- (female announcer) Production funding for Behind the Headlines is made possible in part by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

- University of Memphis President Bill Hardgrave, tonight, on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by U of M President, Bill Hardgrave.

Thanks for being here.

- Thanks for having me.

- Along with Bill Dries, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

You are, just as we tape this on Thursday morning, two years and a couple days into the job.

So let me ask the kind of obvious question, but what have been the biggest challenges of the last two years, and what have been the biggest opportunities and changes that you've seen at U of M in these two years?

- Well, scheduling time to get over here to do this has taken a long time.

So that's the biggest challenge.

So, sorry.

[all laugh] - That has been a challenge actually.

It's all good.

- So, sorry it's taking two years to get over here, but I'm glad to be here.

You know, look, we face the same challenges that all higher education is facing.

And, you know, we're working on things to see if we can't mitigate those.

But, you know, university's in a great place, great city, great location.

- Those challenges, I assume coming off COVID, I mean, that's a big and the kind of ramification, I assume.

Enrollment is always a challenge, and the rising cost is a general challenge within colleges.

- Yeah, but actually the biggest challenge we face is enrollment.

- Okay.

- But that started 18 years ago, not COVID.

COVID exacerbated the issues that we're facing.

- Yeah, and those challenges in enrollment from 18 years ago are what, for people aren't as familiar?

- Well, so you think about, go back, the real issues we'll start seeing next year or the year after that and the year after that.

So go to 2025 next year subtract 18 from that, 2007, '08, '09 what was going on?

- Oh, Great Recession.

- Great Recession.

People stopped having kids.

- Yeah.

- We are now paying that price 18 years later in the form of a decline that we'll see across the country of 10 to 15%.

You know, it'll be worse in some areas than others, but you think about 10 to 15% loss, right?

I mean, it's like a business that loses 10 to 15% of the business.

- Over that last 15, 20 years, are more people going to college?

I know tremendous amount, a much higher percentage of college students are now women I think over the last 20 years, but is the overall percentage of the population going to college?

- Going down.

- Going down.

- So it's a double whammy, right?

The pie is shrinking of the number of 18 year olds that we'll have available.

And then just in the state of Tennessee in the last five years, the college going rate has declined from 63% to 52%.

- Oh, wow.

- So the pie is getting smaller, and the piece of pie is getting smaller.

So that's a real, real hit to higher education.

- And before we go to Bill, is part of that...

In Tennessee, they have a very robust... We have a very robust community college program, technical college program, certificates.

Bill Haslam, former governor, and the legislature put in place, you know, free college for everyone up to two years.

Is that part of what's taking people away from four-year colleges like U of M?

- No, I'm talking about going to, you know, college of any kind.

And the percentage had increased and then it started declining.

Part of that was COVID.

So there's, you know, the COVID was a factor.

Just the job market, right?

I mean, the jobs are plentiful.

You know, you can go out to a distribution center making $28 an hour, you know, unloading and loading trucks or doing something along those lines.

And, you know, for many, that's a very tempting thing at a time when, you know, college is expensive, and there's a lot of, you know, talk about, you know, student loans and all those things that a lot of students have just decided I'm not gonna go that route.

- Yeah, let me bring in Bill.

- So, does that result in obviously fewer students, but do you see more students now who may start and may stop and may start again?

- Oh, yeah, so the global answer is yes, but getting students started once they stop, started again once they stop is incredibly difficult, especially for a student who started and they didn't do well, which is why they dropped out.

The chances you ever getting that student back is very slim, which is one of the reasons why we are being very purposeful about the students that we are admitting to the university 'cause we want to admit students who are going to be successful because, you know, it doesn't do any good to admit a student who is gonna fail out that first year.

They lose, we lose.

I mean, there's a whole lot of losses there.

And again, the chances of them ever coming back are slim.

But there's some things that we can do if a kid really wants to go to college that we can try to find a path.

Maybe it is going to the two-year school.

Maybe it's taking some of these leveling courses and some of the things that we do, but try to get them where they're successful so that they don't stop out.

Now, life happens.

We have a significant number of our students who are now at the University of Memphis part-time, about 35, 36% of our students.

I think we'll see more of that as we go on simply because we're gonna see fewer of the traditional 18 to 22 year olds, right, but more that are in the workplace that want to be able to continue their education if we can get 'em back and we can make it easy.

That's the key, right, is to really make it easy, reduce all those barriers.

- Right, especially if they work for an employer who's going to offer some kind of tuition credit or pay part of the tuition along with it.

- Right.

- The other part of this that I also wonder about is I know colleges spend a good deal of time telling students who come in who are the traditional students, saying, "Look, you can do this in four years, you can do this in five years" so that they know that if they're full-time, if they're carrying a full load, they can make it through in a reasonable amount of time, right?

- Yeah, well, and ideally, we want to everybody to finish in four years, right?

Because they're taking on less debt, right?

They're going full time, you know, but again, that's hard when you have a lot of students who are working, and our student body is one that most of our students have employment of some type.

And so we have to be cognizant of that.

And so, you know, we try to make sure that we keep 'em on track graduating four years, but certainly try to stay within that five years, if not stretch it out to that six years.

You know, the federal measure is a six-year graduation rate.

And I think that's a fairly lengthy time.

I'd love to see more graduate in four years.

- Mm-hmm.

So what runs through your mind when you hear a leader, someone who makes state laws or makes laws who says, "College is not for every student"?

Because I would be willing to bet that you and other college presidents say, "Well, if you're thinking about a traditional college "when you went to school, when you went to college, that that's not all that's going on on campuses anymore."

- You know, I would agree with this statement that college isn't for everyone, but I think everyone should have that opportunity if they want to go to college.

And colleges should make it easy for students who want to go to college and to make sure that students understand those paths.

See, you know, we still serve about a third of our students are first generation.

So, for these first generation students, you know, they don't have the role models at home to suggest, you know, "Hey, here's why "you should go to college.

"Here's what you should major in.

"Here's how you go about, you know, financing that and, you know, filling out your FAFSA forms," and all this kind of stuff, right?

And most of their peer group also doesn't understand that.

And look, I speak from experience.

I'm a first generation college student.

In fact, I'm a first generation high school graduate.

And there was certainly no discussion around my table about, you know, going to college or being a college president or any of those things, but, you know, I was able to get to college, and that opened doors for me that wouldn't have opened otherwise.

And I think that's what we just need to make sure that every student, one, we get 'em through high school, and that's a big problem.

And, you know, we've gotta start there.

And as a college president, you know, I'm worried about 'em when they get here, but I'm actually more worried about those K through 12 of getting them through.

And then let's find that path.

It could be, you know, in Tennessee, the TCAT system, right, the technical training schools.

It could be the two year, could be a four year, but let's also make sure that when they go to a TCAT or a two year, if they wanna start there, that we don't make it so hard then to come into a four year.

In the past, we've made it way too hard, right?

If you as a student decide, hey, I wanna go to a TCAT and learn welding, and then at some point may decide, hey, I wanna, you know, start a welding business, so I wanna go get a degree.

Maybe I go to a two year and get some courses, and now I want a four year degree.

We've made it really, really hard to do that in the past.

Going forward, we must make it easier to tear down these silos between those.

- So, how do you think you get past one silo or break those down on that?

Because speed sells in some cases.

- It does, it does.

Well, so we're being very intentional about it.

And it really takes every institution to be intentional about it.

You know, one of the things that I've seen is transferring.

Just from personal experience, when my daughter went to college, she started off at one university, and then transferred after the first year.

Now, she went to a major school in the SEC and transferred to another major school in the SEC and just took general ed courses, yet she lost half of her courses when she transferred.

Makes no sense.

And you look and you say, "Well, whose decision is that?"

Well, it's the receiving university who makes those decisions?

So if somebody's trying to transfer to us, who makes those decisions about what transfers and what doesn't?

We do.

I've asked our team to make us the most transfer-friendly university in the country.

If somebody wants to come to us, we are going to do everything we can within the policy and the rules of accreditation to ensure that everything that they can transfer will transfer, and we're gonna make that as easy as possible, whether they're coming from a technical school or a two-year school or some other school.

So it really falls on each individual receiving institution to make that possible.

There's nothing in policy that says, hey, if you go to a TCAT, you can't go somewhere else.

That's all on us.

- You talked about FAFSA, and there's been huge changes in financial aid across and affirmative action and all that.

How has it affected... What has the impact been for U of M?

- Ooh, this year it's brutal.

You know, we have about two-thirds of our students are Pell-eligible, which means that they have real financial need.

And so the FAFSA- - The National Pell Grant.

- Yeah, I'm sorry.

Yeah, yeah, thank you, thank you.

And so the FAFSA, and I wish I could even tell you what that acronym- - It's the financial aid form that parents...

I remember doing it as a student, you know, all that.

The parents can fill out, students fill out to figure out what they're qualified for financial aid.

I can't remember what it stands for.

- Yeah, I can't either.

I should know, right?

But, you know, it was a very complicated form.

And federal government decided they would make it simplified, right?

And it's been a disaster.

It should have been done months ago.

We have students who are still trying to get the FAFSA data to us because what the FAFSA data does is is identifies their financial need, what they're gonna get through Pell grants for scholarships and other things.

- But was the problems of that, was that separate from it was the court ruling that changed affirmative action, and weighing those considerations, totally separate.

They've gotten kind of conflated for some people being included, apparently.

Let's talk about the affirmative action side of it.

Has that impacted you at all?

- No, it has not.

- It hasn't.

- No, it has not.

I mean, we're a very diverse campus already.

And that's just in our DNA.

So that ruling has not directly impacted us.

- Midway through the show, let me shift gears somewhat.

U of M has been in the news with the big stadium deal, big funding from the state, from the Smith family.

Fred Smith, from founder of FedEx.

And in a kind of what sometimes is framed as a competition, sometimes just sort of there a bunch of needs, going back to the Strickland administration for a new stadium for U of M, an upgraded, excuse me, upgraded stadium and upgrades to the FedExForum.

You all got clear path to do that.

For the non-sports fan, right, who looks at these hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on an upgraded stadium that isn't always full, why is that the priority for U of M and why are public dollars... And again, people listening say, "Why are my tax dollars going to that?

"I'm all for education, but why are we putting it into a stadium?"

- You know, the stadium serves several purposes.

First of all, when we look at major institutions like the University of Memphis, a big draw of major institutions is the overall student experience.

And major sports is a key part of that student experience.

It's the way that we reach students who may not know us.

And, you know, that's one of the things that we have to do at the university to mitigate some of the things that we talked about earlier around enrollment is to increase our geographic footprint.

Well, one way you do that is via sports, right?

When our football team's playing on national TV, when our basketball team's playing on national TV, people see us and get to know us.

So having good teams and having good facilities, right, they go hand in glove.

It's really hard to have a good team if you don't have the good facilities 'cause it impacts recruiting.

- Let me go to another thing.

Again, for the non-sports fan, people not as close to this, the whole realignment of conferences, which, again, sports radio, you can get that somewhere else, but here, I think you're gonna make the argument, that has an impact on academics.

It's not just about where the U of M football team plays and whether or not they're on national TV.

Talk through what has happened and where you want to be as a university, both for sports and just for the overall benefit of the university.

- Yeah, you know, so there's... You know, sports is costly, right?

It costs a lot of money to have men's and women's sports.

Only a few of those sports actually bring in revenue.

Most do not.

And the big one is football, and the second largest is men's basketball.

And, you know, over time, we've coalesced around what was... A year ago, we've been talking about the Power Five conferences, Big Five, the big conferences, the most powerful conferences.

Now there's the Power Four because the PAC-12 kind of dissolved, but it's all about the media money.

It's about the prestige of the schools that you're associated with within that.

And that's the thing.

It's not just about when you look at the big conferences, the SEC, the Big 10, the Big 12, and the ACC.

It's not just about the sports, but it's about the academic side of it.

And, you know, the University of Memphis for many years really from an academic perspective, we weren't quite where we needed to be there, but a few years ago, we became an R1 institution, which puts us among the top 5% of the universities in the country in research.

So, you know, it's a top 150 schools out of 4,000.

Well, that puts you now in an academic realm that then with your athletics enables you to get into these conferences.

Now, nobody knows what's gonna happen.

You know, a few years ago it was very simple.

Here's the big conferences, and there was alignment.

Now we're not even sure what that's gonna look like in a few years.

What we have to do though is make sure that we have the best facilities and the best teams that we can possibly put on there along with the great academics.

And I will tell you, our basketball stadium made a huge difference, makes a huge difference in how other conferences view us.

When I was talking to presidents of the other conferences, and they're the ones that make the decisions, by the way, on who comes in or not, one of the first questions that I was asked by those who don't really know us is, "Tell me about your stadium."

- Yeah, Bill.

- Let's talk a bit about research.

Research, it seems to me, would tell students that this is more than a place where you go to class, earn your degree, that there is something substantial about it in the life of the city, if not of the region, right?

- Yeah, that's correct, that's correct.

- So where is the University of Memphis's research going or what specific fields are the ones where you want to see the university concentrate?

- You know, so, yeah, research really separates, you know, the regional or local universities from the national universities because you've got these world-class faculty doing leading edge research, and the students then are exposed to that research as it's happening.

And that really does, I mean, it makes a huge difference in the preparation for these students and how they're ready then to hit that job market or go to graduate school when they're finished.

And this university, its growth into being an R1 is nothing short of just miraculous.

And it's one of those things too is it's hard to get in the club, but once you get in the club, it opens up more opportunities.

So, for example, our research has almost doubled since we became an R1 institution just a few short years ago.

We were just about $100,000 shy of $100,000,000 in research expenditures last year.

It has opened us up to doing a lot of research on national defense.

Senator Blackburn was here yesterday, and her and the entire Tennessee Federal Delegation has been very supportive of getting us in on DOD and Navy and Army research down at President's Island that we're doing, millions of dollars that we've been able to unlock since we've become an R1.

So work around defense-related topics, cybersecurity, supply chain, I mean, that's a natural one, right?

We're in the supply chain logistics hub of the US.

We ought to be doing more, and we will.

And a growing one that we're looking at around ag tech, and I'm using that term broadly, but certainly our growing health sciences area.

And you think about the health disparities that we have in this area.

So those would be the ones that come to mind that we're really gonna be emphasizing and investing in the coming years.

- So, what does research do to the typical student or the average student at the university?

I mean, for decades the school was known as a commuter school.

I take it that has changed somewhat because you now have more students living on campus than anyone ever thought possible maybe 20 years ago.

- Yeah, well, and it does separate from a commuter school to one where, you know, we want more students living on or around campus.

We want more students more engaged.

Actually sports come in, right, to get them more engaged.

But the difference that the research brings is that if you think about what makes a great university, and people often think, well, teaching and research don't go together, but if I were to ask you name the top five universities that come to mind, I can guarantee you that those five, or at least not four of them will be top research universities.

And so why do they come to mind is 'cause they have the best programs, and they have the best faculty.

And a university at its core has better programs and better faculty than those are not as highly ranked.

Well, how do you get great faculty is the research.

You attract them, you keep them, they're doing great research, you know, further in the field, brings in more faculty like them doing the similar research.

And those type of things attract students.

And then once you start attracting great students who are working in supply chain or cybersecurity, then it brings in other students.

So it's a very positive cycle that you get into.

And we're just blessed that we got there probably a ahead of schedule.

And now we have to continue to do the research to make sure that we stay there.

- Mm-hmm, we also hear from time to time, and we hear this with some high school students, but certainly some college students who get into research, especially in cybersecurity areas and come up with apps while they're a student.

I mean, I know just enough about this to be dangerous.

So I know that an app is not the end all and be all of the research, certainly, but it does kind of open your eyes to the value of being able to work on something that is in the here and now while you're learning what you need to do.

- Yeah, well, and we wanna foster that, right?

I mean, that's when you look at great universities, they're innovators, right?

They're out there, you know, getting us to the moon and, you know, developing all these great tools.

And so we have the Crews Center for Entrepreneurship that helps students who have these ideas, a place where they can go in an incubator-type space and help develop these.

And we've had some great successes coming out of that so far, and we will have more as we continue to develop our research.

- So with just a few minutes left, you talk about recruiting and recruiting students and recruiting faculty as well.

You know, we're in the middle of a crime problem.

The whole country is.

Memphis's is what we live with.

How do you address that?

Does it hurt recruitment of talent, of talented students, talented faculty, talented staff?

- You know, admittedly it does, right?

And that's something that unfortunately when we're recruiting new talent, whether it's a faculty member or a student, you know, the first thing people do naturally is they go to the web and they Google, you know, Memphis.

And, you know, the thing unfortunately that seems to overwhelm when you do a web search, all the great things in this city is the crime.

And so, you know, we work very closely with the city to see what we can do to help with that, of course, but we we're trying to take care of those things that we can take care of, and that's on campus to be the safest campus we can possibly be.

And for several years running, we've been the safest large campus in the state of Tennessee, but we're doing much more.

You know, we spend millions each year on those things that make our campus safe and make our students and faculty and staff feel safe.

But it obviously is a factor.

- Yeah, let me just, again, we could do half a show if not a whole show on this next question, which is the campus schools, a proposal to expand the campus schools that's going through the legislature, seems to have a fair amount of...

I don't know, as of we tape, where it is.

What is your hope and vision for the campus school expansion and tell people who aren't familiar, what are the campus schools?

- Yeah, so many people don't even know that, you know, we were founded in 1912 as what's called a normal school then, right?

Was a teacher preparation school.

And I mean, that's our founding.

And since that time, we've always had a school on campus, a laboratory schools as they're often called.

And it's been elementary and then expanded to middle school, and now we expanded into to high school.

And the results of our students, now these students, by the way, are not handpicked.

These are lottery from the area.

We serve every zip code in the area.

So these are kids just like every other school, but we are always the top or near the top in all their performance measures from their students.

It's absolutely incredible.

- And I didn't give you enough time to talk about that.

We have written about it quite a bit at The Daily Memphian.

You can learn more about the proposal to expand.

We will get you back sooner than two years we hope.

And thank you very much for being here.

Thank you, Bill, as well.

But that is all the time we have this week.

If you missed any of the show, you can get the full show online at wkno.org, or go to The Daily Memphian, or go to YouTube and search "Behind the Headlines."

Thanks very much, and we'll see you next week.

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