The Man Leading America’s “Most Innovative School”

WALTER ISAACSON: Thank you, Christiane. And Dr. Michael Crow. Welcome to the show.

 

MICHAEL CROW: Hey, Walter. Nice to see you.

 

ISAACSON: For two decades now, you’ve led Arizona State University, the largest public university in the country. One reason it’s so big is you were early on, big on remote learning: On Zoom and virtual classrooms. After COVID, a lot of universities experimented with that sort of thing and went way back to more in-person learning. What did you learn from all of this? And to what extent are you adjusting how much should be in-person?

 

CROW: Well, Walter, you know, it’s a complicated thing. We live in a country of approaching 350 million people in which we have a limited set of institutions and low levels of access to lifelong education. In fact, low levels of access to university education, and underperforming and all kinds of other things. And so the lesson that we learned in COVID was that if you have a great faculty matched with unbelievable innovations, matched with unbelievable drive to continue to innovate, you can find ways to reach learners literally everywhere with the highest level of quality learning products possible. And so that’s, that’s what we really learned, is that it can all work if you’ve got a dedicated faculty and a continuous stream of innovations.

 

ISAACSON: So what are those continuous streams of innovations when it comes to remote learning? How have you tweaked or even revolutionized the process?

 

CROW: Well, first, we’ve built an innovative culture in our faculty, which allows them to be open to the process of innovation. Second, we found 400 learning technologies that we could enhance — build further the innovative process. We’ve brought all those things together. We’ve then found a dedicated energy focusing on the learner themselves. We believe in the theories of abundance that human beings have unbelievable potential. 

And then, and then with these tools, with these learning tools, and with this dedicated faculty, what we found is — I’ll give you an example, you know, this year we’ll have 35,000 engineering students. And when we started this process, we had 6,000 engineering students. We found new ways to teach calculus, new ways to teach biology, new ways to teach chemistry, enabling all the people who want to be an engineer, to be able to be an engineer. That only comes through innovation in this process.

 

ISAACSON: All of the people I’ve written about, one of the things they learned is that in the end, it’s all about collaboration, that innovation’s a team sport. To the extent that you’re doing virtual learning, remote learning, high technology learning, do you have to work hard to make sure that the skills of collaboration are part of it?

 

CROW: Well, we built into our tools, mechanisms for collaboration. And it turns out that, that most of our online learners — which is more than a hundred thousand degree seekers right now, and 500,000 other people who were just taking courses — they’re in collaborative work environments. In fact, we had some medical school deans a few years ago who were reluctant to take our online biochemistry majors into their medical schools because they said, You haven’t worked with anyone. These students produced a video that said, Oh, contraire, you know, I’m a, I’m a flight medic on a rescue helicopter in Colorado. I’m a nuclear tech in the Navy. I’m a nurse in nurse, ER nurse. And I work in groups. 

And so we, we provide collaborative mechanisms. It it’s not you in the basement, you know, with your, with your candy, you know, looking at lectures of talking heads. That’s nothing like what we’ve built for our online learners. We have over 350 degree programs, 5,000 courses, all built by our faculty with these technologies. And collaboration is a part of all of that.

 

ISAACSON: One of the things you’ve done at ASU is called the SkySong, I think it is, in which you actually try to take research and translate it into technology, into real commercial things. That used to not be done much at big universities. And then I think at the beginning of the seventies it started happening. Tell me how important government investment in basic research is, and then allowing you to translate that into commercial products.

 

CROW: Well, I mean, it’s unbelievably important. I mean, one, one of the books that you wrote about the Crispr Nobel Prize with Jennifer Doudna, was, was this whole thing about, you know, decades and decades and decades of fundamental research on enzymes, on chemistry, on proteins, on computational systems, on imaging systems and so forth — thousands and thousands of research groups, tens of thousands of papers, hundreds of patents. All these things allow someone like her, who you’ve spent a lot of time studying and understanding, to even exist. 

Steve Jobs, the person you wrote an entire book about, you know, all of his creativity and his design and his genius, if you dissect and chop up the iPhone 16, it is in fact built on a platform of fundamental science, academic science, academic outcomes. Even Jobs said this himself. I mean, he was a genius of design, a genius of creativity, a genius of making things happen, of overcoming opposition. But what was he building? He was building from the threads of a fabric that had been a hundred years at least academically driven. And then even longer than that

 

ISAACSON: Well explain how basic research did help lead to the iPhone. 

 

CROW: Well, if you look at something like the iPhone 16’s got billions of transistors on the present chip. The first transistor was 1947. The first transistor was derivative of basic physics, basic math, basic computational science, basic material sciences. You couldn’t design it, you couldn’t build it, you couldn’t conceptualize it without that fundamental science. And that’s just — 

 

ISAACSON: So you’ve got a semiconductor research facility at ASU that’s designed to do just that. 

 

CROW: Yes.

 

ISAACSON: And yet the Federal Commerce Department just cut most of the money out, right?

 

CROW: Well, I mean that, that, that maneuver going — so we, we won in the Chips and Science Act, we won a major new lab with the NIST. We won one-eighth of the new Defense Department lab called the Microelectronics Commons. We won the State Department’s funded project to secure the supply train, train, supply chain training. We won a $270 million project funded by Applied Materials, a company, all designed to build new underpinnings for semiconductors. And then this thing that got started late in the Biden administration called Natcast got stood up, and then they picked three places to build new national labs. We won one of those. Secretary Lutnick has just decided to pull that back into the government. I don’t know if that’s, you know, the exact status of that. 

And so what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna continue to fight to do everything we can to make sure that the United States is, is — continues as this epicenter of innovation, academic research, industrial research, training, advanced people, advanced ideas in all things related to semiconductors, all things digital, because that’s on, you know, so much of what the future economy is gonna be based on.

 

ISAACSON: Well, more broadly than just this lab. Are you worried about the National Science Foundation and other funding cuts into basic research that used to be funded by government?

 

CROW: Well, what I’m worried about is: It’s one thing to take the Legos apart because you wanted to have them shaped in a new form to drive the country forward into more success. Right now, the cautionary note I would give to the people that are doing that is you’re melting some of those Legos and you’re breaking this fundamental process.

And so it’s interesting to me to think about, you know, you know, wanting to be the best economy, wanting the United States to be the most successful, and then taking this foundational thing — what I’ve, what I’ve called previously, the invisible hand — this invisible hand of academic science, which underpins all these other things. I heard President Trump on, on the news, talking about being the AI leaders and so forth and so on. Well, yeah. Okay. Well, that requires people, chips, science, technology, algorithms, new math, new tools, new ways of thinking about things. There’s nothing that’s static that keeps you as the best. The thing that keeps you as the best is this unbelievable drive to innovate. And so the unbelievable drive to innovate in the modern world is heavily driven by academic science. I mean, in fact, it is the essential ingredient from which the massive integrative innovators have any promise of even being successful.

 

ISAACSON: One of the reasons for the cuts in federal funding to research universities perhaps is the public disaffection somehow with universities — whether it be the elites like Harvard or Columbia, or state universities like yours, UCLA, or whatever, what is the cause of this public disaffection and what are you doing about it?

 

CROW: Well, my own view of this, and I’ve written a lot about this myself, is that the public disaffection comes from, from two things. One, disappointment. Most people that go to college don’t graduate, and they feel resentful. Most people that have debt have no diploma or degree, and that’s on us. We should have not allowed that to happen. A second thing that’s going on is that the universities, I think, in their rhetoric and their projection haven’t always shown fidelity to the success of the United States. And so a more of a global approach to the world, which is fine. And so there’s some of that going on. And I think also — 

 

ISAACSON: Let me back that up. Unpack that for me. Not fidelity to the success of the United States, meaning they are less patriotic than they should be?

 

CROW: Not, not patriotic as much. It’s sort of like, if we’re gonna be involved in research, yes, we want the world to be a better place, but we need American corporations to be successful. We need the American military to be a good defensive shield for the United States. And so that means we have to talk like that, also. We have to be focused on those kinds of things. 

At the same time as there’s this, this shared disaffection, the demand for the services from the colleges, the desire for people to have their children educated at the highest possible level, has never been higher. Our enrollment, we have a 5% increase in enrollment this year over last year. We have unbelievable demand for our services. We have people breaking our doors down to, to, to want to be here from all over the world. 166 countries are represented here. We’ve got all this going on. And so we’ve got, you know, what I think is institutional instability because we need to do more, take more responsibility and produce better outcomes for the United States.

 

ISAACSON: A lot of universities brag about how low their acceptance rate is. In other words, they only accept 10, 12% of the people who apply. You, I think, brag about the opposite, that you accept as many possible 90% of the people who apply. Why that different approach?

 

CROW: Well, so somewhere in the United States, you’ve gotta have a standard for admission to a university, which is based on what qualifications do you need to give you some chance of success. And so we went back to the admission standards of the University of California from 1950 and the admission standards of the University of Michigan from 1950. And there, you needed a B average in high school. You needed to take certain high school courses. You need to get at least a B in those courses, and then you’re admitted. Those are our admission standards. 

We get lots of A students also, we get lots of kids like you, you know, coming outta New Orleans, going to Harvard, you know, doing really well and so forth. We get those kids also. There’s only so many slots for those kinds of, for those students. So we have a big honors college, about 8,000 students, which looks a lot like Columbia’s undergraduate college, where I used to be a faculty member.

And so, so — but at the same time, we’re not gonna say that we’re a better university because we didn’t admit these fully qualified students. We also have taken one additional step, which is if you’re not qualified for whatever reason — you know, your, your family was, had a catastrophic event when you were in high school, you, you, you made some mistake when you were in high school. You didn’t take the right courses, you goofed off. You were a screw off or whatever. You know we have a pathway for you to earn your way in. 

So some of the great research universities in the US in which we are one of those, need to also be maintaining this notion of egalitarian access in the true spirit of the democracy. Otherwise, we end up with a, with a distorted outcome of only the hyper, hyper qualified students from high school being able to go to college and succeed at college. And if we end up that way, then the democracy’s not gonna be successful.

 

ISAACSON: Is there some lesson there for navigating the world after affirmative action after the Supreme Court has said race-based affirmative action is bad?

 

CROW: Well, we didn’t even read the ruling because we admit every qualified student. And so and so, so, so if you’re qualified, you’re in, if you’re not qualified, we find a way to get you qualified. And so, and so for your, your big public research universities, your public regional universities, your community colleges, others that are really taking the lion’s share of the educational challenge for the future of our country you know, you, you, you don’t want any admission criteria other than what does it qua — what is the qualification for attendance? Then you have to deal with the issue of income disparity. 

And, you know, most kids don’t come from families that are particularly well-prepared to pay for college. So we’ve worked very hard to be able to still have, I should, I should have mentioned that University of California in 1950 had this B level admission standard. (23:59): They also had no tuition. Their tuition was free. Now we, we have a fantastic financial aid package to make sure that people are not left out for financial reasons. 

So the the, the only criteria that we look at for admissions is, are you qualified to perform university level work? If you are, you’re admitted, and then we find a way for you to finish. We find a job for you. We find a pathway to a scholarship for you. We find a way for you to be successful. And that’s allowed us to go from, you know, 8,000 graduates a year to 40,000 graduates a year.

 

ISAACSON: It used to be, you mentioned it happened at University of California, but all over the country, including when my dad went to university. You went to a public state university. It was basically free. 

 

CROW: Yes. 

 

ISAACSON: Now it costs a lot. Should we go in this new knowledge-based age like we did a hundred years ago where we made high school universal and free? Should we make access to public universities free?

 

CROW: I don’t, I don’t like the word free. What I like, the word is accessible. The concept is accessible. And so, so what we need is we need a way where there’s not a financial barrier. You have a way to take this next step. It turns out that, you know, college students are emerging adults, emerging adults need to understand that nothing is free. And so and that, and that you have to take responsibility for what you want to do with yourself. You have to invest in yourself. So we need an investment-based model. We need an ownership-based model. 

Also in high school, you’re required to go and so until at least certain age in certain states college is still your choice. And so what we, what we’ve tried to build is an unbelievably accessible model in which finances will not be a barrier. (25:36): 17,000 students work for us. They, they have, we, we we’re thinking that at some point with so many other learners that we’re attached to, there’s some possibility that all of the 80,000 students that are here with us, or the 100,000  students that are here with us, they won’t have any tuition costs because they’ll all be working as a part of a learning machine where we’re educating many, many other people in addition to the people that are privileged enough to be able to be here with us. And so we see an expansion of this kind of model as being a viable way to move this university forward.

 

ISAACSON: Let me ask you about the feeders, the high schools that are sending people to you. I just saw that the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the sort of national testing scores, have gone way down this year: Math, English, everything else. Are you, is there something that you can do, universities can do about the declining quality of K through 12 education?

 

CROW: Absolutely. I mean you know, we need to — what we said is one of the first things I did here was I figuratively went around the university and I said, we’re lowering all of our shields. We’re putting down the walls, we’re lowering the shields. We’re gonna have K-12 students. We run K-12 schools. We run these as demonstration projects. We have thousands of students in them. We have a 99% graduation rate, a 90% post-secondary rate with 85% of the students coming from Title One families. That is low income families. We have thousand — tens of thousands of K 12 learners. We have hundreds of courses that we’re offering for high school students to get college credit to lower their costs, to prepare them. 

And so the high schools have become often — you know, there’s high schools that don’t teach calculus. There’s high schools that don’t teach much history.  I went to 17 schools before I graduated from high school. And believe me, in some of the schools I went to, they didn’t teach anything. And so, and so we have this unevenness in this system with 15,000 school districts. 

What we need to do is, is, is offer to every person, every family, every learner, every kid, access to whatever they need or whatever they can’t get. So we’ve really taken that on as a mission. If every university did that, if every university lowered their shields and then made their stuff available, their libraries, their assets, their tools, their mechanisms, their courses help the K 12 teachers help teachers to advance, help, new models to evolve.

We mean, we’d be much better off because the old model, as we’re hearing from the data right now, it didn’t go through COVID very well. In fact, it suffered during COVID and underperformed during COVID. And secondly, after COVID, we haven’t recovered. And thirdly, we’re not keeping up. And so we’re doing ourselves a disservice. We’re continuing to allow ourselves to be — to see negative outcomes.

 

ISAACSON: Dr. Michael Crow, thank you so much for joining us.

 

CROW: Thank you, Walter.