How Colleges Can Maximize the Benefits of the New Federal Stimulus Package

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0:00:12.6 Speaker 1: Welcome to Office Hours with EAB. On today’s episode, EAB’s Kaitlyn Maloney and Jackson Nell take a closer look at the federal spending bill that was passed in December, and the impact it may have on higher education. The good news is that this was a substantially better package for higher education than the CARES Act, offering more money and greater spending flexibility for institutions with the greatest need. Kaitlyn and Jackson will discuss how different types of institutions might spend or invest the new federal dollars. They also talk about what we might expect under the Biden Administration, while urging all of us to prepare for incremental progress, rather than transformational change. Thank you for listening. And welcome once again, to Office Hours with EAB.

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0:01:06.7 Kaitlyn Maloney: Hello everyone, and welcome to Office Hours at EAB. This is Kaitlyn Maloney, a senior director in our research division at EAB. This is my first Office Hours appearance in 2021, so Happy New Year to all of our listeners. I’m excited to be joined today, by my close colleague, Jackson Nell, a senior analyst on our research team. Hi, Jackson. How are you doing today?

0:01:27.5 Jackson Nell: Doing well, Kaitlyn. Thank you so much for having me on today. And I’m really looking forward to talking about all the nuts and bolts of federal policy these days. It’s certainly a fun field and I’m sure it’ll be a great conversation.

0:01:37.6 KM: Yeah. In addition to being teammates, Jackson and I are kind of neighbors in Washington, DC, we live just a few blocks from each other. So, in our downtime, we like to have these policy and government type conversations. And we, in the months leading up to the New Year, were anxiously anticipating the release of a new federal relief package. Honestly, it feels like ages ago now, as all eyes are on inauguration and some of the activity leading up to it. But wanted to spend our time today thinking back to the legislation that was passed right before the New Year and how it might affect higher education institutions. Jackson and I did a podcast for Office Hours last… Gosh, April, May, around the CARES Act, the first big COVID relief package with relief for higher education institutions. The CARES Act became a common part of the higher education lingo by the end of 2020. This new package, I keep calling it the new federal relief bill.

0:02:39.1 JN: Yup.

0:02:39.1 KM: Is there a catchier name, is there an official name? I guess, I’ll throw you a softball question to start.

[chuckle]

0:02:45.6 JN: Happy to start with name and terminology on this one, as it’s kind of a mess, you know? One of the reasons why Congress packaged a bunch of bills together at the end of the year and passed an Omnibus, so basically, all of the spending bills for the fiscal year, so the full, true official title of this is the Consolidation Appropriations Act of 2021. So really, really nothing there that’s catchy like CARES, but the emergency appropriation, so those funds that were gonna go to higher education institutions are part of the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act or CRRSAA. So I think we should be calling this CRRSAA. That kinda sounds like a Game of Thrones character or some sort of Greek God…

0:03:26.6 KM: Yeah.

[chuckle]

0:03:26.7 JN: But that really is the best term. I think you will also hear some folks within higher ed talk about HEERF II. So the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund, the second allocation. So that might be kind of another space that you see what the Department of Education uses, and folks within the industry.

0:03:43.3 KM: Okay. CARES, CRRSAA, HEERF II.

0:03:47.3 JN: Yup.

0:03:48.1 KM: Got it. Thank you for straightening that out for me. It’s something I’ve really been struggling to articulate succinctly in emails and in my verbal communications lately.

0:03:55.4 JN: Me too.

[chuckle]

0:03:57.2 KM: Now I know, as we were talking in the last months of 2020, you were constantly monitoring Policy Twitter, as you’ve referred to it…

0:04:06.2 JN: Yes.

0:04:06.3 KM: Looking for updates on this, you were ready to analyze this, and your full analysis of this new relief package, CRRSAA, is up on eab.com. I’m curious if you can give us the top line headlines here.

0:04:18.2 JN: Yeah.

0:04:18.9 KM: What is this new relief package and what will it mean for the higher education institution at that headline level?

0:04:27.2 JN: Absolutely. Well, at a high level, it’s far later than many of us had hoped. I know you and I had been talking about maybe back in August, that there could be something coming down the way, or maybe before the election or right after it. Well, it turns out we had to wait till the end of the year, and Congress did what it always tends to do and procrastinate. But at the end of the year, we did finally get some additional money coming out, and that dollar amount comes out to about $22.7 billion authorized exclusively for higher education institutions. So, $22.7 billion is gonna go into the higher education emergency relief fund. That fund is then broken up into kinda four distinct pieces that I’ll top line briefly. At the top level is about $20.2 billion that’s gonna be awarded out in a funding formula, that’s Pell weighted. It’s a six-part formula, and that’s for every public or non-profit institution. So, lots of schools in that bucket, about 2300 or so will be eligible for that aid and will receive it through that funding formula allocation.

0:05:17.9 JN: The second pot of money is about $680 million, because for-profits are not part of the institutional allocation this round. This is a big improvement on the CARES Act. They still have money set aside by Congress for aid to their students as an emergency financial aid. So that’s set aside there. The third bucket of money is about $1.7 billion, that’s gonna go out in additional Title 3, Title 5, and Title 7 aid. So this is supplementary aid for HBCUs, minority-serving institutions, tribally controlled colleges and universities. Those categories of schools are gonna get more money on top of that $20.2 billion that they would get through the formula, so, a lot there. Then there’s a fourth little bucket, which you know is $113 million, and when you think about it though, that seems like a really small amount of money compared to those other pools, but still a lot when you think about $113 million. That’s set aside for institutions with significant unmet need, but really targeted at independent graduate serving institutions who are not going to get a significant amount of funding through that Pell weighted formula. So, that’s kinda the big landscape to think about those dollar amounts and what it means coming down the pipe for colleges and universities.

0:06:25.0 KM: That’s great. And you know, that was a lot of numbers that you just rattled off.

0:06:28.5 JN: Yes.

0:06:29.6 KM: We will include your full analysis with all of these details in our show notes on eab.com. You had mentioned one distinction between the CARES Act and this new Act of the for-profit exclusion. I’m sure a lot of our listeners, particularly presidents and those that work in business and finance and enrollment management are quite familiar with some of the details and the restrictions on CARES Act funding.

0:06:54.8 JN: Yeah.

0:06:54.9 KM: It impacted a lot of their financial strategy and enrollment management strategy in 2020. I’m curious, what are some of the other big differences between this package and the CARES Act of 2020?

0:07:06.0 JN: Great question. Well, at a high level, Congress kind of copied and pasted a lot of things over from the CARES Act, so the funding categories are more or less the same, but they made some big tweaks. I think the biggest one to call out is on the funding formula itself, which is now going to include full-time and part-time students. So, the CARES Act was a two-part formula that only saw or accounted for full-time students, so that really disadvantaged community colleges in particular, where about 67% of their enrollment is part-time. So, those students were invisible to the formula, and so, therefore, they didn’t get their rightful share of the aid. That is better adjusted this time around because of that, that new weighting. Another big difference here is, as I mentioned is, is that there are some exclusions, the for-profits are out of that, so that removes about 720 institutions from the funding formula.

0:07:54.4 JN: The advantage here is that that leaves a lot more money left over for publics and non-profits. In the original CARES Act, for-profits actually received quite a substantial share of the funding, because they tend to serve large Pell eligible students and populations. And so, their removal from that and their exclusion from institutional aid leaves more money for the non-profits and publics out there. The other thing is there’s this kind of wealth tax imposed on institutions with a very large endowment. So schools, we’re talking about the Harvards of the worlds, the Princetons of the world, that have large endowments. They will not have the same share that they would receive through the funding formula, their allocation is cut by half, so that leaves even more money left over for the schools that really need it, the schools that don’t have those large endowments.

0:08:39.7 JN: Finally, I think the other really big change to call out here is, is on the uses. I think a lot of us spent the spring thinking about what some of those use cases were for the CARES Act, and if you recall for the folks on the line who know, we were all trying to figure out what the shift to emergency remote instruction made eligible for expenses, because that’s the statutory language that Congress had used. Well, now that that language is much broader this time around, it’s really preparing and responding to the Coronavirus pandemic. So, lot more things are bucketed under that this round, that includes providing student support services, so things related to recruitment… Or excuse me, retention and student success during the pandemic, but also, now allow schools to reimburse themselves for lost revenue through these dollars. So I think that that will be a huge change that will help shore up some institutional finances as well.

0:09:27.8 JN: Good news across the boards, I think the tweaks made… They’re not perfect by any means, but a much better iteration on the original CARES Act for schools, and particularly presidents and CFOs.

0:09:38.2 KM: And so, you mentioned the wealth tax exclusion, a dedicated pot for HBCUs, MSIs, some other types of institutions. Help me read between the lines a little bit more.

0:09:48.0 JN: Yeah.

0:09:48.2 KM: What types of institutions or types of students was this relief package most intended to help? Was there… Their motivation is there are certain types of institutions or institutional needs that the government and the legislature were specifically interested in helping?

0:10:04.1 JN: Yeah, Congress really is focusing on helping students with the greatest need, and they interpreted that kind of crudely, but they use the Pell eligibility as their criteria to think about that. So, students who are Pell eligible also have the greatest financial need as a result. So, that’s kind of their target of providing the dollars out. So schools that historically serve large Pell eligible populations, these tend to be public systems, regional publics, even flagship publics, will benefit substantially from that and their students. Because part of this is gonna go out in emergency financial aid to those students as well, this round. Community colleges, as I mentioned, are also big recipients of that because of that part-time calculation, and they also serve a substantial amount of Pell and ED students.

0:10:47.9 JN: So, those two, I think, are the biggest schools that are gonna benefit, that doesn’t mean that regional privates will not be getting substantial money. I think if you run the calculations at kind of a preliminary level, most schools are gonna end up with more money this time around than they did in the CARES Act, so still good news amount. But the skew of the amount will be a little bit more concentrated to those schools that I mentioned earlier.

0:11:07.3 KM: That makes sense. Well, that’s good news that most schools are going to receive something, and for many schools it’ll be more than they received for the CARES Act. How do you expect most institutions to use this funding? I guess, first…

0:11:21.2 JN: Yeah.

0:11:22.2 KM: What are the restrictions on the use of these funds? Are they consistent with the CARES Act restrictions?

0:11:26.9 JN: Yeah, you know the restrictions are the same, pre-recruitment, marketing activities are excluded, again, some capital projects tied to athletics or sectarian instruction or religious instruction are as well. So that bucket of categories is more or less the same, but the uses, again, as I mentioned, are far broader, they’re more generalized to the fact that the pandemic really has impacted a host of things. We’re not just talking about in the spring, that campus is only gonna be closed for some time, it’s really to respond to this new normal that the pandemic has created for higher ed of hybrid learning, distance learning, students, not all on campus at once, all of those things. So, use-wise they’re…

0:12:03.4 JN: Again, I think that the inclination a lot of schools will have is to look at that replacing lost revenue component. Because I think the vast majority of institutions can probably cite examples of where they’ve experienced declines in revenue year over year, particularly in the auxiliary enterprise. So, that could be a space that helps them shore up their finances quicker without having kind of the same limited uses that the federal dollars would have otherwise. So, I expect a tremendous amount of interest. But outside of that, I kinda think there are three archetype institutions, if you will, on how they’ll approach the funding, and I think the first is, we’ve already spent it, so these are the schools that basically are saying that the money is too small and too late to re-open safely for the fall.

0:12:43.4 JN: We had to take out a tremendous amount of money, max out our credit card, so to speak, to pay for testing, to pay for PPE, for sanitation. So to that extent, the dollars are already spent, we’re gonna reimburse ourselves, maybe pay down our short-term credit, so we can kinda keep the lights on. So, that’s one category of schools. The second category, I think at our schools that they don’t have a strategic reserve, a lot of schools have had to deploy those funds to kinda meet the shortfalls and the added expenses due to the pandemic. So some schools are gonna hold this back a little bit and say, we need to hedge against any risk that happens this semester. We don’t necessarily know where enrollment falls out. We don’t know necessarily what unforeseen events and expenses are going to arise, so let’s hold on to this as long as we can and maybe pay out some of these small expenses as they arise, so we have that flexibility.

0:13:28.4 JN: And then the third camp of schools, I think is, maybe not as directly materially impacted by the pandemic, so far, their finances are still in relatively good shape. Now they’re not great, no one’s is I think at the stage, but they’re gonna try and see if there’s anything more proactive, right? You know, can we invest in something that’s gonna have a longer term shelf life or ROI instead of buying a PPE that we literally throw away, not that that’s not important, but is there something else with these one time, maybe once in a generational grant coming down from the federal government to do something more strategic? And a lot of that focus is on some technology investments that are gonna position that institution to both, have greater resilience in the next six months and over the year, but also thinking about how they can be more effective and efficient when the pandemic, hopefully, ends and we return to some sense of normal. So, I think those are largely where the schools fall out, but you know institutional finances far better than I do on that front, so, I think you could assess to how far the dollars will go.

0:14:21.6 KM: Yeah, absolutely, I’m thinking as you’re describing that, that I’m sure all institutions would want to use some of those money for all three of the purposes that you just decided.

0:14:30.5 JN: Right.

0:14:32.3 KM: Some for reimbursement, some for saving for a rainy day or unforeseen new expenses, some for strategic investments, it’ll all come down to prioritization.

0:14:41.1 JN: Yeah.

0:14:41.2 KM: So to that end, I’m familiar with the CARES Act and had said on this podcast that, Hey, look, this is only going to be a dent in the institutional financial need, is by no means going to make institutions whole. How do you assess the impact of this one, is it closer to making schools whole, or is it still somehow… It’s better than nothing, but…

0:15:01.9 JN: Yeah.

0:15:02.7 KM: Schools are still going to have hard decisions to make in the months ahead.

0:15:06.5 JN: Yeah, there’s certainly more money this time than in the CARES Act. So CARES was only $14 billion for High Education here, we’re talking 23, so a big improvement and in total that gets us closer to the $37 or so billion. But when you look at the impact on the industry as a whole due to the pandemic, the ACEs of the world have that estimate at $120 billion plus and lost revenue and added expenses. So, even $23 billion looks pretty small compared to that $120 billion. I think it’s important though, is that it’s not a monolithic, there are institutions in different financial circumstances that were pre-pandemic too. So, depending on where you went into the environment, it will vary quite a bit. So some schools will come out where the federal relief dollars could make their budgets more or less stable, others are still gonna be in that red ink and really aren’t gonna be able to find a way out of it through federal relief alone, unfortunately.

0:15:53.5 JN: That being said, a lot of schools have restructured their cost bases, they’ve made pretty substantial transformations on the cost front that could give them some more opportunities to make the dollars go farther than maybe they had in the spring, so a space to watch. The one thing I would also call out though is for publics, both community colleges and regional publics and systems, this doesn’t do anything to address the state finance challenges, and the municipal finance challenges that affect a lot of community colleges as well, and there’s no additional money in this… In CRRSAA for those packages, hopefully, maybe in a future one. But their need and that public support need is not gonna be solved overnight by this either, unfortunately.

0:16:34.5 KM: And I am very eager to get your take on the likelihood of more really funding in the future, but before I do one, last note on this CRRSAA. I know you helped a lot of our higher ed partners navigate the CARES Act in 2020.

0:16:46.5 JN: Yeah.

0:16:48.2 KM: The guidance given from the EGE was a bit confusing at times. It came in fits and starts, was quite delayed. Based on your experience working with partners on the CARES Act, what advice would you give our listeners this time around as they prepare for receiving this next pot of funding?

0:17:06.2 JN: Yeah. You know, the first point that you raised, there was a lot of volatility in the policy space and then the definition space, and it took time for the department really to clarify what they were talking about and why there was even litigation on, for example, what students were eligible for the emergency financial relief. So there was a lot of uncertainty. My hope this time around is, is that the department can really rely on the work that they’ve done over the… With the previous CARES Act, to make this more efficient on the guidance. There’s a little bit of a caveat here, we’re in the midst of a presidential transition, we don’t have a fully confirmed Secretary of Education, we have an acting Secretary of Education right now, and with Secretary Ross’ resignation, we’re gonna have a new one coming in, but he still has to be confirmed in, Dr. Miguel Cardona.

0:17:48.8 JN: So, there’s a lot of kinda flux in place, if you will, that could lead to some interpretations, particularly around student aid eligibility, and some other kind of details out there. So, just be prepared for that and understand that that’s out there. So, I think hopefully the dollars go out quicker this time around, but the guidance might not be there as quickly as we’d like it to be. The second point, I think kinda the big lesson learned from CARES is to really kind of try as much as we tend to look forward instead of backward, I think what happened in the CARES period of time, which seems like decades ago, but the focus, if you recall was room and board refunds, right? Everyone had to issue them when the campus closed and just talking to CFOs and presidents it was like, we have no other choice really, but to reimburse ourselves on the room and board refunds with these dollars, and even that wasn’t enough.

0:18:32.2 JN: And so, what ended up happening with schools that did that, in some cases, is that they did end up having the Reserves or the financial funds to then make the investments that they needed to to re-open campus safely in the fall. So, they weren’t able to find the capital or the pool money sometimes to put into testing and all of those other things that they needed to. So, the lesson learned from there is to try to be as forward-looking as possible. I know every financial circumstance is gonna be different going into this, and there were schools that don’t really have any other choice but to be retroactive in their use, but being far sighted, I think will help.

0:19:04.0 JN: And then the third one is really when it comes to that emergency financial aid to students, I think the institutions that really did this right, got the money out quickly, they were very transparent about how they did it and why they did it, some schools kind of spent time, delayed the process of getting the aid out, weren’t very transparent or were seen to have played games with it, not giving the direct cash payments or trying to work around other things or conditioning on certain things. I think the lesson learned is this is the equivalent of the economic impact payments, those $600 checks for a lot of students that they’re not eligible to get if they are dependent of their parents, and so getting the money out quickly, fairly and as transparently as possible is a real benefit here, because there’s reputational risk as well as just mission risk, if you delay and kind of over-rationalize it, so three lessons that I would call out here for leaders going forward.

0:19:58.1 KM: Let’s, you and I similarly look forward. Yes, while this was big headline news, this act has kind of fallen down in the headlines, given everything else that’s going on in Washington, and even as we talk to our higher ed partners that, yes, they’re interested in this Relief Act, but they’re also anxiously anticipating the inauguration, the installment of the new administration and the new Congress. I’d love to get your take. I know that you’re watching this space and some of the policy predictions that are occurring here. First though, on the topic of relief funding, do we expect the new administration, the new Congress to pass another relief package in the near term, future?

0:20:39.7 JN: Yeah, I think that there was some debate about what that would happen, but following the Georgia special elections, which is another big development that I think was kind of glossed over with everything that happened at the Capital, unfortunately on the sixth, there is a democratically controlled Congress now, unified government for the first time in a decade. Really, in some level, but the challenge with that is, is that those majorities are very slim, so we’ll talk about what that means for higher ed policy going forward, but on the stimulus front, there seems to be a pretty good consensus that we need to do more, actually, as we are recording this podcast today, the President-elect is going to announce his stimulus package plan, and the word that his team is throwing around is trillions of dollars, so it could be much bigger than what we’ve even seen before, and maybe CARES size, maybe even bigger. Closer to HERO size. So again, a lot of uncertainty about what that means, and then what actually is going to be possible by Congress, do they try to go through a bipartisan approach which would probably limit the size of the package to get Republican support in the Senate, or do they try to explore reconciliation, which will delay it, but maybe it could go bigger on or… There was some uncertainty around that, I’ll spare the details in the wonkiness of that, but know that I’m following it very closely.

0:21:49.7 JN: But the good news overall is I think you will see a stimulus package of some degree or size, and that higher education has enough bipartisan support, but particularly support from the administration and the Democratic controlled Congress to include additional provisions for them in the next round, to what extent are we talking about another CRRSAA sized package of $23 billion? Are we talking maybe 50 or closer to that 120 billion, I think is a big question. And all of the kind of advocacy groups in higher ed right now are really focused on that conversation and making sure that Congress is aware of that need and pushing them to go bigger here, so I’m very optimistic about it now, but again, it’s a space we’ll have to watch very closely over the next few weeks and months.

0:22:31.2 KM: And my conversation then, and I’m sure this is certainly welcome news to our partner institutions who just didn’t expect the pandemic to still be as a front of mind as it is, and are reeling with not just the enrollment impacts and the auxiliaries impacts that you mentioned, but also now for those that have reopened, just the increased cost of testing as time goes on. So that’s great news. What other reasons do higher education leaders have to be optimistic about the new administration? I guess, in other words, what are some of the new policies that might benefit the industry that we can expect or are somewhat likely to pass?

0:23:10.4 JN: Right. And well, you know at a high level I think the good news for higher education leaders is that their voice and their perspective will be sought and valued from the administration and from Congress more so than maybe in the last four years, they’ll have a seat at these tables. And that element, the policy environment is more favorable. Now, that doesn’t mean that they’re gonna get everything they want or their wish list, but I think expect to be heard more so is a big improvement even upon the last four years for many institutions, so high level there. In terms of the specifics it really is up in the air, there’s a lot of talk of what is possible out there, again, I think those slim Democratic majorities are probably gonna limit that to more incremental versus that transformational change that I think a lot in the industry are looking for.

0:23:54.0 JN: And I would expect the Federal government’s not going to really be able to address those root cause challenges, those existential threats that kind of keep our industry up at night, whether it’s the affordability crisis, the equity crisis, or anything related to the cost growth institutions. Those are probably not gonna be fully, or robustly has addressed as we want to by the federal government, so the challenge is on us to still to solve, but in terms of particulars, I think definitely at the conversation is what happens with the future of federal financial aid, the President-elect and during his campaign proposed doubling the Pell grant, the maximum side of the board and also expanding the eligibility, so the number of students who could theoretically access Pell as being a down payment to moving towards debt-free or even debt-free college.

0:24:36.6 JN: So we’ll see how far that goes, it could potentially be wrapped up into a broader omnibus stimulus package or a budget, but worth watching, another kind of thing that’s getting a lot of attention is the debt forgiveness or debt cancellation points, it seems like the focus will be on Congress to really try and act here, again, remains to be seen how much, is it $10,000, is it $50,000? What are the conditions or who gets it? Those are really political questions that will have to be sorted out if it’s gonna happen, but a space to watch… I think the thing though about debt cancellation is it’s maybe a great benefit to our society and to the students and the equity considerations, but for institutions, it treats a symptom, it doesn’t treat a root cause. So at that point, I think it does raise a lot more questions about higher education’s affordability crisis than anything else. So important to keep in mind. And outside of that on the regulatory front, I expect the Biden education department to really crack down on for-profits and some career and technical providers, and really thinking about where they could take the rule and regulatory environment going forward to protect students.

0:25:44.7 JN: So lots on the plate there for sure, but you know that there’s a lot of excitement, but I also would be cautious and caveat everything on the notion of that Congress is still gonna be pretty gridlocked, even with a democratically Unified Government.

0:25:58.2 KM: And just to draw that out for our listeners without getting into too much of the policy and the organizational details, because there’s such a slim democratic majority, the Democratic caucus will need to appeal to the most moderate members of their caucus, as well as the most liberal and therefore, that will limit their ability to pass some of the most liberal policies that I think got a lot of press attention during the 2020 Democratic primaries.

0:26:23.5 JN: Yes, yeah, and I think those big spending packages that it would take to do free college, for example, the added taxes that would come with that, I think, are one of those things that’s likely not to be the priority and probably fall aside, but you could see the focus of a more moderate proposal, thinking about How do we get debt-free college, and maybe focusing that on the two-year space, and so the four-year space, so you will see some prioritization. I think the biggest thing for the industry though, is to try to stay united on that and not divide and make sure their voice is maximized to ensure that aid is given to both the students, importantly and the most importantly, but ensure that it’s as equitably as distributed as possible.

0:27:02.4 KM: Any other places… I hate to ask, ’cause this all sounds great news for the most part, for higher education institutions, where should leaders moderate their expectations and not expect the world or for this new administration, new Congress to solve all of their big problems.

0:27:20.9 JN: Right, I think the important thing is to just think about the broader political and policy context right now, we’re facing simultaneous crises right now. We have the pandemic, we have the pandemic caused recession, we have the social and racial injustice crisis. To throw in another one, we have climate change, so they really add up, and these are really thorny topics to tackle on that are gonna take tremendous allocations of political and financial capital to solve. Now, that doesn’t mean higher education is not a part of those conversations. I could argue that higher ed has a role to play in solving or addressing any one of those crises, but they’re more of a means than an end in themselves, and so I think don’t expect the administration or Congress to go out of the way and say, We’re gonna support more money for tenure-track faculty at institutions, they wanna see ROI for their dollars, and they want those priorities to be aligned with these broader strategic goals, so that does limit both the resources, but also more importantly, limits the attention given to higher ed specific issues and needs, so that would be the frame in calibrating for incremental over that transformational policy.

0:28:22.6 JN: And the other thing I would say is, you know, this is an opportunity that is gonna require a lot of work on our part, a lot of work on the higher ed leaders and the organizations, the collective organizations that represent the industry to really make sure that our voice is heard in the chambers of power, ensuring that the value of higher education is there, that we reclaim the narrative that higher ed is a public good, not a privatized commodity, and ensuring that there’s an opportunity that the value that higher ed provides drives a host of societal goods whether that be economic development, job growth, research and innovation, you name it, so positioning the sector as well as individual institutions is gonna be a big left, but it’s an important part of that work. So overall, I would say that’s the macro context, and then some of those more specific policies that skew towards institutions over students. The government is gonna always prioritize students over institutions, this is important caveat to remember, students vote, their parents vote, institutions don’t. They have impacts, not to diminish that at all, but the political power is certainly on the consumer, not on the supplier, so that will also skew with the focus of the government and where the policies end up.

0:29:30.8 KM: That’s a really important point. I know that you and several of our other colleagues are planning to continue to monitor this space and publish your analysis of what new proposals impact on the higher education industry will be, so lots for our partners and our listeners to be looking forward to in the coming weeks and months. But before we close, I’m curious if you have advice for partners about how they could start preparing themselves now to advocate for their institutions and their students, and position… Put themselves in the best position to thrive under this new administration.

0:30:04.7 JN: Great question. And I think it really starts with what’s your institutional identity, what’s your mission, what is gonna come from that self-identification process, and then where does that fit into the broader political priorities that exist right now, I mentioned those crises, whether it’s the climate change, for example, or talking about the pandemic, what can you as a school do there to help, and how do you make that case to stakeholders? The other thing is, this is an opportunity to really empower your students and to empower your partners, I think oftentimes when you know higher education institutions act alone, that they can sometimes be marginalized or excluded from the conversation with some members of Congress or even in just the bureaucracy that’s out there, but if you find partners in the private sector, private companies that you work with, or local employers or even state and local governments, maximizing the voice through those networks that higher ed has so many of, the Rolodex of most presidents of colleges and campuses is just tremendous but really running at that I think is the best thing that you can start doing today and working on that connectivity, so a lot out there, but again, I think that there are some steps that we can start today that will ensure that we have a seat at the table and that our voice is heard where we need it to be.

0:31:12.2 KM: Yeah, well, thank you, Jackson, and I think that’s a great place to end. This has been a very hopeful and energizing conversation, exciting to hear about new resources coming to our colleges and universities, as well as some policy proposals and decisions that could impact their lives for the better at in the coming months, so we will certainly be excited to see more of your analysis and hear your thoughts in the policy space, but until then, it’s always a pleasure. And thank you for coming on the podcast today.

0:31:41.6 JN: Thanks so much, Kaitlyn.

0:31:48.6 Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. Join us next week when Sally Amoruso, EAB’s Chief Partner Officer talks to Dr. William Tierney, the founding director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education at the University of Southern California. They’re gonna talk about Get Real, Dr. Tierney’s new book about higher education. Until next week, thank you for listening to Office Hours with EAB.

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