PM Show Hr 1 | Who Needs College Anymore? with Kathleen deLaski

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
It's that time. Time, time, Luck and load. The Michael
Verie Show is on the air. In our next segment,

(00:31):
we will talk with a woman named Kathleen Dulaski who's
written a book called Who Needs College Anymore? And it
is a question increasingly being asked. President Trump making a
statement today that Harvard University is a joke and has

(00:53):
lost its way. The federal funding amounts that are under
impact because of their woke policies currently Harvard University at
two point twenty six billion, Cornell University at one billion,

(01:17):
Northwestern University at seven hundred ninety million, Brown University at
five hundred ten million, Columbia University at four hundred million,
Princeton University at two hundred ten million, University of Pennsylvania
UPEN as it's known, at one hundred and seventy five million.

(01:38):
It has been the case for a long time that
these institutions have received hundreds of millions, down to dozens
of millions of dollars of taxpayer dollars. And they are
supposedly elite, very exclusive institutions who are sitting on billions

(02:00):
of dollars in endowments. So why on earth, you know,
it all comes back again. It all comes back to
that poor guy or girl, the single mom who's waiting tables.
She's begging her sister to pick her kid up from

(02:20):
school at three, and then her mom to take the
kid from six, and the next door neighbor let her
play over there at eight, and she's just scratching in
claw to keep it all together because that's the only
shift she can go, that's the best tips. And she's trying,
and she's in a little rat hole apartment and doesn't
want to be on welfare, and she can't be there
for her kid as many hours she'd like to, and

(02:42):
yet we're taking money from her, and some of that
money is going to institutions that she didn't get to attend.
I mean, we'll leave a side that it's going to
Ukraine for their wars and toys and and graft and corruption.
But then you got you know Joe Bob, he's showing
up at the plant. He's working like my dad did,

(03:03):
every extra shift he can, sometimes working sixteen eighteen hours
at a go. We got folks that work seven days
a week. I get emails they're on a twenty one
day run and they'll get three days off and then
start back up again, or they don't take a day
off because they can't afford to. They're just trying to
make it. They're trying to pay for everything. They got
somebody with a chronic health problem. They're trying to put

(03:24):
their kid in a private school at the Catholic church
because there's crime in the neighborhood. They've got something that
they're having to pay off that they're desperately working their
tails off to do. And then we're sending hundreds of
millions of dollars to institutions that have billions in an endowment.
And by the way, dirty little secret, the professors at

(03:47):
these universities don't actually even teach your kids. The kids
go to the university and for your four year undergraduate degree,
you will have more classes taught by a teaching assistant.
And who will that teaching assistant me, Well, I'll tell
you it'll be a graduate student from China or India
who is in this country on a scholarship and a

(04:10):
monthly stipend from the university, and they have to teach
classes in order to get their stipend so they can
get their graduate, masters and PhD degrees. I have so
many friends who went through the program. I'm not mad
about it, but what ended up happening was as Indians
came in, especially into engineering in the graduate schools, they

(04:30):
picked other Indians until they became the faculty members. And
now you'll have almost entirely every teaching assistant as an Indian,
because well, the American kids don't need it, and they
don't get graduate degrees anyway, they just get their undergraduate degree.
So your kids, you spend all this money to send
them to this university because you didn't go to university,

(04:51):
and they're going to go to university and they're going
to learn stuff, and they're going to have a ticket
to punch to make a lot of money in and
they'll have the golden ticket, the golden ticket you saved
from the time your child is born. In Texas, it's
a five twenty nine. There's all sorts of different programs.
I guess the five twenty nine is national, but there's
different programs that states offer. And you put aside all

(05:13):
this money enough to pay for to pay off your house,
enough to provide part of your retirement in many cases,
so your kid will have money to go to college
because college is going to set your kid up, and
everything you do is to set your kid up so
your kid won't have to struggle the way you did.
And then you send your kid to the school, and
there's a very good likelihood they chose to go to

(05:33):
that school because the school won the national championship last
year or competed for it. And that's crazy, right, I
thought this was about education, and yeah, but that's there.
It is. And tuition keeps rising, but the quality of
instruction doesn't improve by any metric. The quality of instruction
doesn't improve, and fewer professors are actually professing any longer.

(05:56):
You got teaching assistants who cost very little money teaching
the class, many of whom you can't understand because they
don't speak any or much English, and that which they
do is in some sort of accent that is impossible
to understand. But who cares. You're an undergraduate. The university
has nothing to do with undergraduate students. Undergraduate students are

(06:19):
to come there, pass through. They'll hit you, hand them
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. They'll hand you a certificate.
You run and show that certificate to show that you
qualify to work at a fortune five hundred company because
that's what they do. They require you to have a
college degree for what reason. Nobody really knows. Now. The
CEO of independent companies that are very wealthy, they often

(06:40):
don't have a college degree. But the big corporations, the
woke institution, this is the funnel, right, We funnel them
through here. We teach them how to think in what
words to use. These are words we don't use. These
are words we do. We do love rap, We don't
like a country. Girls are better than boys. Boys have winers.
They should be cut off. War is bad, but we
should fund it. You know, all these different little things.

(07:02):
I guess war isn't bad. Standing up and fighting for
the honor of your girl, or against the neighbor who's
bullying you, that's bad. War is good because the war machine,
and they give a lot to the universities as well.
So there's this whole cycle that's going on, and Trump
is trying to break it. Harvard University has decided, you
know what, will choose not to get federal funds. It's

(07:24):
a bluff. Will choose not to get federal funds because
it's very important to us that the hamas sympathizers on
campus be allowed to call Jews dirty names. And that's
what that's about. The whole movement, or the hamas sympathizers
on campus. The whole thing there is to show how

(07:46):
lefty you can possibly be, which is fine. You wonder
how long Jews are going to stand by and allow
for this, because eventually it's not just going to be
saying nasty things. But the Democrats' top four heroes in
America right now, if you think about this, are a
murderer named Carmelo, the butcher knife murder who killed the
white kid and now has raised a half a million
dollars and they lowered his bond, so he's out free.

(08:09):
A murderer named Luigi that's the guy with the gun
who killed the CEO of United an MS thirteen illegal
gang member, and a Palestinian Hamas supporter. That's gonna fare
real well in the elections, guys in AOC as your candidate.
The Michael Berry Show, Michael Berry Show, let's take a
break from politics for a moment. It's not really it's life.

(08:32):
Politics should be about life and culture and how we
live and the things that matter most to families. I
went to college on a full scholarship. I was very
proud of that fact. So my parents didn't have to
pay a dime. I went to law school on scholarships.
Was very proud of that fact. I went to the
University of Nottingham and England on a scholarship from the
University of Texas. I was very proud of that. And

(08:55):
I went to a lot of school. And I'm going
to be honest with you, and I know this is
a good way to alienate my audience. I loved it.
I loved school. The only reason I went and got
another law degree, which has no real useful purpose, is
to teach. And I wanted to teach. I love accumulating knowledge.
I love sharing knowledge. Was it Seneca who said to

(09:16):
teach us to learn? I love giving speeches, I love
watching documentaries. I love knowledge. I'm a jeopardy nut. It
makes me happy. Right. So with that in mind, the
academy was created. We were going to take kids from
the farms into the city and we were going to
teach them the things they would need to know to write,

(09:38):
to think, to experiment, science and mathematics and literature and
all these sorts of things. And so people like my parents,
who didn't go to college. Were delighted that I could
go to college. That was exciting, That was a big deal.
You bragged. And then there's the where's your kid going
to college? And it's the IVY leagues and all that,
and then that morphed into whose college has the best
football team? So schools like Alabama and Georgia rose to

(10:01):
the top where they hadn't been before in the brag factor.
And then you start looking at these cases and how
much people are spending on college intuition is seven times
what it was twenty five years ago, I think is
the number. And people are going broke over this, and
kids are graduating or not and have no means to
pay it back, and so the government is paying for it,
so that becomes a huge transfer of wealth. And so

(10:22):
all of this college talk, this massive industry in life
which is bigger than birth and death and marriage and
costs in many cases more than your home. What's the
point of it all? So we came across something called
who needs college Anymore? Imagining a future where degrees don't matter.

(10:42):
The author is Kathleen d'laski or Deloski. Ramon, do you
want me to first try Dulaski, and then she corrects
me as Delaski, or do you want to do delasky
and she corrects me as d'laski Dlaski. Okay, we're going
with Dlaski til she corrects us. And I'll be honest.
We don't get this excited up. We don't do many guests.
You folks know that, but I was really really interested
in this guest because I love when people think differently,

(11:04):
whether that's the COVID shot or anything else. Kathleen, is
it d'laski or dulaski d'laski? Oh, we got it? Okay Polish?
I presume the name is yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:18):
I mean, we've been here a long time, so who knows.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
Well, it'll be okay if you were Polish. I like Poles.
One of my good friends is Polish. Yeah, and the
polls behave very admirably during World War Two. The Polish
underground and the cracking of Enigma is the greatest story
of World War two never told. But I won't bother
you with all that, so I read your background. You
are an education and workforce designer and a futurist. That's
always interesting. I'm not one, but I'm fascinated by people

(11:43):
who are You founded the Education Design Lab in twenty
thirteen to help Well, we'll get into that, and for
a decade you were CEO of this lab, and you're
obviously a person who spends a lot of time thinking
in the aggregate about the big picture of how we
don't believe that that that college is for the purpose

(12:03):
of getting a degree, or even as much as learning
as developing and growing the old the old Yates line
that that education is not filling a bucket but lighting
a fire. I am a big believer in the academy
as it once existed. But I'm going to turn the
show over now to you with a few basic questions.
Why have you written this book? What was the goal

(12:24):
in asking the question? Who needs college anymore? And then
you sort of answer that with imagining a future where
degrees don't matter. I'm going to let you have the
rest of the floor for the rest of the segment.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
Well, thank you and thanks for having me. I love
your story, Michael, It's really it's really compelling about your
family and how you know people who learn, who love
to learn, should will still have the opportunity to go
to college, to go get a four year degree. I mean,
it's the degree is not going away. But I wrote
the book really to try to highlight the fact that

(12:57):
that model, the four your degree model, which has basically,
you know, overtaken all narratives about how how you get
your you know, find your way to the American dream.
It's like the only narrative right now. And yet yet
the model only serves a minority of American adults. You know,
only thirty eight percent of people have a four year degree.

(13:19):
So we need to stop treating it as the only
aspirational brand, you know, to to get to success, because
you know, we see what's happening with the resentment building
and the economic divide. You know, some people are calling
it the diploma divide. You know, we have other models
that show promise, like apprenticeships and like short term certificates
and certifications and boot camps, but they can't scale because

(13:43):
they don't qualify for the funding and the prestige that
you know that right now really only colleges enjoy. And
so that that's why I wrote the book. I mean,
I have my own personal story with my own children.
The model didn't really work for either of them, and
so I was kind of radicalized, even though I live
in an area where everybody goes to college and you're embarrassed,
you know, when you're at a you know, a softball game,

(14:04):
and you know you're kind of like under your breast
in my kids about going. And so you know that
that kind of got me going even in the first
place to start this thing called the Education Design Lab,
which is actually working with colleges to try to you know,
disrupt themselves and reinvent their own models. So we can
talk about that.

Speaker 1 (14:23):
Let's talk first about your story. We've got two minutes
left in this segment. So I always like to know
where someone's angle is and all this. I feel like Nixon,
Nixon going to China. I can say that college doesn't
matter because I spent a lot of time in college.
I think it's harder if someone didn't, because then there
may be defensive about it. What was your story?

Speaker 2 (14:42):
Well, I am not the right messenger to be able
to stand up and say you don't need college, because I,
like you, I was lucky enough to you know, go
to both have an undergrad and I did a master's
degree and I actually, in research in the book went
back to my to my ancestor, who my great grandfather
time seven, was one of the first graduates of you

(15:04):
know that university that's now under attack, but is the
first university, Harvard. He was the son of an indentured servant,
an immigrant, and he was able to somehow get into
Harvard and pulled his family up to a position of
prominence in colonial America. This is in sixteen seventy three,

(15:25):
in one generation. And so I start this I start
the book out there to kind of demonstrate how college
kind of took a foothold in the lore of you know,
how to succeed in America right from the very beginning.
So so you know, my story is that college was
always available to me and my forefathers, and yet now
I feel like we're in the family like some kids

(15:48):
are choosing not to go, including one of my daughters.
One wanted to go but you know, had neurodivergent issues
and ended up getting through it. But it was a complete,
you know, flog and difficult situation. And they, you know,
they helped me see that there are other ways to
succeed number one, but also that college needs to you know,
we need to redesign it to meet the needs of

(16:09):
other folks and have different versions, like the degree should
just be one version of what colleges offer. Why can't
they offer?

Speaker 1 (16:17):
You are speaking my language. I love that you've undertaken
this project because I think that what you're saying is
is very visionary. One moment our guest is Kathleen Dlaski.
The book is who needs college anymore? Who needs college anymore?

Speaker 3 (16:32):
The government made money off of it.

Speaker 2 (16:34):
We didn't get nothing.

Speaker 1 (16:35):
The hard time the Michael Barry Show, it's a day.
I say it's a day. I say it's a day.
And I would encourage everyone who is listening to take
a step back and ask yourself this question. What should
college be If you're going to spend over over one
hundred thousand dollars, which is crazy, what should be the

(16:56):
result at the end. Many people view it as as
I'll have a ticket to punch to get a job.
I think that's sad, but okay, and that's because corporations
created this. You have to have a degree to go
to work here, which was really just a way of saying,
I want to pick the white kids, not the black kids,
but I don't know how to do that. And since
the white kids go to college and the black kids don't.

(17:17):
That'd be a good way to separate. Then the black
kids went to college and they said, oh, what do
we do now? Well, about that time, you had DEI,
so it didn't matter. But I honestly think that that
was the history behind that. And you folks know that
I'm not one to claim very much as racism, but
I think that was racism. It was also a way
to create a class distinction because richer kids went to
college and poorer kids didn't. How do we just get
the kids who know which fort to use? Well, will

(17:39):
require a college degree? Or should it be an opportunity
to learn and you will come out of there and
you will be very smart. Well, nobody really believes that's happening.
The only people who really have to go to college.
Or if you want to be an engineer, a doctor,
a lawyer, an architect, someone who requires this certificate. So
that's really no different than a plumber and electrician just
costs a whole lot more. Or and you have toga parties.

(18:01):
But what should be the point of this thing? I mean,
this is a major part of our economy, and so
I would encourage you to open your mind as we
Kathleen and I have this conversation and join in yourself.
What should be the purpose of all this? Should it
just be the buildings that are attached to the football
team and basketball team that we root for? Because that
seems sort of silly, doesn't it. So Kathleen, let me

(18:23):
let me fast forward from home. Who needs college anymore?
What is give me the four minute ideal? Kathleen is king,
what do you create as a college replacement?

Speaker 2 (18:34):
Well, it's I don't want to replace college. I want
to uh a college an institution to have an umbrella
of let's call them products, right, services that they offer
a continuum of learners and not just the eighteen year
olds who shows up looking for adultification services.

Speaker 3 (18:53):
Right.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
They need they need that maturation process probably more than anything.
They need to learn how to go through the gauntlet
to separate back from fiction, how to you know, organize
their thoughts, how to get along with people that they
might not have known existed. Right, So they need a
kind of a boot camp for life and growing up.
But then many other kinds. A lot of the people

(19:15):
who aren't being served by college are currently are you know,
people who are older or people who are single, moms,
or they're returning vets, or they're in the neurodivergent spectrum.
And you know, college was not designed to serve them,
but but it can. Other programs serve them. But those
other programs are don't have access to the same funding.
And that's what's become you know, kind of very skewed

(19:37):
in the system. Right. It's like it's like it makes
you realize that it really is an elitist funding model
that we need to you know, we need to. I
don't want to say take apart because I still want,
we still need, you know, people to go all the
way through to get a PhD and be be a
cancer researchers. You know, I don't want to stop that.
I don't want to stop engineers, civil engineers from getting

(19:59):
your degree to build bridget We need that. But you know,
the sixty two percent who are being left behind, which
is most of us, let's face it, most most Americans,
they need they need you know, they need college too,
Like why aren't there Why do they have to kind
of figure out how to work through a maze and
end up often trying and failing to do this college thing.

(20:21):
I mean, so so I didn't answer your question, which
is what you know, what if I were king, what
would I do? What? What I advocated in the book
is what I call a step ladder approach. And some
community colleges in particular are starting to do this, and
we're actually working with a number in Texas where they,
you know, you have a short stack called a micro

(20:42):
pathway where you you know, you get you basically learn
the skills through a couple of uh, you know, like
a boot camp basically for one job role, right, and
then you can go out and get that job role,
and then you can stack to the next, you know,
the next income level to build your earnings power, you know,
often while you're in that job. So it's the idea

(21:03):
that you are earning and learning and scaffolding up to
along your career path and getting the learning you need
along the way. And there's two reasons why why why
we're starting to move to this and we have to
move to this model for higher education. Number one is
people can't afford one hundred thousand dollars, which is the
average cost of a college degree these days, four your degree.

(21:27):
People can't afford that, right, So there's opting out and
they're sitting on the sidelines. The second reason is AI, right,
I mean, and technology, Like the things that you spend
those four years learning are not necessarily useful to the
employer when you get out the door and want to
you know, want to line up and apply for that job.
So we need, you know, we need shorter term learning

(21:48):
because you need to be agile, and you need to
learn the latest right, the latest software, the latest cyber thing,
the latest technology, and your healthcare job. It's changing so fast.
The four year model is steeling kind of antique.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
Yeah, it's just so different. You know, we have in
the state of Texas a plumbing crisis or plumber crisis
where plumbers are phasing out and nobody's coming in, and
it requires certification, it requires time on the job. You know,
you go from journeyman and all, you know, from apprentice
to journeymen and all this, and we don't have the

(22:28):
master plumbers to a lesser degree, but still a problem
is true of electricians. And these are things that AI
is not going to replace overnight, and so.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
We've got probably very secure jobs.

Speaker 1 (22:39):
So what's happening is the guy who started as a
plumber made pretty good money and built up a plumbing
company with twenty plumbers, and he's making over a million
dollars a year and he has no He has a
plumbing license, but no college degree. And so he sends
his kid to college to get a psychology degree, and
he's he's folding shirts at avercrime Me and Fitch, and

(23:01):
and our economy is, our needs aren't being met, and
that kid's futures not being set very well because God knows,
Daddy doesn't want him to get his hands dirty. And
I think that's a real problem. Whereas the people who
do go for a vocational license, that should be a
very different experience. We don't need to go and spend
a fortune for fraternities and toga parties when what you

(23:21):
really want to do is get a life skill and
get to work. And so I think everybody's every journey,
I hate the word, but should be different and a
different approach depending on kind of what you're going to do.
I'm fascinated by this, this study you have. You have
really piqued an interest in me in something I think
our society is getting wrong, and especially a one size
fits all, because that's that's not the answer to this.

(23:45):
When did you read who needs College anymore. I want
when did you write?

Speaker 2 (23:53):
I mean, I just finished it like last summer, and
then you know, it takes like six months for the
publisher to get it put it together.

Speaker 3 (23:59):
So it came out in February, okay this year and
worth noting for those of you who are interested in this,
especially because you have children who are in high school
and you're trying to consider what to do for your
c student who's.

Speaker 1 (24:12):
Not really interested in school per se, but you want
a good future for them. The website is who Needs
College Anymore? Dot orgorg Who Needs College Anymore? Dot org?
And with that we will continue our conversation with Kathleen Dulaski.

(24:34):
The website is who Needs College Anymore? Dot org. And
I encourage every family to have this conversation as your
kids are growing up. Don't just go to college because
you don't know what else to do. That's no reason
to join the military, there's no reason to go to college.
There's no reason to do anything else. You've thought to this,
what do I want to be when I grew up?
Who do I want to be when I go up?
And not just what job or how much money I

(24:56):
want to make, but what field of study? What passion
do you have? More coming up here? Yet, people to
understand giving information is not nicky. Kats Len Delastin is
our guest. She's the author of Who Needs College Anymore?
Imagining a future where degrees won't matter. Imagine a society

(25:18):
giving the power to confer upon an individual the ticket
to punch to riches. You would be giving all the
power to this unique institution. And a lot of people
think that's what's happening, and it's not. I've known two
billionaires very closely in my life, neither of whom went

(25:39):
to college. I've known other billionaires who didn't graduate from college.
So if riches are your goal, getting a job and
working within a corporate entity is not always the best
way to go about that. But there's so much more
to life than how much you make. It's what you
do and finding a passion for that. Yeahitely, and how

(26:00):
has your work been received? Because everybody with the college
degree thinks you're devaluing their college degree.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
Well, I don't know. I think at the time that
I chose to raya, which is pretty much now. It
is a kind of wake up call moment. I feel
like ever since the recession from twenty ten college attendance.
College enrollment has been dropping. So community college has lost
a third of their enrollment in the last decade. And

(26:31):
this was even happening well before COVID and then degrees.
I mean, people are not the degree. A number of
people signing up for degrees is dropping, and the number
of people signing up to do like certificates and other
form short forms of training is going up. And so
you know, I don't colleges are receiving my message pretty

(26:53):
well because they know they have to change, and they're
like going right to the chapter that's like how can
colleges adapt? And they're looking at you know, the models
that I show there are really around. Okay, if you
if you want to show that you still have an
ROI or a return on investment for your students, you
really need to focus more on helping them, you know,

(27:14):
land them at the front door of their first job,
because as you just said a few minutes ago, that's
exactly what you know, That's what families are expecting to
happen when their kid graduates, is is they you know,
they're going to get a job, and so you know,
how can we connect those dots better and so I think,
you know, you see a lot of colleges really trying
to start to work on that, and Texas in particular.

(27:38):
I was just at the Association with all the Community Colleges,
the annual meeting UH in Nashville, and some Texas colleges
were presenting and they're explaining that, you know, you've got
you've got a new law in Texas called hb E,
which which is now UH colleges are being judged and
they're getting funding based upon the outcomes that they deliver,

(27:59):
and by that they mean what kind of income are
students making after they graduate. That's actually being tracked and
Texas is the first state to do this, and everybody
else is watching this. I mean the other states are
kind of doing versions of that. They're doing the most
intense version and it's been really interesting to watch.

Speaker 1 (28:18):
That is wow. You know, these are things that I
don't think are talked about widely. There is so much.
I have a son who's a junior, so he will
begin the college application process in the fall, and I've
told both of my sons I'm in the zone. I
have a son who's the freshman's University of Texas, and
I've told them you can do the military, you can

(28:40):
do vocational school, you can go to college, you can
take a gap year and travel and work around the
world as you do it. It's totally up to you.
And both have thus far chosen college as their route.
And I think part of that is that's what their
friends are doing. Is a comfort to that and all that.
Just like with careers and your life partner choice, I
think it's important that that you keep an open mind

(29:02):
and you look at you know, you don't just marry
the girl who lives next door or was your high
school sweetheart. That may work. You don't just do the
job that your dad did. That may work, but you
know these are these are going to have a big
impact on your life and your happiness. So be willing
to look at at least know what all is out there, right,
and don't be limited to the kids who did bring

(29:26):
your dad to work day because there's a lot there
are a lot more careers out there.

Speaker 2 (29:32):
Yeah, well, I just wanted to mention I want to
with your son being a University of Texas. So another
really interesting pilot that I feature in the book is
University of Texas. The whole system is starting to incorporate
like industry certifications into the degrees. And they're again, they're
doing it. You're doing the largest pilot in the country
right now and everybody's watching it. And so you're you know,

(29:55):
they're getting like a Google It certificate or a cybersecurity certificate.
You can get those out going to college. But at
least the college is just saying, wow, we need to
add this value. Yes, where you know, learners can see
the connection between you know, what Google is going to
be asking for in the job interview and what we're
delivering in the classroom. So they're actually baking in the

(30:15):
certificates that have been created by companies, which I think
is a great step in the right.

Speaker 1 (30:20):
Let's talk about why they didn't do it. It wasn't that
they lacked the expertise, or the space, or or the
students with the interest in it. It was beneath the university.
We are the academy, we are the Ivory Tower. We
don't get down into certificates. And I think there is
now a sort of hey, guys, there's got to be

(30:40):
some value to this. I'm spending all this money and
I need to be able to have certificates when we
get out of this to perform tasks, especially because you
mentioned Google. Google goes out of their way to hire
young people who did not go to college, and I
think that's a wake up call to the universities.

Speaker 2 (30:59):
Yes, yes, they have been good about them.

Speaker 1 (31:02):
What is what is the takeaway that people have the
website is who needs college anymore? Dot org to your
theories and ideas that you get the most. What is
the thing that someone says, I hadn't thought about that.

Speaker 2 (31:19):
Well, I think, you know, everybody's heard about apprenticeships and
boot camps, but I don't think people realize that we
are suppressing those models by the way that we put
all of our all of our funding eggs in the
in the in the you know sort of college and
college tuition basket, you know, through federal financial aid. You know,

(31:42):
there's like fifty to one is the expenditures on college,
you know, nationally versus supporting college versus apprenticeships. So, you know,
I don't want to suggest to your listeners that they
could just walk out their kid to walk out and
get a cool apprenticeship, because apprenticeships are are you know,
have long been available areas light construction, electrician, HVAC. But

(32:04):
they're now becoming available in what you might call the
white collar jobs, but not at scale yet. And so
I don't want to suggest that these are like ready
to go models. We need to push for them, and
states are actually taking the lead right now on that.
And so you can your listeners could go to apprenticeship
dot gov and see, you know, where what apprenticeships are available,

(32:26):
because I mean, that's a great model. Yes, and colleges
are now even trying to to bring them in, you know,
to kind of become the the you know, the facilitators
for apprenticeships, and that's cool. You'll see more of that,
but you know, probably not why your kids are in school.
So I don't want to suggest that like these other
models are like easily available to kids right now. They're not,

(32:50):
but we need to make them.

Speaker 1 (32:51):
So I have I'm fortunate to have contacts and people
that I could reach out to, but I have had
my kids doing what I would consider apprenticeships, internships, whatever
you want to call it, and I break down the
formal barriers and I say, I just want them to
hang out with you for some period of time a week,
a month, and literally watch you take phone calls. Watch

(33:13):
how you spend your day, watch how you spend your hours,
watch who you go to lunch with, and you learn
so much. I learned at the foot of mentors that
I had who were much older than me, who were
willing to invest in me. And I'm a big believer
in that model. I want to say, because I'm up
against the clock. You also mentioned self instruction using YouTube.

(33:34):
I think of how many kids are doing homeschooling now,
and they're doing it all online, and you're always told
you have to go to school to be socialized. These
kids are smart, they're well rounded. I'm thoroughly impressed by them.
I love what you're doing. Kathleen Dlaski, let's have you
on again, the author of Who Needs College Anymore? The
website is who Needs College Anymore dot org. Thank you

(33:55):
for your time.

Speaker 2 (33:56):
Thank you, Michael