Jon Fansmith: Hello and welcome to dotEDU, the higher education policy podcast from the American Council on Education. I’m your host, Jon Fansmith. And after the break, we’ll be joined by a very special guest, president of American University, Sylvia Burwell, who is also the former secretary of Health and Human Services, and the former director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Obama. She’s got great insights in terms of translating that previous experience into academia and what it’s like to lead a major institution and I’ll have a lot of interesting things to talk about with her.
But before we get to talk with her, I am joined as always by my wonderful co-hosts, Sarah Spreitzer and Mushtaq Gunja, here to ring in the new year with me. Sarah and Mushtaq, how are you guys doing?
Sarah Spreitzer: Really good. I don’t know if you guys can see it. I’m wearing a jumpsuit because it’s the fashion of the future and we’re now in 2024, and since we don’t have jetpacks, I think we should all start wearing jumpsuits.
Jon Fansmith: Should we make an ACE uniform jumpsuit, maybe?
Sarah Spreitzer: Yes, an ACE jumpsuit. I would really appreciate that.
Jon Fansmith: Is it Jetsons? Did they wear jumpsuits in the Jetsons?
Sarah Spreitzer: I’m sure.
Mushtaq Gunja: 2024 is going to be amazing. It’s an Olympic year. I love the Olympics.
Sarah Spreitzer: Mushtaq ignored that.
Jon Fansmith: Totally ignored that. I think maybe we’re too old for Mushtaq. He doesn’t understand our cartoon references.
Sarah Spreitzer: I guess not. Well, maybe also you could have said we could have worn jumpsuits to the Olympics.
Jon Fansmith: Ohh.
Sarah Spreitzer: But the Olympics are in Paris. We should try and do a live podcast from Paris for the Olympics.
Mushtaq Gunja: You don’t know this, but I am obsessed with the Olympics, and they are in Los Angeles in 2028. And if anybody from that Olympic committee is listening, I would be happy to leave my job at ACE to go work for the Olympics in ‘28 in my home city of LA. Some of my first memories, because I’m also quite old, Jon and Sarah, are from the ‘84 Olympics, which I attended men’s volleyball and some crew and some wrestling, and it was amazing. And so, yeah.
Jon Fansmith: Were those the sports that you most wanted to see or were those the sports you could get tickets to? I’m curious. It’s an interesting mix of sports right there.
Mushtaq Gunja: No, it was definitely that those were the ones we could get tickets to, but you guys have seen me, of course, my wrestling physique is one that is, I’m just working on it for 2024.
Jon Fansmith: That’s your other path. If they won’t hire you for the committee, you’ll work it as an athlete?
Mushtaq Gunja: I think that’s right. Don’t quit your day job.
Sarah Spreitzer: Beyond the Olympics, what else are you guys looking forward to in 2024? There’s so many great things to look forward to in 2024.
Mushtaq Gunja: I have a question for you two.
Sarah Spreitzer: You’re both looking at me surprised. Yeah.
Mushtaq Gunja: My question is around appropriations because one of the headlines that I saw was that Majority Leader Schumer and, I guess, whoever the speaker of the House is now, Johnson.
Jon Fansmith: Mike Johnson.
Mushtaq Gunja: Had come to some topline agreement on some spending numbers, and it felt like there was some progress that was being made, and I wondered if that was fake news. If we really are making good progress, is there going to be a shutdown? How are you guys feeling about what’s happening appropriations-wise?
: I’d be curious to hear Sarah say too, but you could say there’s progress, right? An agreement has been reached. A bipartisan agreement has been reached, which the House and the Senate seem to be aligned that would have the White House’s support. And that agreement is to essentially agree to what was agreed to under Speaker McCarthy when they passed the Fiscal Responsibility Act about, what, nine months ago, something like that.
Sarah Spreitzer: Mhmm.
Jon Fansmith: I guess by standards of we went from no plan to the old plan, that is progress. The problem, of course, with the old plan was it didn’t make a whole lot of conservatives in the House very happy. And true to form, they’re very unhappy about this new plan, which is the old plan.
se.
Sarah Spreitzer: You said something, they’ve supposedly or they’ve come up with this plan. We’ve been here before. There’s a plan between the leadership and the White House, but that doesn’t mean that the caucus or certain members have agreed to it. And while they have topline numbers, we also saw an enormous trip on the GOP caucus down to the border last week. I haven’t heard anything about them reaching some sort of agreement about what they would include regarding border provisions. So, as Jon said, the topline numbers are what we had before.
I don’t think there was... It’s the same disagreement that we’re having again, so my prediction is the first funding deadline, because for some reason, Speaker Johnson, his proposal was to have two different deadlines, January 19th, where you had a handful of agencies, the noncontroversial ones, Transportation, HUD, the Veterans Administration, Department of Agriculture, they’re under the first deadline, that’s January 19th.
And then the second group, which includes the bigger-ticket items, the Labor-HHS bill, Department of Defense, those are all on the February 2nd deadline. I don’t think we’re going to hit the January 19th deadline. I am still thinking that there will be a partial government shutdown and they will continue to push back this larger argument to the February 2nd deadline.
Jon Fansmith: And this is very inside baseball, right? But Speaker Johnson had said the last time they passed this bill, in part because the right wing of his caucus was angry about doing an extension, he said, well, we won’t do any more short-term extensions. They don’t have enough time to pass four bills by January 19th. They haven’t even drafted those bills yet. So they’re either going to have to do a short-term extension, which means he goes back on his word, which alienates a lot of people, particularly on the right again, or they do it to buy themselves time to actually pass the bills, which further means he’s broken his word and he further alienates people. It’s a mess of a situation.
I do want to, one other thing just because I wanted to work this in. Sarah talked about the immigration deal. It’s mostly being negotiated in the Senate. That seems to be falling apart. The House this week is going to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas, certainly not a great tone setter since he is the administration’s lead in the negotiations on the immigration provisions.
John Cornyn, senator from Texas, described Senator Lankford, who is leading those negotiations for the Republican side, basically the futility of his position by saying he is out there working as the goalie for the dark team, which I thought was just such a great turn of phrase. Everybody understands there’s no possibility that they’re going to reach a compromise at this point on immigration. That’s going to further hurt the chances of moving it forward, and this poor guy’s out there taking hit after hit after hit, knowing that all those efforts are most likely in vain. It’s just really a mess.
So yeah, to your initial question, have we had progress? Of a sort, but does it really matter? I think you get Sarah and I to say no, not really in any meaningful way.
Mushtaq Gunja: Well, that’s depressing. Or maybe everything you guys just said in the last seven minutes makes me think that ultimately where we’re going to head is with the same sort of lineup that approved the last extension lining up again for some sort of full-year budget, which is to say something like 200 Democrats and 150 Republicans, 130 Republicans, and the farthest right of the current Republican caucus, those 85 to 100 are just not gettable. And Speaker Johnson recognizes that earlier than maybe Speaker McCarthy did. I wonder.
And maybe Speaker Johnson will lose his job because of it, I don’t know. It’s possible, but it doesn’t really feel like there’s any other way out. What you’re describing makes me think there’s no other real way for this thing to resolve. And the only question is when it resolves do we need to have some full shutdown before it does? And maybe not. I mean, maybe we’ll be able to... I’m gonna remain optimistic on that score.
Sarah Spreitzer: Yes!
Mushtaq Gunja: Because I was super pessimistic the last couple of times, and they were able to find their way to avoiding a shutdown. I wonder if we can do that again here.
Sarah Spreitzer: You know, Mushtaq, before we started this, I was saying that my resolution for the year is to be optimistic. So I think even if we go into a shutdown, I think that it would be short. Again, for our institutions, it’s not really the bill. I mean, obviously, funding for Department of Agriculture research and things like that impacts some of our institutions, but if it’s a short-term, I don’t think it’s going to impact colleges and universities very much. I just see a lot of this as grandstanding in the leadup to the 2024 elections. And I know you follow the races very closely, and next week is the Iowa caucuses, right?
Mushtaq Gunja: Yeah, next Monday. It is, I guess, just a few days from when this podcast will be published. It’s wild. In some ways, it sort of feels like it has snuck up on us, partially because I think that it’s so clear who is going to win the Iowa caucuses and former President Trump will get the most votes.
I think the race really is for second. And I think, as I read this, if Nikki Haley is able to squeak out a second place finish over Ron DeSantis, it may give her enough momentum to be able to get pretty close to former President Trump in New Hampshire. She’s currently polling anywhere from five to 10 points down in New Hampshire, so that might be able to keep this race going for a little bit.
But it is quite possible that Monday happens, DeSantis is five, 10 points up on Haley in the caucus in Iowa, and this whole thing is basically done. It’s a wrap in just a couple of weeks. So we’ll see what happens. But I feel like if you’re rooting for a longer primary season, I think it’s necessary for Haley to come in second in Iowa.
Jon Fansmith: But the interesting thing-
Sarah Spreitzer: Mushtaq, do you-
Jon Fansmith: About that too is if she comes in second in Iowa, even if it’s a percentage point above DeSantis, pulls close in New Hampshire, at least is viable in New Hampshire with Trump, the third stop is South Carolina. It’s her home state. In terms of if you want to launch a longer primary, she’s already drawing big-money donors. There’s a lot of people who are coalescing. There’s always been that, and again, you track this closer than anyone I know, I think, Mushtaq, but there’s always been that thought that there were a lot of people out there who didn’t want to support Trump, but they weren’t sure who they wanted to and it was about coalescing behind one candidate. She’s I think pretty remarkably, at least, running to the lead of the people within the Republican party who don’t want to support Trump. And it’ll be interesting to see what kind of legs that coalition has.
Mushtaq Gunja: Yeah, it feels to me-
Sarah Spreitzer: See, I-
Mushtaq Gunja: Go ahead, Sarah.
Sarah Spreitzer: I was just going to say, I’m really looking at it as people are running to be Trump’s running mate or who’s going to be in the cabinet. To me, Trump already has the nomination stitched up, and it’s more about who can demonstrate how many votes they can get to maybe be on the ticket or be within the leadership team with Trump at the top of the ticket. There was a lot of talk this weekend after Congresswoman Stefanik was on Meet the Press, and I’ve heard people talking about it as being a tryout to be the VP candidate on the Trump ticket. That’s kind of how I’m looking at Nikki Haley, is trying to make a strong showing to show that she should be in that position to bring along some votes. But those are my thoughts.
Mushtaq Gunja: She’s taken a little bit of a sharper tone and done far more critique of President Trump both in demeanor and a little bit on policy in the last, I would say three, four weeks, which I think if you were running to be his VP probably is not the tack that I would take. So we’ll see.
You’re probably quite right that, in some ways, most of the folks that were running, certainly Vivek Ramaswamy and, it feels to me, Tim Scott too, were probably running to not make a lot of waves, demonstrate they could raise some money, and maybe try out for that VP slot.
It’s unclear what DeSantis is doing, and it’s really unclear how long he is going to stay in the race because he has long-term national ambitions, of course. And I don’t know that finishing third, fourth... I think he’s currently polling in New Hampshire. I don’t know if that’s particularly good for him. So we’ll see
.
But Jon, to your question about, or to the observation about the strategy of coalescing the non-Trump folks, I think Haley has done a pretty good job of that. I just think the basic mathematical problem is that in the Republican primary, there’s only, I don’t know, 30, 35 percent of that primary electorate that’s a non-Trump person. And it may well be that Haley is able to coalesce that 35%, but I feel like after South Carolina, even if it’s a two-person race, I think we’re really looking at state after state of a sort of 65% Trump, 35% Haley. She’ll get a few delegates but won’t really be able to do anything, except potentially hang around just in case some of these criminal cases move a little bit faster. And so I guess it’s not the worst strategy in the world to be the second person left.
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, I think that’s almost the hope isn’t that you’ll overtake him. It’s that something else will derail his candidacy and you’ll be next in line at that point.
Mushtaq Gunja: Right.
Jon Fansmith: So lots of optimistic things as we look forward with the start of this new year.
Mushtaq Gunja: One last thing that we probably should touch on since we last recorded, Harvard President Claudine Gay, stepped aside in the wake of that tough House hearing on antisemitism and then in the wake of some plagiarism allegations. And Jon and Sarah, I know you’ve been following this work closely. I wondered if you had reactions to President Gay stepping down.
Sarah Spreitzer: Well, I think just looking at what we’re going to be dealing with this year going into a presidential election, I don’t think that the issues, those charges that were leveled against President Gay are going to go away. And I mean that those charges being leveled against President Gay were more charges being leveled against all of higher education. And I think that those are going to continue to be talked about, continue to be the focus of hearings, continue to be the subject of congressional oversight investigations. Anyone who thinks, well, the news cycle is going to go away now that President Gay has stepped down, is wrong. I think that especially the House Committee on Ed and Workforce is going to continue to push forward on many of those investigations.
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, I would say, Mushtaq, I think, and if people haven’t read it, Claudine Gay’s piece that was published in The New York Times, I thought was fascinating, and there were a couple of things about it. One of the things she really framed it was that this wasn’t about me. And to a certain extent, I agree with her entirely. I think there is a real effort to go after higher education, the idea of higher education, the reputation and the importance of higher education within our broader society. And it’s not confined to her as an individual.
I do think the one thing where maybe I would disagree with her slightly is some of it was what’s new about this is actually going after college presidents as individuals. We would see this historically, people would be upset with higher education and they would rail against the Berkeleys of the world or the Browns of the world or whatever. But now to see this focus, this really laserlike focus, you saw it with Liz McGill, you saw it with Claudine Gay certainly, and you’re seeing it with President Kornbluth at MIT. This focus not just on them as leaders of institutions, representatives of institutions, but on them as individuals. And that is new. I think it’s unfortunate. I think it’s a pretty ugly way to push politics in the national space to try to demonize individuals in that regard.
It’s not new to our politics, sadly, but it is new to our world, our part of the world. And certainly, it’s an unfortunate turn. I agree with Sarah. A lot of this is driven by electoral concerns and electoral goals. And maybe when the election passes, regardless of the outcome, some of this will fade away, but it’s certainly not a positive development, and one I think, regardless of your political viewpoints, if these are the tactics people are adopting in the public space, you should have concern about how that’s being handled, whichever side you’re on.
Mushtaq Gunja: Well, we have a wonderful guest to help continue this part of the conversation about what it’s like to be a college president right now, somebody who has to deal with some of these problems on a day-to-day basis in Sylvia Burwell.
Jon Fansmith: We’ll be back with her right after the break.
And welcome back. We are joined now by the president of American University, Sylvia Burwell. Sylvia, thank you so much for joining us today.
Sylvia Burwell: Jon, thanks so much for you all having me.
Jon Fansmith: I think we’re going to have a very interesting conversation if our off-record conversation is anything to go by. A lot of ground to cover and a lot of interesting topics, but I think maybe the place to start is with the recent big announcement you made, that after seven years leading American University, you will be stepping down as president at the end of this year. You want to talk a little bit about what led you to that decision?
Sylvia Burwell: Sure, would be happy to. And really three things led me to that decision. The first one was I’ve done what I came to do, in terms of American University was a great place when I got here. We’re a student-centered research university here in the heart of Washington, D.C., a mid-sized university with about close to 14,000 students with almost an even split of undergraduates and graduates, with a little bit more on the undergraduate side. And I came, and it was at an important time for the university, important time in higher ed. And the things that I came to do and that we did as a team, I think we’re in a great place. That’s reason number one. The university, whether it’s the eight new chairs that we have, four new centers, the awards that our students are receiving, whether those are the eight Pulitzers that students can put on their resume at American University to all the work that we’ve done as a community in engaging with D.C. So, did what I came to do, which is an important thing.
The second reason is the team that’s in place here. That’s one of the things I’m most proud of, the group of leaders that are here and helping take this university to the next level, which is what I’m hopeful my successor will do, take it faster and to a better place than even I did.
And then, the third thing is my family. And we have a 14-year-old and a 16-year-old. And for my entire time with our children, my career has been such that it is 24/7. And what I’m looking for is an opportunity where some of those weekends and some of those nights can be spent with those kids before they go off to college. And our mothers, my husband and I, our mothers are 83 and 88 and are in great health and doing great things, and we want to do some of that with them.
Mushtaq Gunja: That’s lovely, Sylvia. What’s your plan for when you retire? Are you going to stay on at American in some sort of role or do you know what’s next?
Sylvia Burwell: Mushtaq, clearly you did not read the Washington Post article, which said I’m not retiring. I am not retiring. I am going to become a distinguished lecturer at the Sine Institute of Policy and Politics, which is one of those four centers that were started, a $10 million investment from Jeff and Samira Sine, at a really important place that has had everybody from Bill de Blasio to Bill Kristol as fellows. And so it is a policy and politics center that brings together expertise, and I will be a distinguished fellow there when I leave next year.
Mushtaq Gunja: That’s wonderful. Sylvia, I think I read the Post article, though God knows what I remember and don’t remember, I believe you became president in 2017. And I wonder, reflecting six, seven years back, how do you think about what the climate of higher education looks like now versus what it looked like when you took this job in 2017? What advice are you going to have for your successor in this role?
Sylvia Burwell: Interestingly, I think the answer to that question in terms of what has changed and what it looks like, there has been an acceleration. So in the entire interview process, and I think most people know I was a nontraditional candidate for this role, in the entire process, people kept asking, why are you interested in higher education? And at that time, there were four things that I talked about.
One was that I believed that there were important and large changes in learning, in terms of what was happening, how people learn, what people were learning, the means by which they learned.
Second, that there were changes in work and what work looked like and what work meant and how work was changing.
Number three was I believed at that time, seven years ago, that there was a fundamental change in how people think about the economics of higher ed. And I’ve evolved my language a little bit around that to talk about the value proposition of higher ed.
And the fourth thing I talked about was that it was a critical time in terms of cultural and other issues in the nation that were redounding to campuses.
If you look at all of those things in the seven years I’ve been here, the thing I would say is they have accelerated in terms of all of those things. Did I imagine AI when I said changes in learning? No. Want to be clear about that. Did I think COVID when I was saying that there were changes in the way we learn? Actually, the day before we shut down the university face-to-face during COVID was the day that our chief online officer started, because we were already pursuing that strategy. And so acceleration came in a very real way on a number of these things.
So those were things that I think were happening, and I think they’re things that are continuing as my successor comes, and I think a number of them have different weight in the current environment in terms of some of the things that are most important to focus on and address.
Sarah Spreitzer: So, Sylvia, you call yourself that you were a nontraditional candidate for the presidency at American University, and obviously you had this impressive federal career before you came to AU. But I think colleges and universities are looking to the federal government much more now as we deal with some of these new issues. But given your leadership roles that you had in the various administrations, at OMB, as secretary of HHS, what kind of things did you bring with you from your federal experience into the presidency at AU?
Sylvia Burwell: Hopefully a number of things, but three that I would highlight that I think are, hopefully, particularly helpful in the context that I have seen over the seven years and what has happened during this particular seven years.
The first that you hope would be helpful at any time or point really is running and understanding large complex organizations that have lots of moving pieces and parts, that interact in different ways, that if you move one thing, it causes something different to happen. So this idea of running a large complex organization and what that takes.
The second thing that I would highlight, that I used more than maybe I thought I would, is crisis management. In terms of whether you are handling Ebola, in terms of a crisis like that and what that’s like, to COVID, to the experiences around the Affordable Care Act and the threats to it, in terms of a fundamental part of your work. And so crisis management would be number two.
And number three would be the experience around building and supporting teams and creating community around shared objectives. And so I think those would be the three things that I would highlight that, hopefully, I brought from my experiences before.
Sarah Spreitzer: That’s really helpful and I think all important things for university presidents to have. Do you think that you had any kind of special skills when it came to dealing with COVID as the former secretary of HHS? Were your colleagues calling on you for advice? Because I think having that very unique position, understanding NIH and HHS and things like that, and then being faced with COVID in your presidency, did that give you a leg up or were there things that you thought that you brought from that experience?
Sylvia Burwell: So I think there were two things that were, I think, particularly helpful to me as I was trying to manage the crisis. And one was an understanding. Very quickly, I attached to the importance of understanding how this is transmitted, how COVID is transmitted as a respiratory issue versus Ebola, which wasn’t transmitted that way, what that meant. And the other thing is that it was asymptomatic, and this was something that I think a lot of people didn’t get at the beginning of this, and thereby the importance of testing.
And the other thing that I had the advantage, maybe, of knowing is when one is talking about a situation like COVID and an epidemic and a pandemic, the evolutionary nature of it, I think, was not understood by many. And when one is managing in this kind of crisis, understanding that tectonic shifts in knowledge and understanding are going to happen and how you can iterate quickly and have clarity of goals in terms of management of this particular type of crisis. I think those things did help in terms of my ability.
And I will say my OMB experience, in terms of managing the financial challenges that came to all of us during a COVID period, I feel fortunate that I’ve worked on budgets closely with challenges and in lots of different ways. And that experience, the speed with which you can think through what are the most important levers, how are you thinking about all of the pieces and parts, how are you thinking six moves ahead on the chessboard on the finances as well as on the pandemic. Because those are some of the kinds of things that can help and add stability and can create the space for you to get input from your community because you can frame the kind of input that you need, the kind of choices, versus just completely being reactionary.
Jon Fansmith: It’s a pretty remarkable fit of skills actually for that crisis that emerged. Certainly love to give credit for the foresight for hiring you for that position, although not sure anyone could have anticipated that.
Sylvia Burwell: The chair of the selection committee takes that credit.
Jon Fansmith: As well they should. As well they should, I guess. Another thing that was unique about your presidency. You were the first female president in American University’s history. And I wonder a little bit, did that present unique challenges to you in stepping into that role or were there certain opportunities that presented to you taking the helm? You mentioned being a nontraditional candidate. You were the first female president in AU’s history. What did that look like, and how do you think that might’ve impacted how you led the institution?
Sylvia Burwell: So I think that I’ll speak to maybe a challenge and an opportunity. And I’ll speak to the challenge. I had not been in an environment that reacted along gender lines in a very, very long time in my professional career. I think in the cabinet, there were as many women as men in the Obama cabinet. And so I hadn’t been in a situation where I had seen some of this in a little while.
And the example I will give is in my first months, I go to a conference. I’m on a panel with other presidents. And at this point, I’m just several months from being secretary and in my new role. And on the panel, the moderator, and as we’re using today, I go by Sylvia and that’s fine; that’s what I do. But called me “Sylvia,” but called the other two “President X” and “President Y,” and they were both men. And so those kinds of things happened.
And I will say the evolution has been pretty tremendous in the seven years if you look at the number of women who are now presidents of universities. And that was an early on experience, I had several like that in the early time. I think that’s changed pretty dramatically. That would be put in the challenge category.
The opportunity category, interestingly, the opportunity of this, of being the first woman. I had hesitated in my career to be characterized that way, when it would happen that I was the first woman. And I kind of shied away from that a little bit in terms of that characterization. I now am glad you raised the question and I’m proud.
And that came from a conversation actually with Drew Faust. And I talked to Drew about it, and I understand, and what Drew said to me is you have to understand the importance of the representative nature of it. You have to understand it and you have to embrace it. And she was so right in terms of that good counsel and that advice.
It is so true, whenever I’m announced, when we have accepted students and their parents, any of those things, and this is said, it’s an applause line. And it is because, at universities today, think about it. The majority of our populations are women. And so what it means, I think, is actually quite important. So I think there’s an opportunity to make sure and that people see that representation and understand what that means for them in terms of the opportunities that it means for them. That’s what I think is the opportunity, that others can see what opportunities that there are for their talents, that there’s no limit.
Jon Fansmith: I will say, my nephew just started as a freshman at American this year, and I love that you mentioned it in the speech because his mother was down visiting with us for the new parents and had attended your speech and had mentioned that that’s something that stuck out to her. So it’s resonating absolutely with your audiences. So anyway, little personal aside, but I love my nephew, so if I can work him into the show anytime I absolutely will. Sorry, Sarah. I know you were going to say something too.
Sylvia Burwell: I love your nephew too because he’s an Eagle.
Jon Fansmith: That’s right. Very proud Eagle.
Sarah Spreitzer: No, I was just applauding Sylvia’s comments because I think it is so important. We do have more women now in higher education leadership roles, but for a long time we didn’t. And so to look to you, to look to President Faust, to look to others, it is incredibly important in whether or not you think of yourself as a trailblazer. It’s important for those of us in the higher education community to see you in those leadership roles.
Sylvia Burwell: 74% of the President’s Council, the leadership team at American University, are women.
Mushtaq Gunja: The increase in the number of female presidents is one of these trends that’s encouraging over the last decade or so. Not to be a little bit of a downer, there have been also some things that have been happening in higher education that have been a little bit more troubling.
So, Sylvia, you mentioned the value proposition a few minutes ago, and one of the things that we’ve really seen in some of the internal polling, and external polling as well, of families and students is a little bit of a decline in confidence in higher education. Some of this coincides with many of the shifts that you talked about before, these ideas that learning is changing, that job markets and what our students want are changing. I wonder if you have observations about what’s happening in higher education and any lessons that you learned over the course of the last six, seven years?
Sylvia Burwell: I think there are many things that higher education and postsecondary education gets right. And it’s so important, it’s so necessary. It is so important to individual success, our success as a nation in terms of an incredible workforce and an incredible economy, as well as great citizens. So what we do is really, really important.
But I do think there are some places where one of the important things in any organization, and this gets back to any large complex organization, is listening, learning, and growing, and making sure you’re hearing what are valid concerns and criticisms. And as I think about that in terms of what are the things that I think we, higher education, need to focus on, and I’ve actually written a piece about it at one point in Inside Higher Ed, and it really was about the idea that, one, we need to put our focus on the student and our research. That has to be the center.
And postsecondary education was designed, actually, perhaps not with the research and the student at the center, but perhaps around the provider. It’s a little like health care in terms of design. Did we design health care with the patient at the center or with the provider at the center? And if you think about how health care is designed and you think about how higher ed is designed, and it served us well for many years. Perhaps in the world we’re in now, we need to have our focus be at the center of our mission, which is our students, that part, and our research as a research university.
And then the second thing that I believe we need to do is we need to think about higher education as a sector. And by that, we need to think about what are the needs and demands in the sector. Often when we talk about higher education, everybody puts us all in a bucket together. All the institutions, the new institutions that are joining us that are providing credentials and everything, it all comes into one bucket versus thinking about, it’s a sector. What are the needs in the sector? Think about the whole sector. There are differing needs. If you think about cars, some people need a truck; some people need an electric vehicle that does X or Y. What are the needs in terms of this? What kind of research is needed? Think about the whole sector.
And that brings me to point three. We can’t all be all things to all needs. And so if you think about those three things, put the student and the research at the center, think about the whole sector and what the needs are, then think about what it is you are going to be good at and what part of that you’re going to serve and recognize and applaud that others are going to serve other parts and be clear about that, be distinctive about that. Those are three things that I think are learnings that I have taken away.
Sarah Spreitzer: I feel like this is setting up Mushtaq to talk about Carnegie Classifications.
Mushtaq Gunja: I was about to say that Sylvia is on our Carnegie Institutional Roundtable. And I’m inspired by the words because I think it’s quite right that we have not had students at the center of, at least the Carnegie Classifications seen as the main way that we organize higher education. We’ve done a decent job with the research, though, as you know, we’ve made some changes to the way that we calculate research. But I really do think it’s important for us to recognize that there are different sectors of the higher ed ecosystem and that they can be, should be treated differently and that they have different responsibilities and can do different things, can provide different benefits to students, the economy, society.
I do wonder, Sylvia, with that sort of recognition of not every institution needs to do and be everything, are there places where American decided to lean in and spend more resources, more time? And are there places where you intentionally decided to take a little bit of a step back from an area that you had originally been focused on?
Sylvia Burwell: I think that what we have worked to do is understand what is our differentiator. And in terms of, let me just talk about a place of leaning in with our students. As part of our $500 million Change Can’t Wait campaign, we are making the largest investment, both from philanthropic dollars and our own dollars, in student thriving the university’s ever made. $109 million investment in a student thriving center on our campus. Prioritizing the student and the well-being of the student from start to finish. It will have everything from the places where we’re going to provide academic support, to athletic facilities, to wellness, to where our health parts of our university will be, to redoing what people would consider your student union and our student meeting places. And so that’s the kind of thinking about like, well, what’s the priority in terms of the next investment, in terms of thinking through and making those priorities.
We have prioritized our research. We’ve doubled our externally funded research during my time here. And so that means you’re foregoing investments in other things, in terms of we have created and very proud, our vice provost... We have a person focused, Diana Burley, who is an incredible researcher who leads all that work and leads that work specifically, and we have made a choice to invest in that. And so when you invest in any one thing, as you know in a university setting, you’re making choices. And so those are some of the kinds of things that we have done.
I mentioned the campaign. Doing a campaign, I know everyone focuses on it as a form of advancement and raising funds, but we did a strategy and then connected the campaign directly to the strategy. And so in doing that, what you’re doing is focusing on the priorities. You had to make choices about what you fundraised for, right. So eight chairs. We want to attract and retain incredible faculty, and that’s a part of what those chairs are. We have 152 new or added on scholarships because we know when we come back to those things that I was talking about, the value proposition, how we think about the issues of financial aid and affordability to our student body, it’s important.
And so that’s how I believe that you start to make some of those choices. You put in place a strategy. You think about who you are and what distinguishes you. Our strategy is called Changemakers for a Changing World because that is something that is distinctive, and it was something that always existed at American, but we hadn’t articulated it.
When you look at our students and our student body, our faculty, the speed with which our research goes to action is quite telling. As a matter of fact, NSF is working with a grant with us about the fact that that is how we think about research at this university. But it’s our students too. And it’s our School of International Service, founded over 50 years ago, and it’s service, School of International Service. When Eisenhower dedicated it, he said it’s going to wage peace. This is General Eisenhower this many years ago. At our School of International Service, we’ve had people who study health, the environment, all of those things for many, many years. First university to be carbon-neutral in the country. Our law school, founded in the late 1800s by two women. These are all indicia of this changemaking thing, recognizing it, embracing it, and then thinking about the way that we move forward. Experiential learning, huge. Our School of Public Affairs, top 10 in the nation. Those are the kinds of things in terms of these question of choices, those are some of them.
Sarah Spreitzer: Sylvia, I love how you’re talking about these initiatives as if they’re not one and done, right? You’re talking about the future of AU that is going to continue past your presidency. And you touched on some of those initiatives that you started during your presidency. Are there any that you want to call out specifically that you’re especially proud of? Anything that you’ve done at AU that you think’s really important for people to know about?
Sylvia Burwell: I think that I have touched upon a number of those. One is that focus on getting that incredible faculty and maintaining them. Some of the faculty that have gotten these chairs are just incredible, whether that’s research that is occurring on the question of how diet impacts dementia or how we work with our troops in terms of post-traumatic stress and certain issues like that to issues of marketing and race, to different ways to think about international clients, all of these kinds of things, so important, so proud of those chairs and the centers that are also there.
Whether it’s the Sine Institute that I mentioned that I’m going to of policy and politics or we have a new center for entrepreneurship. As part of that center for entrepreneurship, we brought back the concerts. For those who are listening and have been a part of Washington, D.C., American University was always known for its concerts. We brought those back to our students. The idea of that investment in our students, both the Student Thriving Center and the idea of those scholarships.
And lastly, the thing that I haven’t mentioned that I am proud of is our engagement with our community. Here at American University, we’ve invested $3 million in scholarships for students from D.C. We are not just here bragging about being in D.C.; we want to be a part of D.C.
Our School of Education has a partnership in terms of, what we do is we have several scholarships for students who come from the district, come to our School of Education, and are guaranteed that they will receive their education for free if they go back into the D.C. public school system, in terms of that kind of contribution.
Our connection with the arts. Most people don’t remember the Katzen or think of the Katzen, but it is an incredible place. And the Corcoran Collection, when we were given the collection, and that collection has so many pieces. We have one of the largest collections of art of the region. We now are the place that holds so much of it. We got that collection up and out in almost six months, and it was curated by our students, bringing together community, academics, and our commitment.
Sarah Spreitzer: That’s great.
Sylvia Burwell: So I think I could keep going, but I know you were asking for a few.
Sarah Spreitzer: Thank you.
Mushtaq Gunja: Yeah, and I think that’s a wonderful place to end, Sylvia, and I thank you so much for your service to the sector. Thank you for all of your help with ACE. I know I’ve learned a lot from this conversation. Can’t wait to see you at the Corcoran one of these days or at a concert at AU. Thank you so much for everything, Sylvia.
Sylvia Burwell: Well, thank you all so much for having me and this opportunity to catch up. And I will still be, as I’ve said, I’ll be around at the Sine Institute, and maybe you all can come and we can do a panel there on higher ed.
Mushtaq Gunja: Yeah, would love that.
Jon Fansmith: Sounds great.
Mushtaq Gunja: Thanks again, Sylvia.
Sylvia Burwell: Thank you all.
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