Inside Higher Ed’s News Editor on the COVID-19 Stories You Should Know

00:12 Matt Pellish: From EAB, I’m Matt Pellish, and this is Office Hours, the weekly podcast on the biggest issues in education today. You say something like surfing a tsunami, it sounds a little bit crazy. Then you hear Inside Higher Ed’s news editor Paul Fain talk about what his last few months have been like. This week EAB’s Carla Hickman sits down with Paul and talks about what are some of the under-reported stories, as well as those that got the most attention during the current pandemic. They’re gonna share some thoughts about re-opening the campus in the fall, they’re gonna talk about how COVID-19 actually impacts equity and what the economic downturn might mean for colleges and universities. Will we see a bump in enrollment like we did back in 2008, or not? Thanks for listening and welcome to Office Hours with EAB.

01:06 Carla Hickman: I have to admit, I am really looking forward to our conversation today. This is Carla Hickman, back with you for another episode of Office Hours with EAB. I am joined by a very special guest today because our topic allows me to turn the tables, I get to interview the interviewer, talk all things COVID-19 higher ed in the news with the news editor for Inside Higher Ed, Paul Fain. Paul, welcome to Office Hours and thanks for being with us.

01:30 Paul Fain: Hey, Carla, thanks for having me. Good to see you again.

01:33 CH: Before we jump into the news, I heard a rumor I was hoping you could confirm for me that we might have something surprising in common. So I know you don’t know this, I have two nephews, who about 75% to 80% of their wardrobe right now is all Cincinnati Bengals, because my brother-in-law happens to be from Cincinnati, and he would also say he’s a long-suffering Bengals fan, so can I put you in that camp with them?

01:57 PF: You know, that is on my web bio, I love the Cincinnati Bengals. My first memories are actually the Cincinnati Bengals. But the last few years, I have to admit, I have not been watching.

02:11 CH: I mean, it’s been a little tough to watch, as I like to tease him.

02:14 PF: Yeah, but that’s been that way for 30, 40 years. But I think I have… I feel a little guilty, like I’ve betrayed my team by not watching much. But who knows, hope springs eternal.

02:26 CH: There you go. Well, hopefully we can spring some hope eternal for our higher ed clients too in the midst of some pretty difficult situations unfolding. I actually would love to start with you, I’ve been thinking from my vantage as a researcher, trying to stay on top of the decisions, the announcements, everything that is changing seemingly at lightning speed with COVID-19. What does that feel like from your vantage point? There’s always late breaking news in your world, but what has it felt like in the midst of COVID-19 when it comes to the pace of staying on top of what’s happening out there?

02:57 PF: Yeah, that’s a good question. It is very different. I mean, without a doubt, even in the early March, this is the biggest story by far that I’ve covered in my 16, 17 years covering higher ed. And we saw an initial spike in reader traffic when we were covering, Elizabeth, my colleague, the China situation and the impact on international students. Obviously, a tremendous interest from readers and what was going on there and how it would affect them. And early on, reading some of the statements from some of the highly selective research universities, MIT, Washington, Stanford, where they would cite their own health experts. And they have the world’s top experts saying, “We’re gonna have to limit public gatherings.” And so we were actually, I think, helped in the sense that higher ed was quick and in the crucible early on this crisis. So we were able to really expand the types of coverage we do. We’ve added a lot of new products, including, as you know, a podcast I do called The Key, but really just trying to get as much information as we can out to readers. And in some ways, we’re always being a bit of a public information portal at Inside Higher Ed, but more than ever. Yesterday… I think it was yesterday. Keeping track of time is a real problem these days.

04:24 CH: A big challenge.

04:25 PF: Yeah, we put up the CDC’s guidelines for schools and colleges, and one of the most read stories of all time for us. And we did a good job, I think, of covering that story, but really just got it out there for people, ’cause there’s just a hunger for information and frankly, sometimes not enough guidance from above for the college leaders as they’re trying to make these decisions. So I will say I feel bad about my inbox right now, I’m not getting back to people as I would very much like to be. There are stories that on a normal day… I remember early on there was confusion about the stimulus and whether or not colleges that contracted with OPMs, online program management companies, could access stimulus funds, and I don’t think I even noted it. And I think at one point I put it up as an update of a couple of graphs. In a normal week, that would be a huge story for us, and it’s a lot of tough calls about where to go big and to commit resources to cover stories that… Because there’s just too much.

05:30 CH: Yeah, I’ve been feeling that on the research side, where we have hundreds of questions that are coming in every day from universities and colleges we work with trying to make some very big decisions, and just being able to know are we giving appropriate guidance, is the Department of Education gonna change their minds, who’s out there ahead of the curve? Interesting that you mentioned some of the stories that have been getting traction. I know I was reading with interest pieces like the 15 Various Instructional Models that Might Happen in the Fall. I’ve heard you say that that was one of the ones that also garnered a lot of attention. Are there other stories like that that help you understand where people are at, what seems to be resonating?

06:07 PF: Yeah. That piece, which was by one of our bloggers, Josh Kim, with a co-author, I believe is one of the most well-read, if not the most read in our history. It was over 300,000 unique readers. And he just did a great job of laying out 15 different scenarios that college leaders might be planning for for the Fall. And again, I will say this, I do not envy college administrators right now. Sometimes they reach out and say, “Hey, you must be really scrambling. It must be really hard.” “Yeah, it is, but I’m sure your job is harder. Not a lot of weekends going on in higher ed right now.”

06:44 CH: That’s for sure.

06:47 PF: Anything about Fall planning has been very consumed with vigor by our readers. My colleague, Doug Letterman, did a piece looking at one piece of those 15 scenarios, the high flex model, as I like to say, quoting Zoolander, “High flex is so hot right now.”

07:07 CH: Isn’t it though?

07:09 PF: Trying to figure out how to do a flexible version of a hybrid where students will have a choice. And again, I get that we’re often able to talk to people who are early adopters, do things well, and then get that information out to other colleges so they can study it, but it feels like that’s happening more than ever, that people are making decisions with enormous implications and using our coverage in part, I think, to help to know what their colleagues are doing, which is a little scary. And I’ll just say one other one. I like having that role, but it makes me nervous given just the uncertainty. This is high stake stuff. Our coverage by Lilah Burke, one of our reporters, on the move to pass/fail was another one. We see things like she was… On day one, she had actually talked to the University of Washington the day before they moved to remote instruction, and we were both feeling a little nervous about hinting that they’re considering this, and then the next morning they did it. And so she’s been covering a lot of these decisions where dominoes fall very quickly. And early on, she did a story about pass/fail and had major university administrators reaching out to her to ask for information about that move.

08:25 PF: And then continued to cover it because as you know, it’s a lot harder than it sounds to transform an entire grading structure to pass/fail, particularly for students that are trying to transfer to a four-year institution from a community college or go to med school or graduate school. And I’ll just… One more anecdote. I actually… Notre Dame reached out to me, and their incoming provost who was previously at Rice had started a campaign to get the medical school association to encourage their members to accept pass/fail transcripts and wanted to get the word out. And she came on the podcast and told me later that she had had a webinar with the med school association, but these are implications that have… Decisions that affect students in a big way, and I really feel like college administrators are struggling to get information out about how to deal with it.

09:18 CH: I think that’s exactly right. I actually do a lot of work with deans of graduate schools who now that decision has been made and we’ve moved to pass/fail grading, and now we need to re-look at the admissions requirements for our graduate programs and make some tough calls. And it is that sense of dominoes. I think as soon as one of those medical schools or business schools makes the decision on what those admissions requirements will look like, then the rest are scrambling to follow suit. One of the things that you said there that I think is so interesting is certainly everyone is asking about the announcements, and it seems like one person makes a move or they say they’re gonna do something different in the fall, and then we follow suit. I’m noticing that right now with this notion of a contracted Fall term, so either moving the term early and then ending with Thanksgiving. What do you make of some of these plans? I will admit from my vantage as a researcher, I think that behind the scenes, no one is quite sure yet exactly what it’s gonna look like. Is that your sense too?

10:15 PF: Yes, totally. As a journalist, I’m old school, I try not to inflict my opinion on the way we cover the news, but it’s difficult. You need… You have hunches and you talk to sources and they influence how you view things, and very rarely have I been so confused. I’ll talk to a college president who tells me he and his peers have been discussing, and while they might not say it publicly, the airborne risk of infection in a residence hall or a large classroom is just so substantial that they can’t see fall happening. Then we hear from Lamar Alexander yesterday, “We can do this, we can do the testing.” And my reporter, I had one of our reporters, Lilah Burke, went out and tried to look into the testing question yesterday. And our story today, if you read it, it’s very… It’s surprising, frankly. There’s an epidemiologist or a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who’s one of the world’s experts in this who says, “Yeah, we can do it. It’s not as hard as you think to have an adequate testing.” He said it was like refilling a helium tank. It’s basically… You don’t have to have the whole stock there, you can refill it when you need it. And that went against what I had been thinking, that it would even be feasible for colleges to do this.

11:37 PF: The Dallas Community College district came out pretty early saying, Joe May the leader there, “We can’t do this. It’s not feasible for 160,000 students.” One of the best examples of night and day is just 100 miles or so apart in Indiana, you’ve got Purdue, Mitch Daniel is a very powerful governor, he’s been on all the cable TV news saying, “We’re going to do some version of responsible in-person fall,” Michael McRobbie, the president of IU, saying, “It would be irresponsible to promise a generally in-person fall at this point.” How do you square that? Two big research universities in the same state.

12:16 CH: That’s right, ’cause usually I would say, “Well, it’s about your geography, or it’s about the size of your student population.” We’ve been running…

12:21 PF: Or your state politics.

12:24 CH: There you go. And I actually think I’d love to hear a little bit more on the politics side. I think I’ve shared with you before, I actually live in Tennessee. I grew up here and moved back, so it was interesting to me to listen to Senator Alexander yesterday and think with that Health Committee, “Where is their head at?” And one of the big questions I wonder is how much that this pandemic has almost begun to feel partisan, and it’s creating a little bit of a divide here for some of our campuses on what they’re going to be able to do, how much they’re gonna be in alignment with various governors and state and local officials.

13:00 PF: Absolutely. This is an editorial comment, but I find it sad as a citizen that literally every decision that we make these days has to be partisan. That the decision over whether not to wear a mask into the grocery store feels like a partisan issue right now. So it’s not really a surprise that it plays out this way, but yes, I know for a fact that in some states, public college officials have felt, even from the beginning, a lot of pressure particularly in Republican-led states to not overreact according to those politicians.

13:33 PF: Lamar Alexander… Again, this was in a matter of days, huge amount of respect for Lamar Alexander across all of higher education. Major university president, former Education Secretary, I would describe him as very knowledgeable and very caring about this industry. And I think even folks on the left feel that way. So he went out, I think it was a Sunday talk show, and said, “I just can’t see us being ready in time to have 35,000 undergraduates at that Knoxville Campus this fall,” and everybody was like, “Whoa.” This is the same time when the Brown president had written in the Times that they were gonna reopen. If Lamar Alexander says they can’t, we’ve got an issue. And then a few days later, I wouldn’t say he reversed himself at all, but he said something to the effect, “Well, I think I kinda stepped in it there, and I think it could be done,” and clarified. And honestly, listening to him yesterday in our coverage, he makes a pretty convincing case. I don’t know, I don’t know what the right answer is gonna be. I know there are a lot of smart people who think all of these colleges promising that they’re gonna return in the Fall are gonna have to drop that, but I’m not sure any more. I really don’t know.

14:43 CH: Well, I think it goes to the complexity of the situation and the fact that we are getting new information by the day. I thought it’s interesting, the coverage as well on places where universities have almost reclaimed their role as a check and balance, and their ability to actually stand apart from some of the partisan rancor. I would love to hear you riff a little bit on some of the stories you’ve been tracking there, whether it’s in Florida or in Arizona, where universities are sort of speaking up for the good information that we actually need right now to help us move forward.

15:18 PF: Yeah, definitely. It’s funny, as somebody who covers an industry as a journalist who is not part of the industry, I’ve got a bachelor’s degree, I’ve never worked at a university, I do want higher ed, some form of post-secondary education, to work for this country. I am a Homer in the sense that I think we do need to prepare people for jobs. And I worry about the industry. But I do think, on the whole, higher ed has stepped up pretty well in this incredibly difficult time. And Princeton pushed back very hard on the White House when it criticized highly-selective, wealthy institutions for the emergency aid. And as you probably remember, Princeton said, “You know what? We weren’t gonna take it, we never planned to take it, but we are… Well, one of the reasons is because we couldn’t use it for undocumented students, which we actually think is against our policy.” And if you read the statement, it was strong. And when you have $20-some billion dollars, and you’re Princeton, and Einstein went there, you can take your luck with the White House.

16:24 CH: You can say that.

16:24 PF: Exactly. But I’ve seen it elsewhere, too. As you referenced, Arizona State and the University of Arizona were… Faced a lot of pressure to stop doing COVID modeling. Their research teams, their health official for the state pulled their access to data and asked them to halt modeling the day that the governor announced that they would re-open, and they said, “Nope, gonna keep doing that, that’s our role as universities.” And you’re seeing that in Florida now with a researcher who was leading their modeling in the state, lost her job, and said she was worried about access to data for university folks, and some researchers at several of the universities in the state said the same thing. So it does feel like, to your point, that higher ed is testing its strength in some ways. Another one, probably the best example, the California Community College has sued Betsy DeVos and the department over their decision to exclude undocumented students from emergency aid under the CARES Act. Yesterday, the department put out a clarification statement, which I think the consensus is did not clarify.

17:30 CH: No, might have confused. Yeah.

17:33 PF: Yeah. And they said, “This doesn’t have the rule of law or previous guidance, but underlying law says that you can exclude these students.” And there’s some speculation out there that this may have something to do with that lawsuit from the California Community Colleges.

17:48 CH: Yeah, I was certainly reading that with interest. That was on a Thursday, so I don’t know what a Friday is gonna hold for us when it comes to news at the end before a long weekend. But I do think that that ability of higher education is to speak for those who may feel voiceless in this system. It’s where I wanted to ask you next, I talked to you before about some of the stories that maybe we haven’t been hearing yet and the voices that we’ve not necessarily heard yet, and especially when it comes to issues of equity, vulnerable student populations and even faculty voice, how do we get more of that into the dialogue across the summer?

18:22 PF: Great question. And again, I think it’s just we’re surfing a tsunami. And when you’re trying to determine how billions or trillions of dollars in aid will be used to help state budgets while… Like Colorado this week, unbelievable, a 58% cut to their public colleges, which was largely erased, made it a 5% cut by the governor, Jared Polis, using emergency aid to allocate $450 million. That is… In a couple of minutes here, we’re looking at just enormous change. So I agree with you, I think some of the more kind of human pieces of this have gotten lost, and we’re trying to do more of that at Inside Higher Ed. But one story that I feel like I’m just not seeing much of, we’ve done a little bit about it, the professoriate, on the whole, is not young. I remember we had written about some data about the aging professoriate, that the large percentage of folks that are over 50 or 60, if you’re in that age group, do you wanna be on a college campus this Fall? Obviously, there has been some coverage of that. But you’re at risk.

19:31 PF: And I know when Mitch Daniels went on one of the talk shows this week and said, “No faculty member is compelled to work at Purdue,” I think that scared some people, like… What sort of contractual responsibilities are some universities gonna exercise in this? As always, and again, I don’t… This sounds harsher than it should, but I feel like we continue to expend way too much energy on the whole worrying about the highly selective colleges. And to in no ways minimize… I feel terrible for students who missed out on their last semester, even Princeton students. I know they’re gonna be okay in the long run, but that stinks. And the disruption is terrible for everyone across all of higher ed. But just looking at 20-plus percent unemployment in some states, a lot of the community college students have lost their jobs. And the budgets for their institutions, if they return in the Fall, aren’t looking good. And the early… There’s a lot of debate of whether the vulnerable adult students are gonna come back in the Fall, and a lot of reasons to think it’s hard to predict. But there are some signs that the FAFSA renewals as they can put out are down, and particularly among low-income students.

20:53 CH: I’ve been very concerned about that. Living in Tennessee with Tennessee Promise and all of the investments the state has made, you can actually drive down the interstate here and see billboards telling you to complete your FAFSA. It’s been a really interesting marketing campaign. But even our numbers, they’re very proud in the State of Tennessee about their FAFSA numbers.

21:10 PF: Number one, right? I think.

0:21:10.4 CH: Very… Always. But they’re down and they’re down for adult learners. They’re down across the board for people that still have financial aid eligibility. I have also really worried about this notion that folks think there’s gonna be this counter-cyclical bump. It’s a down economy, the job prospects are bad, we’ll go back to school. And discounting the amount of uncertainty and the financial hit that folks are facing. I don’t think… This is me editorializing. I don’t think it’s gonna happen quite as quickly, and I think the places they’ll typically turn like community colleges may really struggle with the investments and support services that are necessary to do so well this fall if they don’t get more investment.

21:52 PF: Yeah, a totally good point. We’ve been writing about a weekly poll that Strada has been doing on education plans and disruption to students and in the workforce. And it’s almost like we’ve become desensitized to the news, and that the unemployment hit is not maybe sinking in. First of all, it’s insane. I’ve never… None of us have ever lived through 20-plus unemployment…

22:19 CH: Seen these numbers.

22:21 PF: Nothing like that. And it’s a different time than the Depression, obviously. Maybe we can bounce back faster. Who knows? I totally agree with you though. But again, this is like everything we’ve talked about. I don’t know. There isn’t any really any consensus emerging about the fall for community colleges. I was really surprised, frankly. Moody’s put out a report on the community college sector this week that was pretty stable. And one of the reasons that I know a lot of folks have talked about is that unlike most recessions, you’re looking at a time when people wanna stay local where students who might have traveled to go to a residential college may not. So in addition to that usual counter-cyclical people trying to retrain to reenter the workforce, you may have that factor too.

23:12 CH: I think that’s right. And we have been saying, whether you’re thinking about that adult who is looking for their associate’s, their bachelor’s degree or just a certificate in a high-demand field, or even our master’s markets, everything feels more hyper-local now. And then when you add the pandemic on top of that, people’s concerns about travel or just being distant from their family, I think that that hyper-local market is gonna be really interesting to watch as we head into the new year.

23:38 PF: Yeah. And another factor, and I’m hearing this from a lot of community college folks, they are forced to be flexible. If they’re doing their jobs right, they have thought about a range of options for working adults. They have hybrid and online offerings they’ve started to roll out before this. So theoretically, they could be better placed. They don’t have residential campuses in large numbers. So again, I feel like and in the other side of it, you have a student population that tends to be much more vulnerable and much less able to thrive in a lot of online environments, or willing to, frankly. I had one community college president tell me that they had surveyed students, and 35% they said they wouldn’t come back if it was online in the fall. And again, if anyone who has a child and is working from home knows and is fortunate enough to have a job where you can work from home, childcare is a big factor in all of this too when you don’t know if kids are gonna be going back to school this fall.

24:39 CH: That’s exactly right. We’ve been talking about the need for childcare to support learners who are balancing their academics, personal and professional pursuits. But even more so right now, when the state of the whole of that for the fall seems uncertain. Well, we’ve talked…

24:53 PF: Yeah. It’s hard for me right now, I can’t imagine how hard it is for a community college student who has two kids and has lost their job. It’s incomprehensible.

25:01 CH: Yeah, it is. And I think that’s why I loved the stories, and you touched on faculty members. I personally would love to see more of that. I think what makes higher education so unique and powerful is its shared governance model. And in many of the conversations that I’ve had with institutional leaders about their Fall re-opening plans, I keep asking, “Where is that faculty voice?” So whether it’s the 30% who are in that category of high risk by age alone, or simply, it’s gonna take their innovation and buy-in for us to make it through whatever the fall has to hold. So I’m hopeful over the summer we’ll see even more of that faculty leadership emerging.

25:39 PF: I agree. But in the podcast, in an episode that you and I did, where I had interviewed Paul LeBlanc from Southern New Hampshire, he said something in there that suggested that the traditional shared governance model may be more threatened by this than people think. He said it much better than I just did, so I won’t even try to… But I think an institution that has the ability to hire people on short-term contracts, for bad or for good, amid uncertainty is probably gonna be better off right now than those that don’t even know if they’re gonna have students for that revenue this fall. It’s a tough situation.

26:20 CH: It is a tough situation. I feel like we could do an entire conversation about the future of the professoriate as we go forward and have certainly been getting those questions as well, so that might be a good idea for us later on. Well, Paul…

26:30 PF: I just wanna add real fast…

26:32 CH: Yeah, of course.

26:32 PF: And I feel like… And I know you know this as well as anyone. It feels like the bottom line is these changes were coming. These tensions were coming. The demographic cliff, frankly, the kicking of the can of the adjunctification of higher education, but it’s here now in a matter of months as opposed to years.

26:50 CH: That’s exactly right. We’ve said these are trends that have simply accelerated. If you thought you had until 2030, I’ve always laughed a little at higher ed with their five-year strategic planning cycles. Let’s take the cycle out the window. We’re gonna have to figure out something for 2021, if not the Fall of 2020.

27:07 PF: Absolutely.

27:08 CH: So the last thing sort of to wrap things up here today, what are the stories that you’re watching right now or what are you most excited about that we should be watching out for, either upcoming episodes of The Key or other things that we need to put on our radar?

27:21 PF: Yeah, good question. And it’s funny, it’s such a day-to-day thing. I mentioned the Strada data that we’re gonna be doing a lot more with, partnering with them on writing about that in more depth. To kind of get a sense of what are people thinking about, students, families, employers, about the credentials that will make sense, that will be a relatively safe bet amid the recovery that we haven’t started? I think that’s gonna be the big biggie. And of course, the transformational potential to all of higher education. This week, Amy Klobuchar, who I gather is now a possibility as a vice presidential candidate on the ticket, she put out a bipartisan bill, which we don’t see a lot of these days, to do a $4,000 tax credit for anyone who’s lost their job as a result of the pandemic to get re-trained. And it’s very open. It’s distance education, apprenticeships, pretty much anything you want. It doesn’t have to be an accredited provider, I believe. That coupled with… The schools that were doing online well before, I think they’re all up. Maybe not all. Never say all as a journalist. But I just saw ASU online is up 16.5…

28:33 CH: That’s right.

28:33 PF: Compared to last year. I believe SNHU was up even more than that, Southern New Hampshire. I talked with Rachel Carlson from Guild last week about an acquisition of theirs and she said most of their partners are up, if not all. They work with eight or so online programs at institutions that are online, University of Florida online. So I do wonder about, frankly, in a tectonic shift, who are the winners and losers? And what are the modalities and the credentials that will emerge?

29:02 CH: I think that’s right. And I think those that already made the investment, they’ve got the portfolio, the marketing, the brand reach. And when a student asks, “Is this a good investment?” they have the stories and the outcomes to back it up. I can understand why their inquiries and applicants are looking strong. And I think on the employment side, it’ll be really interesting. I’m actually hopeful that we might see a rightsizing of some of what I’ve called the upcredentialing, where it’s not enough to just be an RN. You’ve gotta have the BSN and the DNP and all the way up the ladder. So that’ll be really interesting to watch this fall and sort of… I don’t wanna say that the degree is dead by any means, I don’t believe it, but can we get a bit more creative with some of these shorter format opportunities?

29:43 PF: Well, I know there’s been a lot of frustration with our system’s lack of cohesiveness around licensing and credentials. And to your point, New York state and a bunch of other states helped speed the entry to the system of healthcare workers by relaxing some of the requirements. And you do wonder, once some of these decisions are out of the bag, how do you bring them back? Do we wanna bring them back? I agree with you. I think credential inflation is gonna be an interesting topic going forward. What sort of training or credential do you need to get a job on the back end of this in a transformed economy?

30:27 CH: And I hope… As much as we hope for more bipartisan support for the kinds of relief funds and legislation that we’re gonna need in the country, I hope we also see a new conversation so there’s not so much the false dichotomy between education and training, and we get back to students first. What do they need and how are we all going to need to chip in to get the economy back on its feet?

30:47 PF: Here, here.

30:49 CH: Well, Paul, thank you so much. We’ll look forward to future episodes of The Key, and are so grateful to have this conversation with you here today on Office Hours.

30:56 PF: Thank you, Carla. It was fun.

31:04 MP: Thanks for listening. Join us next week on Office Hours when David Attis is back, and this time he’s gonna chat with American Association of State Colleges and Universities President, Dr. Mildred Garcia, about protecting and serving the most vulnerable student populations on campus. See you then. From EAB, I’m Matt Pellish.