Is the traditional university model failing today’s students—and the industries that depend on them?
Dr. Robert McMahan, President of Kettering University, shares a bold, workforce-driven vision for higher education.
From co-op rotations that give students 2.5 years of paid, professional experience before graduation, to integrating trends like artificial intelligence and sustainability across all disciplines, McMahan outlines what it takes to future-proof students for a rapidly evolving economy—and why most institutions will fall behind if they don’t evolve now.
In this episode:
- Why Kettering students graduate with 2.5 years of paid, full-time professional experience—and often earn $75,000+ before they even walk the stage
- How a 12-week rotation model between classroom and career builds both technical mastery and real-world adaptability
- What five interdisciplinary trends are shaping the future of Kettering’s curriculum
- Why McMahan says the real customer of higher education isn’t the student or their family—and how that changes how we deliver learning
3 Big Takeaways from this Episode:
1. Kettering University’s 50/50 model gives students 2.5 years of paid, professional work experience
Through alternating 12-week rotations between classroom and career, students graduate with a résumé that rivals experienced professionals—and often $75,000+ in earnings.
2. The university continuously evolves its curriculum around five workplace-driven trends
Every discipline includes elements of advanced mobility, sustainable energy, intelligent manufacturing, AI, and new engineering vehicles—keeping students aligned with real-world needs.
3. McMahan redefines who the true customer of higher education is
It’s not just the student—it’s the employer who hires them. By working with over 450 industry partners, Kettering ensures its grads are future-ready and in high demand.
Resources in this Episode:
Learn more about Kettering University's model: https://www.kettering.edu/co-op-experience
See what companies have partnered with Kettering.
Read Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope and the Human Spirit by Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt and Craig Mundie
We want to hear from you! Send us a text.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Matt Kirchner (00:00):
Matt, welcome into The TechEd Podcast. I am
(00:10):
your host. Matt Kirchner, we sayit every week in our
introduction that we love peoplewho are disrupting the model of
education. I think most of usthat spend time around higher
education recognize that a wholevariety of factors, some of
which we'll talk about today,are having a huge effect, not
just on higher education today,but in the future. We have
changing attitudes around highereducation. Certainly there are
(00:32):
demographic realities that aretaking place that are going to
have a huge impact on highereducation as well. I like to
say, in some cases, that thereare two types of higher
educators, those that areinnovating for the future and
those that are not. There'sreally only one type of higher
educator, and that is those whoare innovating for the future.
Because I'm a believer that ifwe don't innovate, if we don't
(00:54):
disrupt that model of highereducation a little bit, the
organizations that don't do thatare probably not even going to
be around to talk about it infive to 10 years, we are around
this week to talk about thatvery topic, and we're doing so
with Dr Robert McMahon, who isthe president of Kettering
University in Flint, Michigan.
We are going to learn all aboutwhat it means to truly disrupt
the world that is highereducation. With that, Bob,
(01:17):
you've given me the permissionto call you Bob, Dr McMahon,
thank you so much for joining ushere on The TechEd Podcast. It's
great to have you here.
Bob McMahan (01:26):
My pleasure. I'm looking forward to the
discussion today. So as we just
Matt Kirchner (01:29):
said in the intro, higher education
absolutely has to innovate, andI know your model is all about
innovation. It's all aboutdisruption. But let's start with
this is the model of highereducation? Is it broken in the
first place? And if so, what arewe not getting right, and what
do we need to do about it?
That's a
Bob McMahan (01:45):
great question. I think it worthy of an hour of
conversation, probably in and ofitself. I mean, I think it
absolutely significant aspectsof it are broken, and it's in
part because it really hasn't asa model, it really hasn't kept
pace with the evolution of oureconomy and the evolution of the
needs of society in some reallyfundamental ways. I mean, I
(02:06):
always like to say to people,we're so forward looking as a
sector that we wear regalia thatwas designed in the 1300s we put
some bling on it, but prettymuch it's the same. You can
trace the academic regalia backto monastic gowns in the Middle
Ages. That's awesome. It's aplace where stability has value.
(02:27):
And so it's not just kind of ageneric resistance to change.
There's reasons why in academiathat that resistance to change,
that that kind of long termstability is a value, but what
it has given rise to are modelsthat are increasingly discordant
with the needs of, well,society, of industry and of the
(02:51):
economy more broadly. And so inthat sense, it very much. There
are aspects of it. They're verymuch broken, really,
Matt Kirchner (02:58):
in some ways. And it's cool, the pop and
circumstance and the robes andthe so on that you would see on
a typical commencement stage,and kind of hearkening back to
the origins of higher education,and there is certainly that
history and that gravitas, ifyou will, that goes along with
being an institution of highereducation. But to your point,
with some of the changes thatare taking place in our society
(03:19):
and in our marketplaces, wehaven't evolved along with those
changes. So looking forward todiving into those topics a
little bit more deeply, or overthe course of the podcast today,
but before we do that, Bob wouldjust be interested. You know, I
did a little bit of homework onyour background and your
history, fascinating careerhistory that led to you running
this great institution of highereducation. So touch on that a
(03:41):
little bit. What are thehighlights of your career and
how have the experiences thatyou've had in your unique path
to your current job influencedyour views on higher education?
That's
Bob McMahan (03:50):
an interesting question. I would characterize
my career in one way. I said itonly makes sense in the rear
view mirror. When you sit whereI am today and you connect the
dots in reverse, they connect insome interesting ways, but you
wouldn't necessarily do thatlooking forward, I've had a
career that really spans a widevariety of sectors, but always
(04:10):
with roots and always withstrong ties to the university
and to the university community.
I have been a venturecapitalist. I have started
companies. I have grown thosesmall companies from literally
kitchen table entities tomultinational companies
organizations. I've beeninvolved in mergers and
acquisitions. I've probablyhired as many engineers as I've
(04:32):
trained over the course of mycareer. I've been involved in
the public policy sphere. I'veworked very closely with the
governor in a very progressivestate, North Carolina, which
uses science and technology tore engineer its economy on an
ongoing basis, all of thosethings I've done while still
being connected to theuniversity, always a professor,
(04:54):
always with students, alwaysreally the first love being
edge. Education. And so in thatcombination of things, I have
really seen education from bothsides. I've seen it from the
producer side as well as fromthe consumer side, and also from
the public policy side. So I'veseen it from the three legs of
(05:16):
the three legged stool that wealways talk about in higher
education, and I think thatgives me some interesting
perspectives on things. Noquestion.
Matt Kirchner (05:25):
What a fascinating background to lead
you into this world of highereducation. Now, our producer,
Melissa Martin, knows right nowthat I am mustering every bit of
discipline that I can muster notto go down the venture capital
rabbit hole, because she knowsthat that is, that is a topic,
and we can hijack an entireepisode of the podcast, just
talking about PE and VC models.
But we're gonna avoid thattemptation. And rather than
(05:46):
talking about that discipline,let's talk about the discipline
that goes along with reallyforming your strategy as an
institution of higher education,your approach, I know it
incorporates these fiveinterdisciplinary trends.
They're all workplace driven anddriving those into every single
academic discipline. So what arethose five trends that you have
(06:06):
your eyes on that are havingsuch an impact on how you're
thinking about the future ofhigher ed? Can I divert
Bob McMahan (06:13):
us a little bit here? Yes, let's go down the
Matt Kirchner (06:15):
venture capital Hall. It was interesting.
Bob McMahan (06:18):
I was actually a venture capitalist for a non
profit venture capital firm thatserved the intelligence
community the United States. Itwas really, it's called in Q
tel, okay, fascinating model inand of itself, one of the few
truly national venture capitalfirms. So, yeah, we can go down
that route. What we want. What'sreally relevant to your question
(06:41):
is this Kettering University asan institution is unique in the
United States. It does not worklike or look like any other
institution of higher educationin the US, and that is because
of the way it was founded and bywhom it was founded. And that
really speaks to your questionin a very fundamental way. We
(07:02):
were founded over 100 years agohere in Flint, Michigan. When
Flint Michigan was the SiliconValley of the United States,
people were pouring into thisarea. This is the home of
General Motors. It was right, ina very real sense, the home of
the automotive industry. Andthey were pouring in from all
over the world, 1000s, 10s of1000s per year. And the folks
(07:25):
who started the automotiveindustry in the US, whose names
are brands now, were, at thattime, young entrepreneurs trying
to create businesses. I have apicture in my house, or the
president's house here, of LouisChevrolet, about 20 years old,
doing some really stupid thingsin these vehicles that he was
(07:46):
designing, just like you wouldexpect someone of his car doing,
right and they were that, butthey had the pressures to
understand long before McKenzieever wrote a piece on the war on
talent and all these things thatwhat was really going to be
fundamental to their success wasthe ability to take this large
(08:08):
group of largely unskilled,uneducated people flooding into
this area and educate them andbring them into a level of
understanding and technicalcompetence that they could
contribute In this industry. Andso they did this by forming a
school, and they brought inCharles Kettering and others who
were huge proponents. But theyalso brought in some people from
(08:31):
the northern parts of Michigan,up in the UP sure the mining
community, which was veryheavily oriented around
apprenticeship programs and thelike. And they had several
individuals who went on to bevery prominent engineers from
that community involved in thecreation of this institution as
(08:52):
well. Interesting, why that isrelevant is, is they started
from a very different model.
Now, this is 100 years ago. Theysaid, Okay, in order for
somebody to be a fully educatedprofessional that's going to
contribute to technicalindustries and technical
disciplines, a lot of what theyneed to learn to be fully
(09:12):
educated, they cannot learn inschool. They need to learn some
things in school, but theycannot learn them in school, and
we translate that today with allthe discussion about soft Guild
and teamwork and communications,and that's all that piece. It's
not enough to be a smartengineer. It's not enough to
(09:34):
have brilliant ideas. You canhave the most brilliant ideas
out there, but in isolation,they don't go anywhere. So in
order to be effective, you haveto not only have brilliant
ideas, but you have tounderstand how to use
organization to move thoseideas, how to develop them, how
to work with other people tomobilize research. Sources to be
(09:58):
those ideas come to fruition andto develop those ideas. And so
with that understanding, theybuilt a university. I built a
school initially, which becameus on a very different model.
They said the students are goingto spend half their time in an
intense and it is intense,rigorous academic curriculum,
(10:21):
and they are going to spend theother half of their time in
professional roles in theirdiscipline, practicing that
working
Matt Kirchner (10:33):
in the private sector. In that case,
Bob McMahan (10:35):
working in the private sector, working at it,
federal research labs, privatesector industry nonprofits
across all sectors, but they aregoing to be working in their
discipline. And they're not justgoing to be watching. They're
going to be participatingmembers of the staff and members
of the team. So when a studentthen and today, when a student
(10:59):
enters Kettering University.
They enter a rotation every 12weeks. They spend 12 weeks in
classrooms, and these arerigorous programs. We're one of
the highest ranked undergraduateengineering programs in the
country. And then they leave theuniversity after 12 weeks, and
they go for 12 week into aprofessional, paid professional
(11:21):
role in one of our partnercompanies and organizations. And
we partner with over 450companies worldwide to provide
these opportunities for ourstudents, and they practice as
part of the professional teamsin those companies for 12 weeks,
and then they come back, andthey enter this rotation as
(11:44):
freshmen, and they continue itthroughout their entire career,
so that they are here, away,here, away. We have two cohorts
that move in opposition, so onlyone half of our student body is
on campus at any given time, andthe others in their professional
placement, and then they switch.
(12:05):
And what this means is they'reable to realize two and a half
to three years of professionaldomain experience. At the same
time, they're getting one of thebest technical engineering
educations in the country, andat the same time, they're
getting paid 75,000 or moredollars for that work. Now, why
(12:25):
is that relevant? To yourquestion, it's relevant because
our students leave us every 12weeks, and they return 12 weeks
later, having spent time in someof the world's leading
technology companies, some ofthe most sophisticated company
around you. We have students atSpaceX, we have students at
(12:49):
NASA, we have students atGeneral Motors. We have students
at Libby. We have studentsacross disciplines. We have
students who are in venturecapital firms. We have students
who are in financeorganizations, depending on what
their major is, and when theycome back, they tell us what
we're doing right and what we'redoing wrong. We get evaluated
(13:09):
every 12 week, and so we windthrough our curriculum things
that are highly relevant to whatwe are seeing in industry and in
technology and in science andthe trends that we need to
support and we need to educateour students. So you asked about
(13:30):
our five areas of focus, rightyour five trends? Yep, right
now. They're advanced mobility,which is all encompassing with
autonomous vehicles, etc, newenergy and new energy vehicles,
intelligent manufacturing,artificial intelligence and
sustainability. Those areintertwined into all of our
(13:52):
curriculum. So you can go to anyone of our majors across the
university and see pieces ofthose in each one of those
majors, who decides
Matt Kirchner (14:02):
what trends you're going to embed? Because
you talk about things likeadvanced mobility, you talk
about, certainly, energy,artificial intelligence,
intelligent manufacturing, or wecall it smart manufacturing
industry, 4.0 what have you.
Certainly all those are elementsof sustainability. But those are
all examples, I think, oftechnologies that change over
time, right? We weren't talkingabout probably at least three of
those 10 years ago. We probablymight not be talking about three
(14:24):
or four of them 10 years fromnow. Who decides what those
trends are?
Bob McMahan (14:29):
We constantly evaluate those, and we work
collaboratively with ourindustry partners to help define
those. One of the things that weas I'll say something a little
sacrilegious in this probablyhas to do with that background
we were talking about earlier,is I have a kind of a different
take that many people have onhigher education and who is the
(14:49):
customer. If you ask mostindividuals in higher education,
who's the customer of highereducation, they will say,
reflexively, the student is thecustomer and the families. Of
the customer. I disagree withthat, and I'll tell you why the
customer is the person or entityor thing or organization that
(15:11):
defines the value of what youdo, the person that buys the
product that's the customer. Nowthe student and the family, in
some sense, is the customer,because they are the purchasing
the product, but theorganization that actually
defines the value of what you doand purchases the ultimate
outcome, which is the educatedstudent, our graduate schools,
(15:34):
companies, industries,organization that hire those
students, they define what thevalue of what you do is. So when
I point to the fact that we haveone of the highest starting
salaries of any university inthe United States, we're in the
top 20. It's not uncommon forour students to be starting at
(15:58):
8090, $100,000 a year when theycome out of school, sure, but
that's a measure of outcomes,right? That's a measure of
value. It's a measure of what isthe return on the investment
that you're making in highereducation that communication
with our partners enables us tostay current. So those five
(16:20):
areas will change, because theyhave to change, right? And we
have to modify what we doaccordingly. For
Matt Kirchner (16:29):
sure, let me ask you this, one of the changes
that we've seen over the courseof the last, let's call it five
years, is I used to joke that wewould hire whether it's a co op
student or we hired a lot ofcollege interns. We used to try
to impart our grand knowledgeonto the intern, right? So we
would bring the intern in, andit was a job of an engineer or a
marketing person or a businessperson to make that person more
(16:51):
more intelligent, make sure thattheir skills were more
appropriate and applicablethrough this experience of
working in a appliedenvironment. And what we're
finding now is that rather thanus imparting our knowledge and
wisdom to the interns, becausethe technology is changing so
fast, and they're learning aboutthings now in their education
pathway, especially when itcomes to things like AI, data
(17:14):
science, analytics, programming,coding, these kind of things
that they're actually teachingus. Are you hearing the same
kind of things from youremployers, where you have
students that are through theiracademic journey learning things
that are maybe so cutting edge,whether it's advanced mobility,
whether it's smart energy, smartmanufacturing, that the student
is actually teaching theemployer. You starting to hear
(17:34):
that from your employers,absolutely.
Bob McMahan (17:36):
And that happens a lot. You know, we had a recent
graduate, a young lady who wasactually from Michigan who was
an industrial engineer. Herfirst job, her first job out of
school was to lead a team of 30engineers to transition product
line manufacturing facility fromGermany to the United States.
Okay, that was her first job.
And the reason she could dothat, for one reason is it
(17:59):
wasn't her first job, yep, butit was also reflective of what
the skills that she brought tothat. But, you know, there's a
danger there too, because whenthe labor if you want to think
about the labor contract kind ofin the abstract, the labor
contract between employee andemployer is very different today
(18:19):
than it was, say, 30 years ago.
How so?
Matt Kirchner (18:24):
What are the key ways? Would you say? Well, the
idea of lifetime
Bob McMahan (18:27):
employment, for example, is no longer
Matt Kirchner (18:30):
dominant. Hardly a reality, right? It's hardly a
reality.
Bob McMahan (18:34):
It's much more transactional. It's much more
skills based. It's much more youcan bring. It's a employee as
free agent at some level. Model,very much in the California
Silicon Valley. We need thistalent. We need this skill.
Let's go out and hire it when wedon't need it anymore, we let it
(18:55):
go. We get the skill that weneed next, right? Which means
that the danger is, and what wetry to help our students
understand about future proofingtheir career is that the skills
that they have today are veryperishable, and they are
fleeting, and they have alimited shelf life. And what
(19:18):
really we're trying to educatethem. I mean, if you start with
the assumption, you say, Well,you know, some big percentage,
half or quarter, whatever numberyou want to use, of the
knowledge that they gain whenthey are students will be
obsolete by the time theygraduate. Interesting. Yeah.
Then what are you trying toteach them? You're trying to
(19:40):
teach them instead habits ofmind and the discipline to
constantly retool themselves andunderstand that that's a
fundamental part of being anengineer or scientist is
constantly educating yourself,constantly reinventing yourself.
Retooling yourself so that youdon't get into the situation.
(20:03):
Well, we had that skill like,I'm the world's best cobalt
programmer, right? Yeah,congratulations,
Matt Kirchner (20:11):
congratulations,
Bob McMahan (20:13):
yeah, I saw one of those machines in a museum
recently, right?
Matt Kirchner (20:17):
Exactly. Have you read Kissinger's book Genesis
yet, and if you have it, it'sFauci you'll love it. So Henry
Kissinger, of course, passedaway November ish of last year.
I believe it was and obviouslyincredible American statesman
passed away at the age of 100years old. Wrote a book with two
other folks, one of whom was aformer CEO of Google, as he was,
(20:38):
you know, entering the last yearof his life. And the whole topic
of the book, called Genesis is,it's about artificial
intelligence, but it's reallyand I'm about halfway through
it, and I'm getting to somethinghere, but a fascinating book of
its own right. It was actuallyTodd wanick, who's the CEO of
Ashley Furniture industries, isa really good friend, and
recommended it to me. So whenTodd recommends a book, I buy it
because every singlerecommendation is great, good.
(20:59):
But this one they talk about inthat particular book how human
beings, you know, thetraditional model of education
is rote memorization, you know,download information into your
brain, go back to an exam andand, you know, spit it back out.
Maybe we're doing some appliedlearning in the form of an essay
or a project and so on. Thewhole premise of that part of
the book is, look the humanbrain, the human beings. We're
(21:21):
not programmed to memorizeinformation. That's not what
we're here to do. We're not evenvery good at it, you know, save
for very, very few of us. It'snot about how much information
we can necessarily pack into ourbrain and regurgitate at some
point in time. It's about whatwe're able to do with what we
learned. And as you were walkingthrough that and saying, you
know, there's a significantpercentage of what we're
(21:41):
learning as we're going throughour academic journey. And I
think it's that that percentageis increasing as the years go
on, because technology ischanging so fast that is saying,
Look what you learn you're freshfrom your college in a, you
know, four year university thatmight not be even relevant by
the time you walk across thestage with those people in their
fancy robes and get yourdiploma. Is that kind of what
you're getting at that we needto be doing something
Bob McMahan (22:01):
more Absolutely. I mean, to your point, the
important skills are not rotememorization or rote
regurgitation, in fact, right?
You know, a quick session withchat GPT can give you just about
all the factual data that youtotally right, right? Yeah, so,
but what we are teaching themis, is synthesis, integration of
data, connecting disparate dotsand create. Because after all,
(22:26):
you know, you work venturecapital, you see this all the
time. Real invention occurs atthe intersection of domains. It
doesn't typically occurincrementally from something
that exists. Real inventionoccurs from people connecting
dots across, and thatintegration and synthesis is the
(22:47):
most important element oflearning, I think, and that's
what we really are teaching.
We're teaching the habits ofmind that allow people to be
active, engaged, contributing,inventive professionals
(23:07):
throughout their career. Andthat comes from being able to
pull thing together, to reinventthemselves, to say, okay, COBOL
is no longer the language ofchoice. There's this thing
called C, or there's this thingscalled Java, or this thing
called Python. I've just got tokeep learning right? But I can
(23:31):
do it. I know I can do it, and Iwill do it, and I reinvent
myself. So it's like a startup.
Most startups don't end up doingwhat they start out to do,
right? And most people don't endup doing what they train to
Matt Kirchner (23:49):
do, right? Yeah, think about Amazon, right? I
mean, Amazon was a bookseller,exactly. And look at what it is
now. And I think Jeff Bezoscertainly had a vision toward
what that could become, butwithout question, the evolution
of business models and thatintersection to your suggestion,
where I've got somebody who'sgot subject matter expertise or
experience in one area cominginto a new area and saying, Hey,
(24:11):
wait a minute, if I did thisthat I did in my old
organization, in this new spacethat nobody else is thinking
about, that's where thatinnovation comes from. That's
where that next great idea comesfrom. And you're you're actually
teaching students the process ofdoing that. One of the questions
that I have for you, Bob, aswe're thinking through this,
because I totally getting themodel right, 12 weeks of
academic experience, 12 weeks ofApplied Learning, taking what I
(24:34):
learned in the workplace back tothe classroom, taking what I
learned in the classroom back tothe workplace. And so we've got
this symbiotic relationshipbetween work and learning, and
it's a cycle. So do the studentscome to you with an employer
already selected? Do you selectthat employer for them? How does
that work? How do you connectthe employer and the student? We
Bob McMahan (24:55):
have all process for that, for starters, to
prepare the student, becausemost. Students are not an
increasing number of studentscoming to us from high school
have very limited workexperience, right? And so we
have a whole process, which wecall onboarding. In fact, we
don't have a student lifefunction. We have a Chief
(25:19):
Student Experience Officer herewho guides the student through
the entire process, beginningwith before they get to campus.
How do you dress professionally?
How do you communicate? Youknow, in a generation that's
used to sending tweets and, youknow, and Tech Talk videos, how
do you communicate with the CEOor the vice president of an
(25:42):
organization? Not in a tweet?
Matt Kirchner (25:46):
Yeah, not all.
Lower case in six, six lettersor six words from a text, right?
Yep,
Bob McMahan (25:50):
that's right. So we start there, and then we have a
whole process by which companiescome to the universities and
recruit our students heavily.
We'll have several what we calljob fairs, but are essentially
speed dating exercises betweenstudents and companies. And
we'll have 200 companiesbringing, you know, four or five
(26:11):
people, recruiters at a time, toour campus to recruit our
students for these Co Oppositions, for these placements,
and then we work with thestudent to match their career
goals, what they're looking forand the opportunities in
industry. And it produces someinteresting results. I mean, you
(26:34):
know, sometimes the mostpowerful knowledge is to know
what you don't want to do asmuch as what you want to do. So
for students can go through thisprocess, find a position, think
it's what they've always wantedto do, and then they get in, as
we all know, who've got a fewgray hairs on our heads,
sometimes the practice of adiscipline isn't the same thing
as the theory of a discipline,
Matt Kirchner (26:57):
for sure. Yeah, lots of time. So how tragic
Bob McMahan (27:01):
is it for a student to go through an entire
education, go through four yearsof mechanical engineering, only
to find out that they don't likebeing a mechanical engineer? And
Matt Kirchner (27:11):
it happens all the time, if we hear those
stories all the time, all thetime,
Bob McMahan (27:15):
but our students, they find that out in their
freshman year or their sophomoreyear, and then they change. And
so there's a whole process bywhich we manage that that looks
kind of like the academicsupport process at most
institutions. We have that too,of course, but we also have this
whole parallel piece that workswith the professional lives of
(27:36):
our students and how thatintegrates into their academic
discipline.
Matt Kirchner (27:41):
Is there a certain profile of a student
that works well in this model,as you're looking at a student,
for instance, coming out of highschool? Are there certain
mindsets, if you will, on thepart of a student that work
really well and others that arelike, Oh, maybe this model isn't
right for you. There's
Bob McMahan (27:55):
a fairly broad profile of students that we see,
but I would say, if if I had todrill it down to some
attributes, it's students thatlike to build things. They like
to create things. It's not justabout building with your hands.
It's about creating things. Itcan be software. It can be
conceptual. But students who aredriven and who loved, you know,
(28:18):
first robotic students, Vexrobotic students. These students
are are ideal Ketteringstudents, because they've
already shown they like gettingout there. They like doing they
like building. They likecompeting. They like pushing the
envelope. A lot of our studentskind of fall into that. Students
that are in the garage on theweekend, building stuff or
(28:39):
sitting at the computer,designing new systems, or
soldering, or it's thatinsulation cords creation that's
a very powerful
Matt Kirchner (28:49):
I love that you know, as we're recording this my
I post on LinkedIn several timesa week and try to be as creative
as possible. And one of my postsfrom yesterday was a picture of
myself as about a nine or 10year old, maybe 11, and my best
friend and my younger brotherand we had dragged home, it was
a refrigerator box from theappliance store, and we turned
(29:10):
it into, like a stand up arcadevideo game, which wasn't a video
game at all, but it kind ofworked like one, right? And I
was just reflecting on that overthe weekend about, you know, we
didn't have that wasn't like aformal process. It was like, All
right, it's July 13, or whateverthe day is, and we got to fill
our day with something today.
Let's do this, right? And so wejust went off and we found this
project to do. And then I thinkabout, you know, as you're
mentioning, things like VEXrobotics. And FIRST Robotics,
(29:32):
highly creative, and there's allkinds of elements of, you know,
engineering, but also marketingand business planning and
creating the competitionenvironment where the robot is
going to do its thing, andplanning the trips to the
competition, all the strategy, Imean, learning all those things.
And then, you know, there's thisnew we've been involved with
this effort called discover AI,which is like getting students
(29:53):
while they're still in highschool. Yes, let's understand AI
and machine learning, but let'sdo it in the context of growing.
And unmanned ground vehicles and3d fabrication and scanning and
so on. It kind of feels to melike we're on the we mentioned
the word Genesis the before,like we're at the beginning of
this process of, kind of anevolution and a renaissance in K
12 education as well, wherewe're finally starting to get
(30:15):
back to, you know, probablynever going to have the day
where the where the two kidswalk on their own across the
busiest street in town to theappliance store and drag a box
back. Right? I don't even knowif that was safe, but it was
fun, but at least to this pointwhere our young people are going
to be having these types ofexperiences in their middle
school and high school journey,and even in elementary school,
Are you sensing the same thing?
(30:36):
Absolutely,
Bob McMahan (30:37):
absolutely and it's exciting. It's so exciting. I'll
give you two quick examples. Iwas walking past we have a large
music studio here that was builtand at the practice studios that
was built through the generosityof one of our alumni. And we did
that because so many of ourstudents have very strong
artistic and musical talent aswell. You know, the correlation
(30:58):
between math and music is verystrong. So, you know, I was
walking past one day and there'sa student playing this
incredible concerto on thepiano. And I walked in and and I
said, that is spectacular. Itturned out student was in, you
know, Junior symphony concertsoloist. But, you know, they
were really interested in thesoftware architecture of game
(31:20):
design. You know, that's whatthey were there to do, but they
had this whole other side oftheir personality to them. We
built a building a couple yearsago here on campus, which is
really unique in the US. It'sreally built around our model of
interaction. And one of thethings you see students over
there all the time, they'll besitting in a room, they'll have
(31:41):
an idea. They'll go down,they'll walk down one flight of
stairs, get a piece of pizza,walk over 50 feet and pick up
their 3d printed model of thething that they were talking
about, you know, before theywent good. And you see that kind
of fluidity now, acrosstechnologies, across I think
it's incredibly exciting. It is,
Matt Kirchner (32:02):
but it totally speaks to the need for a
different model of highereducation, right? Because, I
mean, your model is innovativeto begin with, right? I mean,
you think about this, thetypical, you know, four year
university experience of the,whatever it is, the 13 week
quarters, and the, you know, 26a week semesters, or whatever,
they end up being less thanthat. But then you and then
we're doing our internship inthe summer. We have a job or
(32:23):
whatever. Maybe we do a co opfor a semester, and you've got
this ongoing relationshipbetween the two of them. But
what are some of the other waysthat higher education needs to
innovate so that we can meetthat student, where they are the
one that's innovating on theirfirst robotics course and or
their first robotics team inhigh school, and then they are
going off and having that pieceof pizza and walking back to the
3d printer, and there is thatpart that they designed and
(32:43):
engineered on their own. Youknow, what are some of the other
ways that we need to innovatehigher education?
Bob McMahan (32:48):
That's a great question. And it really comes
from a perspective of, I think,understanding that one of the
things we need to think abouthigher education, and we need to
start designing higher educationin this country, to recognize
that it is a spectrum. It is nota model, and we have treated it
as if, as it is a model. And ifyou look across the country, you
(33:10):
know, there are some 4000colleges and universities in the
United States, a huge majorityof which look effectively,
essentially the same, totally,with the exception of the
architecture of the campus andthe food they serve in the
union. What we need to thinkabout, I think, seriously, is a
(33:32):
consolidation of highereducation in this country around
the notion that there aredifferent forms of higher
education and they servedifferent purposes, and we need
to think about how we optimizeindividual institutions to those
missions. And that's a bit ofvigorous hand waving in your
(33:53):
answer, but Kettering is aperfect example of what that
looks like when you do that, andwhat it produces when you do
that. And there are others.
There are others in the arts,there are others in the
sciences, there are others inacross disciplines. Are there
Matt Kirchner (34:13):
other ones that you would point to, in addition
to Kettering, that are like,wow, these folks are really,
really coming up with a creativeapproach to higher ed. Yes,
Bob McMahan (34:21):
there are. When it comes to the kind of model that
we have, we see a lot of partialimplementations, if you will.
There's a lot of programs thathave Co Op programs or are
internship programs, but there'sno modification of the core
structure of the university andthe academic delivery. I mean,
we deliver our servicedifferently in a different way
(34:45):
than everyone else does. Ourcalendar is different. We have
to get special exemptions fromour accreditors because of the
nature of how we deliver creditto our students, and we have to
go through all. Sorts of hopesto demonstrate that ours is
equivalent or better than thetraditional institution. And so
(35:07):
there are other programs thatare are similar to us, but none
that are that integrateexperiential learning to the
degree that we do. And I thinkthat's the real power of the
model. But there are otherdomain specific institutions,
especially in the arts. You haveschools like the College of
Creative Studies in Detroit. Youhave schools like the California
(35:27):
Institute of the Arts. You havespecialty schools that have
tailored their curriculums tospecific domains, in this way,
but it's driven in large part,or driven fundamentally, by
defining who the customer is,and what are they telling you?
Absolutely
Matt Kirchner (35:46):
I had I won't say the person's name, but I've
thought about this so manytimes. About four years ago, we
had a dean at an institution ofhigher education who said he
asked the question, is our jobto create a job for every
student, or a student for everyjob. And his argument was, his
job was to create a job forevery student, or to have a job
(36:06):
for every student. And I'm like,Well, wait a minute. I mean that
that to me, seems a little bitback, right? So not that you
have to find a student for everyjob, but should we look at where
the careers are going and find,you know, find talent to be able
to support those careers. And ifthose are innovative companies,
or if those are employers thatare looking for talent that's
been, you know, trained andupskilled and educated in a
different way. It feels to melike that's the market we're
(36:26):
after and after, and it seemslike you're looking at it
exactly the same way. Certainly,you're going to do well by your
students, but you only do wellby your students if you do well
by the people that are employingyour students in the communities
that are benefiting from theirexistence in the and the skills
and the competencies that theyhave, I could continue on this
path for hours. I do want topose two final questions to you,
Bob, and they're ones that weask every single guest here on
(36:48):
the podcast, and the first onewe've dove into already, and
with your conversations abouthow we disrupt higher education
and your different views oneducation in general, might be
even hard to top some of thethings that we already talked
about. But what is one of thosethings that you believe about
education that would surprise alot of people?
Bob McMahan (37:04):
I kind of came up through the traditional
structure of education. I thinkwhat would surprise people is
how fluid I do believe educationand education should be. In the
United States, we do thecommunity college level within
our economy, within our society.
I think we do it gravedisservice. I think they are a
very powerful contributor to thesolution of this problem, and we
(37:28):
don't leverage them in the waythat we should as a society, and
that many countries actually do.
If you look towards countrieslike Germany, for example, the
way that they view highereducation as a spectrum and as a
lifelong activity. I think it'sa very healthy one and, and
(37:48):
perhaps that's the thing thatpeople would surprise from a
traditional university projectpresident, yeah,
Matt Kirchner (37:54):
for sure. Agree 100% and I know, and I've I'm a
big believer that it's all anand not an or right? It's not a
four year university or anadvanced degree or a technical
college, certificate, diploma,you know, what have you, it's we
need all of these, and the morefluid to use your word that we
can make. The process ofeducation and the choices and
the on ramps and the off ramps,and people not making life
(38:15):
decisions necessarily, andknowing that you can, you know,
to your earlier point, you canstep back from a decision you
made, if you decide that thatdecision wasn't the right one
for you as you look to yourfuture. So all these different
options, but to hear that from auniversity president really
gives me optimism for the futureof education, because
partnerships in those regards,really, really important
thinking about optimism for thefuture. I want to take you all
(38:37):
the way back to when you were a15 year old young man with your
whole future in front of you,and we're going to ask you our
final question that we againlove to ask every single guest
here on The TechEd Podcast. Andif you could go back to that 15
year old sophomore in highschool version of Bob McMahon,
everything that you've done, theexperiences you've had,
everything that you've learned,all of the different sectors
(38:58):
that you've spent time with,knowing that you've got that
huge variety of experience andwisdom. Now, what would you
share with that 15 year oldversion of Bob McMahon, if you
could give him one piece ofadvice, how
Bob McMahan (39:09):
long you got the thing, I look back on those
things, is nothing ever happensfast enough when you're that
age. And this is something Itell students when I talk to
them, when they come to me andtalk about, well, you know, I've
been doing this for six monthsnow, and it's just not going. I
said, Well, okay, okay, butthings never happen fast enough.
(39:29):
They never develop fast enoughwhen you're that age. And so
probably the one thing I wouldcounsel is that in patience and
and an understanding that thefuture you, everything you learn
along the way, and everyexperience that you have is a
piece of the future you. And youwill only know how to connect
(39:55):
the dots and revert and theywill connect you. If you're open
to those experiences and open tothat, but I think that's
probably,
Matt Kirchner (40:06):
yeah, absolutely, it makes 100% sense. And, you
know, I talk and I've got mykids are now in their 20s, and I
can't tell you how many times atevery juncture of life when you
know when, when I'm one of them,and all kids deal with one
challenge or another, wasdealing with a challenge. And I
would always say, You know what?
This doesn't make any senseright now, but I guarantee you,
in two or three or four years,looking back on it, you'll
understand why we had thisexperience exactly. So
(40:26):
connecting those dots so, soimportant, and so I think
apropos for our audience aswell. Bob, so appreciate that
you're right now. Things neverhappen fast enough when you're a
15 year old kid. I'll tell yousomething that happened too
fast, was this episode of TheTechEd Podcast. We I mean, I
can't believe that our timedisappeared as fast as it did. I
feel like we have so much moreto talk about. We'd love to have
(40:48):
you back sometime in themeantime, though. Bob McMahon,
who is the president ofKettering University, Dr Robert
McMahon, officially, thank youso much for joining us here on
The TechEd Podcast. Thank you.
Had a wonderful time. Iappreciate it, and thanks to our
audience for being here as well.
A great conversation with DrRobert McMahon, president of
Kettering University. We covereda lot of great information. You
(41:09):
can find information aboutKettering and many of the topics
we talked about here on thepodcast at our show notes.
You'll find those at TechEdpodcast.com/mcmahon I'll spell
that for you, TechEdpodcast.com/m, c, M, a, H, A n,
when you're done there, ofcourse, check us out on social
media. We are all over LinkedIn.
(41:29):
We are on tick tock. We are onFacebook, we are on Instagram.
Wherever you consume your socialmedia, you will find The TechEd
Podcast, and we hope you find ushere again next week. We will be
here and looking forward toseeing you then, until then. My
name is Matt Kirkner. I am thehost of The TechEd Podcast, and
thank you for being with us.
You.
Matt, welcome into The TechEd Podcast. I am
(00:10):
your host. Matt Kirchner, we sayit every week in our
introduction that we love peoplewho are disrupting the model of
education. I think most of usthat spend time around higher
education recognize that a wholevariety of factors, some of
which we'll talk about today,are having a huge effect, not
just on higher education today,but in the future. We have
changing attitudes around highereducation. Certainly there are
(00:32):
demographic realities that aretaking place that are going to
have a huge impact on highereducation as well. I like to
say, in some cases, that thereare two types of higher
educators, those that areinnovating for the future and
those that are not. There'sreally only one type of higher
educator, and that is those whoare innovating for the future.
Because I'm a believer that ifwe don't innovate, if we don't
(00:54):
disrupt that model of highereducation a little bit, the
organizations that don't do thatare probably not even going to
be around to talk about it infive to 10 years, we are around
this week to talk about thatvery topic, and we're doing so
with Dr Robert McMahon, who isthe president of Kettering
University in Flint, Michigan.
We are going to learn all aboutwhat it means to truly disrupt
the world that is highereducation. With that, Bob,
(01:17):
you've given me the permissionto call you Bob, Dr McMahon,
thank you so much for joining ushere on The TechEd Podcast. It's
great to have you here.
Bob McMahan (01:26):
My pleasure. I'm looking forward to the
discussion today. So as we just
Matt Kirchner (01:29):
said in the intro, higher education
absolutely has to innovate, andI know your model is all about
innovation. It's all aboutdisruption. But let's start with
this is the model of highereducation? Is it broken in the
first place? And if so, what arewe not getting right, and what
do we need to do about it?
That's a
Bob McMahan (01:45):
great question. I think it worthy of an hour of
conversation, probably in and ofitself. I mean, I think it
absolutely significant aspectsof it are broken, and it's in
part because it really hasn't asa model, it really hasn't kept
pace with the evolution of oureconomy and the evolution of the
needs of society in some reallyfundamental ways. I mean, I
(02:06):
always like to say to people,we're so forward looking as a
sector that we wear regalia thatwas designed in the 1300s we put
some bling on it, but prettymuch it's the same. You can
trace the academic regalia backto monastic gowns in the Middle
Ages. That's awesome. It's aplace where stability has value.
(02:27):
And so it's not just kind of ageneric resistance to change.
There's reasons why in academiathat that resistance to change,
that that kind of long termstability is a value, but what
it has given rise to are modelsthat are increasingly discordant
with the needs of, well,society, of industry and of the
(02:51):
economy more broadly. And so inthat sense, it very much. There
are aspects of it. They're verymuch broken, really,
Matt Kirchner (02:58):
in some ways. And it's cool, the pop and
circumstance and the robes andthe so on that you would see on
a typical commencement stage,and kind of hearkening back to
the origins of higher education,and there is certainly that
history and that gravitas, ifyou will, that goes along with
being an institution of highereducation. But to your point,
with some of the changes thatare taking place in our society
(03:19):
and in our marketplaces, wehaven't evolved along with those
changes. So looking forward todiving into those topics a
little bit more deeply, or overthe course of the podcast today,
but before we do that, Bob wouldjust be interested. You know, I
did a little bit of homework onyour background and your
history, fascinating careerhistory that led to you running
this great institution of highereducation. So touch on that a
(03:41):
little bit. What are thehighlights of your career and
how have the experiences thatyou've had in your unique path
to your current job influencedyour views on higher education?
That's
Bob McMahan (03:50):
an interesting question. I would characterize
my career in one way. I said itonly makes sense in the rear
view mirror. When you sit whereI am today and you connect the
dots in reverse, they connect insome interesting ways, but you
wouldn't necessarily do thatlooking forward, I've had a
career that really spans a widevariety of sectors, but always
(04:10):
with roots and always withstrong ties to the university
and to the university community.
I have been a venturecapitalist. I have started
companies. I have grown thosesmall companies from literally
kitchen table entities tomultinational companies
organizations. I've beeninvolved in mergers and
acquisitions. I've probablyhired as many engineers as I've
(04:32):
trained over the course of mycareer. I've been involved in
the public policy sphere. I'veworked very closely with the
governor in a very progressivestate, North Carolina, which
uses science and technology tore engineer its economy on an
ongoing basis, all of thosethings I've done while still
being connected to theuniversity, always a professor,
(04:54):
always with students, alwaysreally the first love being
edge. Education. And so in thatcombination of things, I have
really seen education from bothsides. I've seen it from the
producer side as well as fromthe consumer side, and also from
the public policy side. So I'veseen it from the three legs of
(05:16):
the three legged stool that wealways talk about in higher
education, and I think thatgives me some interesting
perspectives on things. Noquestion.
Matt Kirchner (05:25):
What a fascinating background to lead
you into this world of highereducation. Now, our producer,
Melissa Martin, knows right nowthat I am mustering every bit of
discipline that I can muster notto go down the venture capital
rabbit hole, because she knowsthat that is, that is a topic,
and we can hijack an entireepisode of the podcast, just
talking about PE and VC models.
But we're gonna avoid thattemptation. And rather than
(05:46):
talking about that discipline,let's talk about the discipline
that goes along with reallyforming your strategy as an
institution of higher education,your approach, I know it
incorporates these fiveinterdisciplinary trends.
They're all workplace driven anddriving those into every single
academic discipline. So what arethose five trends that you have
(06:06):
your eyes on that are havingsuch an impact on how you're
thinking about the future ofhigher ed? Can I divert
Bob McMahan (06:13):
us a little bit here? Yes, let's go down the
Matt Kirchner (06:15):
venture capital Hall. It was interesting.
Bob McMahan (06:18):
I was actually a venture capitalist for a non
profit venture capital firm thatserved the intelligence
community the United States. Itwas really, it's called in Q
tel, okay, fascinating model inand of itself, one of the few
truly national venture capitalfirms. So, yeah, we can go down
that route. What we want. What'sreally relevant to your question
(06:41):
is this Kettering University asan institution is unique in the
United States. It does not worklike or look like any other
institution of higher educationin the US, and that is because
of the way it was founded and bywhom it was founded. And that
really speaks to your questionin a very fundamental way. We
(07:02):
were founded over 100 years agohere in Flint, Michigan. When
Flint Michigan was the SiliconValley of the United States,
people were pouring into thisarea. This is the home of
General Motors. It was right, ina very real sense, the home of
the automotive industry. Andthey were pouring in from all
over the world, 1000s, 10s of1000s per year. And the folks
(07:25):
who started the automotiveindustry in the US, whose names
are brands now, were, at thattime, young entrepreneurs trying
to create businesses. I have apicture in my house, or the
president's house here, of LouisChevrolet, about 20 years old,
doing some really stupid thingsin these vehicles that he was
(07:46):
designing, just like you wouldexpect someone of his car doing,
right and they were that, butthey had the pressures to
understand long before McKenzieever wrote a piece on the war on
talent and all these things thatwhat was really going to be
fundamental to their success wasthe ability to take this large
(08:08):
group of largely unskilled,uneducated people flooding into
this area and educate them andbring them into a level of
understanding and technicalcompetence that they could
contribute In this industry. Andso they did this by forming a
school, and they brought inCharles Kettering and others who
were huge proponents. But theyalso brought in some people from
(08:31):
the northern parts of Michigan,up in the UP sure the mining
community, which was veryheavily oriented around
apprenticeship programs and thelike. And they had several
individuals who went on to bevery prominent engineers from
that community involved in thecreation of this institution as
(08:52):
well. Interesting, why that isrelevant is, is they started
from a very different model.
Now, this is 100 years ago. Theysaid, Okay, in order for
somebody to be a fully educatedprofessional that's going to
contribute to technicalindustries and technical
disciplines, a lot of what theyneed to learn to be fully
(09:12):
educated, they cannot learn inschool. They need to learn some
things in school, but theycannot learn them in school, and
we translate that today with allthe discussion about soft Guild
and teamwork and communications,and that's all that piece. It's
not enough to be a smartengineer. It's not enough to
(09:34):
have brilliant ideas. You canhave the most brilliant ideas
out there, but in isolation,they don't go anywhere. So in
order to be effective, you haveto not only have brilliant
ideas, but you have tounderstand how to use
organization to move thoseideas, how to develop them, how
to work with other people tomobilize research. Sources to be
(09:58):
those ideas come to fruition andto develop those ideas. And so
with that understanding, theybuilt a university. I built a
school initially, which becameus on a very different model.
They said the students are goingto spend half their time in an
intense and it is intense,rigorous academic curriculum,
(10:21):
and they are going to spend theother half of their time in
professional roles in theirdiscipline, practicing that
working
Matt Kirchner (10:33):
in the private sector. In that case,
Bob McMahan (10:35):
working in the private sector, working at it,
federal research labs, privatesector industry nonprofits
across all sectors, but they aregoing to be working in their
discipline. And they're not justgoing to be watching. They're
going to be participatingmembers of the staff and members
of the team. So when a studentthen and today, when a student
(10:59):
enters Kettering University.
They enter a rotation every 12weeks. They spend 12 weeks in
classrooms, and these arerigorous programs. We're one of
the highest ranked undergraduateengineering programs in the
country. And then they leave theuniversity after 12 weeks, and
they go for 12 week into aprofessional, paid professional
(11:21):
role in one of our partnercompanies and organizations. And
we partner with over 450companies worldwide to provide
these opportunities for ourstudents, and they practice as
part of the professional teamsin those companies for 12 weeks,
and then they come back, andthey enter this rotation as
(11:44):
freshmen, and they continue itthroughout their entire career,
so that they are here, away,here, away. We have two cohorts
that move in opposition, so onlyone half of our student body is
on campus at any given time, andthe others in their professional
placement, and then they switch.
(12:05):
And what this means is they'reable to realize two and a half
to three years of professionaldomain experience. At the same
time, they're getting one of thebest technical engineering
educations in the country, andat the same time, they're
getting paid 75,000 or moredollars for that work. Now, why
(12:25):
is that relevant? To yourquestion, it's relevant because
our students leave us every 12weeks, and they return 12 weeks
later, having spent time in someof the world's leading
technology companies, some ofthe most sophisticated company
around you. We have students atSpaceX, we have students at
(12:49):
NASA, we have students atGeneral Motors. We have students
at Libby. We have studentsacross disciplines. We have
students who are in venturecapital firms. We have students
who are in financeorganizations, depending on what
their major is, and when theycome back, they tell us what
we're doing right and what we'redoing wrong. We get evaluated
(13:09):
every 12 week, and so we windthrough our curriculum things
that are highly relevant to whatwe are seeing in industry and in
technology and in science andthe trends that we need to
support and we need to educateour students. So you asked about
(13:30):
our five areas of focus, rightyour five trends? Yep, right
now. They're advanced mobility,which is all encompassing with
autonomous vehicles, etc, newenergy and new energy vehicles,
intelligent manufacturing,artificial intelligence and
sustainability. Those areintertwined into all of our
(13:52):
curriculum. So you can go to anyone of our majors across the
university and see pieces ofthose in each one of those
majors, who decides
Matt Kirchner (14:02):
what trends you're going to embed? Because
you talk about things likeadvanced mobility, you talk
about, certainly, energy,artificial intelligence,
intelligent manufacturing, or wecall it smart manufacturing
industry, 4.0 what have you.
Certainly all those are elementsof sustainability. But those are
all examples, I think, oftechnologies that change over
time, right? We weren't talkingabout probably at least three of
those 10 years ago. We probablymight not be talking about three
(14:24):
or four of them 10 years fromnow. Who decides what those
trends are?
Bob McMahan (14:29):
We constantly evaluate those, and we work
collaboratively with ourindustry partners to help define
those. One of the things that weas I'll say something a little
sacrilegious in this probablyhas to do with that background
we were talking about earlier,is I have a kind of a different
take that many people have onhigher education and who is the
(14:49):
customer. If you ask mostindividuals in higher education,
who's the customer of highereducation, they will say,
reflexively, the student is thecustomer and the families. Of
the customer. I disagree withthat, and I'll tell you why the
customer is the person or entityor thing or organization that
(15:11):
defines the value of what youdo, the person that buys the
product that's the customer. Nowthe student and the family, in
some sense, is the customer,because they are the purchasing
the product, but theorganization that actually
defines the value of what you doand purchases the ultimate
outcome, which is the educatedstudent, our graduate schools,
(15:34):
companies, industries,organization that hire those
students, they define what thevalue of what you do is. So when
I point to the fact that we haveone of the highest starting
salaries of any university inthe United States, we're in the
top 20. It's not uncommon forour students to be starting at
(15:58):
8090, $100,000 a year when theycome out of school, sure, but
that's a measure of outcomes,right? That's a measure of
value. It's a measure of what isthe return on the investment
that you're making in highereducation that communication
with our partners enables us tostay current. So those five
(16:20):
areas will change, because theyhave to change, right? And we
have to modify what we doaccordingly. For
Matt Kirchner (16:29):
sure, let me ask you this, one of the changes
that we've seen over the courseof the last, let's call it five
years, is I used to joke that wewould hire whether it's a co op
student or we hired a lot ofcollege interns. We used to try
to impart our grand knowledgeonto the intern, right? So we
would bring the intern in, andit was a job of an engineer or a
marketing person or a businessperson to make that person more
(16:51):
more intelligent, make sure thattheir skills were more
appropriate and applicablethrough this experience of
working in a appliedenvironment. And what we're
finding now is that rather thanus imparting our knowledge and
wisdom to the interns, becausethe technology is changing so
fast, and they're learning aboutthings now in their education
pathway, especially when itcomes to things like AI, data
(17:14):
science, analytics, programming,coding, these kind of things
that they're actually teachingus. Are you hearing the same
kind of things from youremployers, where you have
students that are through theiracademic journey learning things
that are maybe so cutting edge,whether it's advanced mobility,
whether it's smart energy, smartmanufacturing, that the student
is actually teaching theemployer. You starting to hear
(17:34):
that from your employers,absolutely.
Bob McMahan (17:36):
And that happens a lot. You know, we had a recent
graduate, a young lady who wasactually from Michigan who was
an industrial engineer. Herfirst job, her first job out of
school was to lead a team of 30engineers to transition product
line manufacturing facility fromGermany to the United States.
Okay, that was her first job.
And the reason she could dothat, for one reason is it
(17:59):
wasn't her first job, yep, butit was also reflective of what
the skills that she brought tothat. But, you know, there's a
danger there too, because whenthe labor if you want to think
about the labor contract kind ofin the abstract, the labor
contract between employee andemployer is very different today
(18:19):
than it was, say, 30 years ago.
How so?
Matt Kirchner (18:24):
What are the key ways? Would you say? Well, the
idea of lifetime
Bob McMahan (18:27):
employment, for example, is no longer
Matt Kirchner (18:30):
dominant. Hardly a reality, right? It's hardly a
reality.
Bob McMahan (18:34):
It's much more transactional. It's much more
skills based. It's much more youcan bring. It's a employee as
free agent at some level. Model,very much in the California
Silicon Valley. We need thistalent. We need this skill.
Let's go out and hire it when wedon't need it anymore, we let it
(18:55):
go. We get the skill that weneed next, right? Which means
that the danger is, and what wetry to help our students
understand about future proofingtheir career is that the skills
that they have today are veryperishable, and they are
fleeting, and they have alimited shelf life. And what
(19:18):
really we're trying to educatethem. I mean, if you start with
the assumption, you say, Well,you know, some big percentage,
half or quarter, whatever numberyou want to use, of the
knowledge that they gain whenthey are students will be
obsolete by the time theygraduate. Interesting. Yeah.
Then what are you trying toteach them? You're trying to
(19:40):
teach them instead habits ofmind and the discipline to
constantly retool themselves andunderstand that that's a
fundamental part of being anengineer or scientist is
constantly educating yourself,constantly reinventing yourself.
Retooling yourself so that youdon't get into the situation.
(20:03):
Well, we had that skill like,I'm the world's best cobalt
programmer, right? Yeah,congratulations,
Matt Kirchner (20:11):
congratulations,
Bob McMahan (20:13):
yeah, I saw one of those machines in a museum
recently, right?
Matt Kirchner (20:17):
Exactly. Have you read Kissinger's book Genesis
yet, and if you have it, it'sFauci you'll love it. So Henry
Kissinger, of course, passedaway November ish of last year.
I believe it was and obviouslyincredible American statesman
passed away at the age of 100years old. Wrote a book with two
other folks, one of whom was aformer CEO of Google, as he was,
(20:38):
you know, entering the last yearof his life. And the whole topic
of the book, called Genesis is,it's about artificial
intelligence, but it's reallyand I'm about halfway through
it, and I'm getting to somethinghere, but a fascinating book of
its own right. It was actuallyTodd wanick, who's the CEO of
Ashley Furniture industries, isa really good friend, and
recommended it to me. So whenTodd recommends a book, I buy it
because every singlerecommendation is great, good.
(20:59):
But this one they talk about inthat particular book how human
beings, you know, thetraditional model of education
is rote memorization, you know,download information into your
brain, go back to an exam andand, you know, spit it back out.
Maybe we're doing some appliedlearning in the form of an essay
or a project and so on. Thewhole premise of that part of
the book is, look the humanbrain, the human beings. We're
(21:21):
not programmed to memorizeinformation. That's not what
we're here to do. We're not evenvery good at it, you know, save
for very, very few of us. It'snot about how much information
we can necessarily pack into ourbrain and regurgitate at some
point in time. It's about whatwe're able to do with what we
learned. And as you were walkingthrough that and saying, you
know, there's a significantpercentage of what we're
(21:41):
learning as we're going throughour academic journey. And I
think it's that that percentageis increasing as the years go
on, because technology ischanging so fast that is saying,
Look what you learn you're freshfrom your college in a, you
know, four year university thatmight not be even relevant by
the time you walk across thestage with those people in their
fancy robes and get yourdiploma. Is that kind of what
you're getting at that we needto be doing something
Bob McMahan (22:01):
more Absolutely. I mean, to your point, the
important skills are not rotememorization or rote
regurgitation, in fact, right?
You know, a quick session withchat GPT can give you just about
all the factual data that youtotally right, right? Yeah, so,
but what we are teaching themis, is synthesis, integration of
data, connecting disparate dotsand create. Because after all,
(22:26):
you know, you work venturecapital, you see this all the
time. Real invention occurs atthe intersection of domains. It
doesn't typically occurincrementally from something
that exists. Real inventionoccurs from people connecting
dots across, and thatintegration and synthesis is the
(22:47):
most important element oflearning, I think, and that's
what we really are teaching.
We're teaching the habits ofmind that allow people to be
active, engaged, contributing,inventive professionals
(23:07):
throughout their career. Andthat comes from being able to
pull thing together, to reinventthemselves, to say, okay, COBOL
is no longer the language ofchoice. There's this thing
called C, or there's this thingscalled Java, or this thing
called Python. I've just got tokeep learning right? But I can
(23:31):
do it. I know I can do it, and Iwill do it, and I reinvent
myself. So it's like a startup.
Most startups don't end up doingwhat they start out to do,
right? And most people don't endup doing what they train to
Matt Kirchner (23:49):
do, right? Yeah, think about Amazon, right? I
mean, Amazon was a bookseller,exactly. And look at what it is
now. And I think Jeff Bezoscertainly had a vision toward
what that could become, butwithout question, the evolution
of business models and thatintersection to your suggestion,
where I've got somebody who'sgot subject matter expertise or
experience in one area cominginto a new area and saying, Hey,
(24:11):
wait a minute, if I did thisthat I did in my old
organization, in this new spacethat nobody else is thinking
about, that's where thatinnovation comes from. That's
where that next great idea comesfrom. And you're you're actually
teaching students the process ofdoing that. One of the questions
that I have for you, Bob, aswe're thinking through this,
because I totally getting themodel right, 12 weeks of
academic experience, 12 weeks ofApplied Learning, taking what I
(24:34):
learned in the workplace back tothe classroom, taking what I
learned in the classroom back tothe workplace. And so we've got
this symbiotic relationshipbetween work and learning, and
it's a cycle. So do the studentscome to you with an employer
already selected? Do you selectthat employer for them? How does
that work? How do you connectthe employer and the student? We
Bob McMahan (24:55):
have all process for that, for starters, to
prepare the student, becausemost. Students are not an
increasing number of studentscoming to us from high school
have very limited workexperience, right? And so we
have a whole process, which wecall onboarding. In fact, we
don't have a student lifefunction. We have a Chief
(25:19):
Student Experience Officer herewho guides the student through
the entire process, beginningwith before they get to campus.
How do you dress professionally?
How do you communicate? Youknow, in a generation that's
used to sending tweets and, youknow, and Tech Talk videos, how
do you communicate with the CEOor the vice president of an
(25:42):
organization? Not in a tweet?
Matt Kirchner (25:46):
Yeah, not all.
Lower case in six, six lettersor six words from a text, right?
Yep,
Bob McMahan (25:50):
that's right. So we start there, and then we have a
whole process by which companiescome to the universities and
recruit our students heavily.
We'll have several what we calljob fairs, but are essentially
speed dating exercises betweenstudents and companies. And
we'll have 200 companiesbringing, you know, four or five
(26:11):
people, recruiters at a time, toour campus to recruit our
students for these Co Oppositions, for these placements,
and then we work with thestudent to match their career
goals, what they're looking forand the opportunities in
industry. And it produces someinteresting results. I mean, you
(26:34):
know, sometimes the mostpowerful knowledge is to know
what you don't want to do asmuch as what you want to do. So
for students can go through thisprocess, find a position, think
it's what they've always wantedto do, and then they get in, as
we all know, who've got a fewgray hairs on our heads,
sometimes the practice of adiscipline isn't the same thing
as the theory of a discipline,
Matt Kirchner (26:57):
for sure. Yeah, lots of time. So how tragic
Bob McMahan (27:01):
is it for a student to go through an entire
education, go through four yearsof mechanical engineering, only
to find out that they don't likebeing a mechanical engineer? And
Matt Kirchner (27:11):
it happens all the time, if we hear those
stories all the time, all thetime,
Bob McMahan (27:15):
but our students, they find that out in their
freshman year or their sophomoreyear, and then they change. And
so there's a whole process bywhich we manage that that looks
kind of like the academicsupport process at most
institutions. We have that too,of course, but we also have this
whole parallel piece that workswith the professional lives of
(27:36):
our students and how thatintegrates into their academic
discipline.
Matt Kirchner (27:41):
Is there a certain profile of a student
that works well in this model,as you're looking at a student,
for instance, coming out of highschool? Are there certain
mindsets, if you will, on thepart of a student that work
really well and others that arelike, Oh, maybe this model isn't
right for you. There's
Bob McMahan (27:55):
a fairly broad profile of students that we see,
but I would say, if if I had todrill it down to some
attributes, it's students thatlike to build things. They like
to create things. It's not justabout building with your hands.
It's about creating things. Itcan be software. It can be
conceptual. But students who aredriven and who loved, you know,
(28:18):
first robotic students, Vexrobotic students. These students
are are ideal Ketteringstudents, because they've
already shown they like gettingout there. They like doing they
like building. They likecompeting. They like pushing the
envelope. A lot of our studentskind of fall into that. Students
that are in the garage on theweekend, building stuff or
(28:39):
sitting at the computer,designing new systems, or
soldering, or it's thatinsulation cords creation that's
a very powerful
Matt Kirchner (28:49):
I love that you know, as we're recording this my
I post on LinkedIn several timesa week and try to be as creative
as possible. And one of my postsfrom yesterday was a picture of
myself as about a nine or 10year old, maybe 11, and my best
friend and my younger brotherand we had dragged home, it was
a refrigerator box from theappliance store, and we turned
(29:10):
it into, like a stand up arcadevideo game, which wasn't a video
game at all, but it kind ofworked like one, right? And I
was just reflecting on that overthe weekend about, you know, we
didn't have that wasn't like aformal process. It was like, All
right, it's July 13, or whateverthe day is, and we got to fill
our day with something today.
Let's do this, right? And so wejust went off and we found this
project to do. And then I thinkabout, you know, as you're
mentioning, things like VEXrobotics. And FIRST Robotics,
(29:32):
highly creative, and there's allkinds of elements of, you know,
engineering, but also marketingand business planning and
creating the competitionenvironment where the robot is
going to do its thing, andplanning the trips to the
competition, all the strategy, Imean, learning all those things.
And then, you know, there's thisnew we've been involved with
this effort called discover AI,which is like getting students
(29:53):
while they're still in highschool. Yes, let's understand AI
and machine learning, but let'sdo it in the context of growing.
And unmanned ground vehicles and3d fabrication and scanning and
so on. It kind of feels to melike we're on the we mentioned
the word Genesis the before,like we're at the beginning of
this process of, kind of anevolution and a renaissance in K
12 education as well, wherewe're finally starting to get
(30:15):
back to, you know, probablynever going to have the day
where the where the two kidswalk on their own across the
busiest street in town to theappliance store and drag a box
back. Right? I don't even knowif that was safe, but it was
fun, but at least to this pointwhere our young people are going
to be having these types ofexperiences in their middle
school and high school journey,and even in elementary school,
Are you sensing the same thing?
(30:36):
Absolutely,
Bob McMahan (30:37):
absolutely and it's exciting. It's so exciting. I'll
give you two quick examples. Iwas walking past we have a large
music studio here that was builtand at the practice studios that
was built through the generosityof one of our alumni. And we did
that because so many of ourstudents have very strong
artistic and musical talent aswell. You know, the correlation
(30:58):
between math and music is verystrong. So, you know, I was
walking past one day and there'sa student playing this
incredible concerto on thepiano. And I walked in and and I
said, that is spectacular. Itturned out student was in, you
know, Junior symphony concertsoloist. But, you know, they
were really interested in thesoftware architecture of game
(31:20):
design. You know, that's whatthey were there to do, but they
had this whole other side oftheir personality to them. We
built a building a couple yearsago here on campus, which is
really unique in the US. It'sreally built around our model of
interaction. And one of thethings you see students over
there all the time, they'll besitting in a room, they'll have
(31:41):
an idea. They'll go down,they'll walk down one flight of
stairs, get a piece of pizza,walk over 50 feet and pick up
their 3d printed model of thething that they were talking
about, you know, before theywent good. And you see that kind
of fluidity now, acrosstechnologies, across I think
it's incredibly exciting. It is,
Matt Kirchner (32:02):
but it totally speaks to the need for a
different model of highereducation, right? Because, I
mean, your model is innovativeto begin with, right? I mean,
you think about this, thetypical, you know, four year
university experience of the,whatever it is, the 13 week
quarters, and the, you know, 26a week semesters, or whatever,
they end up being less thanthat. But then you and then
we're doing our internship inthe summer. We have a job or
(32:23):
whatever. Maybe we do a co opfor a semester, and you've got
this ongoing relationshipbetween the two of them. But
what are some of the other waysthat higher education needs to
innovate so that we can meetthat student, where they are the
one that's innovating on theirfirst robotics course and or
their first robotics team inhigh school, and then they are
going off and having that pieceof pizza and walking back to the
3d printer, and there is thatpart that they designed and
(32:43):
engineered on their own. Youknow, what are some of the other
ways that we need to innovatehigher education?
Bob McMahan (32:48):
That's a great question. And it really comes
from a perspective of, I think,understanding that one of the
things we need to think abouthigher education, and we need to
start designing higher educationin this country, to recognize
that it is a spectrum. It is nota model, and we have treated it
as if, as it is a model. And ifyou look across the country, you
(33:10):
know, there are some 4000colleges and universities in the
United States, a huge majorityof which look effectively,
essentially the same, totally,with the exception of the
architecture of the campus andthe food they serve in the
union. What we need to thinkabout, I think, seriously, is a
(33:32):
consolidation of highereducation in this country around
the notion that there aredifferent forms of higher
education and they servedifferent purposes, and we need
to think about how we optimizeindividual institutions to those
missions. And that's a bit ofvigorous hand waving in your
(33:53):
answer, but Kettering is aperfect example of what that
looks like when you do that, andwhat it produces when you do
that. And there are others.
There are others in the arts,there are others in the
sciences, there are others inacross disciplines. Are there
Matt Kirchner (34:13):
other ones that you would point to, in addition
to Kettering, that are like,wow, these folks are really,
really coming up with a creativeapproach to higher ed. Yes,
Bob McMahan (34:21):
there are. When it comes to the kind of model that
we have, we see a lot of partialimplementations, if you will.
There's a lot of programs thathave Co Op programs or are
internship programs, but there'sno modification of the core
structure of the university andthe academic delivery. I mean,
we deliver our servicedifferently in a different way
(34:45):
than everyone else does. Ourcalendar is different. We have
to get special exemptions fromour accreditors because of the
nature of how we deliver creditto our students, and we have to
go through all. Sorts of hopesto demonstrate that ours is
equivalent or better than thetraditional institution. And so
(35:07):
there are other programs thatare are similar to us, but none
that are that integrateexperiential learning to the
degree that we do. And I thinkthat's the real power of the
model. But there are otherdomain specific institutions,
especially in the arts. You haveschools like the College of
Creative Studies in Detroit. Youhave schools like the California
(35:27):
Institute of the Arts. You havespecialty schools that have
tailored their curriculums tospecific domains, in this way,
but it's driven in large part,or driven fundamentally, by
defining who the customer is,and what are they telling you?
Absolutely
Matt Kirchner (35:46):
I had I won't say the person's name, but I've
thought about this so manytimes. About four years ago, we
had a dean at an institution ofhigher education who said he
asked the question, is our jobto create a job for every
student, or a student for everyjob. And his argument was, his
job was to create a job forevery student, or to have a job
(36:06):
for every student. And I'm like,Well, wait a minute. I mean that
that to me, seems a little bitback, right? So not that you
have to find a student for everyjob, but should we look at where
the careers are going and find,you know, find talent to be able
to support those careers. And ifthose are innovative companies,
or if those are employers thatare looking for talent that's
been, you know, trained andupskilled and educated in a
different way. It feels to melike that's the market we're
(36:26):
after and after, and it seemslike you're looking at it
exactly the same way. Certainly,you're going to do well by your
students, but you only do wellby your students if you do well
by the people that are employingyour students in the communities
that are benefiting from theirexistence in the and the skills
and the competencies that theyhave, I could continue on this
path for hours. I do want topose two final questions to you,
Bob, and they're ones that weask every single guest here on
(36:48):
the podcast, and the first onewe've dove into already, and
with your conversations abouthow we disrupt higher education
and your different views oneducation in general, might be
even hard to top some of thethings that we already talked
about. But what is one of thosethings that you believe about
education that would surprise alot of people?
Bob McMahan (37:04):
I kind of came up through the traditional
structure of education. I thinkwhat would surprise people is
how fluid I do believe educationand education should be. In the
United States, we do thecommunity college level within
our economy, within our society.
I think we do it gravedisservice. I think they are a
very powerful contributor to thesolution of this problem, and we
(37:28):
don't leverage them in the waythat we should as a society, and
that many countries actually do.
If you look towards countrieslike Germany, for example, the
way that they view highereducation as a spectrum and as a
lifelong activity. I think it'sa very healthy one and, and
(37:48):
perhaps that's the thing thatpeople would surprise from a
traditional university projectpresident, yeah,
Matt Kirchner (37:54):
for sure. Agree 100% and I know, and I've I'm a
big believer that it's all anand not an or right? It's not a
four year university or anadvanced degree or a technical
college, certificate, diploma,you know, what have you, it's we
need all of these, and the morefluid to use your word that we
can make. The process ofeducation and the choices and
the on ramps and the off ramps,and people not making life
(38:15):
decisions necessarily, andknowing that you can, you know,
to your earlier point, you canstep back from a decision you
made, if you decide that thatdecision wasn't the right one
for you as you look to yourfuture. So all these different
options, but to hear that from auniversity president really
gives me optimism for the futureof education, because
partnerships in those regards,really, really important
thinking about optimism for thefuture. I want to take you all
(38:37):
the way back to when you were a15 year old young man with your
whole future in front of you,and we're going to ask you our
final question that we againlove to ask every single guest
here on The TechEd Podcast. Andif you could go back to that 15
year old sophomore in highschool version of Bob McMahon,
everything that you've done, theexperiences you've had,
everything that you've learned,all of the different sectors
(38:58):
that you've spent time with,knowing that you've got that
huge variety of experience andwisdom. Now, what would you
share with that 15 year oldversion of Bob McMahon, if you
could give him one piece ofadvice, how
Bob McMahan (39:09):
long you got the thing, I look back on those
things, is nothing ever happensfast enough when you're that
age. And this is something Itell students when I talk to
them, when they come to me andtalk about, well, you know, I've
been doing this for six monthsnow, and it's just not going. I
said, Well, okay, okay, butthings never happen fast enough.
(39:29):
They never develop fast enoughwhen you're that age. And so
probably the one thing I wouldcounsel is that in patience and
and an understanding that thefuture you, everything you learn
along the way, and everyexperience that you have is a
piece of the future you. And youwill only know how to connect
(39:55):
the dots and revert and theywill connect you. If you're open
to those experiences and open tothat, but I think that's
probably,
Matt Kirchner (40:06):
yeah, absolutely, it makes 100% sense. And, you
know, I talk and I've got mykids are now in their 20s, and I
can't tell you how many times atevery juncture of life when you
know when, when I'm one of them,and all kids deal with one
challenge or another, wasdealing with a challenge. And I
would always say, You know what?
This doesn't make any senseright now, but I guarantee you,
in two or three or four years,looking back on it, you'll
understand why we had thisexperience exactly. So
(40:26):
connecting those dots so, soimportant, and so I think
apropos for our audience aswell. Bob, so appreciate that
you're right now. Things neverhappen fast enough when you're a
15 year old kid. I'll tell yousomething that happened too
fast, was this episode of TheTechEd Podcast. We I mean, I
can't believe that our timedisappeared as fast as it did. I
feel like we have so much moreto talk about. We'd love to have
(40:48):
you back sometime in themeantime, though. Bob McMahon,
who is the president ofKettering University, Dr Robert
McMahon, officially, thank youso much for joining us here on
The TechEd Podcast. Thank you.
Had a wonderful time. Iappreciate it, and thanks to our
audience for being here as well.
A great conversation with DrRobert McMahon, president of
Kettering University. We covereda lot of great information. You
(41:09):
can find information aboutKettering and many of the topics
we talked about here on thepodcast at our show notes.
You'll find those at TechEdpodcast.com/mcmahon I'll spell
that for you, TechEdpodcast.com/m, c, M, a, H, A n,
when you're done there, ofcourse, check us out on social
media. We are all over LinkedIn.
(41:29):
We are on tick tock. We are onFacebook, we are on Instagram.
Wherever you consume your socialmedia, you will find The TechEd
Podcast, and we hope you find ushere again next week. We will be
here and looking forward toseeing you then, until then. My
name is Matt Kirkner. I am thehost of The TechEd Podcast, and
thank you for being with us.
You.
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com