February 21, 2025 • 42 mins
In this part II conversation with Michael Avaltroni, President of Fairleigh Dickinson University, we dive deep into the challenges and opportunities reshaping higher education.
Michael shares:
- How FDU is carving out niche strengths in health sciences and healthcare-adjacent fields.
- Why partnerships with community colleges and healthcare systems are essential to solving enrollment and workforce challenges.
- His bold vision for campus redesign—turning them into vibrant, lifelong learning hubs.
- How FDU is tackling the "broken business model" of higher ed by focusing on ROI and student outcomes.
This conversation is a must-listen for anyone invested in the future of higher ed and its impact on our communities.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Awesome, well, so thrilled to be here again with
Michael Avletroni for part two.
Michael, thank you for beinghere.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
It's a pleasure to be here, pleasure to reconnect.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Yeah Well, I really appreciate the opportunity to
speak to you in greater depth.
We covered so much ground in ourfirst conversation.
We're talking about everythingfrom, you know, institutional
priorities to how you thinkabout sort of revenue
diversification and starting toreally sort of scratch the
surface on how you can deliveran educational product.
(00:33):
That is really sort of meeting,you know, the needs of student
bases while at the same timeworking as a sustainable
business model, and that seemedlike a really sort of ripe area
to explore in a secondconversation model, and that
seemed like a really sort ofripe area to explore in a second
conversation.
So you know, one of the things Iwould love to sort of dive
deeper with because I thinkyou've got some really good
insight here and I've seen youspeak on this in a few different
(00:54):
sort of spaces but youemphasize the importance of
focusing on trying to sort of bethe right things to the right
kind of students rather thanjust trying to sort of serve all
of the needs, and, historically, how a lot of institutions have
tried to sort of be the rightthings to the right kind of
students rather than just tryingto sort of serve all of the
needs and, historically, how alot of institutions have tried
to sort of be all the things.
Can you talk through a littlebit about how you identify and
(01:14):
prioritize your core strengthsand then look to sort of
position those in such a crowdedspace?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Sure, I would be happy to.
So I think it's such animportant piece of the future is
really carving out those nicheareas and those specific
identities that you can thrivein Right, and so for us it was
actually, I think, somethingthat I was fortunate enough to
have some historyinstitutionally with.
I was brought on to be a memberof faculty back in 2003 and
(01:44):
thought I'd be doing that as mycareer and very quickly actually
moved into creating our Schoolof Pharmacy and Health Sciences
as a new program and in thatsort of program set we created a
number of different healthcarerelated programs and the
interesting thing was ouraspiration in all of them was to
actually kind of create afuture designed program, really
thinking about where healthcarewas going rather than where it
(02:06):
had been, and so we leanedheavily into that.
That became a part of ouridentity.
We created a program inpharmacy, physician assistance
studies, occupational therapy,public health and social work,
which were all new, and theyactually complemented a number
of programs that we had inpsychology, counseling, nursing,
allied health.
So we had this really goodrounded complement of programs
(02:28):
and that became ultimately wherewe decided that we were going
to begin the exploration of aheavier lean.
We realized we've been doingthat well, we've developed an
identity and, most importantly,as the dynamics change in higher
education and what a collegedegree is and what does it mean
and why is it valuable, in myestimation, the place that that
(02:48):
will be the easiest to generatethe answer why, and in terms of
higher ed, and why would I spendthis money in this time is in
the health sciences.
And the reason is twofold.
First, because there is no wayaround needing an education to
become a trained and licensednurse, physician, assistant,
pharmacist.
To qualify for licensure youneed a degree.
(03:09):
That will always be the case.
I don't anticipate that's goinganywhere.
And the second thing is there'ssuch tremendous opportunity and
tremendous need right nowacross the continuum, most
exacerbated in nursing, whereyou see tens of thousands of
shortages in the space locally,regionally and nationally, and
(03:31):
that creates these opportunitiesto really rethink the ability
to build this workforce pipelineand to create these
opportunities to developtomorrow's healthcare leaders.
So that became one of thethings that we leaned heavily
into, largely because of thefact that all of the dynamics
really aligned very well.
They aligned from the thingsthat we felt we were doing well,
the things that we had investedin and built, but, more
(03:53):
importantly, the places where wefelt the market was going to
continue to go in the future.
As we continue to see studentbehaviors change the idea of
what does a student want from acollege degree and where does a
student want to go with acollege degree we feel good
about this future, but the otherpiece that we sort of have
described in terms of makingthis pivot is that we don't want
(04:15):
to be a healthcare-onlyinstitution.
We want to be a healthcareinstitution with health
adjacencies with otherprofessional focuses, and so
we've started to now take thelens of view of well, what if we
started to look at some of ourother programs and looked at
them not to be exclusively forthe focus of healthcare but to
have an opportunity to focus?
(04:35):
Examples that are easy to comeby are things like business,
where you can think of certainlythe business of healthcare and
a business degree with that typeof alignment.
But we've started to look atother programs, like our
hospitality program, where thehospitality of healthcare is
actually a very important partof the healthcare industry,
because patients oftentimes ratea physician practice or a
(04:57):
hospital more likely on how theywere treated in the waiting
room and in the length of timeit took to see someone and how
they were greeted than byactually the clinical care.
So having this complementarity,we feel like, is opening up new
opportunities and ultimately forus it sort of comes full circle
to the original question youasked, which is we felt that we
(05:20):
were able to really createidentity pieces that were true
to mission, that were true tothe focus of where we believe we
were investing and headed but,more importantly, things we
could do well that align withthe demands of the workforce,
align with the demands and needsof our students and we hope
will set us up not to againclose down to a real, real tight
(05:41):
circle but to have the circlebe sort of concentric, to have
that core be a solid healthcarefocus and the adjacencies
beginning to widen that lens ofview.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
I love that answer.
I mean, I love the way thatyou're sort of pulling in your
mission and your strength withthe real sort of needs that are
out there and then also lookingfor how can you sort of have
this lens of?
We have the strategic focus, wehave this competitive advantage
and niche here.
How do we layer on those piecesA little bit of like a sidecar
(06:16):
tangent to that.
Like, have there beenconversations with everything
that it seemed that like thebroader healthcare conversation
really got kicked up nationally,regionally and all sorts of
spaces, with the UnitedHealthcare CEO sort of shooting.
Has that had any sort of effectin terms of the conversations
on the ground and what thatlooks like?
(06:36):
It strikes me as like just thetiny bit of diving and
consulting work I've done kindof in those spaces, like such a
layered issue with like all thesort of competing parties and
sort of like the insurance sortof nature of it and then the et
cetera, et cetera.
Right, but what have thoseconversations looked like?
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Yeah, you know it's so interesting because you see
that what it really did was itput into the lens of focus.
How difficult the environmentis in health care right now.
how difficult the environment isin healthcare right now.
Right, it's tragic that somehowa death, a murder, became a
polarizing conversation.
It speaks to a lot of otherthings that are concerning about
(07:16):
society and culture, but whatis also pointed out was that
really, the reaction had nothingto do with the CEO, what had to
do with the corporation and thefundamental brokenness of the
business model of health care.
Right, that ultimately, all ofthe pushback and all of the
people who were saying this wasa good thing or this was
(07:37):
understandable which is ahorrible thought to even
contemplate, to even contemplateit all comes from the fact that
what we realize is that thesefeelings are coming from a much
deeper frustration with a systemthat has really let down
American society.
Right, that, fundamentally,this sort of payer-based system
where there are only a few whoprofit greatly at the expense of
(08:00):
all others, is the breakdown,and so we've obviously been much
more focused, really and wethink this is a key linchpin to
our partnership on reallyactually an alignment of
partnership between highereducation, our institution and
the health system that we areexcited about sort of beginning
to launch partnership with,because we believe that the
(08:21):
solution to addressing a lot ofthese issues comes from really
being able to create a robustecosystem that aligns education
with health care in a way whereyou can actually educate people
who are ready to navigate thesystem, but ultimately educate
in volume, so that you don'thave these mass shortages and
(08:42):
then can begin to look at thecritical business pieces that
allow this, to begin addressingthe needs of people, rather than
oftentimes really leaving thesehuge gaps.
Right, and you hear it all thetime.
It's frustration, certainly,and people not getting
reimbursed or paid, but a lot ofthe frustrations also come from
people saying I needed anappointment with my cardiologist
(09:03):
and they have something nextyear, right, and you know that
it's your heart and you don'twant to sit and wait eight
months, six months or whatever.
And yet the frustration is suchthat there's all of these pain
points and we can only alleviatethem by really starting to take
a comprehensive look, and webelieve we have a role to play
in that.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Yeah, well said, it's such a layered issue and we
could probably spend an houreasily just sort of just
dissecting the various sort oflayers of this, interconnected
pieces and all of that.
But really really cool to justsee how sort of your education
is sort of layering on to notjust the demand needs but the
sort of multifaceted nature ofsort of educating people in the
(09:42):
spaces.
And that kind of brings me toanother question, which you know
, talking about sort of brokensystems and operational costs.
You know you've been reallysort of open about, you know,
the fundamental business modelof higher education being broken
or at the very least neededsome like massive sort of
revamping right to like massivesort of revamping right.
Can you talk a little bit aboutyou know how you've essentially
(10:09):
sort of like identifiedopportunities for cost savings
without compromising studentexperience and how you're really
sort of like playing with ittoo?
We talked, we started to cover alittle bit of ground with the
first part, but it strikes me isthat with all these sort of
different sort of programs thatyou've been able to spin up and
the sort of synergies thatyou've had kind of between some
of these different sort ofentities and areas, you've found
interesting ways to sort oflike educate at bigger scale, to
(10:33):
find cost savings, to dodifferent things, to sort of you
know, still meet your mission,demand and all of that and push
the institution forward.
What's that sort of costbenefit look like for you?
Speaker 2 (10:46):
there, sure.
So this is really a criticalpiece to where we feel that
higher ed has to go right andultimately we believe in
building an ecosystem that weare a part of, but not the
absolute end.
All be all for right, and so wehave to stop the reality that I
think is far too pervasive inhigher ed of feeling like
(11:07):
everyone's in competition withone another.
Right, because ultimately, ifwe keep competing with one
another to try and fill seats,we're doing so at our own peril
and the peril of the entiresystem.
We need to really embrace thisecosystem in a sense of starting
(11:28):
in the high school, to thetwo-year community college, to
the four-year institution, tothe workforce provider.
There's a continuity therewhere we can exist together and,
rather than seeing ourselves asan either or or a competitor
one to the other, to actually bea continuum right.
So my thought in kind of how Iwould love to see us and we're
approaching this as we begin toaddress this is to really not
(11:51):
exclusively get out ofundergraduate education in the
first two years but, tounderstand that we don't need to
be there for every student,that it is not the right fit for
every student to go to afour-year private institution
and start there.
For many it's a great experience.
For many others it's either tooexpensive, it's setting
students up to fail, it'ssetting students up to make this
(12:13):
transition before they're ready.
So the thing we would love isto really embrace high schools,
beginning to look atpartnerships with the two-year
college to do robust dual-enrollprogramming to really begin
allowing students to get thathead start.
I actually have in my own homemy own experience.
My kids took advantage ofdual-enroll.
My oldest will graduate in May,a year ahead of time.
(12:36):
My middle will go into collegewith a year of advanced standing
.
For us it was a hugeopportunity on multiple fronts.
They got a tremendousexperience at the two-year
institution but more importantly, they get this head start in
time and cost and everythingelse.
That is a huge opportunity formany students and in some cases
(12:57):
for those students it means thedifference between college being
a reality and not, and thengetting the two-year college to
be the sort of finisher forthose students that want that
approach to complete theassociate's degree then makes
for a clean handoff to us, notat the expense of giving away
two years, but we can then bethe provider of the additional
(13:17):
two years and, frankly, if astudent is coming in
well-prepared and ahead ofschedule, actually throw on a
third year towards a master'sdegree in a combined degree
setting.
And the other piece in theworkforce side is, if we build
these partnerships, particularlyin programs like in the health
sciences, where a student canbecome a two-year graduate of a
(13:37):
nursing program, become an LPNor an RN, begin working at the
health system, the health systemwill actually pay for them to
go back in school and completethe degree.
So it's a win on every front.
And this allows us to addressthe cost issue, because it
allows us to run at a scale thatwe can be much more focused.
(13:58):
And again it goes back to thatnot being everything to everyone
, because ultimately, when youtry and be everything to
everyone, the only way you cansucceed is if you have capacity.
In the current economics and thecurrent environment of higher
education, there will not beexcess capacity.
There is an oversupply of seatsand not enough students to fill
(14:19):
them, which means the analogy ofrunning the planes half filled,
right, and you know fromairlines or the trains or
anywhere else.
When you're running with emptyseats, ultimately you are going
to inevitably be running with alack of efficiency.
That's probably going tobankrupt you, and we're seeing
that right now in higher ed.
A much more focused approach onfilling those things we do well
(14:40):
and doing them with excellence,I think allows us to manage our
costs, allows us to carve outour space and, most importantly,
allows us to do what we reallydo well for students, which is
provide that comprehensive,focused education in program
areas for students who arematuring through to prepare them
for the workforce.
That would be a phenomenalstory for us to be able to tell
(15:03):
and I think it's a win, not aloss, for us if we're partnering
with community colleges so thatthey do what they do with
excellence and we receive thestudents ready and willing to go
and take it up to that nextlevel.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Yeah that's so well said.
You've talked aboutpartnerships and collaborations
a few times already in theconversation.
Can you just walk through whatare some like the partnerships
with community colleges or uhlike uh an affiliation with a
(15:43):
regional hospital or like thosekind of pieces where you you
have some sort of agreements orcontracts and those kind of
pieces like those can get reallysort of tricky to execute when
you've got very, very differentsort of missions and you're
trying to sort of meet themiddle on those two pieces.
So, like what have been some ofthe like, the like the keys to
really sort of like creating,sustaining those, so that
(16:03):
they're like you've got theflywheel of of excellence
between between those two things.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
It's a it's a really tough thing, One of the barriers
that we often encounter, justas a default, particularly with
places like two-year schools.
By default, usually the go-tois a state public institution,
right, and because of the costalignment as well, even though
really when you get through theactual total packaging of a
(16:29):
student with aid and scholarship, dollar for dollar, there's
almost no difference.
But the fundamental stickerprice, if you will, oftentimes
makes the default we'll go tothe public and we'll build the
partnership there.
So it's having to re-educate alittle bit and in some cases, to
create some sort of strategiesaround pricing and packaging and
others, to kind of kick openthe door a bit, because the
default, I think, is oftentimesto go to the ones that are sort
(16:52):
of a known entity within thestate system.
But one of the other thingsthat we quickly learned is that
you also in this area, need tobe hyper-focused, right.
The biggest danger you run isto create a blanket affiliation
agreement where you have ahundred students but they're
spread across 30 programs witheach of them having three or
four students, at which pointyou're going to go put yourself
(17:13):
out of business trying to managethat right.
So we've started to even theresay what do you do?
Well, right, because thecommunity colleges, the two-year
colleges or even other partners, there's a focus and an
interest there.
It's not equally yoked whereeverything is equal In some
cases where we started to offeractually education in the
community through corporatesettings.
(17:34):
We've also said what do youwant?
Rather than let's do everything, you have a strategy.
You're a healthcare business.
You probably want a healthcarefocused degree.
You have a high volume ofstudents in an associate's
degree in social work, so youprobably want a social work
continuity plan.
So we can really create andarticulate again focused vision
(17:56):
rather than.
I think the tendency and thetemptation is always we wanna do
it all.
We want to sign this thing andhave it be 50 pages and
identified.
I think that's a losing handbecause ultimately the only way
that works is if there's volume.
And what we're seeing now isthat I think the biggest enemy
to higher ed, probably for thepast 30 years, has been because
(18:17):
there's so many obligations theyhave and nobody likes to get
away from the things by sayingwe're not going to offer this
anymore.
We've run a whole load of themat very, very inefficient scale
right, and we've seen it even inlegacy community college
partnerships we've had wherewe're down to 20 students and
we're maintaining this thing andthis engine that has to keep
(18:37):
churning and you're saying atthe end of the day that the
numbers just don't work.
We'd be much better saying wecan hyper-focus two programs,
let's start there.
If they're a huge, smashingsuccess, we'll come back for two
more.
If they are the two that wewant, we'll stop there and we'll
call it a victory for everyoneinvolved.
So I think it's so much of a.
It just comes back to thecontinued conversation around
(19:00):
alignment right, and we know wehave this, we know you need that
.
This is where we see theconnection and it's not wide,
it's narrow, because I thinknarrowing the focus is the way
we can create economies of scale.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Yeah, really, really well said, and I think it also
sort of connects to the position, the conversation that we've
had in terms of sort of theposition of FTU and not trying
to be everything to everystudent and really sort of
(19:35):
focusing on who's the studentthat we can really sort of.
What are the differentiatorsthat we have With that?
Right, like, the one of thetricky things that I hear from
like leaders all of the time isthat you know, you've got this
sort of broader narrative aroundhigher education that isn't
positive, like you know, quiteoften, right, and I think to to
(20:01):
a fault, everybody gets ropedinto this like sort of like
bigger conversation around, likedeclining value of higher
education or those type ofpieces, but like to the
detriment of like individualbrand.
Right, and I think you'reyou're you're also trying to
sort of like signal the valuethat you have to your target
market and do that in a waythat's sort of like compelling
and different, like how do youthink about that piece of it?
Right, we've got a very, Ithink, skeptical and rightfully
so Gen Z population where you'vegot so much of your marketing
(20:24):
and your targeting is reallysort of focused, kind of in and
around there.
How do you think about thatsort of overcoming that
skepticism piece of it and sortof signaling in a way that's
like authentic and real andthose kind of pieces?
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Yeah, it's a great question because to me there's
been and I'm not saying it's notimportant there's been way too
much focus on the enrollmentcliff, where they talk about,
you know, the declining numbersof students, and much too little
focus on my much bigger fear,which is I'm more worried about
(20:58):
the population walking away fromseeing what we do is valuable,
right, and that is a muchgreater danger because
demographics are what they areand whether we should have been
more prepared for them or not.
The reality is you can predictthe ebb and flow based upon how
many seats are right now in thefirst grade in the towns in New
Jersey, what the likelihood isgonna be in 10 years that those
first graders become 12thgraders who are making their way
(21:19):
to you.
That doesn't worry me, althoughobviously there's concerns.
The bigger worry is exactlywhat you said, which is that the
public has soured on what we doIn some cases.
I often joke with people.
I said I've gone in what feelslike a fairly short amount of
time in my career, from going toa place where people lauded and
were impressed by what you doto now where it feels like you
(21:41):
work for big tobacco right,where you have to kind of start
with the apology.
I'm really sorry, right, andthat's a sad state of affairs
and, to be honest, not all of it, but a lot of it is
self-inflicted.
Right, we have done a lot ofdamage ourselves, I think, by
creating this sort of gatekeepermentality, saying that we're
kind of holier than thou, andnot really addressing the core
(22:03):
issues, which are that peopleare burying themselves in debt
and there needs to be an ROI.
I think actually just to take astep back, I think the biggest
mistake that has been made wastelling every student you're
only a success if you go tocollege, because what it did was
it set up a boatload of falseexpectations and it set up a
(22:24):
whole bunch of disappointedpeople who probably would have
been better off pursuing thetrades or pursuing a non-college
required career, where theywould have excelled and been
happy and satisfied, rather thanbeing sort of set up in this
place.
And I think part of what I'vebeen trying to do is some of it
needs to be owning up to thereality and kind of saying we
(22:46):
are taking it upon ourselves todo better.
Part of it is speaking to thefact that there is a discrepancy
in the ROI of a college degreeand we can't ignore that right.
I think we have to acknowledgethat there is a reality, like
we've talked about, in thehealth sciences a four-year
degree in nursing assures thatyou will have a job, probably
(23:07):
now and always, where afour-year degree in something
else may not right.
And that's not a falsehood,it's not a that's unfair, it's a
reality and I think that's partof what we have to get to
comfortable with.
But I think it goes a stepfurther, which is we know that
the way in which students learn,the way in which they engage,
(23:31):
the way in which they aregratified and satisfied
immediately and have differentneeds and wants has to mean that
we change the way in which wedeliver the educational product
as well.
The days of sitting in aclassroom, 20 people in a
lecture, with me talking forthree hours is gone and not
returning.
It needs to be engaged learning.
(23:52):
It needs to be honing thoseskills to really make future
leaders right.
I always say that the realityof what we should be thinking
about is not majors.
It should be a comprehensiveleadership curriculum that takes
a look at all of thosetransferable skills that won't
go away just because AI comes orjust because a new technology
(24:14):
rolls out.
That are the things that youcould take and are portable with
you in your first job all theway through to your last job.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Yeah, I love that, I love that.
I love this sort of transitionof skills piece of it and just
the fact that you really sort ofowning that like hey, guess
what Major matters.
And listen, I've worked at somany liberal arts schools.
I was a career server as adirector at many liberal arts
schools and I'm a data guy, solike you can't get away from the
(24:42):
data right like there's.
There's just straight up acorrelation between what you
major and the type of work thatyou do and sort of trying to
sort of decouple it or demystifylike whatever you're sort of
saying I'm not saying you're notgetting amazing skills from the
education, but it's justreality is like your major is
going to sort of impact yourcareer trajectory, especially
(25:03):
early in your career, andthere's no way of really sort of
getting around that.
One thing that sort of alludedto when you were sort of talking
about this sort of curricularkind of piece of it, and this is
something I haven't figured outif there's really like truly
national best practices thathave been squarely figured
around, like what's theco-curricular experience look
(25:27):
like right with, with everythinghappening, with all the sort of
changes that are happening andthe delivery models kind of, per
your point, needing to changeright, with the nature of
students just being differentand being really sort of
tech-centric and the actual sortof lived experience of being on
a campus, changing our businessmodels, changing all of those
(25:48):
pieces.
Maybe that two-part is likewhat's the sort of co-curricular
experience sort of going to belooking like at FDU?
And two, how are you liketraining and positioning staff
to really sort of like deliveron that, right?
Because both of those just seemlike they're really fast moving
and tricky things to like lockdown and I don't know if I've
(26:08):
seen anybody be completelyhonest and be like I'm not
exactly sure what this lookslike, right?
So I'm curious on your thoughtson those pieces.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
No, it's an excellent question and honestly it's the
million dollar question becauseI think somebody who finds the
answer to that will corner themarket right In a sense.
You know it's interesting andI'll go back to actually my
experience.
When I was dean of our pharmacyand health sciences program, we
created a whole co-curriculartranscript.
That actually was really a kindof a pioneering one,
(26:36):
particularly for the healthsciences space, because those
educational focal kind ofcurricula are usually all about
you got to take this and thentake that and take the other
thing.
So it was kind of a little bitoutside the box but it was
fascinating because we foundthat so much of the student
experience outside of theclassroom, but even in some
(26:56):
cases outside of healthcarepractice, was the most
meaningful for them.
Right, we rolled out a robustservice learning set of
initiative.
Students could take servicelearning courses as elected
Almost 201, when we would dofocus groups afterward with
graduating students, they wouldsay the transformational
experience for them, those thatwent on, it was the service
(27:17):
learning trip that they took togive kids the world down in
Florida to work with chronicallyand terminally ill children, to
work in a residential treatmentfacility, to work with the
homeless, and the program wasnot designed so they were
delivering health care becausethey were not equipped to do
that.
It was designed to go and bemake balloon animals with the
(27:39):
kids, but what they were clearlygetting out of this was they
were getting this experience ofempathy.
They were getting thisexperience of understanding your
role as a health care providerand how you communicate with
people, how you listen to theirstory and understand them, how
you understand why someone'sculture, background, their
experiences, will make them abetter candidate for a certain
(28:03):
treatment, because they'relikely to take their medication,
whereas someone else may not be, because of something that they
tell you that you've got to belistening for in the subtlety,
right.
So I think these sorts ofthings are tremendously
important.
We've also rolled out in ourundergraduate curriculum.
We've rolled out a COIL program, which is Collaborative Online
(28:23):
International Learning, andbecause we have a number of
international campuses, we'vebeen able to make some
connections internal withourselves and then with other
international partners as well,and I've heard tremendous things
about the student interactionthere, where you again gain this
appreciation and thisunderstanding of people who are
unlike you.
We created a center for empathyresearch and training and I've
(28:46):
actually rolled out empathytraining to all of our first
line, frontline student affairsand faculty and other people.
We've rolled out as well amental health first aid training
to all of our faculty and staffand those are the things that
we're finding when our studentsare engaged in them.
They're the things that arereally transformational
experiences.
So I think the co-curricularpiece, which in some respects
(29:09):
isn't really fully co-curricular, it's kind of almost
intra-curricular.
I think creating theseexperiences, creating things
that actually are meaningful andaligned with gaining greater
empathy and leadership andunderstanding and communication,
and then creating that linkageto the world of work where a
(29:30):
student is interested inpursuing.
That's the continuum that ifyou could do a lot of that,
that's a heck of a lot moreimportant than logging 120
credits in a seat by saying Isat for X number of hours and
logged X number of meaningfulcourses of the you know an FDU
(30:01):
kind of experience of those sortof you know sort of living,
learning, community aspects thatare just unique and different
than you know what you get from.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Just not that there's anything wrong with sort of
just going to a communitycollege or having some other
sort of learning modality orwhatever it is, but it's a
different sort of piece thanwhen you're sort of like
actively embedded in sort ofdoing these integrated learning
pieces, that sort of connectit's like.
How do you balance and thisstrikes me as just another sort
of tricky sort of piece that Isee so many places like struggle
(30:27):
with, right, it's like you'vegot curricular needs of you know
students need to complete X, y,z to you know to sort of meet
the nursing degree.
You've got all these sort ofco-curricular needs that are
sort of like layered on top ofthat are increasingly important
and we know for, like lifeskills and development and
actual sort of success and sortof lived on the job.
(30:47):
Those are super important kindof.
For your point right, how doyou sort of balance and package
these in ways that are good forboth building resilience but at
the same time, you know we knowstudents like mental health and
lived experiences generationally.
Mental health is just such atricky thing right, like how do
(31:08):
you think about sort ofbalancing the you know the
teeter-totter on that trickykind of piece of it of you know,
trying to sort of find themiddle ground for all these
moving pieces?
Speaker 2 (31:26):
This is the, this is the, the really the kind of the
big balancing act that we haveto strike in a sense of and you
know it's interesting, becausewhat you said I completely agree
with that that I think it'sit's hard, it's a hard sell
sometimes to tell people thisbecause they say, well, you, I
can't believe you have to paymoney to do this.
But for the traditional agestudent, the thing that college
probably has the most value atdoing, and probably the thing
that we should really make thepivot towards, is helping
(31:49):
students stressed and anxiousand unplugged and tech
overloaded young people intofunctional adulthood.
Right, and that's, I think youknow.
Again, it's a hard sell becausepeople are going to say I can't
believe you're saying that'swhat college is.
But in a world where knowledgeis ubiquitous, right, that the
(32:09):
days of you know.
I remember again I'm sure youremember it as well, not all
that long ago being in theclassroom and you had to
memorize this formula because itwas the only place you could
find it.
You had to go to the library ifyou wanted this thing and make
a photocopy of it out of thebook, because it wasn't there.
Those things are gone, right,and you have to own up to the
fact they're never coming back.
So the reality is I can getmore information on my phone
(32:32):
that I could have gotten inevery college library that was
built for the last thousandyears.
That's reality.
So what we really have to thinkabout is well then, what is
college?
And I think a lot of college isthis sort of social maturing and
this sort of immersion into thefunctional adulthood that
becomes being a part of society,being a leader, being someone
(32:57):
who is able to be navigable in avery complex, changing, dynamic
world, to be a world citizen,to be someone who is a world
leader, to be someone who isreally a kind of an understander
and an empath to understandthese complex issues, but to
also, you know, part of.
I think the most thing I tookout of our empathy training the
(33:20):
most was that this is a bifocallens.
It is about doing that forothers and about for oneself,
and that's where I think we getinto a lot of the mental health
pieces that it's not acceptableto train up people who are
empaths towards others and whoare servants towards others when
they lose sight of the factthat you also have self-care as
(33:41):
a critical part, that your ownwell-being, that your own
journey has to be a part of thisand the two have to align so
that you don't have a heavierweight on one than the other.
And I think all of this becomespart of the sort of lived
experience of being a member ofa community in a college and
creating this community ofconnected, committed, caring
(34:02):
individuals who are all kind ofable to navigate differences,
able to navigate disagreements,able to navigate all of the
things that are the foibles of afamily, but to do it in a way
that's mature, that'sresponsible and that is teaching
and learning in the environmentalong the journey as well.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Incredibly well said and I love everything that you
said there because I think itgets to the sort of complexities
of the work that we're tryingto do and also, I think, just
giving a sort of a mental modelthat works for people when
they're sort of going through,you know, a really big
transition in their life andsort of going from some degree
(34:46):
like a consumer to to reallysort of a producer out in the
world With so many sort ofexternal pressures and
everything that's sort ofhappened.
Maybe an interesting place towrap would be how do you think
about positioning FDU for likelong-term resilience, like what
are the infrastructureinvestments or the areas that
(35:07):
you're looking to sort of likebuild and position for so that,
you know, 15, 20 years from now,fdu is sort of sitting in the
sort of the best place possible?
What's that look like from abig you know big picture
perspective?
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Great question and this is, I think, you know, the
thinking for us is that webelieve all of these things
actually that we've talked abouttoday, all of the sort of the
kind of mission critical pieces,all actually align very closely
and actually all of them kindof converge into the story of
what I believe our institution'sfuture will be.
So, as we talk about greaterfocus on our programming, we
(35:46):
believe that over the next 10,15, 20 years robust partnership
with a health system orcollectively, this sort of
health footprint of New Jerseywe're starting to make inroads
there, significant inroads, andwe're excited about where that's
going to really enhance ourprogramming, but also to enhance
our, again, kind of scope ofhow the alignment of even those
(36:08):
adjacent or non-directly linkedprograms can kind of align under
this umbrella.
We also have, I think, anopportunity to redefine our
college campuses, and this goesback to exactly what we were
just talking about, which thedays of having libraries that
are, you know, thousands ofsquare feet of volumes of books
that nobody's ever touched in 20years.
(36:29):
Those days are gone, right.
So one of the things we'reexcited about is actually
creating what we believe is aredevelopment of the college
campuses.
We are unique in that we havetwo of them in New Jersey that I
often say are just far enoughapart for an inconvenience Right
.
So it's not any economies ofscale within.
But we sit on 180 acres inMorris County, 190 acres in
(36:52):
Bergen County, the Bergen Countycampus, at the foot of the
George Washington Bridge, theMorris County campus, on a
direct rail line into Manhattan.
So one of the things we'reexcited about is part of this
redevelopment is to see how wecould potentially redevelop the
college campus of the future tobe actually a lifelong learning
environment that has componentsof higher education, components
(37:16):
of healthcare, but, moreimportantly, these other
developed entities like, forexample, what's becoming very
fashionable and popularuniversity-based retirement
developments for people who areaging and want to stay in a
vibrant, developed, engagedcommunity, to have
transit-connected developmentfor families and for people who
are aging up.
But to have the scope of thisenvironment to actually have the
(37:39):
theme of what we would call edsand meds right, to be focused
on education and learning and tobe focused on healthy and
healthy lifestyle and overallwell being.
And if we could create thesesort of environments, we believe
that there are multiple wins.
One is obviously for us we havethis sort of footprint, of
redevelopment that can be very,very lucrative to enhancing our
(38:01):
overall college campuses for ourstudents.
But, more importantly, we createthis access point for the
community that becomes a draw infor people who oftentimes just
don't come to us because theydon't see us as valuable, and I
think redefining the value of acollege, a university, in the
community it serves.
(38:22):
If that happens, the wholenarrative we talked about before
of these things are overpricedboondoggles goes away very
quickly to this is a valuablepiece and it's the reason I want
to live in this town and notthat town.
And I think if we can createthis vibrancy, it actually
aligns with our mission, becausewe've always been a community
(38:43):
focused institution.
Our founding was to be of andfor the people of our
communities.
Long before there was acommunity college in the sense
of that, we were focused oneducating New Jersey.
We were focused on taking GIswho were coming home and their
families and creating thisopportunity for them where they
lived.
And I think all the more now,going forward, 85 years later,
(39:07):
after where we were founded from, that's probably more relevant
today than it ever was beingcommunity embedded as an asset,
relevant today than it ever wasbeing community embedded as an
asset.
I think that's where, in 15 or20 years, if we were successful,
we'd be excited to boast aboutthe fact that the towns that
we're in are vibrant, thrivingtowns, not just because of the
education, but because of theentire ecosystem we've created.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
It's such a fabulous point.
Um, I think that's a brilliantplace to end it.
You're talking about sort ofthe interconnection and the
value.
I think too many places havegotten so focused on their own
stuff and and like rightfully soand understandably so but you
get so internally focused thatyou forget about the bigger
picture and the sort ofinterconnected pieces of, hey,
(39:53):
we're part of these much broaderecosystems and we have much
bigger and broader value thanjust the spaces that we're sort
of serving here.
And hey, if we're doing thiswell, we're lifting all boats in
doing it.
So I really like that.
Michael, this has been afabulous conversation.
Thank you, I appreciate you.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
Pleasure Anytime, always great to talk.
Awesome, well, so thrilled to be here again with
Michael Avletroni for part two.
Michael, thank you for beinghere.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
It's a pleasure to be here, pleasure to reconnect.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Yeah Well, I really appreciate the opportunity to
speak to you in greater depth.
We covered so much ground in ourfirst conversation.
We're talking about everythingfrom, you know, institutional
priorities to how you thinkabout sort of revenue
diversification and starting toreally sort of scratch the
surface on how you can deliveran educational product.
(00:33):
That is really sort of meeting,you know, the needs of student
bases while at the same timeworking as a sustainable
business model, and that seemedlike a really sort of ripe area
to explore in a secondconversation model, and that
seemed like a really sort ofripe area to explore in a second
conversation.
So you know, one of the things Iwould love to sort of dive
deeper with because I thinkyou've got some really good
insight here and I've seen youspeak on this in a few different
(00:54):
sort of spaces but youemphasize the importance of
focusing on trying to sort of bethe right things to the right
kind of students rather thanjust trying to sort of serve all
of the needs, and, historically, how a lot of institutions have
tried to sort of be the rightthings to the right kind of
students rather than just tryingto sort of serve all of the
needs and, historically, how alot of institutions have tried
to sort of be all the things.
Can you talk through a littlebit about how you identify and
(01:14):
prioritize your core strengthsand then look to sort of
position those in such a crowdedspace?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Sure, I would be happy to.
So I think it's such animportant piece of the future is
really carving out those nicheareas and those specific
identities that you can thrivein Right, and so for us it was
actually, I think, somethingthat I was fortunate enough to
have some historyinstitutionally with.
I was brought on to be a memberof faculty back in 2003 and
(01:44):
thought I'd be doing that as mycareer and very quickly actually
moved into creating our Schoolof Pharmacy and Health Sciences
as a new program and in thatsort of program set we created a
number of different healthcarerelated programs and the
interesting thing was ouraspiration in all of them was to
actually kind of create afuture designed program, really
thinking about where healthcarewas going rather than where it
(02:06):
had been, and so we leanedheavily into that.
That became a part of ouridentity.
We created a program inpharmacy, physician assistance
studies, occupational therapy,public health and social work,
which were all new, and theyactually complemented a number
of programs that we had inpsychology, counseling, nursing,
allied health.
So we had this really goodrounded complement of programs
(02:28):
and that became ultimately wherewe decided that we were going
to begin the exploration of aheavier lean.
We realized we've been doingthat well, we've developed an
identity and, most importantly,as the dynamics change in higher
education and what a collegedegree is and what does it mean
and why is it valuable, in myestimation, the place that that
(02:48):
will be the easiest to generatethe answer why, and in terms of
higher ed, and why would I spendthis money in this time is in
the health sciences.
And the reason is twofold.
First, because there is no wayaround needing an education to
become a trained and licensednurse, physician, assistant,
pharmacist.
To qualify for licensure youneed a degree.
(03:09):
That will always be the case.
I don't anticipate that's goinganywhere.
And the second thing is there'ssuch tremendous opportunity and
tremendous need right nowacross the continuum, most
exacerbated in nursing, whereyou see tens of thousands of
shortages in the space locally,regionally and nationally, and
(03:31):
that creates these opportunitiesto really rethink the ability
to build this workforce pipelineand to create these
opportunities to developtomorrow's healthcare leaders.
So that became one of thethings that we leaned heavily
into, largely because of thefact that all of the dynamics
really aligned very well.
They aligned from the thingsthat we felt we were doing well,
the things that we had investedin and built, but, more
(03:53):
importantly, the places where wefelt the market was going to
continue to go in the future.
As we continue to see studentbehaviors change the idea of
what does a student want from acollege degree and where does a
student want to go with acollege degree we feel good
about this future, but the otherpiece that we sort of have
described in terms of makingthis pivot is that we don't want
(04:15):
to be a healthcare-onlyinstitution.
We want to be a healthcareinstitution with health
adjacencies with otherprofessional focuses, and so
we've started to now take thelens of view of well, what if we
started to look at some of ourother programs and looked at
them not to be exclusively forthe focus of healthcare but to
have an opportunity to focus?
(04:35):
Examples that are easy to comeby are things like business,
where you can think of certainlythe business of healthcare and
a business degree with that typeof alignment.
But we've started to look atother programs, like our
hospitality program, where thehospitality of healthcare is
actually a very important partof the healthcare industry,
because patients oftentimes ratea physician practice or a
(04:57):
hospital more likely on how theywere treated in the waiting
room and in the length of timeit took to see someone and how
they were greeted than byactually the clinical care.
So having this complementarity,we feel like, is opening up new
opportunities and ultimately forus it sort of comes full circle
to the original question youasked, which is we felt that we
(05:20):
were able to really createidentity pieces that were true
to mission, that were true tothe focus of where we believe we
were investing and headed but,more importantly, things we
could do well that align withthe demands of the workforce,
align with the demands and needsof our students and we hope
will set us up not to againclose down to a real, real tight
(05:41):
circle but to have the circlebe sort of concentric, to have
that core be a solid healthcarefocus and the adjacencies
beginning to widen that lens ofview.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
I love that answer.
I mean, I love the way thatyou're sort of pulling in your
mission and your strength withthe real sort of needs that are
out there and then also lookingfor how can you sort of have
this lens of?
We have the strategic focus, wehave this competitive advantage
and niche here.
How do we layer on those piecesA little bit of like a sidecar
(06:16):
tangent to that.
Like, have there beenconversations with everything
that it seemed that like thebroader healthcare conversation
really got kicked up nationally,regionally and all sorts of
spaces, with the UnitedHealthcare CEO sort of shooting.
Has that had any sort of effectin terms of the conversations
on the ground and what thatlooks like?
(06:36):
It strikes me as like just thetiny bit of diving and
consulting work I've done kindof in those spaces, like such a
layered issue with like all thesort of competing parties and
sort of like the insurance sortof nature of it and then the et
cetera, et cetera.
Right, but what have thoseconversations looked like?
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Yeah, you know it's so interesting because you see
that what it really did was itput into the lens of focus.
How difficult the environmentis in health care right now.
how difficult the environment isin healthcare right now.
Right, it's tragic that somehowa death, a murder, became a
polarizing conversation.
It speaks to a lot of otherthings that are concerning about
(07:16):
society and culture, but whatis also pointed out was that
really, the reaction had nothingto do with the CEO, what had to
do with the corporation and thefundamental brokenness of the
business model of health care.
Right, that ultimately, all ofthe pushback and all of the
people who were saying this wasa good thing or this was
(07:37):
understandable which is ahorrible thought to even
contemplate, to even contemplateit all comes from the fact that
what we realize is that thesefeelings are coming from a much
deeper frustration with a systemthat has really let down
American society.
Right, that, fundamentally,this sort of payer-based system
where there are only a few whoprofit greatly at the expense of
(08:00):
all others, is the breakdown,and so we've obviously been much
more focused, really and wethink this is a key linchpin to
our partnership on reallyactually an alignment of
partnership between highereducation, our institution and
the health system that we areexcited about sort of beginning
to launch partnership with,because we believe that the
(08:21):
solution to addressing a lot ofthese issues comes from really
being able to create a robustecosystem that aligns education
with health care in a way whereyou can actually educate people
who are ready to navigate thesystem, but ultimately educate
in volume, so that you don'thave these mass shortages and
(08:42):
then can begin to look at thecritical business pieces that
allow this, to begin addressingthe needs of people, rather than
oftentimes really leaving thesehuge gaps.
Right, and you hear it all thetime.
It's frustration, certainly,and people not getting
reimbursed or paid, but a lot ofthe frustrations also come from
people saying I needed anappointment with my cardiologist
(09:03):
and they have something nextyear, right, and you know that
it's your heart and you don'twant to sit and wait eight
months, six months or whatever.
And yet the frustration is suchthat there's all of these pain
points and we can only alleviatethem by really starting to take
a comprehensive look, and webelieve we have a role to play
in that.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Yeah, well said, it's such a layered issue and we
could probably spend an houreasily just sort of just
dissecting the various sort oflayers of this, interconnected
pieces and all of that.
But really really cool to justsee how sort of your education
is sort of layering on to notjust the demand needs but the
sort of multifaceted nature ofsort of educating people in the
(09:42):
spaces.
And that kind of brings me toanother question, which you know
, talking about sort of brokensystems and operational costs.
You know you've been reallysort of open about, you know,
the fundamental business modelof higher education being broken
or at the very least neededsome like massive sort of
revamping right to like massivesort of revamping right.
Can you talk a little bit aboutyou know how you've essentially
(10:09):
sort of like identifiedopportunities for cost savings
without compromising studentexperience and how you're really
sort of like playing with ittoo?
We talked, we started to cover alittle bit of ground with the
first part, but it strikes me isthat with all these sort of
different sort of programs thatyou've been able to spin up and
the sort of synergies thatyou've had kind of between some
of these different sort ofentities and areas, you've found
interesting ways to sort oflike educate at bigger scale, to
(10:33):
find cost savings, to dodifferent things, to sort of you
know, still meet your mission,demand and all of that and push
the institution forward.
What's that sort of costbenefit look like for you?
Speaker 2 (10:46):
there, sure.
So this is really a criticalpiece to where we feel that
higher ed has to go right andultimately we believe in
building an ecosystem that weare a part of, but not the
absolute end.
All be all for right, and so wehave to stop the reality that I
think is far too pervasive inhigher ed of feeling like
(11:07):
everyone's in competition withone another.
Right, because ultimately, ifwe keep competing with one
another to try and fill seats,we're doing so at our own peril
and the peril of the entiresystem.
We need to really embrace thisecosystem in a sense of starting
(11:28):
in the high school, to thetwo-year community college, to
the four-year institution, tothe workforce provider.
There's a continuity therewhere we can exist together and,
rather than seeing ourselves asan either or or a competitor
one to the other, to actually bea continuum right.
So my thought in kind of how Iwould love to see us and we're
approaching this as we begin toaddress this is to really not
(11:51):
exclusively get out ofundergraduate education in the
first two years but, tounderstand that we don't need to
be there for every student,that it is not the right fit for
every student to go to afour-year private institution
and start there.
For many it's a great experience.
For many others it's either tooexpensive, it's setting
students up to fail, it'ssetting students up to make this
(12:13):
transition before they're ready.
So the thing we would love isto really embrace high schools,
beginning to look atpartnerships with the two-year
college to do robust dual-enrollprogramming to really begin
allowing students to get thathead start.
I actually have in my own homemy own experience.
My kids took advantage ofdual-enroll.
My oldest will graduate in May,a year ahead of time.
(12:36):
My middle will go into collegewith a year of advanced standing
.
For us it was a hugeopportunity on multiple fronts.
They got a tremendousexperience at the two-year
institution but more importantly, they get this head start in
time and cost and everythingelse.
That is a huge opportunity formany students and in some cases
(12:57):
for those students it means thedifference between college being
a reality and not, and thengetting the two-year college to
be the sort of finisher forthose students that want that
approach to complete theassociate's degree then makes
for a clean handoff to us, notat the expense of giving away
two years, but we can then bethe provider of the additional
(13:17):
two years and, frankly, if astudent is coming in
well-prepared and ahead ofschedule, actually throw on a
third year towards a master'sdegree in a combined degree
setting.
And the other piece in theworkforce side is, if we build
these partnerships, particularlyin programs like in the health
sciences, where a student canbecome a two-year graduate of a
(13:37):
nursing program, become an LPNor an RN, begin working at the
health system, the health systemwill actually pay for them to
go back in school and completethe degree.
So it's a win on every front.
And this allows us to addressthe cost issue, because it
allows us to run at a scale thatwe can be much more focused.
(13:58):
And again it goes back to thatnot being everything to everyone
, because ultimately, when youtry and be everything to
everyone, the only way you cansucceed is if you have capacity.
In the current economics and thecurrent environment of higher
education, there will not beexcess capacity.
There is an oversupply of seatsand not enough students to fill
(14:19):
them, which means the analogy ofrunning the planes half filled,
right, and you know fromairlines or the trains or
anywhere else.
When you're running with emptyseats, ultimately you are going
to inevitably be running with alack of efficiency.
That's probably going tobankrupt you, and we're seeing
that right now in higher ed.
A much more focused approach onfilling those things we do well
(14:40):
and doing them with excellence,I think allows us to manage our
costs, allows us to carve outour space and, most importantly,
allows us to do what we reallydo well for students, which is
provide that comprehensive,focused education in program
areas for students who arematuring through to prepare them
for the workforce.
That would be a phenomenalstory for us to be able to tell
(15:03):
and I think it's a win, not aloss, for us if we're partnering
with community colleges so thatthey do what they do with
excellence and we receive thestudents ready and willing to go
and take it up to that nextlevel.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Yeah that's so well said.
You've talked aboutpartnerships and collaborations
a few times already in theconversation.
Can you just walk through whatare some like the partnerships
with community colleges or uhlike uh an affiliation with a
(15:43):
regional hospital or like thosekind of pieces where you you
have some sort of agreements orcontracts and those kind of
pieces like those can get reallysort of tricky to execute when
you've got very, very differentsort of missions and you're
trying to sort of meet themiddle on those two pieces.
So, like what have been some ofthe like, the like the keys to
really sort of like creating,sustaining those, so that
(16:03):
they're like you've got theflywheel of of excellence
between between those two things.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
It's a it's a really tough thing, One of the barriers
that we often encounter, justas a default, particularly with
places like two-year schools.
By default, usually the go-tois a state public institution,
right, and because of the costalignment as well, even though
really when you get through theactual total packaging of a
(16:29):
student with aid and scholarship, dollar for dollar, there's
almost no difference.
But the fundamental stickerprice, if you will, oftentimes
makes the default we'll go tothe public and we'll build the
partnership there.
So it's having to re-educate alittle bit and in some cases, to
create some sort of strategiesaround pricing and packaging and
others, to kind of kick openthe door a bit, because the
default, I think, is oftentimesto go to the ones that are sort
(16:52):
of a known entity within thestate system.
But one of the other thingsthat we quickly learned is that
you also in this area, need tobe hyper-focused, right.
The biggest danger you run isto create a blanket affiliation
agreement where you have ahundred students but they're
spread across 30 programs witheach of them having three or
four students, at which pointyou're going to go put yourself
(17:13):
out of business trying to managethat right.
So we've started to even theresay what do you do?
Well, right, because thecommunity colleges, the two-year
colleges or even other partners, there's a focus and an
interest there.
It's not equally yoked whereeverything is equal In some
cases where we started to offeractually education in the
community through corporatesettings.
(17:34):
We've also said what do youwant?
Rather than let's do everything, you have a strategy.
You're a healthcare business.
You probably want a healthcarefocused degree.
You have a high volume ofstudents in an associate's
degree in social work, so youprobably want a social work
continuity plan.
So we can really create andarticulate again focused vision
(17:56):
rather than.
I think the tendency and thetemptation is always we wanna do
it all.
We want to sign this thing andhave it be 50 pages and
identified.
I think that's a losing handbecause ultimately the only way
that works is if there's volume.
And what we're seeing now isthat I think the biggest enemy
to higher ed, probably for thepast 30 years, has been because
(18:17):
there's so many obligations theyhave and nobody likes to get
away from the things by sayingwe're not going to offer this
anymore.
We've run a whole load of themat very, very inefficient scale
right, and we've seen it even inlegacy community college
partnerships we've had wherewe're down to 20 students and
we're maintaining this thing andthis engine that has to keep
(18:37):
churning and you're saying atthe end of the day that the
numbers just don't work.
We'd be much better saying wecan hyper-focus two programs,
let's start there.
If they're a huge, smashingsuccess, we'll come back for two
more.
If they are the two that wewant, we'll stop there and we'll
call it a victory for everyoneinvolved.
So I think it's so much of a.
It just comes back to thecontinued conversation around
(19:00):
alignment right, and we know wehave this, we know you need that
.
This is where we see theconnection and it's not wide,
it's narrow, because I thinknarrowing the focus is the way
we can create economies of scale.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Yeah, really, really well said, and I think it also
sort of connects to the position, the conversation that we've
had in terms of sort of theposition of FTU and not trying
to be everything to everystudent and really sort of
(19:35):
focusing on who's the studentthat we can really sort of.
What are the differentiatorsthat we have With that?
Right, like, the one of thetricky things that I hear from
like leaders all of the time isthat you know, you've got this
sort of broader narrative aroundhigher education that isn't
positive, like you know, quiteoften, right, and I think to to
(20:01):
a fault, everybody gets ropedinto this like sort of like
bigger conversation around, likedeclining value of higher
education or those type ofpieces, but like to the
detriment of like individualbrand.
Right, and I think you'reyou're you're also trying to
sort of like signal the valuethat you have to your target
market and do that in a waythat's sort of like compelling
and different, like how do youthink about that piece of it?
Right, we've got a very, Ithink, skeptical and rightfully
so Gen Z population where you'vegot so much of your marketing
(20:24):
and your targeting is reallysort of focused, kind of in and
around there.
How do you think about thatsort of overcoming that
skepticism piece of it and sortof signaling in a way that's
like authentic and real andthose kind of pieces?
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Yeah, it's a great question because to me there's
been and I'm not saying it's notimportant there's been way too
much focus on the enrollmentcliff, where they talk about,
you know, the declining numbersof students, and much too little
focus on my much bigger fear,which is I'm more worried about
(20:58):
the population walking away fromseeing what we do is valuable,
right, and that is a muchgreater danger because
demographics are what they areand whether we should have been
more prepared for them or not.
The reality is you can predictthe ebb and flow based upon how
many seats are right now in thefirst grade in the towns in New
Jersey, what the likelihood isgonna be in 10 years that those
first graders become 12thgraders who are making their way
(21:19):
to you.
That doesn't worry me, althoughobviously there's concerns.
The bigger worry is exactlywhat you said, which is that the
public has soured on what we doIn some cases.
I often joke with people.
I said I've gone in what feelslike a fairly short amount of
time in my career, from going toa place where people lauded and
were impressed by what you doto now where it feels like you
(21:41):
work for big tobacco right,where you have to kind of start
with the apology.
I'm really sorry, right, andthat's a sad state of affairs
and, to be honest, not all of it, but a lot of it is
self-inflicted.
Right, we have done a lot ofdamage ourselves, I think, by
creating this sort of gatekeepermentality, saying that we're
kind of holier than thou, andnot really addressing the core
(22:03):
issues, which are that peopleare burying themselves in debt
and there needs to be an ROI.
I think actually just to take astep back, I think the biggest
mistake that has been made wastelling every student you're
only a success if you go tocollege, because what it did was
it set up a boatload of falseexpectations and it set up a
(22:24):
whole bunch of disappointedpeople who probably would have
been better off pursuing thetrades or pursuing a non-college
required career, where theywould have excelled and been
happy and satisfied, rather thanbeing sort of set up in this
place.
And I think part of what I'vebeen trying to do is some of it
needs to be owning up to thereality and kind of saying we
(22:46):
are taking it upon ourselves todo better.
Part of it is speaking to thefact that there is a discrepancy
in the ROI of a college degreeand we can't ignore that right.
I think we have to acknowledgethat there is a reality, like
we've talked about, in thehealth sciences a four-year
degree in nursing assures thatyou will have a job, probably
(23:07):
now and always, where afour-year degree in something
else may not right.
And that's not a falsehood,it's not a that's unfair, it's a
reality and I think that's partof what we have to get to
comfortable with.
But I think it goes a stepfurther, which is we know that
the way in which students learn,the way in which they engage,
(23:31):
the way in which they aregratified and satisfied
immediately and have differentneeds and wants has to mean that
we change the way in which wedeliver the educational product
as well.
The days of sitting in aclassroom, 20 people in a
lecture, with me talking forthree hours is gone and not
returning.
It needs to be engaged learning.
(23:52):
It needs to be honing thoseskills to really make future
leaders right.
I always say that the realityof what we should be thinking
about is not majors.
It should be a comprehensiveleadership curriculum that takes
a look at all of thosetransferable skills that won't
go away just because AI comes orjust because a new technology
(24:14):
rolls out.
That are the things that youcould take and are portable with
you in your first job all theway through to your last job.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Yeah, I love that, I love that.
I love this sort of transitionof skills piece of it and just
the fact that you really sort ofowning that like hey, guess
what Major matters.
And listen, I've worked at somany liberal arts schools.
I was a career server as adirector at many liberal arts
schools and I'm a data guy, solike you can't get away from the
(24:42):
data right like there's.
There's just straight up acorrelation between what you
major and the type of work thatyou do and sort of trying to
sort of decouple it or demystifylike whatever you're sort of
saying I'm not saying you're notgetting amazing skills from the
education, but it's justreality is like your major is
going to sort of impact yourcareer trajectory, especially
(25:03):
early in your career, andthere's no way of really sort of
getting around that.
One thing that sort of alludedto when you were sort of talking
about this sort of curricularkind of piece of it, and this is
something I haven't figured outif there's really like truly
national best practices thathave been squarely figured
around, like what's theco-curricular experience look
(25:27):
like right with, with everythinghappening, with all the sort of
changes that are happening andthe delivery models kind of, per
your point, needing to changeright, with the nature of
students just being differentand being really sort of
tech-centric and the actual sortof lived experience of being on
a campus, changing our businessmodels, changing all of those
(25:48):
pieces.
Maybe that two-part is likewhat's the sort of co-curricular
experience sort of going to belooking like at FDU?
And two, how are you liketraining and positioning staff
to really sort of like deliveron that, right?
Because both of those just seemlike they're really fast moving
and tricky things to like lockdown and I don't know if I've
(26:08):
seen anybody be completelyhonest and be like I'm not
exactly sure what this lookslike, right?
So I'm curious on your thoughtson those pieces.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
No, it's an excellent question and honestly it's the
million dollar question becauseI think somebody who finds the
answer to that will corner themarket right In a sense.
You know it's interesting andI'll go back to actually my
experience.
When I was dean of our pharmacyand health sciences program, we
created a whole co-curriculartranscript.
That actually was really a kindof a pioneering one,
(26:36):
particularly for the healthsciences space, because those
educational focal kind ofcurricula are usually all about
you got to take this and thentake that and take the other
thing.
So it was kind of a little bitoutside the box but it was
fascinating because we foundthat so much of the student
experience outside of theclassroom, but even in some
(26:56):
cases outside of healthcarepractice, was the most
meaningful for them.
Right, we rolled out a robustservice learning set of
initiative.
Students could take servicelearning courses as elected
Almost 201, when we would dofocus groups afterward with
graduating students, they wouldsay the transformational
experience for them, those thatwent on, it was the service
(27:17):
learning trip that they took togive kids the world down in
Florida to work with chronicallyand terminally ill children, to
work in a residential treatmentfacility, to work with the
homeless, and the program wasnot designed so they were
delivering health care becausethey were not equipped to do
that.
It was designed to go and bemake balloon animals with the
(27:39):
kids, but what they were clearlygetting out of this was they
were getting this experience ofempathy.
They were getting thisexperience of understanding your
role as a health care providerand how you communicate with
people, how you listen to theirstory and understand them, how
you understand why someone'sculture, background, their
experiences, will make them abetter candidate for a certain
(28:03):
treatment, because they'relikely to take their medication,
whereas someone else may not be, because of something that they
tell you that you've got to belistening for in the subtlety,
right.
So I think these sorts ofthings are tremendously
important.
We've also rolled out in ourundergraduate curriculum.
We've rolled out a COIL program, which is Collaborative Online
(28:23):
International Learning, andbecause we have a number of
international campuses, we'vebeen able to make some
connections internal withourselves and then with other
international partners as well,and I've heard tremendous things
about the student interactionthere, where you again gain this
appreciation and thisunderstanding of people who are
unlike you.
We created a center for empathyresearch and training and I've
(28:46):
actually rolled out empathytraining to all of our first
line, frontline student affairsand faculty and other people.
We've rolled out as well amental health first aid training
to all of our faculty and staffand those are the things that
we're finding when our studentsare engaged in them.
They're the things that arereally transformational
experiences.
So I think the co-curricularpiece, which in some respects
(29:09):
isn't really fully co-curricular, it's kind of almost
intra-curricular.
I think creating theseexperiences, creating things
that actually are meaningful andaligned with gaining greater
empathy and leadership andunderstanding and communication,
and then creating that linkageto the world of work where a
(29:30):
student is interested inpursuing.
That's the continuum that ifyou could do a lot of that,
that's a heck of a lot moreimportant than logging 120
credits in a seat by saying Isat for X number of hours and
logged X number of meaningfulcourses of the you know an FDU
(30:01):
kind of experience of those sortof you know sort of living,
learning, community aspects thatare just unique and different
than you know what you get from.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Just not that there's anything wrong with sort of
just going to a communitycollege or having some other
sort of learning modality orwhatever it is, but it's a
different sort of piece thanwhen you're sort of like
actively embedded in sort ofdoing these integrated learning
pieces, that sort of connectit's like.
How do you balance and thisstrikes me as just another sort
of tricky sort of piece that Isee so many places like struggle
(30:27):
with, right, it's like you'vegot curricular needs of you know
students need to complete X, y,z to you know to sort of meet
the nursing degree.
You've got all these sort ofco-curricular needs that are
sort of like layered on top ofthat are increasingly important
and we know for, like lifeskills and development and
actual sort of success and sortof lived on the job.
(30:47):
Those are super important kindof.
For your point right, how doyou sort of balance and package
these in ways that are good forboth building resilience but at
the same time, you know we knowstudents like mental health and
lived experiences generationally.
Mental health is just such atricky thing right, like how do
(31:08):
you think about sort ofbalancing the you know the
teeter-totter on that trickykind of piece of it of you know,
trying to sort of find themiddle ground for all these
moving pieces?
Speaker 2 (31:26):
This is the, this is the, the really the kind of the
big balancing act that we haveto strike in a sense of and you
know it's interesting, becausewhat you said I completely agree
with that that I think it'sit's hard, it's a hard sell
sometimes to tell people thisbecause they say, well, you, I
can't believe you have to paymoney to do this.
But for the traditional agestudent, the thing that college
probably has the most value atdoing, and probably the thing
that we should really make thepivot towards, is helping
(31:49):
students stressed and anxiousand unplugged and tech
overloaded young people intofunctional adulthood.
Right, and that's, I think youknow.
Again, it's a hard sell becausepeople are going to say I can't
believe you're saying that'swhat college is.
But in a world where knowledgeis ubiquitous, right, that the
(32:09):
days of you know.
I remember again I'm sure youremember it as well, not all
that long ago being in theclassroom and you had to
memorize this formula because itwas the only place you could
find it.
You had to go to the library ifyou wanted this thing and make
a photocopy of it out of thebook, because it wasn't there.
Those things are gone, right,and you have to own up to the
fact they're never coming back.
So the reality is I can getmore information on my phone
(32:32):
that I could have gotten inevery college library that was
built for the last thousandyears.
That's reality.
So what we really have to thinkabout is well then, what is
college?
And I think a lot of college isthis sort of social maturing and
this sort of immersion into thefunctional adulthood that
becomes being a part of society,being a leader, being someone
(32:57):
who is able to be navigable in avery complex, changing, dynamic
world, to be a world citizen,to be someone who is a world
leader, to be someone who isreally a kind of an understander
and an empath to understandthese complex issues, but to
also, you know, part of.
I think the most thing I tookout of our empathy training the
(33:20):
most was that this is a bifocallens.
It is about doing that forothers and about for oneself,
and that's where I think we getinto a lot of the mental health
pieces that it's not acceptableto train up people who are
empaths towards others and whoare servants towards others when
they lose sight of the factthat you also have self-care as
(33:41):
a critical part, that your ownwell-being, that your own
journey has to be a part of thisand the two have to align so
that you don't have a heavierweight on one than the other.
And I think all of this becomespart of the sort of lived
experience of being a member ofa community in a college and
creating this community ofconnected, committed, caring
(34:02):
individuals who are all kind ofable to navigate differences,
able to navigate disagreements,able to navigate all of the
things that are the foibles of afamily, but to do it in a way
that's mature, that'sresponsible and that is teaching
and learning in the environmentalong the journey as well.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Incredibly well said and I love everything that you
said there because I think itgets to the sort of complexities
of the work that we're tryingto do and also, I think, just
giving a sort of a mental modelthat works for people when
they're sort of going through,you know, a really big
transition in their life andsort of going from some degree
(34:46):
like a consumer to to reallysort of a producer out in the
world With so many sort ofexternal pressures and
everything that's sort ofhappened.
Maybe an interesting place towrap would be how do you think
about positioning FDU for likelong-term resilience, like what
are the infrastructureinvestments or the areas that
(35:07):
you're looking to sort of likebuild and position for so that,
you know, 15, 20 years from now,fdu is sort of sitting in the
sort of the best place possible?
What's that look like from abig you know big picture
perspective?
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Great question and this is, I think, you know, the
thinking for us is that webelieve all of these things
actually that we've talked abouttoday, all of the sort of the
kind of mission critical pieces,all actually align very closely
and actually all of them kindof converge into the story of
what I believe our institution'sfuture will be.
So, as we talk about greaterfocus on our programming, we
(35:46):
believe that over the next 10,15, 20 years robust partnership
with a health system orcollectively, this sort of
health footprint of New Jerseywe're starting to make inroads
there, significant inroads, andwe're excited about where that's
going to really enhance ourprogramming, but also to enhance
our, again, kind of scope ofhow the alignment of even those
(36:08):
adjacent or non-directly linkedprograms can kind of align under
this umbrella.
We also have, I think, anopportunity to redefine our
college campuses, and this goesback to exactly what we were
just talking about, which thedays of having libraries that
are, you know, thousands ofsquare feet of volumes of books
that nobody's ever touched in 20years.
(36:29):
Those days are gone, right.
So one of the things we'reexcited about is actually
creating what we believe is aredevelopment of the college
campuses.
We are unique in that we havetwo of them in New Jersey that I
often say are just far enoughapart for an inconvenience Right
.
So it's not any economies ofscale within.
But we sit on 180 acres inMorris County, 190 acres in
(36:52):
Bergen County, the Bergen Countycampus, at the foot of the
George Washington Bridge, theMorris County campus, on a
direct rail line into Manhattan.
So one of the things we'reexcited about is part of this
redevelopment is to see how wecould potentially redevelop the
college campus of the future tobe actually a lifelong learning
environment that has componentsof higher education, components
(37:16):
of healthcare, but, moreimportantly, these other
developed entities like, forexample, what's becoming very
fashionable and popularuniversity-based retirement
developments for people who areaging and want to stay in a
vibrant, developed, engagedcommunity, to have
transit-connected developmentfor families and for people who
are aging up.
But to have the scope of thisenvironment to actually have the
(37:39):
theme of what we would call edsand meds right, to be focused
on education and learning and tobe focused on healthy and
healthy lifestyle and overallwell being.
And if we could create thesesort of environments, we believe
that there are multiple wins.
One is obviously for us we havethis sort of footprint, of
redevelopment that can be very,very lucrative to enhancing our
(38:01):
overall college campuses for ourstudents.
But, more importantly, we createthis access point for the
community that becomes a draw infor people who oftentimes just
don't come to us because theydon't see us as valuable, and I
think redefining the value of acollege, a university, in the
community it serves.
(38:22):
If that happens, the wholenarrative we talked about before
of these things are overpricedboondoggles goes away very
quickly to this is a valuablepiece and it's the reason I want
to live in this town and notthat town.
And I think if we can createthis vibrancy, it actually
aligns with our mission, becausewe've always been a community
(38:43):
focused institution.
Our founding was to be of andfor the people of our
communities.
Long before there was acommunity college in the sense
of that, we were focused oneducating New Jersey.
We were focused on taking GIswho were coming home and their
families and creating thisopportunity for them where they
lived.
And I think all the more now,going forward, 85 years later,
(39:07):
after where we were founded from, that's probably more relevant
today than it ever was beingcommunity embedded as an asset,
relevant today than it ever wasbeing community embedded as an
asset.
I think that's where, in 15 or20 years, if we were successful,
we'd be excited to boast aboutthe fact that the towns that
we're in are vibrant, thrivingtowns, not just because of the
education, but because of theentire ecosystem we've created.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
It's such a fabulous point.
Um, I think that's a brilliantplace to end it.
You're talking about sort ofthe interconnection and the
value.
I think too many places havegotten so focused on their own
stuff and and like rightfully soand understandably so but you
get so internally focused thatyou forget about the bigger
picture and the sort ofinterconnected pieces of, hey,
(39:53):
we're part of these much broaderecosystems and we have much
bigger and broader value thanjust the spaces that we're sort
of serving here.
And hey, if we're doing thiswell, we're lifting all boats in
doing it.
So I really like that.
Michael, this has been afabulous conversation.
Thank you, I appreciate you.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
Pleasure Anytime, always great to talk.
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