>> From WXXI News.

This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made in 2009, when a new benchmark was hit in American education.

That year, more than 70% of high school graduates went to college.

It was the highest mark ever.

But something else was going on that year.

The financial collapse of 2007 and 2008 had already convinced some American couples not to have children, when they otherwise would have.

As a result, the birth rate declined, and now it's that time when those children would be finishing up high school and thinking about college.

And there are fewer of them.

And now consider this.

We went from 70.1% of high school graduates going to college in 2009 to 62% last year.

We are way off the all time high.

Foreign students are having a much harder time getting approved to come to this country for school and colleges and universities are talking a lot about an enrollment cliff.

The possible cliff isn't a cliff everywhere.

It will hit higher ed differently depending on where you are and who you are.

But there's no question that higher ed is in a more challenging place.

We've seen schools like Wells and Cazenovia close.

Last week, my colleague Veronica Volk reported on the growth that Keuka College is experiencing, one of the few in our region that is growing.

Many are struggling to fight decline.

And this hour we ask what the future is for higher ed.

Will we see more closure?

Will we see consolidation?

Can universities convince American high school students to reconsider the value and attend in higher numbers?

My guests this hour include the president of Keuka College.

Amy Storey is with us.

Thank you for making time for the program today.

>> Thank you for having me.

>> Ian Mortimer is with us.

The president of the Golisano Institute for Business and Entrepreneurship.

Welcome to you.

Thank you, Evan, and welcome to Brian Sharp, my colleague from upstairs, Enterprise and Investigations reporter.

Thanks for popping down and joining us in the studio here.

Thank you.

briefly here, I think we, we most people would know Keuka College school right there on Keuka Lake technically in Penn Yan, or is it not in Penn Yan?

Mailing address.

>> It's not in Penn Yan.

What is it?

It's called Keuka park.

>> Keuka park?

okay.

but it's roughly an hour away.

Golisano Institute is not an hour away from where we're sitting.

It's probably five minutes away.

Something like that.

Correct.

Been open for how long?

>> Two years.

>> How's it going?

>> Very well.

>> What's your enrollment?

>> One 7160.

>> Is that by design?

That's where roughly where you want to be.

Or you want to grow a.

>> Little bit.

We want to grow to 350 in the Rochester campus.

And then potentially going into new metros starting in 26.

>> So we're going to talk about how they're doing that.

I should also say that Dr.

Mortimer has worked in higher ed.

A little bit of your background outside of Golisano.

>> Yeah, I worked in enrollment for 20 years at RIT Nazareth, then Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont.

>> okay.

So a lot of background there.

Keuka College has an enrollment of, what.

>> About 900 undergraduates and 400 graduate students.

>> So 1300 total.

but the low point in the last decade was what number.

>> On campus.

Maybe we were down between 7 and 800.

And that is the bulk of what we do.

So that was a difficult moment during the pandemic.

>> So they they've grown a bit.

You might see the phrase small.

on purpose, small on purpose.

that doesn't mean not growing though.

And we're going to talk about what growth would mean there.

in a moment here.

Brian's reporting back in, I think it was in June that you talked to the outgoing president of RIT about this issue.

Yes.

>> Yeah.

We were I sat down with David Munson a few weeks before his retirement.

and we were talking about all the things, all the different things that were happening in Washington that were you know, creating different or changing the landscape.

I would say for, for higher ed.

>> Funding.

>> Funding.

issues going on with international student enrollment.

they were projecting at that time 200 fewer students this fall and that number to continue to dwindle in the years ahead.

and in that and I think that's where we have a clip of him sort of laying out this issue.

is is I was asking, you know, and he was also talking, though, you know, as everyone you're trying to grow, you're trying to increase your, your profile.

and all of that and, and sort of how you do that at a time where you're facing these other pressures.

And that's when he got into sort of the the outlook for enrollment of domestic students, which there he spoke about it being basically flat, but they were maintaining and sort of what that landscape looked like going forward, particularly in and I referenced, I think in the clip we're going to play where I got here in 2005, and then incoming mayor Bob Duffy always spoke about this being a city of universities, we have 19 colleges and universities in our area.

and what a what a boom that was for, for our community.

we though also have a community that's very dependent now on those universities.

We don't have the Kodak, Xerox, Bausch Lomb we're now higher ed and healthcare being our major employers.

So what happens in this area and how healthy our universities can be is is very important.

>> All right.

Let's listen to that conversation from June.

>> The other thing that we and everybody in higher ed will be facing is, the high school graduation demographic.

We knew this was coming.

We've been talking about it for so long.

Everybody feels like, wow, we must have way fewer high school students graduating now.

And no, not now.

But starting this coming year, the number of high school graduates in the U.S.

is really going to start to tail off.

That is an effect of the recession.

Back in 2008.

After that, American family started having fewer children, and it actually didn't pick up much at all.

And so we fast forward about you know, 18, 20 years forward from that and look at who's coming out of high school and how many freshmen are you going to have available.

There are not going to be enough domestic students to go around.

So we've seen some closures of especially small colleges over the last couple of years.

And I'm afraid we're going to see a whole lot more of that.

I feel sad because I feel like having a college in in a lot of different villages and small towns all across the nation is kind of part of Americana.

And I think those educational institutions are the centerpieces of their towns and villages.

I think we're going to see a fair amount of that, perhaps go by the wayside.

so that concerns me a lot.

>> One thing that they always talk about, Rochester, I go back to when Duffy came on as mayor, and he would always talk about Rochester as a city of universities.

And, you know, greater are we particularly are we vulnerable to what you just mentioned, or do you think ours are?

>> we're somewhat vulnerable.

just because we have so many colleges and universities in our region, we have 19 colleges and universities in our region, and there's certainly going to be some pressure on on some of those institutions.

obviously our economy has changed a lot from the days of Kodak and Xerox and Bausch and Lomb all having their headquarters here and being very substantial operations.

I think the economy is just as healthy as ever with a lot of medium sized companies.

We're still very strong in optics and some other areas.

A lot of things in food and beverage.

but also the economy now is even more reliant on higher ed and on health care.

And of course, health care may be having its own challenges with the federal government and perhaps some lack of funding of Medicare.

We'll see how that turns out.

But I would say of higher ed and healthcare are hurt.

that will damage the Rochester economy.

>> And just so I have the context for when we're talking international students going down by maybe 200 in the incoming class.

Yeah.

What are you seeing in terms of the overall enrollment?

well, so.

>> Our enrollment of domestic students at RIT is very close to what we've seen in the last couple of years.

That's what we're projecting for the fall, maybe down slightly, but but very close.

It's the drop in international students that we're particularly concerned about now.

>> The domestic is that been sort of steady or is that.

>> Yeah.

For us for us it's it's been steady.

It's been pretty steady the last few years.

Yes.

And but as I say, starting real soon they're going to be fewer of those students to go around.

And there's kind of a pecking order amongst higher ed.

And unless you're a higher ranked institution, you're going to be more susceptible to enrollment.

>> So that starts with the group that just graduated.

>> I would say that's going to be steady.

Yeah, we'll be seeing that effect.

bigger in fall of 26.

And then we'll be really kind of deep in the trough by 28. okay.

>> That's President Munson, outgoing President Munson in June, talking to Brian Sharp, who's with me in studio here with WXXI.

and let me just ask you a little bit there, Brian.

I mean, this is that's not a fun subject for a college president to talk about.

You've got a couple of their cohort in studio, but they're in a pretty healthy position compared to a lot of schools.

They'd rather talk to you about the opening of the shed or a big new a big new project, et cetera.

but he was pretty blunt about that, although I don't know if that means that there is an immediate concern about whether what we saw with Wells Cazenovia, I don't have any warning bells on the horizon immediately locally that there's more closure or consolidation.

Do you.

>> Know, and I think I think really it got to, you know, that part where he talked about the, the sort of the Americana that he, he was looking at the broader landscape you know, I think he was at that point of, you know, finishing up his career, going to retirement and looking sort of at what he was, the industry that he was leaving.

rit, I think is healthy.

I think the folks here, you know, their institutions are healthy.

but just the overall concern of, of what's to come.

>> I appreciate you taking time for for us here and sharing that with us.

We're going to link to Brian's reporting because the full conversation, the transcript is really interesting to read.

It goes beyond just the possible enrollment.

Cliff touches on a lot of different issues.

Still worth seeing that.

Thanks for popping in.

I'm going to let you get back to the newsroom.

All right.

Go to work.

Get out of here.

That's Brian Sharp Enterprise and Investigations reporter with WXXI.

And let me ask Amy Storey, president of Keuka College.

Do you think President Munson's diagnosis was correct?

>> I obviously agree with the demographic changes that are taking place.

and the risk to New York State in that in particular, New York is going to be one of the hardest hit states when it comes to the declining birth rates.

So looking at the Comptroller Dinapoli's report in particular, it's it's dire 27% decline in the number of high school graduates is something that should make all of us concerned.

What I don't necessarily fully agree with is the fact that smaller institutions will close.

I think that they are at greater risk, perhaps, but I think that I would argue that some of our larger institutions may have overbuilt within the last 20 years in terms of residence halls or classrooms or whatever, while knowing that there was going to be a smaller population coming at this point in time.

And Keuka College did not do that.

And therefore we are, I would argue, better positioned to weather this period of of smaller graduating high school classes.

>> And I know, you know, the outgoing RIT president.

Well, how was the diagnosis of the situation that you heard there?

>> I mean, I think factually in terms of what he said obviously is accurate.

You know, Dave knows a lot about higher ed.

And we worked a lot together when I was there.

and so he's well informed, not just by my influence, but by a lot of people.

I think one of the things, though, that you know, to Amy's point is that we can't use this demographic soundbite the enrollment cliff, as a way to not focus on value creation for students and families.

So one of the things that happens oftentimes, particularly in enrollment offices, is that whenever there's, you know, kind of a demographic shift, it people sometimes can throw their hands up and like, oh, woe is us.

And, you know, what are we going to do?

And there's a lot of variables that influence whether or not a student attends an institution.

And one of those is the education attainment of the family from which they're coming from.

>> If your parents want to.

>> If your parents went to college.

Exactly right.

And so when you look at the demographic data in the decline in high school graduates, yes, in aggregate it's less.

But that doesn't mean there's going to be less people going to college per se, because as you said in your opening, you know, 60% go to college.

And the variables that decide who goes to college or not are very, very accurate in their statistical prediction.

And when you look at the Rochester region, there's actually growth in the characteristics of families that send their kids to college.

Now, if you're an institution that serves a lot of first generation students and demographics that typically don't participate in higher ed, those are, you know, that's that's where the cliff is really, you know, falling.

But if you're serving a population of one bachelor's degree or two bachelor's degrees or advanced degrees, at least in Buffalo and Rochester, there's actually growth.

And those families typically send their their kids to college at rates of 80%, whereas the statistical strata of those who typically do not, it's about 30% go to college.

And so you can't the thing we have to avoid is, you know, kind of wide, sweeping statements that because there's less high school students, there's going to be less kids going to college in Rochester, New York, statistically, and from a economics perspective, it's just not accurate.

So what we have to understand is who do you serve?

What are the the trend lines of the populations that you typically serve.

And then, you know, to really applaud Keuka, you know, what are the programs that you offer that connect very well to employment.

So, you know, there's macroeconomic factors and there's macroeconomic factors.

And without a doubt, families are looking at what is the the chance of underemployment or underemployment by obtaining this major at this school.

And when you have programs like in nursing and OT and PT and things that are aligned with the economy, you have a little bit more of a cushion to maybe if you know, you have a lot of students that may be more in the humanities or actually in business, the underemployment rate in business is very, very high.

And that's why we exist at some level.

So I guess the headline is, is that wide, sweeping statements like the cliff is going to create, you know, school closures.

I don't subscribe to that at all.

Who you are, who you serve, the value that you provide will determine essentially how you come out of this.

>> I mean, I see Amy nodding about the idea of making sure that you're still focused on value, that you're providing for students.

And in a moment, I'm going to ask both of our guests just to kind of give their thoughts to why we see a difference from 2009 to today in terms of just the percentage of high school students either choosing or able to go to college.

So again, all time high in 2009, just over 70% were back down to 61, 62, maybe close to 63%.

But it's not where everyone in higher ed would like it.

It's not where it look like that trend was going in the aughts.

So I'm going to ask that question a moment.

Let me grab a phone call from Adam in Wayne County who wants to jump in?

Adam.

Go ahead.

>> Hey there.

Evan, thanks for taking the call.

Yep.

just I got a comment and kind of a another comment, but here we go again.

We're kind of we're kind of not saying it, but we're saying that there's a war on woke colleges or college education.

As far as, like, enlightening people and bringing.

>> Trump.

Here we go.

I'm going to I'm going to I'm just going to say it.

This guy, you know, I called last year before he got inaugurated and said, you know what?

I don't think he's going to attack the institutions.

And here we are.

I feel I feel like I was wrong.

He he is absolutely attacking every institution in this country.

And college is another one of them.

And I'm glad that New York has as much infrastructure as we do the Suny schools.

And as maybe affordable.

I mean, I went to a technical school basically for my career.

And I would like to say that when I, when I, when I want to ask someone that's on the opposing view, do you, do you want to make college unaffordable for people or do you want to make it a obliterated.

Do you want to just take it away?

And I don't understand what we're going through right now sometimes.

But I also know that yes, if you go to college for marketing or a business degree or art arts and liberal arts, if you got a long way to go, still from there and you're in debt big time.

So I don't know.

I just think that there's no there's no winning right now.

But I think the people that will go to college and stick out a career and yes, they will have to travel around the country to find jobs, probably.

But is this administration is this environment that we're living in making it harder?

I'm 40 years old.

Is this making it harder for 20 year old people to progress and find a career?

And I don't know, I it's all just baffling.

I'll take any comments.

Sure.

If you have them or.

Yeah, just get off the air.

>> No, no no I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Man.

Call any time.

I appreciate the perspective.

So and let me also say this I'm not trying to insulate our guests on the subject of politics.

They can say whatever they want.

and I take your point, Adam, that certainly in the first year of the second Trump administration, there's been a lot more direct confrontation with higher ed.

some of it has been pretty theatrical.

And and I'm not saying I'm not saying anything about the validity of any of that.

I'm just saying you acknowledge that this administration is targeting higher ed in a lot of ways.

They employ Chris Rufo, who's made it his entire career, to try to change what schools teach and what levels and why, and and then what you do about that and how you fund it.

I get that most of what we are talking about today is, is outside of that.

Yes, there's the issue of foreign students not being able to come here in the same kind of numbers.

And if you're RIT, if you're U of R, if you're a lot of others that's a bigger deal probably than for our guests in the studio.

And that's not nothing.

It's certainly something.

But really, it's this demographic called a cliff called a change that started in 2007, 2008, 2009, coupled with, to your point, Adam, the question of how we fund college or opportunity to go to college, whether a sticker price that you and I have talked on this on this program many times, whether the sticker price represents what students pay, how that perception hits people psychologically when you're 15 years old and you're starting to think about that and you see those sticker prices, are you convinced that my family's not going to pay, that most people don't pay the full sticker?

Or do you think that's not for me?

So there's a lot going into this.

There's a lot.

ultimately, there's I think two questions come out of Adam's call, which is, first of all, what is the goal here?

Do we want to make it more accessible?

And how do you do that?

And I think that ties to why are fewer students going.

That's what I want to hear.

So, Amy, let me start with you.

I mean, if it was 70% in 2009 and it's 62% now, why why a decline when we saw a steady march upward, obviously the pandemic, I get that.

But it's not just the pandemic.

So what's going on here?

>> It's not just the pandemic.

And and I agree with some of what Adam was saying about the rhetoric that is taking place nationally about the value of a college degree, but it still remains true that based on Census Bureau data nationally, that 2022 median earnings for those with a bachelor's degree were almost 175% higher than for those that were high school graduates.

So there is value.

There's no question that there's value in higher education for your lifetime.

Earning potential in most situations.

but I think that some people are nervous because it is a major investment.

And to Ian's point, for people who don't have a history of higher education and their families, is it a risk that they're willing to take?

And I don't know, I think that the public dialog around this issue is definitely influencing some people's decision about whether or not to go right now.

>> Dr.

Mortimer, why are fewer high school graduates choosing college right now?

>> It's not one thing by any stretch for any one population, but some of the variables that I would offer are determined that are impacting it are one underemployment.

So, you know, we don't we have some work to do to help people enter jobs that require a bachelor's degree.

The statistics are pretty alarming when about half of all college graduates enter a job that do not require a bachelor's degree.

When you strip out nursing, PT, OT, accounting, teaching, all the things that require a license, the numbers are even more difficult.

And I think people are starting to become more aware of that just because of the transparency of communication amongst peers and families.

And so that's one thing.

And I think all of us have to do more work to match the the investment that families make into education and how it connects to solving an employers problem.

So that's one thing I don't think it can be understated that those who experience K through 12 during the pandemic got roughed up.

you know, New York was a little bit more back to school than a lot of states.

If you were in the South, like Virginia, I mean, they were online for a year and a half, and in some situations they're still online because they can't find teachers to come back to the schools.

And so I don't say that the pandemic, the pandemic has had a big impact, I think, on K through 12.

And as a result has challenged the idea of what it means to be a student from an emotional satisfaction perspective.

You know, identity, perspective.

And, you know, some of the students that come to us and are really successful with us are looking for a new mode of education.

And, you know, for a small end, we fill that hole.

And then I do think there's this new phenomenon with young people, particularly that struggle with the amount of time.

So, you know, for years, you know, used to be, hey, four years.

Sounds like, you know, I get to go away and have fun and, you know, you know, do all the things that you know, young people like to do.

And I hear more and more of young people that four years just seems like an eternity to them, you know, not knowing what they want to do and committing four years of their lives, at least at the front door, to trying to achieve something that they're not entirely sure what they're trying to achieve.

>> Is that the time or is that I don't know if I need four years, given the debt that's going to come with that.

>> I think that there's probably an association between the two, but I do think they're independent variables in many consumers heads.

okay.

you mean the money is is absolutely a big thing, but the money's always been a big thing.

and I think it's more along the lines of, I'm not really sure what I want to do in four years.

Feels like a long time to to to try and commit to that.

>> Are we likely to see over the next generation or so, higher ed offer a lot more than just a standard four years?

>> I personally would hope so.

I mean, it's why the Golisano Institute exists, and I think.

>> Because.

How long is your program?

>> Two years.

Two years?

Yeah.

In one year we have a one year certificate and a two year certificate.

And we serve, you know, a lot of different populations.

We don't serve a traditional population.

We in some ways we're a proxy for a graduate program.

But I think the the one size fits all modality of education COVID proved that that just doesn't work for everyone.

And I think now we're at a point in time where we have, you know, the opportunity and cook is a is a leader in this to to innovate and start crafting new approaches to delivering on what it means to be prepared for a job and to be educated.

And the the gatekeeper here is the accreditors, at least in my perspective.

The accreditors got to kind of loosen a little bit of their their reach into, into post-secondary education and allow colleges and universities to innovate.

And I think if that is allowed, then you'll start seeing some real innovation happening where it could be, you know, different times, different modalities, different, you know, relationships, whether it's cohort, non cohort.

I mean, there's a lot of small, smart, innovative people in higher education.

But they need to get the tools and the capacity to to make some novelty.

>> President, do you want to add to that?

>> I agree completely.

the accreditors it would be better if they valued flexibility in terms of what we're delivering and where we're delivering it.

But I would also say New York State Education Department is is similarly while I'm sure that they are trying to ensure quality and other elements there are many hoops to jump through, many barriers to innovation and flexibility.

And I'm not always sure that that serves our population well.

So I would argue that, you know, there are many states in the country where private institutions are not subject to state education law.

New York is not one of them.

So it's a challenging place to do business.

There are 150 private institutions in New York State, and we are a major economic engine.

But it is challenging.

>> What would you do differently if the rules were different?

>> so determined thinking about where do we deliver education?

So, we, for example, have delivered nursing education in hospitals.

There are hoops to jump through before you're allowed to do that.

In New York, or based on the number of students that you have.

When the number of students in the cohort changes, you need approvals.

So there's a lot of complexity to this that I'm not sure adds value to the citizens of the state of New York.

>> And not enough flexibility.

>> Personally, I think that if we had the autonomy to make some of these these decisions ourselves, our students would have better outcomes and they would arrive at graduation or completion quicker.

>> And part of the challenge is to add to Amy's great points is that the way the structure is, is that your your state and federal federal aid funding is tied to your compliance with what Amy just described.

So you even if you wanted to innovate, you kind of overcome some of these, you know, kind of structural obstacles that Amy describes, if you get too far out of line, then you compromise your ability to deliver Pell Grants and New York State Tap and federal loan program, which without those, it's almost impossible to to make to make it go.

>> So I have to take our only break, and then I'm going to take Jill's phone call.

I've got a couple of emails to read here.

We're talking about.

I think we're trying to have a sober conversation about the reality facing higher ed without overgeneralizing.

I think our guests are making good points about don't just look at a headline and assume an enrollment cliff means we're going to see widespread college closures, or every school is going to face the exact same kind of crisis in the same way.

It is not that way.

Although there is a challenge for sure.

And it is not just because of one thing.

So we're trying to sort through that.

What that means now, what that means in the future, what it means for families and for students who need to know what an ROI or what value is.

And it probably feels a little different than when I was going to school.

And it might feel different for parents and grandparents who had a different idea about it.

But it's a big part of the equation.

Now, if you're if you're going to spend, you're going to take on loans.

You got to know what you're getting for it.

And we're talking to Amy Storey, who's the president of Keuka College.

Ian Mortimer who is the president of the Golisano Institute for Business and Entrepreneurship.

Your feedback on the other side of this only break.

Coming up in our second hour, the Buffalo Bills are going to win the Super Bowl this year.

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I just think it's clear this is the year.

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It's going to be hard to get a ticket.

Prices are going to be insane.

And Western New York is going to be having parades.

We're going to talk about how all of that's coming together next hour.

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>> This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson Jill on the phone next.

Hey, Jill, go ahead.

>> Hi, Evan, thanks for taking the call.

Sure.

an important part of the discussion of the threat of so many institutions is how many of these, particularly small schools are tuition driven, meaning that their entire operating budgets are based on how much tuition they can collect.

So if unless you have more students coming or more families who are suddenly willing to pay a higher price than before, then your budget is stagnant.

And yet your salaries go up and medical costs go up.

So it really puts an onus on these small schools that are at at risk to really be creative.

Either create more programs or go into some pretty intense budget cutting.

But again, the the the fact that so many institutions are tuition driven is a significant threat.

>> okay.

president story, what do you think?

>> I would agree.

I think that the majority of institutions in this country are tuition driven.

There are very few that have an endowment or an alternative source of revenue.

That is significant enough to offset the the effect of tuition, room and board.

and it's absolutely correct that costs continue to rise.

Tuition rates continue to increase as well.

So I think the piece that while it is a threat, I would agree it's a threat.

It's also an opportunity because it it causes us to have the impetus to innovate and to think of other ways to drive revenue at our institutions.

So, for example, at Keuka College, we're on a beautiful finger lake.

So all summer long, when our students are not in classes, we are hosting different things and bringing different people to the region, supporting tourism.

So it is a threat, but it's also an opportunity.

>> okay.

Dr.

Mortimer.

>> I think the the note there that I'd like to highlight is the one about health care costs.

those by far, in a way, at least at the places that I've been involved in are the the biggest challenge in terms of budget problems.

And one of the things that I think could be done, and we did it in Vermont, is build a consortium where rather than Cuca buying health care coverage and Nazareth buying health care coverage in Saint John, Fisher buying health care coverage is you build a consortium and buy strength in numbers.

You reduce the the cost because you have more people in the system.

in Vermont, Saint Michael's College, Middlebury College, Champlain College, and I'm forgetting the fourth all pooled their resources together.

And so they have one health care plan, and it reduced their overhead by a lot of money.

So there are ways to kind of creatively move around.

but you got to work together on them.

Oftentimes.

>> do you see any more consolidation?

I only ask because it's one thing to do health care.

It's another to say, are we at the point where if we're going to survive, we fully consolidate in different ways?

Do you think that could happen?

>> I think it's a great question.

And I've done a little bit of work on this, and the problem with mergers and column acquisitions in higher ed is that they typically happen when things are too late, when you have one organization that's essentially gobbling up the other and by by when that happens, you know, the the value of that organization is cut so thin that it kind of creates these examples that it just doesn't work.

The best examples are when you have two organizations that are coming from a position of strength, and they have the strategic will to come together and create something better.

But it requires two things.

One is it requires the boards to just swallow a little bit of pride and understand that the the school that they may remember 20 or 30 years ago is likely not the school that's going to be there 20 or 30 years ahead and really come together in an honest, proactive way to build a better entity.

And then you can plan for, you know, planned obsolescence and some of the things that can go in to building and getting some scale.

but when it's kind of a school of strength trying to acquire a school that, you know, doesn't have much left in the tank, they just become bad examples and people walk away.

>> okay.

You agree with that?

>> Yes.

And I don't know how many more there are going to be of mergers and acquisitions because the cultures that exist within the faculty and and you know, Ian's point within the alumni are really hard to merge.

and I think, you know, corporations have done a good job of giving examples of how mergers and acquisitions take place.

But you always have one that's subsuming the other.

And I it particularly with respect to faculty, I think that is a tremendous barrier to having many successful mergers going forward.

>> okay.

Robert in Fairport is next.

Hey, Robert, go ahead.

>> Yeah.

Thanks for taking my call.

I think part of the part of the issue here that's hasn't been mentioned so far is that if you look at the Suny system in New York State, there's just a ton of schools that have seen enrollment declines of as much as 50% the last 20 years.

And there's there's just a tremendous amount of unused capacity there.

These these schools never close.

You get a school like Potsdam or Fredonia and so on and so forth.

They're competing directly with private schools there.

The state has come up with tuition cut kind of programs that are stealing share and students from from private schools to, to run these kind of zombie college campuses that probably should have gone out of business.

>> okay.

is there a validity there?

>> I think so, I mean, I think we have 64 Suny campuses right now, and I think it's something that we definitely should be talking about.

And when you think about what does it cost to keep that infrastructure up and running at all of those locations?

But I go back to Dave Munson's point in the beginning of the fact that many of these institutions are the heart of their community.

There's a reason why New York State is propping them up, and there is economic activity that is taking place, even if it's not what it once was.

So I don't think there's an easy answer to that.

But I do agree that small private liberal arts institutions in New York State have to be efficient for all of the reasons that your callers have already said we are tuition driven.

We we innovate in ways that perhaps state funded institutions or state supported institutions don't.

>> And I think if you're in Fredonia, New York, and you're a state senator or an assemblyman that's responsible for that region of the country, and you want to become unpopular really quick quickly talk about shutting down Fredonia like that.

Would it's just a political problem like there's no way that a politician is going to allow that school to close.

in their region because it's jobs, it's economic power, and there's just there's too many strings attached to it.

In my opinion.

>> okay.

That doesn't answer whether you think it would be the right thing to do.

>> I'll hold you.

I mean, from an economics like just supply and demand, of course.

But you know, there's.

>> You're being realistic.

>> A lot of things are are not efficient.

>> Yeah.

Looking at the politics there a couple listeners just wanted to know what the sticker price for our guests institutions are.

So what's the sticker price of Keuka College?

>> Oh, gosh.

I don't even know.

so we just passed a new the board just passed a new resolution, and I don't even know if it's public, but.

>> Can you go to the the pre board resolution?

All right.

Well president story figures that out in at Golisano.

>> It's you know we are we have the benefit of being supported by Tom Golisano.

And so our annual tuition is extremely subsidized by a very generous donor.

So for one year of education, 12 months is $8,900.

It costs us a lot more to educate a student than what we charge.

But we are very unique in that we have the the benefit of Tom.

>> Yeah, you don't really count.

>> We don't really count.

>> No.

It's so different.

>> It is.

>> Very different.

You do is so different than what we do.

And literally everybody pays a different price.

Well.

that's an important point.

>> Now I'm seeing online about I think our team says about 38,000 total.

That sound about right?

>> It sounds about right.

>> What percentage of students who go there pay the full.

>> Zero 0%, 100, zero, 100% of our.

>> Students on your campus?

>> No, we just had this conversation with my vice president for enrollment and my board of trustees when we were talking about increasing tuition for next year, because, you know, it is the Board of Trustees duty to make sure that what we're doing is stewarding the the institution correctly.

But the sticker price is really it doesn't tell you anything because nobody pays that.

>> So what what's the average that students pay then?

>> I couldn't even answer you that, other than to say that sometimes we'll do comparisons against Sunni schools and on average, it would cost a a student about $5,000 a year more to attend Keuka than to attend a Suny school.

And with room and board, all in.

So those are what we look at.

>> okay.

but I mean, again, this is a conversation we've had and probably need to keep having, and it's a whole separate conversation.

But if 0% of your students are paying the full 38 K. But again, if you're that 15 year old student starting to think about it and you see that and that number looks too big for you, does that psychologically have a deleterious effect on attracting students?

>> So one would think and and again Ian can talk about all the, the logic or lack thereof involved in the entire enrollment process.

>> Yes.

>> But people like to receive a scholarship.

They like to know that you want them to come.

And those incentives mean something to families.

So you've seen colleges try to do tuition resets like Utica University, and then they end up right back in the same place that they were a couple of years before.

So tuition reset is when a college tries to get rid of sticker price and just give it a more legitimate price to families, but families still want scholarships.

>> okay, that's an interesting point.

It's almost it's like, I'd rather pay the same out of pocket.

But no, it's on a scholarship than not.

Even if even if the actual cost is exactly the same.

Yeah.

>> Yes.

>> Scholarships are a huge determining factor of of demand, but this is I believe this is an important consideration for the listeners.

Is that and this is a big problem.

It always has been.

And hopefully it won't persist.

Is that the higher education community has followed the wealthy boys and girls in the industry for a long, long, long time.

And so in the 80s, when you know the Ivies and the Nescac and the Colgate's and the Hamiltons, you know, started cranking it up 6 or 7%, then everyone else started cranking it up six and 7%.

And it just it's gotten out of control with the with the premise, which is not holding truth anymore, is that retail price is a reflection of quality, and we've hit a tipping point in that people just don't believe that to be true anymore.

And so now, you know, to Amy's point, the question is, is how do you set a retail price that is really true to what it costs to educate a student, but also giving you the latitude to kind of shape the profile of your class based on quality and all these other characteristics.

By using scholarships as instruments to make that happen.

And I, I think that that's kind of a big core question for the category is how do you kind of reframe this relationship financially that is honest and upfront, but also gives some latitude to have some flexibility to incentivize the students that you want to enroll.

>> So I'm now I'm wishing we had two hours because I'm going to squeeze a lot in here.

On that point of convincing families, students, prospective students that there is an ROI I take President Storey's point from earlier this hour that the data still shows that you're going to earn more with a degree than not.

I mean, there's still a good return on that, but there's also a lot of concern about how the job market will change about how economic constrictions could affect that.

We've talked about artificial intelligence.

There's sort of the positive and the negative or the concerning and the inspiring there.

So there's a lot that's going to be different in the next generation.

And if you're going to school today I think you're going to ask hard questions.

So at Kuku, what what's the sell on an ROI here.

>> Well it depends.

So for our pre-professional programs or pre-licensure programs like nursing and OT and social work, it's required if you want to go into that field you've got to do it.

And so the question for the students is what gets me to my end goal as quickly as possible?

>> with respect to students in some of the other disciplines, it's really the employability of their fellow graduates.

How many of the people who graduated ahead of them are employed or in graduate school?

And that is a metric or a data point that most families want to see.

And it's an important one.

>> okay, Ian, you want to comment on that on ROI and how you convince families.

>> Yeah.

And again, this gets to some of the benefits that we have being an independent subsidized school from, you know, from Tom Golisano.

So we embed three internships in the two years.

So you can't walk out the door without having three work experiences that are oftentimes diverse in nature.

but also kind of roll up into essentially three quarters of a year of full time employment.

So that's one piece.

The second piece is that we've embedded skills that we know that the business community is screaming for.

And again, we have the latitude because we're not, you know, we have independence of accreditation, but we teach sales and we teach coding, and we teach the skills that we hear that people want.

And by nature of listening, reacting, putting our students in, those employers testing, if we're doing a good job and then just kind of cycling through, then we're the ROI is obvious.

I mean, they're getting great jobs and they're being very successful.

We've graduated our first class and all but one of them are in high skills business positions.

that would typically require a bachelor's degree if not an MBA.

>> Before we move on, even if I might, I also wanted to just point out Keuka College has field period, which we've had since 1943, where each one of our students has to do 140 hours in the field every year freshman, sophomore, junior, senior.

So similarly, they have practical experience with employers.

It's a continuous feedback loop.

So we also have that which is relatively unusual.

Most institutions might have an internship.

We do something a little bit more.

>> I think there will be more demand in the future from students and families for opportunities like that.

I don't know how scalable it is.

We're talking about two pretty small institutions here.

But Debbie writes in to say my son's first choice would have been RIT for robotics, even though he received a scholarship, it was financially prohibitive for him to attend.

We also encouraged him to not be that deeply in debt.

At the end of four years, he's enrolled at the University of Buffalo.

In this environment, I have listened to many money managers advise to choose the least debt.

Coming out of four years.

That's a big consideration.

I mean, I know it's not the only one, but what do you say to that?

>> Ian?

I, we used to work with a gentleman.

He had a saying, and I think it's spot on is that student debt is a bet on future earnings.

Nothing more, nothing less.

And so if you think like that, then you have to understand the value of what those earnings may be based on the program you choose and the reputation of the school that you choose.

And so those two things essentially determine that.

>> okay, brief comment there on.

>> That same I think that if you really need to think about is the school that you've selected for your, your son or daughter the right location for them, can they be successful there?

And if they can, and it's less expensive, great.

But not everybody is going to be successful at a larger institution.

So, you know, it's it's so dependent on the individual.

>> Tom says many colleges are sitting on real estate that is far more valuable as housing than fading institutions.

Ouch.

okay.

Well, look a lot changing in higher ed.

We've talked about a lot this hour.

I want to close with this during our brief break, Ian Mortimer mentioned a phrase learned helplessness.

What are we trying to avoid?

What does that mean?

What?

Where do you want to get the pessimism out of this?

Like.

>> I think the higher education doesn't need a reason to be pessimistic.

I mean, there's things that need to be overcome, but culture matters.

Like.

And, you know, wonderful leaders like Amy are a good example of that.

And the success that Kuka has had, there are ways to pound through this.

And, you know, by claiming that an enrollment cliff is going to be the demise of either your organization or the industry as a whole is a not rational.

And B there's going to be a lot of opportunity for for strong leaders and strong boards and, and people who can think differently because the change you make today is going to prove itself valuable over the next decade.

And so that's, I guess, the headline I'd like to share.

>> Somebody's going to be educating a student at higher.

>> Exactly right.

>> Might as well.

>> Be you.

Yeah, right.

Bingo.

>> Final thought from you.

>> Same.

I'm so optimistic about the future because I like disruption.

I like opportunities to think differently and to question the assumptions that perhaps we've been operating under.

So I'm very optimistic about the future.

>> And again, around 1300 total students right now.

Where would you like to be?

Ultimately.

>> Not any bigger.

We're right about where we want to be.

>> It's comfortable.

>> It is maybe 1000 undergraduates.

That'd be as big as I'd get.

>> One 6170.

Now you're going to double that roughly?

>> Yeah, about 400 here in Rochester.

And then we're expanding some news to be shared in the next couple of weeks.

>> You can break it right now.

>> I'm going to hold off until its final official.

>> okay.

You have my number.

Ian Mortimer is president of the Golisano Institute for Business and Entrepreneurship and has decades of experience in higher ed different institutions.

Thanks for being here.

Always great and Amy Storey.

You might have heard her in my colleague Veronica Volk reporting, president of Keuka College small on purpose, but experiencing some growth when others are are really struggling.

Thank you for being here.

>> Thank you for having me.

>> More Connections coming up in a moment.

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