(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Major support for Carolina Business Review provided by Colonial Life, providing benefits to employees to help them protect their family, their finances, and their futures.

High Point University, the premier life skills university focused on preparing students for the world as it is going to be.

And Sonoco.

A global manufacturer of consumer and industrial packaging products and provider of packaging services with more than 300 operations in 35 countries.

- Momentum seems to be the theme here, almost this spring.

I'm Chris William, and welcome again to the most widely watched and longest running program on Carolina business policy and public affairs.

Momentum in the deployment of the vaccine, momentum with kids going back to school, momentum in the economy, hopefully and just in general, a better feeling as spring begins to approach the Carolinas.

Stay with us.

We unpack some of the issues that are most critical.

And then later, Dr. Nido Qubein, High Point University joins us again - [Announcer] Gratefully acknowledging support by Martin Marietta, a leading provider of natural resource based building materials, providing the foundation upon which our communities improve and grow.

BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.

Visit us at southcarolinablues.com.

The Duke Endowment, a private foundation enriching communities in the Carolinas through higher education, healthcare, rural churches and children's services.

(upbeat music) On this edition of Carolina Business Review, Scott Hamilton of the Golden Leaf Foundation Antjuan Seawright of Blueprint Stategy and special guest, Dr. Nido Qubein President of High Point University (upbeat music) - Welcome again to our program.

It's good to see you both Antjuan, Scott, welcome back.

We could almost say happy spring.

So it seems like we're all feeling a little bit more optimistic about things.

Scott, let me start with you.

Talk about this idea of optimism and positive momentum.

It seems like when we look at schools and particularly K-12, Scott, that there is momentum.

Kids are starting to show back up in person.

There's just a general sense.

We're looking at teachers now as being the next group of COVID vaccinations, et cetera, et cetera.

What do you think is gonna happen now between now and summer and beyond?

- Well, this has been a great learning experience as much as it's been a challenge, it's been a great learning experience.

And Chris, thank you for the invitation to join you here today.

Jumped right in without thanking you for this and enjoy being here with Antjuan as well.

But there is a of momentum of it.

You're feeling good.

The weather right now is forecasting spring and the students, I think as we have moved into this, as I said, we're learning a lot from this.

And so I do think you will see the school system shifting some.

Interestingly, I do think, especially in the counties that get winter weather having a school day now may be more virtual than saying no school, depending upon how severe it is.

But there's been a lot of the shift of how we're gonna educate.

We have adapted to online education.

We know in-person is the best thing, the interaction, the people being in the classroom, and I think how that's gonna be delivered is gonna be a little different as well because of physical distancing.

But you can't make up for being there.

And so as we get the students back into the school from K-12, I am from a family of educators.

My father was an educator and my wife was an educator, my daughter is a current educator in elementary school.

And so the shifting and the overused word of pivoting has really, really, I think strengthened the school system to a degree that learning how to adapt and bringing us further along faster than I think we would have gone.

So we've had a lot of challenges with the pandemic, but we've also learned a lot from it.

- Antjuan, a simple question.

Do you see summer school in the future for South Carolina students?

- Oh, I do.

Look, a number of things are going to happen.

In fact, a catalog of options will be presented going forward.

Safety is going to be first.

I think you're going to see a shift in the narrative of the politics of whether teachers belong in the prioritization batch in comparison with other constituencies.

I think that's going to be settled on it's own from a legislative standpoint, perhaps some government intervention particularly at the state level.

I also think you're going to see a shift of a new effort to how we do learn and going forward.

Online learning works for some but it does not work with others.

And I think you have that already at the higher education level, we're testing this in a way at K-12.

And so you may see this shift from a K16 perspective.

Over 200 and some odd thousand teachers in South Carolina at survey want the vaccine, the legislature passed legislation to do that.

Some of my neighbor states, i.e.

Georgia, the governor recently to prioritize teaching.

So I think you're gonna see that happening.

As relates to summer school, I think there are a lot of students, particularly those that come from consequential communities, they're going to have any lack of make up if they want to compete in an ever changing global society.

Not to mention this big thing called poverty, this big cloud still exists and we know what happens in the summer in consequential communities.

A lot of things happen, whether it's not being able to have food, whether that, I mean so many things going through the summer.

So I think all those things are gonna bubble up to give you every reason in the world to prioritize learning.

And finally, Chris, this idea of this pandemic of the reality for this pandemic, I'm sorry, has exposed us to a truth that we have to have broadband access across the board, across the Carolinas if we want to learn going forward, and that's whether we're in the classroom or not.

- Antjuan, perfect setup.

Scott, I've got to ask you about broadband.

Obviously rural communities are right in the center of the bullseye for Golden Leaf and many folks.

So is this thing year that both general assemblies will put a stake in the ground and get to the finish line on fully funding broadband?

What'd you expect?

- Well, I think this is the year that you're gonna continue to see forward movement in the deployment of broadband.

Broadband in rural communities is extremely tough.

Having met several years ago with the top official with one of the technology firms asking how do you crack the nut in rural America in deploying last mile broadband?

There's tremendous challenges to it.

Some of it's policy challenges and in North Carolina, there's some policy challenges of who can and who can not provide broadband services.

And so some are gonna have to be addressed on the policy level.

Funding is still, it's incredibly expensive.

Community, Pender County in Eastern North Carolina received about $30 million from USDA for broadband expansion, but that's gonna cover half the county.

So it's still tremendously expensive.

Plus the take rate for putting that capital in the ground to get the last mile, the door to door deployment, the take rate because of costs.

We would need to look at what are some of the policies about being able to recoup those expenses of getting the broadband to two areas.

In the Western part of North Carolina, and I'm sure in South Carolina as well when our wireless deployment is becoming more prevalent it's also a challenge because of the topography.

And a lot of it is line of sight to get that deployment for that last mile.

So lots to do, not lots of money.

And it's just not state policies that are gonna need to change.

Federal policies will need to change, and so will federal funding as well.

- Chris, can I say one thing in follow up to that?

- Yes, please.

- I think, if and when the COVID package, COVID release bill passes American Rescue Act, there's going to be a tremendous amount of money that flows to school districts for safety, precautious, but also in that package is going to be the reality of funding for things like broadband expansion.

And guess what?

While broadband, we know is the issue in rural parts of the Carolinas, it's sadly a part of a bigger issue in urban and suburban parts of the Carolinas.

If you go to parts of Columbia, South Carolina, there's no broadband access.

So I think there's going to be a collective effort to make sure that our students have the opportunity to compete in an ever changing global society.

And that's the most important thing.

But along with broadband access and so forth, you have to have the necessary devices.

And there's some investments there that school districts are gonna have to make in order to not just have internet at school, but also at home and making sure that parents and so forth are educated on how to best assist our children so that they can continue to learn and move forward.

- Antjuan, just stay to with you, in a quick answer, 30 seconds, if you can, notwithstanding any stimulus dollars that are coming or any leaning in by any local or statewide policy folks, and this is not a very scientific question, Scott, I'm gonna ask you the same thing, but very quickly.

Do you get the sense that uncertainty is being removed now from everyday life and businesses and folks are becoming more maybe settled or secure about the near term much unlike it was even six months ago?

- I think people are realizing that we all are recalibrating in so many ways.

And I think that people know that the old norm will not be the new norm and the new norm may not look like the new norm we think it may look like.

And so I think it's gonna be an ever changing process of what normalcy looks like going forward from education, to business, to social and personal life, and even for those of us who engage in religious affairs.

- Scott, same thing, 30 seconds.

You get the sense of a settling down of some sort?

- Well, I think I get the sense of adapting.

I'm not sure about settling down, but it is adapting.

There's fatigue.

We wanna get out, we wanna get into the meetings.

We've also learned that some of the meetings we used to go to couldn't be accomplished in this type of manner and be more effective and efficient, but we also have understood, and I think Antjuan said this earlier is being there in the room.

You cannot make up for that.

I was in Surrey County recently meeting with the school systems and the community college there on some of their apprenticeship programs.

And you could not have understood the value of that program in electronic format.

You had to be there to see it, touch it and feel it.

And so we are starting to learn how to adapt to those types of opportunities to be able to get out and to understand and to make it feasible to be able to be out there.

So some of it's the fatigue, some of it though is also we're figuring it out and we're gonna have to continue to adapt over time.

'Cause every couple months I think we're gonna have to adapt.

- It is hard not to smile and be optimistic when you talk to our special guest.

He exudes that.

There's something about him.

That doesn't sound very middle of the road as a television show moderator, but it's hard to miss that about our guest.

We welcome back to this program and back to the dialogue, he's the president, among many things, of High Point University, Dr. Nido Qubein.

Dr. Qubein, welcome back.

And you look healthy and well.

- Thank you, Chris.

It's always fun being with you.

And that's a little makeup.

That's what looks so healthy for you.

(laughs) - Whatever works for you, I guess.

So Dr. Qubein, you had been through it.

You were one of the first outfront and very public about when COVID first emerged, High Point University and the facilities were very strict about a lockdown.

But now let's look forward.

What is education going to be like now?

What are the permanent changes wrought by COVID around High Point and other schools?

- Look, COVID has tested the very fiber and fabric of every human being, every leader, every business, for profit or non-profit.

There's no running away from that.

It's been a very difficult journey for all of us, but this is the test of character and this is the test of leadership.

And so I believe that we're gonna look back at this time just like we looked back at the great recession, we learned great lessons, we pivoted, we changed, realigned many things.

We are transformed leaders because of difficult times in our life.

And COVID, I think will show, in higher education specifically that we had some areas we need to fix on higher education and yet we have some opportunities we need to focus on.

So I think the answer to the question might be bested in three short sentences.

Number one, I think higher education, forever now has to focus on relevance.

And relevance is defined by the marketplace.

And I say this respectfully, and I say this thoughtfully but the reality of it is that we have to make a distinction between training people and educating people.

Both are wonderful, both are needed, but if you go to a school like High Point University and graduate from college and you don't know how to fit into a team, you don't know how to be a solution finder, you don't know how to fit in life in a practical and pragmatic way, then we haven't done our job of life skills and so on.

So relevance, relevance, relevance.

It's not about value, Chris.

It's about appreciated value.

You can render value but it's not appreciated by your market, by your audience.

It really is not gonna know any big results.

Secondly, I think higher education for everyone now has to focus on the notion that we must be efficient.

We must be efficient.

This bureaucracy business has to be set aside.

We have to think about things like load management.

Are we using all of our buildings all day instead of two or three hours, for example, and we have to become very intuned, attune to fiscal acumen.

Fiscal acumen.

Every organization and higher education must have people who understand how to allocate capital, how to operate successfully, and this business of just balancing a budget or losing money at the end, this is not gonna fly longterm.

You have to have some money at the end of the game so that you can reinvest it, so that you can avoid different maintenance and so on.

And thirdly, I think it's very important to know that creating capacity in the communities in which we live should be part and parcel of our goals, our mission, our values, our aspirations.

So for example, look what Duke has done in Durham.

Look what Wake Forest has done in Winston-Salem.

Look at what High Point University has done in High Point.

The stadium downtown wouldn't have happened without us.

Now we have apartments and condos and offices and restaurants coming up everywhere.

And that's not the only way obviously of creating capacity in the community.

But we must be relevant in the cities in which we reside each in his or her own way, we can bring service learning, we can bring economic impact and so on.

- Thank you.

We're gonna bring our guest in.

Before I do that, I neglected to say at the top of the program, High Point University is an underwriter of Carolina Business Review.

We are thankful for it, but we need to fully disclose that as well.

I wanna open this up.

Antjuan, why don't you take it.

- Mr. President, thank you for your leadership.

This pandemic, worst pandemic since 1918 caused some of the worst economic challenges perhaps since 1932 has forced all of us to make adjustments in some way, shape or form as we learn in yoga.

But for you as a college president, one, how do you prioritize safety, health, and then the economics around this pandemic and what it will mean for students from a financial standpoint, what it will mean from a health perspective, sports and the daily interaction of classroom and social action of college because that's a big aspect of it.

And then finally, what does it mean for how do we do learning going forward?

Because I think, again, it's gonna change a whole lot and business as usual will no longer be a thing instead it'll be unusual business.

- Yeah, Antjuan, first and foremost, I love your jacket.

Let me get this thing on the-- - (laughs) Thank you.

- You're looking sharp as all, get out.

I'm a college president and I can't afford a jacket.

But listen, I wanna acknowledge that.

But let me tell you Antjuan, look, we in higher education must be focused on holistic learning.

Holistic learning means have a sense of awareness.

Who am I, why am I, what do I do with my life?

And organizations must do the same.

So when you think about safety and security, these are byproducts of our awareness that every student on every campus, certainly on our campus here at High Point should feel safe, right?

Should feel secure.

Not just physical safety, but from a diversity inclusivity perspective, from an affordability perspective, all of these things are important.

Learning, I believe has to be more practical.

I think of academic learning as the Mona Lisa, it's the heart, it's the lifeblood of an institution.

Faculty are the lifeblood of an institution.

But I also believe that you should take some liberty with the frame around the Mona Lisa.

And that frame means what can we do to make sure that every student receives an extraordinary education in an inspiring environment with caring people?

I think the answer to the question is to be focused on it, to be aware of it, to invest resources in it, but mostly, Antjuan, to attract a circle of influence, faculty, staff, alumni, community advocates and so on, who understand that and who give themselves to help you achieve that.

- Scott.

- Well, I appreciate that answer and I think it's really good.

And it leads into my question about strategies with the high schools in community colleges and four year colleges and universities.

In following up on what you said earlier is I truly believe the community colleges, the four year colleges and universities are gonna be the catalyst of recovery for the communities that they serve.

They are the ones that are gonna be out there innovating and bringing that to business, to the private sector, to bring in that feeling of the momentum that we talked about a little bit earlier to the community is that those educational institutions will really be the ones that move that momentum forward.

So talk a little bit about the strategies of incorporating the linkage of the high school into either a community college or a four-year college, and then into the private sector and how those strategies need to really play out to move education forward, move people forward, and move a community forward.

- Well, Scott, thank you for that question 'cause I think it's very relevant and very important, especially in these times.

We have a very close relationship at High Point University with community colleges in our area here.

We believe that that is a wonderful partnership.

It's a collaborative effort that makes our communities better.

You look across South Carolina or North Carolina, you see wonderful community college systems that contribute every day to the workforce.

Look, companies we all want economic impact.

And South Carolina is a really great examples when you look at Spartanburg area and Greenville area and so on and other places.

Companies want to come to an area where there is a trained and educated workforce.

And so community colleges specifically play a phenomenal role in preparing workforce in a very meaningful, productive and quickly applicable manner.

And we in four year colleges and beyond we have a duty, I think, to reach beyond our borders, beyond our campuses to partner with community colleges.

High school's a thing for ball games.

K-12 is going through tremendous change as you well know.

There are all kinds of stuff that's going on and all kinds of models out there.

But ultimately, Scott, I think you'll agree with me on this.

Ultimately we should not be focused on students.

We should be focused on the student because people learn differently.

People have different needs.

People come from different socioeconomic backgrounds.

People have different aspirations, different fears, different goals.

And I find that on our campus that we have 5,600 students in High Point University, it's not too big for us to focus on these students.

But even if you have 30,000, you can have special offices.

In our case, we have success coaches and mentors and so on that we partner with each student.

We must look at the needs of the person and bring forth in a meaningful way.

It's the only way to really strategize for a future that is sustainable, right?

I believe therefore I will.

I am therefore I'll do.

And that is a role we ought to assume in terms of guiding students so on.

Historically that wasn't the case.

Historically, as you went to college, you're gonna be a degree, or you got to some degree in this or that, but no one said, you should know something about communication, you should know something about business, you should know something about leadership.

We have a massive degree here.

It is called Masters of Communication and Business Leadership.

And I say, everybody should take that masters because otherwise when they graduate you don't have it all.

America is going through mega transformation and the higher education sector must equally be aligning itself with a transformation.

Whether we agree with everything or not is besides the point.

Each of us can do our part to make the future better than the past.

- All right.

President Qubein, I wanna unpack that for just the next two minutes and we literally have two minutes left.

You talk about this massive transformation and until we get to the world that you talk about, which we are heading that way, it seems like, and that's this idea of being encouraged and optimistic and forward looking and not afraid of the challenges, we still have a fairly large and growing mental health and mental wellness issue that has become prevalent because of COVID and other things.

So how, and literally we have two minutes, how do you approach this idea that there are record numbers of people that are seeking counseling?

It's not a bad thing, but how do you get your arms around leading and helping folks through the softer science of mental health?

- Chris, you've put your fingers on one of the most important topics, I believe, in society today.

Because absent really paying attention to that, we will have challenges in the future that will be cumulative and therefore more difficult to deal with.

I think the way you deal with it is number one, you acknowledge it, and number two, you assess it.

What is it?

What can we do to alleviate it?

Number three, you begin to structure systems in your organization that fit in your organization to deal with it.

For us here, we have a thriving, thriving in the sense that it's big and active counseling office with many many practitioners in it, certified counselors and so on.

But we also have academic programs that have counselors, like learning excellence program.

Because mental health is a byproduct of something.

It's a byproduct of your upbringing, it's byproduct of society in which you live.

So byproduct of the fact that you struggled with your academics, for example, and therefore you feel lesser than, and that begins to cause problems.

So you have to have, I believe you have to attack it from many different angles, not from a singular angle.

But first we must acknowledge that it's real and that it's our responsibility to stand up, step out and deal with it.

- How does it show up in the student body at High Point University?

- In many ways.

For example, one of the reasons that people drop out of college has been-- - In about 30 seconds, I'm sorry.

- With the environment, right?

That's one reason.

That's too late.

You should predict it before that happens.

It shows up in people being not socially engaged.

We have 120 clubs and many sports.

And for every person, if you'll see somebody who's just not engaged, it shows up with student's not going to class.

So we have an alert system here, a care system that we follow up.

It shows up in true anguish where you become depressed or you become suicidal.

So I think you have to have in your system that deals with it many aspect, many facets so you can look at it from different angles and deal with it accordingly.

- Dr. Qubein, I wish we have more time to unpack it.

Thank you for your leadership.

Scott, nice to see you.

Antjuan, be safe.

Until next week, I'm Chris William.

Goodnight.

- Thank you.

- [Announcer] Major funding for Carolina Business Review provided by High Point University, Martin Marietta, Colonial Life, The Duke Endowment, Sonoco, BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina, and by viewers like you.

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