, deepercivic engagement issue that we
have.
But once they went there andwere able to discuss some of the
(22:22):
things that were important tothem, the chancellor's office
was very responsive, called indepartment heads to meet with
the students and they were ableto come up with an action plan,
because a lot of the things thatthe students were concerned
about were already happening.
The students just didn't know,and I think that that's why we
need this feedback loop and thiscommunication, because the
(22:45):
number one spokesperson for acollege community, a college
campus, should be the students,the people who are actually
receiving the education.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Really, you literally just described business, so I'm
so excited to see what you'redoing, so to speak, on that.
It's really incredible how eventhe small institutions really
run almost like massivegovernment agencies.
They move very slow.
They're.
They're not design oriented,right they're.
(23:18):
They're very sort of rigid interms of um and very top down
and it's um.
It's so unfortunate because,like I think the best product,
services, whatever, are sodesigned for the end user, right
, like they're they're they'repain points.
They understand this like theLike their pain points.
They understand this, like themarket, so well, they understand
(23:40):
what the person needs so wellthat it's like it's just a fit,
you know, and it's like it'sreally the sort of polar
opposite with sort oftraditional institutions, and it
is just one of those thingsthat there's better ways to do
it, and I'm glad to see you allsort of advocating for those
(24:01):
pieces of it, because the waycollege was designed so so long
ago is not, you know, adapted tomeeting the needs of these
people today.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
That's right, and who students are is so different
from who students were back then, and you know we used to call
them non-traditional students.
But when you think aboutcollege, we didn't look like
what a traditional studentlooked like.
We were all 18, but we didn'tlook like what you see on TV as
(24:33):
a traditional student.
So I think, for a long timeagain, when you're talking about
how higher education movesslowly, I also think it has to
do with American culture,because even when I was in
college, I was non-traditionaljust because of, like, my
(24:56):
economic background or myfamilial structure.
So I think non-traditionalstudents are students, which is
why folks call it today'sstudents.
I think we're just students.
This is just what our countrylooks like now, and so education
needs to evolve for theirclientele, and so education
(25:17):
needs to evolve for theirclientele Completely.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
How can university leaders really sort of tap into
the Invincibles?
Learn more about your research,like your incredible work, like
how do they do that?
Speaker 2 (25:30):
We are not hard to find.
We are at Young Invincibles, onTikTok, on Instagram For my
older millennials, we are stillon Facebook.
We are.
Where else are we?
We are on YouTube.
I am personally on LinkedIn myname Kristen McGuire where I
(25:51):
post all kinds of things highereducation, yeah, you can find us
pretty much anywhere.
We're there, and our website iswwwyounginvinciblesorg.
And that's invincibles.
Now, sometimes folks call usinvisibles, and that is what we
are not.
We are actually named after thehealth care debates of 2008,
(26:15):
2009, where folks were like, oh,the system will never work
because young people won'tenroll because they're so young
and so invincible, and so that'skind of how we were founded
under the health care debate andthen expanded into the issues
of higher education andworkforce workforce Very, very,
(26:37):
very cool, what with so manythings that are happening in our
country right now that, I think, give pause and, you know, make
people a little bit nervous,for you know, I think, for good
reason.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
What are, what are the few things that get you
optimistic, that get you excited, that help you sort of continue
to stay motivated to do theincredible work you're doing?
Speaker 2 (26:54):
So my team laughs at me because I start every morning
with radical optimism.
It's unfounded optimism.
I just wake up extremely happyevery day because if I maintain
whatever upset me or lowered mymood from the day before, then
it'll just be all downhill fromthere.
So I start at 150% every dayand then let it go from there.
(27:20):
So here's the one thing thatkeeps me really excited, and
it's the resilience of youngpeople.
Every major movement in ourcountry has been led by young
people.
When you think of anyhistorical movement in America,
young people have been front andcenter.
So what excites me is what isto come.
(27:43):
I'm really excited to be at anorganization where I get to be
in community with all of thesepowerful, passionate young
adults who do not feel afraid,who are not paralyzed and really
just want to create the bestversion of our country that we
possibly can for everyone wholives here.
I'm very proud to be a mother ofa soon-to-be young adult.
(28:06):
She's 17.
She is bright, she is ready totake on the world and she gets
to also begin her collegejourney in the fall, and I think
watching her and her friendsand the young people in our
leadership development programsin our offices.
Really just think about youknow why are things this way?
(28:28):
What can we do to make itbetter?
And just know, I know, thatthey will be able to do it, just
as generations before have beenable to create change in our
country.
And even though things mightseem a little hard right now,
movement work is always slow,but it's always steady and I'm
(28:48):
just excited.
Maybe we can't quite seebecause we're in the middle, in
the midst of some turmoil rightnow, but, like, what happens on
the other side is something thatreally just gives me hope every
single day.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
I think that's a beautiful answer and a great
place to end it.
Kristen, I appreciate you,thank you.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
Thank you.
Thanks so much for having me.
This was really fun.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Absolutely Kristen.
You are awesome, Thank you.
So I'm very honored to be with Kristen McGuire.
Kristen, you've got thisamazing career that has been
advocacy policy, highereducation reform.
You do some really interestingwork.
Can you just give us a quickintro about who you are and how
you ended up doing theincredible things that?
Speaker 2 (00:19):
you're doing?
Sure, so I'm Kristen McGuire,I'm the executive director at
Young Invincibles and I getasked this question a lot how
did I end up doing the job thatI'm doing?
So, fun fact, I think that I'vealways been doing this kind of
work.
I just didn't know that therewas actually a formal structure
(00:40):
to get paid for trying to changethe world, to get paid for
trying to change the world.
So I have memories, even inhigh school, before I was even
able to vote, that I remember Ilive in California and I
remember there was a law thatadults were having to vote on to
try juvenile offenders asadults and I felt very strongly
(01:02):
that that was the wrong thing todo, that kids needed some other
type of intervention.
So I went to my high school.
I was registering the18-year-olds to vote.
We got to change this guys.
Unfortunately, we were notsuccessful.
That did pass in California,but it was really, I think, the
first time I started to thinkthat young people had something
(01:23):
to say and we had to figure outhow to do it.
Now that was a long time ago,back in 2000.
But I think my career trajectoryjust kind of followed that to
where, when I got to college andstarted to learn that my
ability to kind of mobilizepeople and teach them about
(01:43):
issues was a strength that justI always thought was just
something I could do.
And then it became really clearwhen Barack Obama was running
for president and I found outthat what I was doing was called
a community organizer.
I had no idea.
I also didn't know you couldget paid for that Not very much,
(02:05):
mind you, but it was a job.
It was a job and so I changedmy major in college from
psychology because I failedpsych 101 and it was so easy in
high school I didn't understandhow I couldn't pass it in
college.
(02:25):
But I found a major calledpublic administration where I
started learning about likegovernment structures and I
think I just I went from there.
I've worked across a variety ofadvocacy issues, all which were
very important to me publichealth, education, and so when I
started working at YoungInvincibles back in like 2015,
(02:47):
it was almost like a dream cometrue, because I didn't know an
organization like this existedand I was very selective about
where I wanted to work and ithad to be issues that were
aligned with me personally andmy personal beliefs, and so I
just felt like the work that wedo across all of our issues, but
especially in higher education.
(03:07):
We're deeply, deeply alignedwith my own experiences
navigating higher ed as a firstgeneration college student, and
I've been here ever since I'mthe truest millennial.
This is the longest job I'veever had.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Very cool.
Can you contextualize what theInvincibles are and what you do?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Absolutely so.
We are actually the nation'slargest policy and advocacy
organization committed to youngadult issues.
Our issue areas are highereducation, health care workforce
and finance and civicengagement.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Yeah, very cool.
What are the biggest financialchallenges that you see young
people facing today?
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Well, when we think about financial challenges of
young adults, I can start withyou know, you hear young people.
This is the generation whereyoung people aren't moving out
of their parents' homes, right,and we kind of hear that as like
a tongue in cheek, maybe even apassive insult.
But what I would like tocounter that with is there's
(04:10):
actually no young person in theworld who doesn't want to try to
move out.
Our economy is in a state nowwhere young people cannot move
out of their homes, right, rentis high, the cost of living is
high, the cost of highereducation is skyrocketing and
wages are not following suit.
So young people in thisgeneration are in a precarious
(04:32):
situation where they're havingto delay adulthood for a variety
of economic factors, and so Iwould say the largest challenge
to young adults is that the costof growing up is exponentially
higher than it was forgenerations before us.
Long gone are the days whereyou can hear folks say, oh, I
(04:53):
worked a part time job, paid formyself to get through college
and then bought a house at 22years old.
That's, that's just notpossible in today's America.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
It's not, I mean just looking at.
I went to school at universityof connecticut and I was looking
at the tuition costs of that Ipaid relative to what they're
paying today and it was justlike it's down for me, um, like
the, the amount that you sort ofsee, but you know it leaves, I
think, young people in this likereally precarious situation
where it's like we know that ifyou go to college, you know the
(05:24):
data is going to bear us out,your earning potential goes up
so much over the course of yourlife, right, but at the same
time the cost of actuallygetting there is not financially
viable for the vast majority ofyoung people.
How do you sort of hold thosepositions and with, like you
know, the business model ofcollege essentially, potentially
(05:45):
, like you could argue, isbroken in some ways, right, in
terms of sort of cost of things?
How can institutions or how canyou know policies sort of
really sort of direct us in away that, like we can make it
more affordable?
Speaker 2 (05:57):
or gettable and, you know, and work better for young
people, absolutely, and it's notthat one could argue that it's
broken.
It is broken and I think whatwe need to.
Everything you said is correct,mike.
So having a college degree isstill the number one way to
increase one's earnings overtheir lifetime right, it's the
(06:20):
best way to create a pathway toeconomic mobility, especially if
you come from a working classor a low income family, right?
So, again, these are thechallenges, because these are
the same people.
When you think about the crisiswe have with student loan data,
these are the very student loandebt.
These are the very people whocarry the highest burden of debt
(06:42):
load in our country.
Who carry the highest burden ofdebt load in our country.
So there, right, there is theproblem where we've opened up
our school systems but haven'tnecessarily opened up pathways
to finance our education.
So, when we think about accessand affordability under higher
ed, those are two of the mainpolicy buckets that we focus in
for higher education.
(07:04):
There are a lot of pathways intohigher ed when affordability is
a challenge.
Most states have access systemswithin the state.
So for California, for example,we have our UC system, which
everyone knows, but our accessinstitution is the Cal State
system, so they were studentslike me.
(07:24):
I attended a Cal State.
The school is a little moreaffordable and you don't have to
have over 4.0 GPA to get in,and so these are the schools
that you know.
If you graduate high school inCalifornia, you'll likely have a
seat there, and a lot of stateshave those types of access
institutions, which is a veryviable pathway.
(07:46):
Community colleges are also aviable and affordable pathway
into a four-year degree, and Ithink what we really want to
focus on is assuring that, iffolks want the high school to
four-year pathway, that we havea way for them to be able to
afford it.
It's been our premise for verylong that if what we value in
(08:08):
our country is an educatedcitizenry, if what we value is
being able to plant the seedsfor our future leaders, our
future teachers, our futurepublic service workers, then we
need to make sure that theeducation pathway is affordable,
and this also segues intostudent debt right when we have
programs like public serviceloan forgiveness.
This should be our government'scommitment that we value these
(08:34):
professions, these career fields, and we want to make sure that
we can maybe even on the backend, make sure that education is
affordable for them.
So those are like the keytenets of affordability.
We need to ensure that ourgovernment works with the
institutions so that the folkswho need the most help
(08:54):
navigating higher education areable to receive it.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
I think about the.
I think one really massivechallenge to me is that with the
costs continue to go up forboth private and public state
institutions, especially theplaces that arguably could have
better outcomes.
(09:19):
To sort of come to that, areyou sort of more focused on
let's make sure that we haveequitable, accessible sort of
spaces and places, versustackling this sort of big thing
that is really out of ourcontrol, which is sort of like
private state kind of thing?
(09:39):
How are you thinking aboutthose two different things,
knowing that they're kind ofdifferent?
Speaker 2 (09:44):
So both ways.
Federally we advocate for aPell Grant to be expanded,
because Pell Grant will allowstudents to receive funds that
don't have to be repaid, and sowe work to have that expanded
every time it's possible.
We also work with stategovernments to increase
state-based aid.
(10:05):
So we have, for example, theMAP grant in Illinois or Cal
Grant in California.
So we kind of look at studentsbeing able to couple the grants
in order to kind of ease thecost of attendance.
And then there's a whole otherbucket when we think about basic
needs, where we're working withinstitutions and state
(10:28):
governments to be able to helpstudents be able to afford
things like food or expandinghealthcare systems so that
students have better access tohealth insurance coverage.
So we look at the cost ofattendance in a variety of ways.
Some ways requires a policy atthe federal or state level.
Sometimes we can work withinstitutions and get
(10:50):
institution-based change, butwe're always working on
affordability by any meansnecessary.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Well.
I really appreciate theholistic approach that you all
take, because it's I mean, it'ssuch a complicated picture like
all of these pieces, and hereyou are sort of working on sort
of these connected issues that Ithink sort of you know sort of
drive, long-term, you know ROIfor both individuals, but also
sort of community station, etcetera.
Where do you see the biggestgap between, like what students
(11:21):
are looking for, what employerneeds, and then like how
colleges structure theirprograms?
Speaker 2 (11:28):
So we talk with students extensively.
We actually have asemester-based leadership
development program called YoungAdvocates where we train them,
we educate them on policyadvocacy but, most importantly,
we get to listen to young peopleall the time.
It's a constant feedback loopand so when we hear from
(11:49):
students they're really lookingfor OK, we're in college, we're
getting this degree, but what'sthe next step?
How do we actually connect thisto a job?
Right, I can be a politicalscience major, but what does
that mean for a job?
So when we're thinking about ourfirst generation college
students specifically, wetypically don't have those
connections and we also don'thave the privilege of
(12:13):
circumstance to be able toparticipate in unpaid
internships so that we can dothat career exploration.
So what's important is that wework with institutions to create
more pathways so that studentscan have, you know, experiences
in the workplace, so they cankind of see what careers could
(12:33):
possibly look like when youngpeople enter the workforce,
wanting them to be able to comein and maybe have access to
understanding a little bit aboutthe career.
(12:54):
And I think really what it isis having to create partnerships
between campuses and employers,even if it's based on
geographic location.
These are the top employersnear this campus campus and then
creating partnerships fromthere.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Yeah, definitely, definitely.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Where do?
Speaker 1 (13:12):
you find that students feel that they're the
most let down from colleges likewhere their expectation just
just wasn't wasn't met.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
You know, I think for the most part again, when we're
talking about first generationcollege students, I really think
it's the affordability piece.
I think students are completelyunprepared for how much college
has started to cost.
Also, the cost of attendance isnot set for the four years that
(13:42):
they're supposed to be there,so they can go in thinking
school costs this much and ayear or two later tuition is
raised, the cost of housing israised, and so when you leave
your family with a four-yearstrategy to get through college
and everything changes, it doescreate a bit of a crisis.
And again, I can speak to thatfrom experience.
(14:04):
When you come from a workingclass family, you're the first
person to go to college.
I sat down with my mom, we madea plan on how much this should
cost us, how much she shouldgive me, and, and then the cost
of tuition changes and so that'sthat's only you know increased
over the years.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
So what I paid to go to college pales in comparison
to what students today arepaying to go to college that
every institution should bethinking about whether you're a
community college serving youknow members of you know your
(14:50):
community or you're a you know anational private university
with selective admission, likewhat are things that you would
say like really be focused here?
Speaker 2 (15:01):
So I think there's a few things that we could really
focus on.
One would be career pathwaysplanning help young people be
able to connect their degree topotential employment after
graduation.
Two I would say this is now.
This one's a little crazy, butlike some fixed costs so that
(15:22):
students don't have to feelsurprised when things change.
And then, lastly, being able toincrease the amount of aid that
does not have to be paid back.
A lot of our privateinstitutions have endowments and
the ability to help studentspay, and I think we need to look
(15:43):
at those formulas.
I just read yesterday, Ibelieve, that Harvard raised the
threshold for tuitionassistance, the family income
for tuition assistance, andthose are the types of signals
that I think students need tosee from all institutions.
Now, the funding structure forour public universities is a lot
(16:03):
different from our privateuniversities, so that actually
requires federal statepartnerships to ensure that our
institutions have the funding tosupport these first generation
and lower income students.
Yeah, completely.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Are there trends that you see sort of playing out
from your perspective, justbeing an expert that's, so you
know, deeply baked in policy andhas, I think, a real holistic
view of the sort ofinterconnected challenges that
young people are facing.
Are there trends that you seehigher education not paying
attention to that you wish theywould?
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Well, I wouldn't say that higher education isn't
paying attention.
I think higher ed is in tunewith what students need.
I don't know if they are veryreactive to what students need.
What I'll say here is we have agrowing trend of students not
(17:02):
having access to the basicthings that they need, to the
basic things that they need.
We now have a nationalcoalition on advocacy for
student basic needs becausethere are so many students who
don't have key things likesomewhere to sleep or enough
food to eat to sustain theirhealth.
That's not okay.
The little joke I remember whenI went to college the starving
(17:25):
student and I always wonderedwhy was that funny?
Why is that a rite of passage?
To have to go hungry to go tocollege?
And I think that's justsomething about us in our
country that we almost admirestruggle and hardship and I
(17:46):
actually don't believe that youhave to be hungry or couch
surfing or homeless to have avaluable college experience.
I would never want that tohappen to my daughter and I
don't think as a country, weshould trivialize that when it
happens to other students, and Ibelieve that higher education
(18:06):
and our government needs to feelthe same way and do everything
we possibly can to ensure thatour students can thrive while
they're in college Again,because we're depending on these
students and these young peopleto be the next generation of
leaders in our country.
Another thing I think I wouldfocus on would be that we ask
(18:32):
campus leadership to reallylisten and take heed to the
leadership of the young adultsand the students.
I think that's something thatdoesn't happen enough On some
campuses.
I can kind of see it changing,but how remarkable would it be
if we're able to transformhigher education by the very
consumers of higher education.
And then another national trendthat's a little alarming is
(18:56):
this overall plot of is collegeworth it?
And people using theaffordability piece and equating
it to a value.
The affordability piece andequating it to a value and we
know all the data points show,we know that college is
(19:17):
absolutely valuable, we knowit's absolutely worth it and we
know, if you're someone whowants to have higher wages, as
you projected, higher wages asyou move through life, that
college is the way to do it.
So I think we definitely needto begin to talk about higher
education just as what it is,and it's a vehicle for economic
mobility, and I think thosewould be the top priorities.
(19:38):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
I couldn't agree more with.
I mean, if you just look atlike a community college and the
economic impact it has overlike a 10 year period.
it's incredible, I mean, it'sbillions of dollars of economic
impact that that one single, youknow well-run community college
will actually have.
And you know, when you sort of,you know, think about the
(20:03):
flywheel sort of generationaldebt and things that sort of
happen, you know, as a result ofpeople actually sort of going
through that completing theirdegree.
It's a remarkable, remarkablething.
You said something else reallyinsightful around the you know,
higher ed not really leaninginto feedback of their consumers
(20:25):
.
Enough, can you say, becausethat's that is near and dear to
my.
Enough, can you say, becausethat's that is near and dear to
my heart.
Can you say more on that?
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Yeah, you know, when you think about any other
product right, you can think ofanything you visit a website,
you I don't know you buysomething from Amazon.
The seller is going to send youa survey and say how did we do?
Did you like this thing?
Did it work, you know?
And so if we think about thattype of longitudinal data from
(20:55):
students, I think this issomething that higher education
as a system could absolutelylean into.
We have alumni networks.
We ask students to come backand give money, but have we ever
asked them did this work outfor you?
If not, why?
What can we do to change it?
And so, when you think aboutstudents as a consumer of
education, they're absolutelythe number one clientele that
(21:18):
institutions of higher educationshould be speaking to.
You'd be surprised at how manyconversations that I am in where
I say something profound likehave we talked to the students
yet?
And a lot of the times, theresponse is no.
How should we do that?
(21:38):
And I think that's somethingthat, since we are always in
community with students oncampus, we maybe feel like
there's a feedback loop there,but I think we need to be a
little more intentional on howwe collect that feedback from
students and then changes thatcan be made as a result.
(21:59):
I recently took a group ofstudents over to the
chancellor's office the CalState chancellor's office.
They didn't even know they wereallowed to schedule a meeting
there to speak about it.
Now, that's not the fault ofthe chancellor.
I think that's a larger, deepercivic engagement issue that we
have.
But once they went there andwere able to discuss some of the
(22:22):
things that were important tothem, the chancellor's office
was very responsive, called indepartment heads to meet with
the students and they were ableto come up with an action plan,
because a lot of the things thatthe students were concerned
about were already happening.
The students just didn't know,and I think that that's why we
need this feedback loop and thiscommunication, because the
(22:45):
number one spokesperson for acollege community, a college
campus, should be the students,the people who are actually
receiving the education.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Really, you literally just described business, so I'm
so excited to see what you'redoing, so to speak, on that.
It's really incredible how eventhe small institutions really
run almost like massivegovernment agencies.
They move very slow.
They're.
They're not design oriented,right they're.
(23:18):
They're very sort of rigid interms of um and very top down
and it's um.
It's so unfortunate because,like I think the best product,
services, whatever, are sodesigned for the end user, right
, like they're they're they'repain points.
They understand this like theLike their pain points.
They understand this, like themarket, so well, they understand
(23:40):
what the person needs so wellthat it's like it's just a fit,
you know, and it's like it'sreally the sort of polar
opposite with sort oftraditional institutions, and it
is just one of those thingsthat there's better ways to do
it, and I'm glad to see you allsort of advocating for those
(24:01):
pieces of it, because the waycollege was designed so so long
ago is not, you know, adapted tomeeting the needs of these
people today.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
That's right, and who students are is so different
from who students were back then, and you know we used to call
them non-traditional students.
But when you think aboutcollege, we didn't look like
what a traditional studentlooked like.
We were all 18, but we didn'tlook like what you see on TV as
(24:33):
a traditional student.
So I think, for a long timeagain, when you're talking about
how higher education movesslowly, I also think it has to
do with American culture,because even when I was in
college, I was non-traditionaljust because of, like, my
(24:56):
economic background or myfamilial structure.
So I think non-traditionalstudents are students, which is
why folks call it today'sstudents.
I think we're just students.
This is just what our countrylooks like now, and so education
needs to evolve for theirclientele, and so education
(25:17):
needs to evolve for theirclientele Completely.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
How can university leaders really sort of tap into
the Invincibles?
Learn more about your research,like your incredible work, like
how do they do that?
Speaker 2 (25:30):
We are not hard to find.
We are at Young Invincibles, onTikTok, on Instagram For my
older millennials, we are stillon Facebook.
We are.
Where else are we?
We are on YouTube.
I am personally on LinkedIn myname Kristen McGuire where I
(25:51):
post all kinds of things highereducation, yeah, you can find us
pretty much anywhere.
We're there, and our website iswwwyounginvinciblesorg.
And that's invincibles.
Now, sometimes folks call usinvisibles, and that is what we
are not.
We are actually named after thehealth care debates of 2008,
(26:15):
2009, where folks were like, oh,the system will never work
because young people won'tenroll because they're so young
and so invincible, and so that'skind of how we were founded
under the health care debate andthen expanded into the issues
of higher education andworkforce workforce Very, very,
(26:37):
very cool, what with so manythings that are happening in our
country right now that, I think, give pause and, you know, make
people a little bit nervous,for you know, I think, for good
reason.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
What are, what are the few things that get you
optimistic, that get you excited, that help you sort of continue
to stay motivated to do theincredible work you're doing?
Speaker 2 (26:54):
So my team laughs at me because I start every morning
with radical optimism.
It's unfounded optimism.
I just wake up extremely happyevery day because if I maintain
whatever upset me or lowered mymood from the day before, then
it'll just be all downhill fromthere.
So I start at 150% every dayand then let it go from there.
(27:20):
So here's the one thing thatkeeps me really excited, and
it's the resilience of youngpeople.
Every major movement in ourcountry has been led by young
people.
When you think of anyhistorical movement in America,
young people have been front andcenter.
So what excites me is what isto come.
(27:43):
I'm really excited to be at anorganization where I get to be
in community with all of thesepowerful, passionate young
adults who do not feel afraid,who are not paralyzed and really
just want to create the bestversion of our country that we
possibly can for everyone wholives here.
I'm very proud to be a mother ofa soon-to-be young adult.
(28:06):
She's 17.
She is bright, she is ready totake on the world and she gets
to also begin her collegejourney in the fall, and I think
watching her and her friendsand the young people in our
leadership development programsin our offices.
Really just think about youknow why are things this way?
(28:28):
What can we do to make itbetter?
And just know, I know, thatthey will be able to do it, just
as generations before have beenable to create change in our
country.
And even though things mightseem a little hard right now,
movement work is always slow,but it's always steady and I'm
(28:48):
just excited.
Maybe we can't quite seebecause we're in the middle, in
the midst of some turmoil rightnow, but, like, what happens on
the other side is something thatreally just gives me hope every
single day.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
I think that's a beautiful answer and a great
place to end it.
Kristen, I appreciate you,thank you.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
Thank you.
Thanks so much for having me.
This was really fun.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Absolutely Kristen.
You are awesome, Thank you.
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