[upbeat ambient music] - Hello, I'm Nido Qubein, welcome to Side by Side.

My guest today is a champion for education throughout the state of North Carolina and across the country.

She's the president of the North Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities, and a very influential person in higher education, Dr. Hope Williams.

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[upbeat ambient music] - Dr. Williams, welcome to side by side.

You know, I know a little something about higher education and you know so much about higher education.

You know, it's from a much wider spectrum, after all you've been president for 30 years of the North Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities.

Your work has been respected, admired and appreciated by so many.

And I just wanna begin by asking this question, what is the future of higher education?

We read so much, we hear so much, so much doubt about it.

Affordability is a big issue in higher education.

What is your view about where we are?

And more importantly, where are we headed?

- I think affordability certainly is key right now in higher education, and certainly following the pandemic, that's going to be a huge issue for families who have had issues with unemployment or jobs that may have been lost.

But the wonderful thing about higher education in America and certainly in North Carolina is that there are many opportunities to receive assistance.

So we have state aid and federal aid and institutional aid and all various scholarships that alumni and others have left to colleges and universities.

So I think the number one thing that we want students to remember is that they need to go talk to the financial aid office of the college they're interested in attending and find out what might be available for them.

- Mm-hmm.

- Because one of the things we know is that we can make higher education affordable.

- What role do you think government should have in making higher education available to a wider segment of our population?

- Well, I think North Carolina certainly has done that and all states do that by providing assistance to their state institutions to help keep tuition low for those state institutions.

- Hmm.

- We're so fortunate here and in many states to have an aid program so that students whose families have been paying taxes in the state all these years can also benefit from some state tax assistance to be able to help to go to colleges and universities.

- Hmm.

- That may be private non-profit as we are.

- Hmm, in North Carolina, how many privates.

How many public's do we have?

- We have 16 public universities plus the school of science and math and the public sector for four year.

And then we have our 58 community colleges and we have 36 independent colleges and universities are private non-profit ones.

- Hmm.

- And that includes the five historically black colleges and universities, three colleges for women and one two year college.

- Mm-hmm, and what is the number of, I don't know, the enrollment number of North Carolina students who are enrolled in colleges and universities, or perhaps all of the population of students in all of these colleges you mentioned?

Let's take the private sector and the independent sector without the community colleges.

What would those numbers be?

- Well, we have about 90,000 students, including our undergraduate and graduate students.

- In private schools?

- In private college and universities.

- And private colleges, yeah.

- Across the state.

- Independent colleges and universities.

- Right, and our undergraduate and professional programs.

- And that will include and Wake Forest.

- all 36.

- And Davidson is on.

- That's correct, all 36.

And the UNC system has, the last numbers I saw, I guess, were somewhere around maybe 240,000, I believe.

- Mm-hmm.

- But that may be a little off on that one.

- But that's a large number goes to independent institutions.

- A large number.

- Yes.

And what is the biggest challenge for independence?

- I think the biggest challenge for independence is trying to make sure that the students can afford to come.

So we provide 700 to $800 million a year in institutional aid.

- Mm-hmm.

- On top of state and federal aid.

And that's a critical factor in helping students be able to make that choice and families.

- Mm-hmm.

- To be able to make that choice to attend.

one of our colleges.

- Mm-hmm.

- And many students we know are from rural areas, especially across the country, but certainly here in North Carolina and they're accustomed to small classes and small high schools.

And they like to continue that.

- Mm-hmm.

- Small individual attention feeling in higher education too.

- Yeah, they appreciate the mentorship of it all.

- Absolutely.

- I went to independent college as an undergrad, and I went to a public university for grad work.

And so did you.

[chuckles] You covered the basis.

I mean, you went to undergraduate you did Duke University, then you went to NC State for your masters, then you went to University of North Carolina Chapel Hill for your doctorate.

Politically you're well set.

[chuckles] - I get teased a lot actually, people will sometimes be introducing me, and if they don't know me, they'll stop in the middle before they get to the PhD and say, but who do you root for?

Because of course, here in North Carolina and in the states across the country, that's a big question is which team you're rooting for.

- Mm-hmm.

- And which team do you root for?

- I root for my undergraduate as all students should, which is Duke and all 35 other independent colleges and universities.

- I see.

[chuckles] Okay, so we're trying to get, sometime we'll get the coach K here, we'll ask him about some of those questions.

Hope, you know, you began your career in North Carolina as, I don't know whether you were an intern or a full-time employee during the time of governor Hunt.

What did you do?

What was your very first role in that office?

- Well, I was in the department administration for eight years during Hunt one and two, working with Jane Patterson who became secretary of the department.

And I was over some divisions and working with her on a variety of things because that department manages the state functions, the business functions of state government.

- Hmm.

- That was an important part and a great experience, but we also had the advocacy programs.

So the programs that help women and persons with disabilities and the Human Relations Council, and a number of those that were trying to help certain populations within the state.

- Mm-hmm.

And how did you end up at NCICU?

Tell us the story that you meet somebody who said [chuckles] you got to do this.

Did you find that there's an opportunity?

What drove you there?

- Well, it's interesting because as I was working in state government in public service, I decided I wanted to pursue a master's degree at NC State and one of the great things about our public and private institutions across the state and all over the country really is that there are multiple opportunities to take courses.

So I was able to do that program at night.

- Hmm.

- Which allowed me to do that.

And then I began my, while I was working full time, and then while I started my PhD in the same way.

So that working full-time as many adults do, we have so many adult students.

- Yes, yes.

- People think about our traditional students.

- Yeah, so you began actually as a staff person of NCICU, and then later you became president?

- Well, I did, and after I received my PhD and I did pursue that in higher education, because I decided that's where I wanted to be.

- Mm-hmm.

- It's such a difference and a life changer.

- Mm-hmm.

- For so many students.

And so I began work as the head of the research side of NCICU, and then in 1992 became precedent.

- Mm-hmm.

I have to ask you, you would think, given your background, your education, your expertise, why didn't you choose to become a college president?

- Well, I thought about that.

- Is it the stress [chuckles] and the misery and the criticism that might come your way?

- No, believe me, there's a lot of stress on this side as well, but one of the things that I found I really love about this work is the policy side.

- I see.

- And the ability to help more broadly.

- Mm-hmm.

- So that when we are able to work, whether it's with the general assembly or with Congress and all of the kinds of issues that higher education faces, we're able to affect that and try to work and develop that in a way that helps students, faculty, staff, and our institutions.

- Mm-hmm.

- And that's a very broad reach.

And so I like being able to be involved in something that has such a broad impact.

- Mm-hmm.

It makes a lot of sense.

Hope, I got to ask you about the North Carolina Independent Fund.

We talk about affordability, especially for North Carolina students who want to have a choice what school to go to.

They have so many wonderful choices in this state.

What is the North Carolina Independent Fund and what does it do?

- Well, the Independent College Fund helps raise scholarship funding and grant funding.

And so we have a number of grants underway and some requests in place now to work on specific issues, one is a male minority mentoring program.

We are concerned about all of our students of color, but especially our male students who seem to leave college before they graduate more.

- Mm-hmm.

- We have one in encouraging stem majors because we find that a lot of stem majors start out that way.

- Mm-hmm.

- But they don't necessarily complete that way.

- Yes.

- And we know that our employers across the state need that.

So we're raising that, and also for scholarships to help our students be able to come.

- Where does the money come from?

- The money comes primarily from corporations and foundations.

- I see, I see.

- And so we appreciate so much, the great support that we receive in that area.

- Mm-hmm.

- We have some who've been giving, some businesses who've been giving for over 50 years.

- Wow.

- And we greatly appreciate their continuing support.

- Wow.

- We also have programs, collaborative programs to help save money for our colleges, and business affiliates who work closely with colleges across the state.

- Hmm, hmm.

- And, I know that you're a part of myFutureNC, what is that?

What is its mission?

And where is it headed?

- Well, we've all been working on attainment for a long time, but this is a great example of how the state comes together when there's a major issue, in this way we have our business leaders, we have all of our sectors of education altogether.

I do represent our colleges and universities on the commission.

- Hmm.

- And the idea for this is our goal that we've set is that by 2030, we will have 2 million adults, ages 24 to 44, right in that range somewhere who have either a high quality credential or a post-secondary degree.

- I see.

- And the goal is we have so many students and certainly adults who have some college, but no degree.

- I see.

- And we want to help them, which also helps.

- To finish that, yes.

- To finish, which also helps our employers across the city.

- Mm-hmm.

- And how do you do that?

I mean, what is it that myFutureNC will do to ensure that that happens?

Is it funding?

Is it placements?

- What is it?

- It's a variety of things, including some great supports from some foundations here in the state, providing opportunities for programs, such as there's one underway for adult students to try to help encourage those adult students with some college, but no degree.

- Mm-hmm.

- To come back and complete their degree.

There are studies underway to try to find where the gaps are so we can approach those gaps and try to resolve them.

- As in talent gaps?

- To keep these students, the talent gaps in terms of gaps too, we know what we need, we know what employers are asking for.

- Yes.

- And so we're working on that.

- Yes.

- But then we also are looking at the issues that make the students drop out, what is it that.

- I see, I see.

- Keeps them from completing and how do we help them overcome those?

- Mm-hmm.

Let's talk about the talent gap for a moment.

North Carolina specifically wants to have a great workforce.

That's the way you attract large corporations to the state, that's the way we create jobs, that's the way we create economic impact, that's the way we ensure a prosperous future for our families and all of our citizens.

But when you talk to, as we've interviewed on this program, a number of CEOs who run large corporations, and they speak about this talent gap that they speak about it in two ways, number one, that we don't have enough college graduates for example, who are very skilled in technology and technology is ruling the world in many ways, they speak about it in the sense that we don't have enough diversity in this talent pool that we wanna attract.

They speak about it in generational differences and what they want to do and how they want to do it.

And then they speak about it in terms of this, the college student who graduates and who is ready to work versus the college student who has been academically gifted and performed well, but when they graduate, they just don't have the life skills.

And so what happens, the companies that have to walk them through six months or a year of further training to bring them up to par.

And I'm just intrigued by how myFutureNC is attacking all these issues from every dimension.

- Well, and myFutureNC is really aimed at that attainment goal, right?

The focus is there.

I think that one of the things that all of our colleges and universities are doing is to make sure that we provide internships and on the ground opportunities.

- Hmm.

- For students to have experience so that as, you're right, when they leave the college, that they have had that in-person experience to understand what it's like in a workplace, and to be accustomed to that.

One of the things we do hear from employers is that the broad liberal arts education with those specific courses that they need for that particular job are critical.

Because one of the things that employers are seeking is someone who can think critically.

- Mm-hmm.

- Who can make decisions, right.

And they need to be able to do research, to work in teams.

All of those are things that our colleges and universities across the country I think are, are focusing on and something that our international colleagues across the world really looked to America as a real strength.

- Mm-hmm.

Hope, do you know how many institutions of higher education are there in the United States of America?

Is it 3000, 4,000?

- Somewhere around 3000, I think.

But I haven't counted lately.

- Plus community colleges.

- Plus all the community colleges, right.

- Okay.

And you told us in North Carolina, we have 60 and plus 50, plus 30, 36, right.

- 36 of ours and 58 community colleges.

- And 58 community colleges.

But we hear about, and we read about, and we worry about lots of institutions in the country who frankly are not doing well.

Financially, enrollment may be dropping, facilities may be in, if not in despair, need significant renovations and so on, lacking the capital funds to do that, not having enough people enrolling, yet the expenses keep going up in every direction.

And these institutions, some of them are small and they struggle with how do we survive much less thrive?

So on the one hand, we want to get the talent gap completed and prepare all these students, on the other hand, some of these institutions have some tough times.

Some of them are closing, some of them are merging and purging, some of them are joining even public institutions in some instances.

What is your take on all of that?

And I'm not asking you to name names or anything like that, but where do you see us headed in that direction?

Do you see more colleges closing down, should more colleges close down?

That's a tough question for someone in your position to answer.

And should there be mergers and acquisitions?

I don't know.

College sometimes are not the most efficient institutions in terms of doing things in the business like manner.

They're not businesses, right?

I mean, I had a university that focuses on the notion that our mission is to educate students and to prepare them for life for the world as it is going to be, but we also of course, acknowledge and understand that we have to administer this university in a business-like manner.

And if you don't, then you find all these challenges that emerge from every direction.

Just give us your take on all that.

- I think that the question is really not should a certain number close or anything like that, but how each individual institution can look to the future and find a way to be sustainable and to educate the students and to provide the jobs, and we have such a broad economic development and economic impact as well as education, and sometimes people don't think about that, but where the, together, the largest private employer in North Carolina.

- Mm-hmm.

- When you combine our colleges.

But I think we are finding that since the recession number of years ago now, certainly with the pandemic on top of that as we move into the future, and continue to look ahead, colleges are having to determine what their mission is going to be which may be different at least a little bit from what it used to be years ago.

- And some of them have unique missions, right?

- And some are designing that way.

- Yes.

- Are turning that way.

- Mm-hmm.

- And I think that the big challenge is that our colleges and I know certainly here in our state and more broadly are having to look at the programs they offer and the degrees they offer, where is the demand?

If the demand is not there, are they going to have to rethink about whether they're going to provide that?

So they're having to do.

- That's a tough question Hope.

- Its a very tough question.

- Because that threatens the faculty base, that threatens tenure, that threatens a number of fundamentals, right?

- And it threatens who the institution is, right?

- Yes.

- Because the institution is always thought of itself in a certain way.

- Mm-hmm.

- But to survive and certainly to thrive, the colleges have to be able to say, we are providing and receiving the students we need to support this because especially for non-profit institutions that depend on tuition, certainly endowment and gifts, but primarily tuition, we have to have the students here to make that work.

And we certainly want to be a good employers for our faculty and staff.

And so they're really having to right-size, and we do have a situation where over the last several years, certainly our colleges and more broadly nationally have been looking at what is it that we're going to have to take a hard look at perhaps discontinuing.

- Mm-hmm.

- And where should we be adding?

One of the great things about our colleges across North Carolina is a huge growth in health sciences.

- Mm-hmm.

And you know a lot about that.

- Sure.

- And certainly those engineering, a lot of the stem fields are in huge demand.

- Hmm.

- Information technology.

- But Hope, the colleges that attempt to do some of that get a lot of resistance, right?

Because you.

- Yes.

- You threaten the definition of liberal arts, you threaten certain disciplines that may be a president, you and I have seen presidents come into an institution attempt to change things and renovate and transform, and before you know it, they're gone [chuckles] within six months.

It is a national issue, it's not a statewide issue.

- Absolutely.

- It's a national issue.

You are very involved in a number of national institutions, in fact, you have chaired a number of very important groups.

What is the conversation about this nationally?

- I think the conversation nationally is just what we're saying is that colleges absolutely are having to look carefully at what they're going to continue to do and how they're going to continue to do it.

And have to make hard decisions.

We are not a business as you said, but we're very much like a business.

- Mm-hmm.

- Because just as a business must have customers to be able to stay.

- Mm-hmm.

- In business, we have to have our students and be able to help support them getting there, but also attract them for the fields in which they're interested in.

- Mm-hmm.

In that sense, we have to enhance and increase revenues, we have to be efficient and productive in the way we manage expenses, and in the midst of all that, we have to create capacity in our faculty and in our students, giving them the resources they need to become learned and purposeful individuals for years to come.

- All while maintaining the vision and the mission of what we believe higher education should be.

- Yes.

- Which does include a lot of the liberal arts in addition to all of the special fields and disciplines.

- Mm-hmm.

So you don't see, I take it that you don't see, and you are an expert in this, I mean, you know so many people, you talk to so many people, you're involved in so many national initiatives.

You don't see colleges simply saying to each other, why don't we just merge and create efficiencies of scale?

I suspect some of that on the independent college side is that all of these colleges are connected to something, right, to a church, to a certain mission, to a certain set of beliefs.

And therefore the commonalities are not as evident as one would think.

- There certainly are institutions that have discussed merger, but I'm often asked the question that with 36 independent colleges, we must have a lot that are just alike.

And I say, not even two.

- Hmm.

- Because of the culture, the history, the community.

- Mm-hmm.

- All of the factors that make that.

- Mm-hmm.

- Individual institution what it is, make it difficult then to combine, even if there are very strong similarities between institutions.

- Mm-hmm.

- It's very difficult to do.

It certainly has happened.

And sometimes it works well and sometimes not so much, but it's certainly an issue that people have to address, and our colleges have to across the country, but it is a challenge, no question.

- So you're known in the Tar Heel State as this very skilled leader who can go into the legislature and both sides of the eye like you, respect you, they may not always do what you want and the way you want it, but they do like you and respect you and welcome you.

What is your secret?

- Well, one of the things, and I hope that's true, but one of the things that I think is important for all and education to understand is that we need everybody's support.

- Hmm.

- So we don't identify with one party or the other.

- It's not a political issue, it is a societal issue.

- It's a societal issue.

- Hmm.

- And it's something we need everyone to embrace.

And so they might support us for different reasons, right, but we hope that they'll support us.

Certainly our members and leadership in the general assembly understand the economic impact our colleges have by being that largest employer, in our small communities, many of which are rural.

And those jobs are so important, as well as the education, they understand the impact.

We award almost 90% of the physician assistants degrees in North Carolina.

- Really?

- 60% or more are pharmacy law and medical degrees, 25% of the teachers who graduate in North Carolina, who graduated from college in North Carolina, graduate from our institutions.

- And many of them stay in North Carolina - These are the ones in North Carolina of our teachers.

So yes, the impact, although people may identify more with their local institution, with which they're more familiar and may not be aware of all 36.

- Mm-hmm.

- The impact together that we have is huge on North Carolina and the state needs us and we need the state.

It's a wonderful, mutually beneficial relationship.

- And in the end, it's about serving citizens in this state and making sure that families have their children educated to have a more prosperous and more successful future.

- We transform lives, right?

- Yes.

- We have 50% of our North Carolina students who are Pell eligible, those are our lower income students.

- 50, five zero?

- 50, five zero percent of our North Carolina students who all qualify for Pell grants.

These students are from families and this applies to all families and all students, but especially those from lower income families need that education.

- Mm-hmm.

- To be able to help them to improve their quality of life, at the same time, meeting the needs of our employers across the state, it really is an ecosystem.

- Yes.

- And all of us need to play our part.

- Indeed.

So talking to you, Dr. Williams, I find you hopeful about the future of higher education.

And I found you a faithful to the cause of independent colleges in the state.

And I find you very persuasive about acknowledging and understanding the challenges that lie in front of us and our abilities [upbeat ambient music] and determination to deal with them.

And I'm delighted that you are in the role that you're in and that you are assisting so many of us in so many ways that I thank you very much for being with me here today on Side by Side.

- Thank you for having me.

- [Narrator] Funding for a Side by Side with Nido Qubein is made possible by.

[upbeat ambient music] - Here's to those that rise and shine to friendly faces doing more than their part and to those who still enjoy the little things.

You make it feel like home.

[baby laughing] Ashley HomeStore.

This is home.

[upbeat ambient music] - The Budd Group is a company of everyday leaders making a difference by providing facility solutions through customized, janitorial, landscape and maintenance services.

[swoosh] [upbeat ambient music] - Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors locally thanks to our teams.

we are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.