This is Reimagining The Future of Higher Education from Studiosity. Your go-to podcast with remarkable education leaders, sharing personal stories from their experience in and around the sector, including reflection and evidence for progress in the sector. With your host, Professor Judyth Sachs, former DVC Learning and Teaching at the University of Sydney, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost Macquarie University and Special Advisor in Higher Education at KPMG and now Chief Academic Officer at Studiosity.
Prof Judyth Sachs:
I'd like to welcome Don Kilburn who is the CEO of University of Massachusetts Online. Don, you've had a very interesting life, both working in universities and in the corporate world. But in your own words, tell us about your journey to where you are now and some of the sort of the highlights.
Don Kilburn:
Well, thanks Judyth, it's nice to see you today and thank you for having me. I guess I've always been a fairly non-traditional learner and have had a variety of interests. And, you know, throughout my career, I haven't had a particular straight line at times. I graduated from college, I was a musician and an athlete, and I decided to pursue that for a while before taking any number of jobs and eventually deciding that it was probably time to settle down and do something. And I took a job at Xerox and they shipped me off to a division that had educational publishing in it. And that was kind of the beginning of my, of my journey into education and I worked with successive companies, including Prentice Hall and Simon & Schuster and then Viacom and Paramount, and ended up working with Pearson about 1998, where I had, I was primarily in the higher ed sector initially, and I worked in a number of executive positions or in different divisions. And then someone thought I did a good job and gave me multiple divisions in the K-12 space and technology. And eventually, over some period of time, I started running the entire Pearson North American operation, which at the time was probably the largest education company in the world and did that for three or four years and and then decided that I wanted to, I got a call from the Governor and the President of University of Massachusetts and asking, Did I want to do something to I guess give back in a way. And their idea was that how do we actually, we're not meeting the needs of working adults and degree completers out of the university system. How do we create a new educational system that will capture these learners and provide them opportunities that they wouldn't have from a university whose primary mission is to serve those people? So I've been essentially doing that for the last five years, culminating in an acquisition of a brand new college for the University of Massachusetts in California, which we renamed University of Massachusetts Global. And now we are setting about to serve those working adults that I believe are kind of underserved by on campus programs and on ground campus programs, and we're trying to help people advance their lives through learning, because it does make, it changes people's lives, it changes their family trajectory when they can actually, you know, attain a skill or a degree, and there are so many things that require these kind of, you know, degrees or certificates in order to advance in your career. And we're, we're happy to be providing, hopefully providing that, providing opportunity and access around that.
Prof Judyth Sachs:
So, Don, just picking up on something you said about being an athlete and a musician. What was your instrument and what was your sport?
Don Kilburn:
I was actually a college basketball player, which is if you saw me, I'm five foot ten, you would say, you must have been pretty tenacious because you're short. And I played guitar and I played a little drums and played in various bands in the Midwest after I graduated. Much to the chagrin of my parents, I got into law school and I said, Nah, I'm not going to the law school, I'm going to join a band and then did that for a while because it just seemed like a better thing to do at the time, and it seemed to have worked out okay.
Prof Judyth Sachs:
So when you think about being a basketball player and clearly a decent one and then a musician in terms of popular music, what what did you take from having to learn an instrument, having to play a game that you took with you later in life, both in terms of corporate life, but also now working in in a, in a university?
Don Kilburn:
Yeah, I, I have been accused of having excessive grit at times. You know, I, I learned early on that if you wanted to get better at something that most people aren't naturally good at it, that you had to really work at it and you really had to have a passion about things if you want to get good at, better at something. And so I learned that a lot of problems, you could work a lot of problems and you could work a lot of issues and a lot of things, and if you worked them hard enough, you were probably going to get a better, you may not get the right outcome, you might not get the outcome you want, but you were going to get a better outcome then if you, if you didn't. And it was always a little bit of an out of the box thinker. I mean, one of the reasons I got this job at Xerox is I took this test and they said, You think strangely. And so, actually not sure that was a compliment. But I got into some special program as a result of that. And, you know, I just I just, you know, continue to kind of grind away at things. And that was true of learning to play the guitar, that was true of playing basketball. I didn't learn to swim until I was 29. I bought a book and I started going to a local pool and reading the book about how to swim. And I grinded that out for a full year until I got to about a half a mile or so. And so I don't know. It's just I, I seem to have that, maybe it's competitive spirit. Maybe it's just a learned behaviour that if you continue to work at something really hard, you you're going to get the best out of yourself. You may not never be good, but you're going to be better than you were without doing that.
"It's just I, I seem to have that, maybe it's competitive spirit. Maybe it's just a learned behaviour that if you continue to work at something really hard, you you're going to get the best out of yourself. You may not never be good, but you're going to be better than you were without doing that."
Prof Judyth Sachs:
That takes a lot of courage and grit to learn to swim at 29, but there must be many years beforehand where you didn't go near water.
Don Kilburn:
Exactly. It actually took quite a bit of ridicule because I'd literally get in the pool and go a quarter lap, jump out and go back and do my, you know, my little paddle about, you know, for a quarter of a lap and then go back and see if I could do a half a lap next time. So but I was the first in my family learn how to swim. We didn't, we were not swimmers. So that was and it's been, you know, a strange source of pride later that at that age doing that.
Prof Judyth Sachs:
So what did that tell you as a learner, as an adult learner because many students that you would deal with in your part of the university are adult learners. So what did it tell you about adult learning that you, that framed some of your thinking about delivering programs for adult learners?
Don Kilburn:
Well, I think one of the things I was, I was fortunate to have very loving, supportive parents. My dad was a pretty good basketball player in his own right, and there was certainly encouragement at a young age and support at a young age. And I don't know if I had an innate competitiveness or I developed that over time, but there was an environment of, there was an environment of support there. And, and so I you know, I kind of learned there that I, I think one of the struggles for so many adult learners is that they're either if there was support early in life, there's there's there's not much support now. If there wasn't support, how do you learn how to do that? And, you know, I think the evidence is for many, especially non-degree completers is that life gets in the way. You know, the car breaks down or the kids get sick. And we did some studies at Pearson where we were shocked to find that when we looked at students who dropped, frequently as much as 50% had GPAs or grade point average's over three. It wasn't because they couldn't do the work, they couldn't get to work or they couldn't, you know, do the day-care and stuff. They didn't have support or they found a rough spot and there was nobody there to give them encouragement to say, You can do it, and here's some resources. I'm going to be there to help you. And so it wasn't a lack of ability which, you know, being fortunate to have had a lot of that. You know, I also realise in the modern university frequently a student will, and you see this a lot in people of diverse backgrounds, they go to college as a freshman and they just don't, I don't know if it's culturally fit in or they just have never had that kind of support and they drop and they drop like crazy, you know, or something happens in their life and they drop and you know, you want to give people that opportunity. You know, and I also remember in my college days, do you want to get something done? It's like, all right, go to the bursar, go to the registrar, go to your professor and maybe his office hours. Oh, he's not here today. Go over here. Nobody responded. Oh, they you know, they can't find the form over here. You know who's going to help me with, you know, setting up my financial aid? Oh, we have a thing in the US called the FAFSA, which is the most complicated financial aid form you've ever seen. It's actually meant for people not to be able to fill it out. And in my you know, I filled it out and I think I'm reasonably competent at these things and it was hard. So all those, all those obstacles are non-academic. Many of those are not academic. And so, you know, my thinking about this is how do you begin for, you know, not all students are monolithic, right? We have different needs of different types of students. And so how to, for that student where life gets in the way and they may not have the right supports, How do you build a supportive educational system so that things like academic help and mentoring or choosing which courses they take and a lot of the admin stuff is not hard, right? It's easy and accessible and maybe the curriculum continues to be challenging. It should be challenging, but all that other stuff, you give support and aid there and I think that makes a huge difference in terms of completion rates and people getting through.
"Basically what I believe is that the reason to go into the field of education is that it's the most effective way to change the world. Maybe the slowest but the, but the most effective."
Prof Judyth Sachs:
When you think back on your own experience and you sort of mentioned a few things there about your own experiences as a student, what was your student experience like? And where did you go to school?
Don Kilburn:
Well, I went to Rutgers initially. I got into a bunch of debt, my my dad, my dad worked in a warehouse, so I got to some other places, a couple of Ivy League places and stuff, but I got a partial scholarship to go to Rutgers. So that's where we're going to go as Rutgers. And so I spent a couple of years there, and then my parents moved to Ohio. My dad got ill, and so I transferred to the College of Wooster, which is a small liberal arts college, which is closer to my, to my parents. And to be honest, I visited Kenyon and Oberlin at the same time, and the only reason I chose Wooster was about 20 miles closer and it was a sunny day when I visited. So sometimes, sometimes, sometimes the mind of a, of many 20 year olds are not exactly the most precise things in the world, and mine certainly wasn't. I would have to say that I was an episodic student. I would say that I think I actually ended up on probation a couple of times and Dean's list a few times. So depending on the amount of attention I was giving it in particular, I never felt like I couldn't get really good grades. I just wasn't always engaged at certain points. And so, you know, straight A's, a couple of D's and an F. Go figure.
Prof Judyth Sachs:
I mean, you talked about that sort of support for students being a small liberal arts college there, it would have been quite a personalised experience.
Don Kilburn:
Yes.
Prof Judyth Sachs:
Whereas at UMass, something quite different.
Don Kilburn:
Yes.
Prof Judyth Sachs:
Interestingly you know, mass as in massification too, as opposed to Massachusetts.
Don Kilburn:
Yes, exactly. Well, and Rutgers was quite different. It's a, it's a state-state university of New Jersey. And at the time we had a lot of intro lecture classes where there were two, three hundred, four hundred students. And and, you know, the lectures had been pre-recorded from the prior year and they were given again and and they're in the library and and then going to I mean, I remember missing class at Rutgers. I was on the basketball team. No one seemed to care. Right. You know, I remember missing class at Wooster and the coach came up and said, You missed class today. And I'm like, Yeah, so what? It's just we don't miss class here. And I was like, All right, I can live with that. That's, you know, I probably need that. That's good. But it was, it was a much smaller class environment. Wooster's actually, one of the things it's known for is its undergraduate teaching, it's one of the, one of the highest ranks schools for undergraduate teaching. So they were very good at undergraduate teaching. We were required to do essentially a thesis, an undergraduate, a junior and senior thesis, which I think is a little unusual. And a high percentage of students at Wooster do go on to do graduate work. So that was, that was a, that was a better experience for me. Much more engaged experience.
Prof Judyth Sachs:
Mm hmm. So if we just move on to your, your career and you've had a career in the corporate world. Clearly successful.
Don Kilburn:
Judyth, by the way, this is awfully indulgent on my part to actually talk about myself this much.
Prof Judyth Sachs:
I know. And I'm really good at asking people questions.
Don Kilburn:
I just that's, I don't usually do this, so anyway.
Prof Judyth Sachs:
No, I don't either. But I mean, you've got a great story to tell and that's why, you know, I'm really wanting to pursue this because, I mean, when I was working at the University of Sydney, we had a, the, the chief financial officer came from the corporate world, rather than coming up from within the university and the transition of many people from the corporate world into the university, they struggle a bit, because universities operate with glacial speed.
Don Kilburn:
Hmm they do.
Prof Judyth Sachs:
So I'm interested in hearing about your sort of observations about higher education in universities through the lens of being a successful corporate person. And the paradox is universities educate people to be successful in the corporate world. But there's a little bit of a misalignment sometimes.
Don Kilburn:
Quite a bit of misalignment. I actually, you know, my my experience at Pearson was initially, the management team was largely US based. My last three, four, five years there, the management team was essentially British based. I've often said that prepared me for a more political environment than on the corporate side. The Brits were all about I mean, it was very much a, very much a class structure there. We had a lot of folks from Oxford and Cambridge. There was, it moved glacially at times and it had a lot of process. Right. And so that, you know, and then there were people stabbing each other all the time, too. So that's, you know, you learn that kind of thing. I think the pace thing was interesting. One of the most striking things is in a very early meeting at the university, the conversation was almost always about revenue at the senior levels. We weren't talking about, we weren't really talking about student performance or this or that. It was about revenue. And I thought, you know, at my last days at Pearson, we were always talking about student efficacy and outcomes. And I thought that was the most ironic thing of all. In the corporate world, all we talked about was how do we get better, measurable outcomes? I go over here and we're talking about how do we get more revenue? I thought there's probably some balance in between these two approaches that that would be appropriate. So that was the first thing I noticed. I you know, I work in a large public institution and it's, you know, the people that work there are part of the state employee system and it has its own pace. I mean, it absolutely has its own pace and it has its own motivations around individual motivations. And, you know, there's a lot of discussion about how long you have to go until you get your pension or those kind of things which is, you know, a dwindling benefit in the United States. You know, so it's a, it's kind of a special thing. I was fortunate that I had the backing of the chairman of the board to start a new college. And, you know, he was really hell bent on getting something innovative done for the university and put it in everybody's goals and plan. So I had this mandate to do that. So most of what I ran into that was, was the, the underground centrifuge that occurs in universities, the continual undermining and and slowing things up. And so there were many times where something would get stuck or somebody didn't want to do it. And there was actually there's quite a bit of status quo in a major university. And there was really I mean, we like to talk about innovation and why we, you know, we do all this progressive stuff, but actually it's a, it's a very static organisation in many ways. And there was a real resistance not on the research side, but in the general operation of the university, and so there's a real resistance to doing something new. And there was a lot of, you know, political backbiting and a political fighting and that would go on. But it was always I mean, I don't, I would not have survived if the Chairman had not been fully embracing change. And I've, you know, when I was on the Pearson side, we helped institutions and presidents do things. You know, I built online progress with them, they it always failed if you didn't have a senior leader who was very strong and would stay the course, politics would get you every time. You know, and they just wait you out or sell you up or you know, cut your resources. So that was really super helpful to have that kind of, that kind of support. The other I did a couple of things I thought that were, that were helpful. I didn't take the job until I got a guarantee that I could hire a consulting firm to do an analysis, because I also knew from experience that no one would believe me or they would, you know, if the facts aren't on your side and you attack the person if the person's okay, then attack the process, whatever the politics are there. And so I, I knew if this consulting firm told them it was true or two consulting, then it would probably, it would stick. And so I did that early on and they came up with the proper analysis of how we needed to innovate. And we went ahead and did that. And the next year was funny. It became the the soup du jour. Everybody was hiring consulting firms to make their argument internally. So that was in fact the folks I hired. So they were very thankful. So people do learn, but I make sure that that was set up so that we could actually tell the story there and and have that kind of background. And then we hired, we made sure that we brought on early on specialists in online education and marketing. And I early on hired a crisis PR firm because I could see that there were going to be, you know, issues either real or made up. And we were going to have to have a very good story around that. So we also got a lot of expertise lined up to move ahead, which is very, at the end of the day, was very helpful.
"And there was actually there's quite a bit of status quo in a major university. And there was really I mean, we like to talk about innovation and why we, you know, we do all this progressive stuff, but actually it's a, it's a very static organisation in many ways."
Prof Judyth Sachs:
So I mean, very few people in higher education have the opportunity to start something new, particularly at the whole of organisational level.
Don Kilburn:
Yeah.
Prof Judyth Sachs:
Tell me what the big lessons have been that you've learned and what advice you would give to some newcomer that was setting up a new institution somewhere?
Don Kilburn:
Yeah. Well, I, I did take a business from 20 million to 800 million before, and I took a business from 100 million to 500 million. So I had a little bit of experience about scaling and growing and what it took to actually, because the corporations are not immune from status quo thinking. And, you know, Clayton Christensen wrote one book about it that, you know, his is the kind of the Bible on innovation. And you can't actually take legacy businesses and do innovation. So that's, that was one of our thesis, is that we had to, we had had to break it out and do something entirely different. My you know, one of the things I would say is. Give a lot of thought, you know, it's kind of the ounce of prevention worths a pound of cure. Give a lot of thought in the institution as to where the, where the opposition is going to come from, where the support is going to come from, where the opposition is going to come from. Get your messaging right about why you're doing this and and how you're going to go about this. Make sure you shored up senior leadership. I do think one of the problems in institution is institutional turnover. You know, one president might have gung ho, they're gone. And next thing you know, everybody, the knives are out and you're and you're done. And so I think figuring out your support base and getting that solidified. One of the things that I and you know and this is, this will sound strange coming from the corporate commercial person, but one of the things I insisted upon, which I thought we were really as an institution not great at, was focusing on the learner and why we're doing this and the mission. And I said everything we say about I mean, my first day I came out and there was a someone spoke to the Boston Globe. They said, Well, we're doing this to make $400 million. And I just I threw a nutty, I said, no. I said, we are the mission defines us and the operating margin we make will sustain us. But focus on the mission. The mission is to help more working adults get degrees. If we do that well, we will grow. We will grow by quite a bit, but really you can never get lost. And so my advice to people is figure out what that mission is and default to that on a regular basis. It is really hard for critics to say, like we would frequently say, how are we going to serve the 35 year old working mother? Single mom has two jobs, wants to study at 10pm. Your helpdesk closes at four and every one of you professors create a different environment for your course that she's trying to figure out between midnight and 1am before she gets up and goes to work again and takes the kids. You need to. You need to, if you can't, if your educational model, which is built on faculty autonomy, does not serve that student, we need a different model for that kind of student. That doesn't mean your model is wrong or bad. It just doesn't work for this student. So let's create something that works for this student so they can move ahead. And that's really, that's the kind of talk that we now we don't always get get across our message. But that was the, I do believe that message that that's the other advantage. If you have if you're working on that message and you're working on this and you don't believe it or it has holes in it, you've got a problem. So really test those kind of arguments as well.
"You need to, if you can't, if your educational model, which is built on faculty autonomy, does not serve that student, we need a different model for that kind of student. That doesn't mean your model is wrong or bad. It just doesn't work for this student. So let's create something that works for this student so they can move ahead."
Prof Judyth Sachs:
So can we just develop that? How do you support students and how would students describe their experience both at UMass Online and the college in California?
Don Kilburn:
Yeah, I think the majority of students at UMass, the public university, are still on ground hybrid students who take some courses online. With the exception I think of, we have an MBA program out at the, at the flagship, and that's fully online. But you know that, those students are you know, I had a friend tell me at Harvard that they had no trouble during Covid going to online. And I said, well, you chose the best students in the world. You can give them any environment, they're going to succeed. I mean, and there's a little bit of that, I think, in the in the MBA program where they're very good students. But most of the students in the regular university are taking some courses online and and many on ground and kind of mixing it up. You know, I'm one who actually thinks that the discussion of on ground hybrid and online is a little bit dated as a conversation. I think this is all about digital transfer, general digital journeys and digital transformation. On the one hand you have analogue face to face and machine learning and it's not that you have to be on either side. You have to just figure out where you want to be on that to serve students better, then you can be way over here if you want that if that, that fits your student body or you can move as more skills based or whatever, you can move more towards machine learning or using that kind of, that kind of environment to help students. But I think, you know, all along that line there are appropriate places to be. I contrast that with many of the fully online programs in the US today where you have standardised curriculum so there are people with PhDs and master's degrees in structural design and curriculum development and they develop templates for these that that standardise these around best practices and there are best practices around creation of curriculum. And then you, then then faculty are really subject matter experts to make sure that the subject matter is correct and accurate and and compelling, etc.. But they fill those into these shells that are, that are templates essentially. And you also begin to use best practices around assessment if you want to have an online program. So there are best practices around that and you should have an assessment strategy. You shouldn't leave it to, I'm not going to professor x who is in discipline y. Who has never actually studied how to do an online program or an assessment at all. I mean, that's a disservice to the student out there. So you begin to frame up the standardisation that makes this, adds efficacy, I think, to the whole environment. And then the faculty are added in as subject matter experts to make that work. The other benefits of that is and I think you build those courses with outcomes first, measurable outcomes backward, and then you can begin to work through your assessments to measure the those outcomes and in real time rather than, Oh gee, we got to the final, they failed the final done right. You can maybe say early on, I think we're struggling here. I remember at Pearson we started doing some of this stuff and we had, we had big textbook business and we found one book was online and we found that students were really struggling with chapter four and we said, Why don't we find out why they're struggling with chapter four. We went back, we realised that it was written in a different grade level and was just not as good as the rest of the chapters there. And that's why students were failing assessments. And as we went back and we were able to actually rectify that and then everything worked a little bit better. So that kind of continuous feedback allows you to also improve the learning environment for students. And then I think the other thing about that, you know, these online programs begin to do is collect the kind of data that you can do, you know, and I'm cognisant that many universities are filtering out students as much as anything right. Their, you know, the medical programs are saying you're good enough, you're not good enough. They're filtering out. You know, we're these programs are actually more about mastery. How do we get as many people to learn the subject matter and get through? And and as you collect this data, you can begin to see patterns that will allow you to have interventions, predictive analytics. And so you can say, you know, the following three red lights went off, the assessment, missed a class, so and so. Data says 67% chance of dropping in the next week. We should probably call to see if we can help, see what's up. Right. And those interventions do make a difference. And so, you know, and the other, the other piece of that is the is the whole and these online is the support piece. So when you show an interest in a school, you call and a lot of them use what's called, you know, you'll hate this term one stop shopping and that's the person will actually help you with the financial aid. Will actually walk you through what course of study you and how you set your programs up, any other logistics you need to figure out. We'll do that and we'll and frequently in some of those programs will stay with you throughout your whole college experience, right? Or you'll be handed off to someone who will stay with you your whole college experience and always be there and continue to track. And these support services that are informed by this data and and are set up they should be, they should run on for working adults on at least 18/7, if not 24/7, because they study in different times. And as I said, we have a, I'm aware of a school and won't say, I'm aware of a school that has three people in its support office and they work from 9 to 4. Now working adults work from 9 to 4, so that's not particularly helpful. So I think that's a big difference. The other good thing about these online programs are there are specialising in degrees that get people one of three things, either an interview, a job or a promotion, and it's less of a liberal arts degree. It's more of I'm 35 years old, I got two kids. I need to get a promotion and I need to get that and I need to be, I need to finish my nursing degree so I can get a raise so that, you know, I can afford to fix the car, I mean, whatever. And so it's really focussed on those, I'm getting people, you know, interviews, jobs and promotions, and so the programs match that as well.
"You have to just figure out where you want to be on that to serve students better, then you can be way over here if you want that if that, that fits your student body or you can move as more skills based or whatever, you can move more towards machine learning or using that kind of, that kind of environment to help students."
Prof Judyth Sachs:
So Don the topic of this podcast is Reimagining Higher Education. Chat GPT. Machine learning. Artificial Intelligence. There's not one day in the past six weeks where we haven't read about that. Can you talk to me just briefly about your reimagining higher education in the context of these sort of major transformative moments?
Don Kilburn:
Well, this is timely. I was on a panel for some reason they thought I could speak to this yesterday, last night in New York. So it's, it's a timely conversation. I think there's considerable discussion about AI right now and considerable disagreement. I'm of the camp that this has the potential to change everything. And I'm of the camp that this is more akin to the steam engine than to enhance search. Someone said the other day, I'm like, No, I don't think so. I mean, you're talking about neural networks that are layered, that are actually beginning to to, you know, in many ways approximate thinking. And it's quite different. And is it there yet? And do you have hallucinations or is it not tuned up properly? Sure. Go back and look at, you know, video games in the 1970s, the Atari games and missile command and stuff that, you know, it's come a little ways from there. This will change dramatically. I think you're, you're going to see robotics and game gaming combined with AI, and that's going to be a strange world as well. I think the AI, there are a number of people, a lot smarter than me, and I was surprised at how many of them are saying that there's a potential for AI to be existential. And I think it's something you know, I think it's something to really think hard about. And there are a lot of really varied, I mean, when there are certain people that I, that I consider to be fairly modest and conservative saying this, this could really be something, you know, I start listening and I think it's a, it's a good point. I think short term, I think people in service positions, customer service, potentially knowledge, jobs, all are at risk of losing their job. And I think the implication for universities is it's twofold. One is, we got a lot of support people, a lot of people to do this kind of stuff. And, you know, is this the you know, what do we do with this, this thing that could actually I mean, I saw a study the other day, it was fascinating. And it was, they did a test on customer service with I think it was Chat GPT and-and humans and it was, it was more accurate on Chat GPT. But here's the interesting thing. 76% of the respondents thought it was more empathetic.
Prof Judyth Sachs:
That's interesting.
Don Kilburn:
Yeah. And because it doesn't have a bad day, it knows how to respond promptly. It doesn't, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't hang up on you. It isn't, all those human things that, you know, are not particularly sometimes empathetic. And so I thought that was fascinating. So I think short term there'll be, there'll be opportunities for productivity gains. Pretty massive potential job loss out there. You know, how does that dovetail into the things we teach? I think it probably directly dovetails into some of the things we teach. You know, there is the well every time there's a new technology, there's new jobs created. And the only one I've heard so far is more software engineers and prompt engineers. I you know, I think what's different here is this is the first time. We didn't replace the railroad with something we were really replacing in many ways humans with quote unquote superior humans for these tasks. They don't get tired. They don't break down. They work 24/7 there you know. And I think I mean, I feel sad about that, but I and I realise the potential for a significant job loss across the board. And I think as universities think about this, they're going to have to keep an eye on the jobs of the future. What are we doing with, I mean, it may be a future where they're just so much less work that we all get a cheque from the government and we all go back and take art classes, you know, because we have all this free time to do that. I mean, I don't know. But I do think it's going to be fundamentally change everything. And I think it's I've been looking I was out at Google a few weeks ago looking at some of the advanced stuff they're working on. It's, it's something, it's something else. I was with a lawyer friend of mine and to the lawyer friend I said, give me a problem you're working on and we put it into one of these programs and it came up with a synopsis, and they said this is really good. I was going to have to read 20 pages tonight and I said, Yeah, this is going to be a great productivity tool for you until it eats your lunch. And she said, That's probably right.
Prof Judyth Sachs:
But learning is essentially social as well. And I mean, students go to college not only to get a qualification, they make friendships for life.
Don Kilburn:
Yes.
Prof Judyth Sachs:
So does it also mean that universities have to rethink the student experience?
Don Kilburn:
Well, I earlier said there's probably room for multiple educational models. And I think you're right. I think there's a social emotional aspect to college and the maturation process that takes place there. And that's frankly wonderful. Not scalable, not scalable to a population that has, you know, working, working adults and, you know, unless you're going to pay them for time, pay them for time off. And, you know, I mean, I just I it's just not realistic for many working adults to be able to participate in that dream. Right. So I think, I think to that point there, I think there will still be an Ivy League, there will still be, you know, an Amherst, an Oxford, a Cambridge. But I do think that, you know, there will be continuing cropping up of educational access and opportunities for underserved populations and also people who are either, who are basically diverse backgrounds. I think that'll be, it'll also be beneficial that we still have under enrolled rates for black and brown people in the United States. And, you know, and we still have over 30 million people who started some college and didn't complete.
Prof Judyth Sachs:
My last question is what advice would you give to the next generation of university leaders and administrators?
Don Kilburn:
I don't know. I'm not sure they want my advice, but my, my advice would be, and I think everybody would say they're doing it, but I'm not sure they're all doing it. But what does it really mean to be truly student focussed and in your mission, who are you really serving and if you're really serving x student population, what does it mean to do that? I am of the opinion that most universities around the country here in the States are frankly faculty focussed, first and foremost. And then if you ask them, they'll give you a tautology. You know, they'll say, Well, I am good because I am you know, I am quality. It's like, how did you measure that? You know, how did that how did that work out? You never went you never as a professor, you never got taught how to teach. Right. You never went to like a K-12 teacher. You are sage on the stage that we can take that back to 1600. That's pretty good. How does that. You don't have any measurements other than your midterm final. And again, how do you know your, you know, how you know you're a good teacher? And so I think leaders can, you know, should focus on their mission of serving and how they do that better. And and it may be also that they're not serving, really come to grips that they're not serving all people. Like I keep on telling the university, you're not serving these working adults. You serve some of them. I mean, it's not like it's again, it's not all or nothing on the working adult side, but you're not serving the entire population, only serving this segment over here who can get to the classroom or who has the wherewithal to do x. But there's a part and maybe you shouldn't be, maybe you shouldn't be making that hard choice and and focusing in on that. But that would, that would be the, that would be the biggest thing. I think the other thing I would tell leaders is, look, there's to look real hard at their institution for viability. I mean, I'm of the opinion in the United States that there is overcapacity of higher education right now. If you're a small liberal arts school that does not have a niche or large endowment, some, some special, something special about you, even special brand, you're in trouble. You're in trouble. And there's unfortunately, many schools are going to be looking to merge or stop coming up. And they all got a break during Covid because they got a lot of federal money and you could borrow money at 2%, 3%, but that's gone. And so that's the other thing is, what's what's what's viable. And, and now I have lots of things to tell them. The other thing I would tell you is if you want to do something new, break it out from the regular organisation, give us autonomy, give us some independence. One of the things we did with UMass Global is we set it up as a private university affiliated with the public because we knew that once we started touching it, we wouldn't stop with the public. And we didn't think that was probably, that was going to be good for an innovative place. So it has its own border, has its own border regions and it has autonomy to do some things. So that would be my other advice, you want to do something different, break it out somehow and give it enough resources, because the argument would always be, well, these resources should go to the status quo. Well, that's always true until the day it isn't. And the switch on disruption flips and you've got a problem. So that would be my, anyway, that's probably enough for a day.
Prof Judyth Sachs:
And what a, what a great way to complete our conversation. I hope you've enjoyed our conversation as much as I have. And and it's been very different from other ones because I've just gone with the flow. But your story is a fabulous story, and your insights have been really useful, particularly from this side of the Pacific.
Don Kilburn:
Well Judyth, it has been a pleasure to engage with you. You are wonderful. Every engagement I've had has been wonderful. And thank you for spending time this evening, or morning for you.
Prof Judyth Sachs:
And I hope perhaps serendipity might mean that we meet face to face, sometimes.
Don Kilburn:
Come to a conference on the East Coast. I'll come, I'll come and see you.
Prof Judyth Sachs:
Have a great evening.
Don Kilburn:
Take care. Bye. Bye.
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