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COVID Stole a Full Year from America’s Kids (Full) · Solving America's Problems

• 0:00
  Alex: [thoughtful] Student loans in America are serviced by private companies
• 0:03
  who get paid MORE the worse job they do—intentionally steering borrowers
• 0:08
  away from lower payments and forgiveness so the debt keeps growing forever.
• 0:14
  [clears throat][appalled] Anya Kamenetz, who called this crisis twenty years
• 0:17
  ago, just told Jerremy and Dave that the pandemic accidentally broke the machine:
• 0:22
  tuition finally peaked, completion rates jumped, and millions realized they were
• 0:26
  paying Ivy League prices for Zoom school.
• 0:30
  [somber] The $1.62 trillion mountain is STILL there, the middlemen are still
• 0:34
  profiting off misery, and nobody in power has fixed the incentives that created it.
• 0:40
  [quietly intense] This is Solving America’s Problems.
• 0:44
  Dave Conley.
• 0:45
  What are our beautiful listeners being graced with today?
• 0:51
  Dave Conley: In this episode of Solving America's Problems, we're
• 0:54
  questioning whether higher education still delivers on its promise.
• 0:58
  College has been the traditional gateway to opportunity, but with the
• 1:01
  skyrocketing costs, mounting student debt, and shifting career paths,
• 1:04
  is it still the best investment?
• 1:07
  Or has the landscape of education and work changed so much That we
• 1:11
  need to rethink the entire system.
• 1:13
  That's this week, in Solving America's Problems, Rethinking
• 1:16
  College, with Anya Kamenetz.
• 1:20
  Jerremy Newsome: College has been seen as the gateway to the American dream, a path
• 1:25
  to opportunity and financial stability.
• 1:28
  But today with sky rocketing tuition, record breaking student
• 1:35
  debt, many are questioning whether the investment still pays off.
• 1:40
  Our guest today, Anya Kamenetz, has spent her career Examining the
• 1:47
  forces shaping education, an award winning journalist and author.
• 1:53
  Her books generational generation debt.
• 1:57
  And D I Y U along with the brand new work that she just created recently, the
• 2:05
  stolen year COVID 19 impact on children.
• 2:09
  We are here to talk about just that is college still worth it.
• 2:15
  And we're here solving America's problems, rethinking college with
• 2:19
  myself and my cohost, Dave Conley.
• 2:23
  Dave, thanks for being here.
• 2:24
  It's going to be remarkable.
• 2:25
  Dave Conley: I'm excited.
• 2:26
  Jerremy Newsome: And Ania, I appreciate you so much.
• 2:28
  Okay.
• 2:29
  So Generation Debt and DIYU, right?
• 2:32
  So Do It Yourself University.
• 2:34
  That's like 10, 15 years old.
• 2:36
  And as, as you see this progression happening, you identify in those books.
• 2:42
  systemic issues like rising tuition costs and the growing student desk crisis.
• 2:47
  So you, you nailed this a long time ago.
• 2:49
  Have these issues evolved over the last 15 years?
• 2:54
  How have you seen these changes ripple?
• 2:57
  Anya Kamenetz: That's a really interesting question.
• 2:58
  So I guess like with COVID, we all learned to follow an exponential curve, right?
• 3:05
  And to project out and see what happens when trend lines go out into the future.
• 3:10
  And I hate to admit this, but, Generation Debt actually is
• 3:13
  almost 20 years old, that book.
• 3:16
  the percentage of people who borrowed money to pay for college had crossed
• 3:22
  the halfway mark in the mid nineties.
• 3:25
  And I wrote that book saying, if this continues, this is
• 3:29
  going to be a real problem.
• 3:30
  It had gotten to about two thirds and now we're edging up
• 3:33
  on, more than three quarters.
• 3:35
  And tuition rising back faster than inflation debt rising for
• 3:39
  generation upon generation.
• 3:40
  Those trend lines have for the most part continued.
• 3:44
  But there's also been A much broader awareness, I think, of
• 3:48
  the detrimental impact of college.
• 3:51
  And while, sorry, the detrimental impact of this college debt and these
• 3:55
  college tuition increases, particularly when people are not necessarily
• 3:59
  finishing their degrees, right?
• 4:01
  So that's really the worst impact is on young people who don't get that degree.
• 4:06
  They get the debt without the diploma.
• 4:08
  So the awareness is much bigger than it was.
• 4:10
  And I would say that the pandemic threw an unforeseen monkey wrench into the whole
• 4:15
  system and it's had multiple consequences, which I'm eager to talk about with you.
• 4:20
  Yeah.
• 4:24
  Jerremy Newsome: like, well, ultimately, so that, you know, my main absolute
• 4:29
  huge platform, the thing that I'm radically focusing on tons of time,
• 4:33
  energy, and effort over the next eight to 12 years is not only running for
• 4:37
  president, but hopefully changing the educational system of America.
• 4:41
  I feel like it's broken.
• 4:42
  I see it as broken serve me.
• 4:44
  It didn't serve tons of people that interact with.
• 4:46
  And to your point, that caused such a huge monkey wrench, yet most
• 4:52
  of the policymakers, most of the updates haven't actually changed.
• 4:56
  They're still like, Hey, what's up?
• 4:57
  It's 1930.
• 4:58
  I hope everyone's having fun out there.
• 5:01
  A hundred years later, it's the exact same.
• 5:03
  And with the cost changing and the mental health being a huge issue
• 5:08
  with collaboration and communication and now social media has been
• 5:12
  mentioned tons of times in different interviews, there really is a very,
• 5:16
  very unique distinction on, we are aware that a change needs to be made.
• 5:22
  It just hasn't been, it just hasn't happened yet.
• 5:24
  Anya Kamenetz: I think that's true for the most part.
• 5:26
  So what's really interesting is.
• 5:28
  Is that when you look at the trend lines and tuition, particularly
• 5:34
  the pandemic year was the peak.
• 5:36
  And so in terms of cost prices of college at all levels, that was the
• 5:42
  highest that they were able to do.
• 5:44
  And the reason for that obviously is that it just, it was such a big rug pull.
• 5:48
  It pulled the rug out from under the entire deal, right?
• 5:51
  And it caused so many families and so many kids to ask what am I paying for?
• 5:56
  I'm not allowed to go on the campus.
• 5:57
  I can't use these amenities.
• 5:59
  Why am I paying this huge bill?
• 6:01
  And so it altered what they were able to charge.
• 6:04
  And so we've actually seen.
• 6:07
  a walk back from the highest year of tuition being three or four years ago.
• 6:13
  And so we're probably going to be seeing something similar with debt.
• 6:15
  And then what's fascinating as well, when you look at the pandemic trend
• 6:19
  and the pandemic impact is the six year graduation rates have just come out.
• 6:24
  So this is a bizarre thing, right?
• 6:26
  They're defining success as.
• 6:30
  For people that start a four year program, how many finish within six years later?
• 6:34
  So giving you 50 percent extra time to complete it and you track those people.
• 6:37
  So with the kids who started or the young people that started in 2018, they
• 6:42
  are showing a higher rate of completion.
• 6:45
  And that's across the pandemic years of over 60%.
• 6:49
  And now you might say 60 percent is Not a great number, but in fact, it represents
• 6:53
  an improvement on many prior years.
• 6:55
  So in the last, with the pandemic, this huge disruption, we have
• 7:00
  seen this positive development in the sense of tuition is peaked
• 7:04
  and completion has gone up.
• 7:06
  Dave Conley: My my niece graduated during the pandemic and spent the last year in
• 7:12
  front of a laptop at home with her mom.
• 7:15
  And in talking to her about this, actually speaking with you, She mentioned that for
• 7:22
  her and her friends, now that she's been out, like, a couple of years into the
• 7:26
  workforce, there's no real strong desire to go back and do their graduate degrees.
• 7:30
  Like, nobody is, like, I would, you know, like, it just wasn't there.
• 7:34
  Do you think that that's, you know, just anecdotal?
• 7:37
  Or do you think that that is, you know, more along the lines of people re
• 7:42
  rethinking where they want to be going?
• 7:45
  Anya Kamenetz: Yeah, I think that's a great question.
• 7:46
  I think that There's multiple different benefits or experiences that are
• 7:50
  bundled under the term of higher ed.
• 7:52
  And so for some people it's really about the com competition and the pressure to
• 7:58
  achieve and to be the top, to have the connections that are gonna allow you to,
• 8:03
  get to that next phase in your career.
• 8:05
  Then there are people who are really into college or university or graduate
• 8:08
  for the experiential part of it.
• 8:10
  So those learning experiences, those immersive, yeah, that is, and that's.
• 8:15
  To me, that's the ideal, really want people who are there for
• 8:17
  the for having that experience.
• 8:20
  It's very difficult to recreate that in an online environment.
• 8:23
  And for people that have I'm paying my money and I get this qualification,
• 8:26
  it's going to get me to a better job going through the pandemic.
• 8:30
  Really reduced their interest in going back and getting more degrees because
• 8:34
  as long as they have a job You know, they didn't get it wasn't a very good
• 8:38
  experience I mean nobody goes and gets an online degree because it's gonna be
• 8:41
  so much fun to do it that way, right?
• 8:44
  They're doing it because it's the most convenient way But if they don't have
• 8:48
  an immediate impetus to do it I think for a lot of young people if that was
• 8:51
  their experience learning online, they're not gonna be that eager to go back
• 8:55
  Jerremy Newsome: yeah.
• 8:56
  Especially if they're out for that experiential piece, I mean, because
• 9:00
  then you have the interesting concept of should the majority of either,
• 9:06
  let's say degrees that might not need tons of physical interaction,
• 9:13
  mostly pursue something online.
• 9:15
  And then you can have experiential colleges that are just focused on
• 9:19
  the conversations, the hangouts, the groups, the parties, you
• 9:23
  can start kind of separating it.
• 9:25
  And then potentially maybe institutions can start possibly making these shifts,
• 9:30
  which is going to be a follow up question for you in regards to can privatize
• 9:36
  or publicize or public schools come in and just totally shift change and alter
• 9:42
  the way the education is approached.
• 9:44
  And then the follow up question really on you is, and the stage is, do you
• 9:49
  think that's going to be more of a government step in to make that change?
• 9:53
  Or is it going to be more of an institutional school to
• 9:55
  come in and make these changes?
• 9:58
  Anya Kamenetz: I think that there's It One of the things that I've grown to
• 10:02
  appreciate about the university and, universities are a thousand year old idea.
• 10:07
  They are not originated in the United States, right?
• 10:11
  The universities in West Africa.
• 10:12
  Yeah, there are universities in West Africa, in the Middle
• 10:15
  East, in, in, in Europe.
• 10:18
  And.
• 10:19
  They are, so they precede really the nation state, even as we know it.
• 10:23
  And that is one of the reasons that they've been so powerful and so enduring,
• 10:26
  because they really have their own ethos.
• 10:28
  And now they obviously bring together a complex group of different stakeholders,
• 10:33
  and they are beholden to some government.
• 10:34
  Sometimes they are related to the church or sometimes they're related
• 10:37
  to different states or public institutions, private institutions.
• 10:40
  And so there's a lot of experimentation going on always.
• 10:43
  And even within, you could have something that's accredited as a legal matter, but
• 10:49
  like really what it is, it's a choir.
• 10:52
  Like it really could be a musical choir.
• 10:53
  It could just be, it could be mainly a community service type of aspect, within
• 10:57
  a social work school, for example.
• 10:59
  And I think that there's a lot of really creative innovators who are in faculty
• 11:05
  in universities trying to figure out how to make meaningful learning experiences.
• 11:09
  By the same token, there's plenty of people outside the institutions that
• 11:12
  are doing the exact same thing, right?
• 11:14
  They are, if you look at, and this has been true for a decade plus, All over
• 11:20
  social media, all over communities, there are people who are learning entrepreneurs
• 11:25
  and they're creating learning experiences that they are coaching
• 11:28
  experiences, mentoring experiences, experiential, communal experiences.
• 11:33
  And all of those things have learning value, value that we associate with
• 11:38
  traditional institutions and therefore lifelong learning, whether that's
• 11:41
  about, it could be physical training, it could be nutrition, it could be,
• 11:45
  Music, anything across the board.
• 11:47
  And so I think if you widen your viewpoint of you on what exactly learning is in a
• 11:52
  lifelong capacity, that there's actually a lot of positive developments going on.
• 11:57
  They're just not owned by, the institutions.
• 12:00
  Jerremy Newsome: I would agree with that.
• 12:01
  Dave Conley: are there, you know, are there innovations
• 12:04
  or models that excite you?
• 12:06
  Like, what are, what are, what are the, what are things that people
• 12:08
  are doing that you're like, wow, we need to have more of that.
• 12:12
  Anya Kamenetz: Yeah, that's a really great question.
• 12:13
  I've been a fan for a long time of the Western Governors University.
• 12:18
  That is, was really started, it was started by a consortium of 19 Western
• 12:22
  states and they really were like, what is the minimum viable opportunity
• 12:27
  that we can offer people, keep our prices very low, very steady and
• 12:32
  work developing our courses with what people in the industries want.
• 12:37
  So we're going to use the subject matter experts and the industry experts
• 12:42
  to help us develop our learning.
• 12:44
  And what they've also done that I really love is they have split up their.
• 12:49
  Faculty roles so that everybody has a personal success coach and that
• 12:54
  person doesn't grade your work because that would be a conflict of interest.
• 12:59
  But they are themselves rated in their performance on how
• 13:02
  their students are doing.
• 13:03
  And so it's their opportunity to make sure that any obstacles removed to
• 13:07
  you navigating this online program.
• 13:09
  And so by doing that, they have.
• 13:12
  A lot of success.
• 13:13
  They have a lot of strong relationships, even though it's a remote model.
• 13:16
  Because they're, just for that simple reason that they're dedicating people's
• 13:21
  job to making sure that students succeed.
• 13:25
  Jerremy Newsome: Mm hmm.
• 13:26
  I can respect that.
• 13:27
  So as you take a sip of water, go ahead.
• 13:28
  And then I'm going to, I'm going to throw a gear change in for a moment.
• 13:33
  So the federal student loan debt total, you know, approximately
• 13:37
  when you're talking trillions, 1.
• 13:39
  6, 1. 6 trillion, which is 1 trillion, 6, 000, 000.
• 13:44
  Billion.
• 13:45
  So they get overshadowed by
• 13:48
  Dave Conley: can't even, I can't, I can't, it's hard for me to even fathom 1.
• 13:53
  6 trillion.
• 13:56
  Like how many mil, how many, you're the, you're, you're the
• 13:59
  Jerremy Newsome: the cool part.
• 13:59
  Dave Conley: How many million.
• 14:02
  What is that?
• 14:02
  Jerremy Newsome: listen to this.
• 14:03
  10 percent of a trillion is a hundred billion.
• 14:07
  Sink in for a second.
• 14:08
  10 percent of 1 trillion is 100 billion.
• 14:10
  All right, so 1.
• 14:11
  62 trillion is the federal student loan debt.
• 14:15
  Average federal loan debt per borrower is about 37, 000 and some change.
• 14:20
  And student loan debt has grown by 52 percent since 2013.
• 14:24
  Anya, how do we, how do we deal with that, in your opinion?
• 14:29
  Like, just the individual, That is getting crippled by their debt, their debt
• 14:34
  payments, they're paying until they're 50.
• 14:36
  How do we handle that as a country?
• 14:38
  Oh,
• 14:43
  Anya Kamenetz: of the tireless efforts of advocates under the last administration,
• 14:47
  the outgoing administration, to lower people's payments on their loans.
• 14:52
  And a limited amount was done to forgive loans outright.
• 14:55
  A lot of that effort was extremely complicated.
• 14:58
  So one of the main, one of the major problems with the student
• 15:01
  loan debt problem is that the education department is not a bank.
• 15:06
  It is not supposed to be managing 101.
• 15:08
  2 trillion in consumer debt.
• 15:11
  That's not a job for pretty much anybody in the federal government to do.
• 15:15
  And so what they've done is they've outsourced the work to servicers
• 15:18
  and these servicers are the most.
• 15:22
  let me just say this.
• 15:23
  They are government contracted financial institutions with zero incentive to
• 15:27
  provide good service because when they provide good service, they help
• 15:30
  people pay off their debts when they provide bad service, such as not letting
• 15:34
  people know about their options to lower their payments or defer their
• 15:37
  payments or get their loans forgiven.
• 15:39
  When they provide bad service, they make more money.
• 15:43
  And so a lot of the programs that get put in on the books do not reach the
• 15:47
  final consumer because these servicers, these third parties stand in the way.
• 15:52
  And some people might compare it to the situation that we have
• 15:55
  with health insurers, right?
• 15:57
  Where you've put somebody in the middle who makes their money by denying.
• 16:02
  Benefits to the consumer.
• 16:05
  Despite that complication, and that has been a chronic problem with for
• 16:09
  profit college students who are scammed with veterans that are scammed with
• 16:14
  people that are not getting access to public service loan forgiveness.
• 16:17
  And I've seen this throughout my career.
• 16:19
  I'm not these people.
• 16:20
  It's not an accident.
• 16:21
  Okay.
• 16:21
  I'm not willing to say that they're to give them the benefit of the doubt.
• 16:24
  These servicers these programs that have gone into place
• 16:27
  are not being fully utilized.
• 16:29
  They're not providing relief to everybody that deserves
• 16:31
  it and that qualifies for it.
• 16:34
  What's happening under the four, the incoming administration is a lot of
• 16:38
  that might get killed in Congress.
• 16:40
  And so people might get caught in whiplash between a program that they
• 16:43
  applied for to lower their debt and that program suddenly getting canceled.
• 16:49
  So it's a really volatile situation that we're heading into
• 16:52
  when it comes to managing debt.
• 16:53
  Now, if you ask how we would get rid of this, I would knock out servicers.
• 16:59
  I don't think servicers, should exist as an, as a middleman.
• 17:03
  I think the government, needs to own the problem that it has.
• 17:07
  And then I think if they want to simplify the way the debt is
• 17:09
  managed there could be one big write down one big type of amnesty.
• 17:14
  Another way of doing it would be put it into the bankruptcy courts.
• 17:17
  So student loan debt.
• 17:19
  Because it's under the federal government.
• 17:21
  There's no bankruptcy.
• 17:22
  Now, I don't know what you guys think about bankruptcy, but it
• 17:25
  exists in American society so that people can get a fresh start
• 17:29
  when they have serious extenuating circumstances and unmanageable debt.
• 17:33
  So having that as a safety net really helps you see how you can That's great.
• 17:36
  Dr. avoid putting the burden on the people who it's going to be the most harmful to.
• 17:41
  And then across the board, you can help people restructure their debt in such a
• 17:45
  way that they can find the endpoint of it.
• 17:47
  But ultimately what we're going to need to do is have mechanisms in place
• 17:51
  to lower the cost of college upfront.
• 17:53
  Dave Conley: I, I, there's a lot about what you just said that I'm
• 17:56
  just sitting here and nodding.
• 17:57
  I, you know, particularly with your, with describing this as like, these
• 18:02
  are like insurance companies and I, you know, I'm, I have yet to find
• 18:05
  any human being in the United States that said, man, I love my insurance.
• 18:09
  And I think a way to think about this is every time that there's
• 18:14
  a step in the process, meaning that there's a handout, right?
• 18:17
  Like there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a person in between.
• 18:21
  Those people have to get paid.
• 18:23
  Anya Kamenetz: Yes,
• 18:24
  Dave Conley: And you're literally just talking about managing debt.
• 18:28
  I mean, this is, this is, this is an Excel spreadsheet and
• 18:31
  it's automated and it's simple.
• 18:33
  Like, managing those numbers is not complex.
• 18:37
  The systems, the systems exist.
• 18:40
  Whereas these, I mean, and the schools, correct me if I'm wrong,
• 18:45
  Have already been paid, right?
• 18:47
  Like that's the, that's the point of the debt, right?
• 18:49
  Like they, they're, they're out of this.
• 18:51
  So they're like, we don't care.
• 18:52
  You've got your degree.
• 18:53
  We've got our money.
• 18:54
  See ya.
• 18:56
  And the schools aren't being held accountable for the amount of debt
• 19:00
  that somebody is being put in.
• 19:02
  Right.
• 19:03
  Anya Kamenetz: That's right.
• 19:04
  Dave Conley: All right.
• 19:06
  so, so the only people that are incentivized to ensure that this stays
• 19:11
  completely unmanageable are the people who are in between who are making the money.
• 19:15
  Anya Kamenetz: That's right.
• 19:17
  Jerremy Newsome: We're uncovering some stuff.
• 19:19
  Dave Conley: just making sure I get it.
• 19:21
  Anya Kamenetz: There's a, you could say that there's a collusion between
• 19:24
  the colleges that raise the money, raise the prices on the front end and
• 19:29
  the existence of these loans because without the financing mechanisms,
• 19:34
  there would be a lot more resistance to the increases in prices, right?
• 19:38
  Dave Conley: Well, the flip side of this is that the more money that's
• 19:41
  in a system, the higher the inflation of the product, the way to keep
• 19:45
  costs down is to not provide any, any, any funding forward at all.
• 19:51
  Right.
• 19:51
  You know, like if everybody had to pay their way and that there were exceptions
• 19:56
  that were there for people who couldn't afford it, but wanted to go right.
• 19:59
  Like, there's no reason that that a. I mean, how big is Harvard's endowment?
• 20:04
  You, you know this, Jeremy, right?
• 20:06
  Like, is there any reason that anybody should ever be paying for
• 20:08
  Harvard's tuition ever, right?
• 20:11
  You know, like,
• 20:11
  Anya Kamenetz: No.
• 20:13
  Dave Conley: So, like, like, there is such thing as, as conceivably free
• 20:17
  tuition for people who are in need.
• 20:19
  So, like, the more money that's in the system, the more inflation there is.
• 20:22
  And that's why people are getting through these, these, these systems with being
• 20:28
  told, Hey, If you just get a degree, you'll have a comfortable middle, middle
• 20:34
  class lifestyle, and they're kind of sold a bill of goods, and then they're
• 20:38
  put into a system where they can't even declare bankruptcy if they get shocked
• 20:41
  with you know, something that isn't their fault, like medical death, the number
• 20:45
  one reason why people are in bankruptcy.
• 20:48
  So
• 20:48
  Anya Kamenetz: Yeah.
• 20:49
  So
• 20:49
  Dave Conley: just, yeah, it just pisses me off.
• 20:52
  Anya Kamenetz: Yeah.
• 20:52
  It's a complicated mess.
• 20:53
  And I think that what makes it so hard is that it's very heterogeneous, right?
• 20:59
  Not everybody can go to Harvard.
• 21:00
  It's great that Harvard has that endowment, but there's only a handful
• 21:03
  of colleges that have that ability.
• 21:05
  And so then we think about higher ed as a, something that should be for the masses.
• 21:09
  That's a philosophical question, right?
• 21:10
  Yeah.
• 21:11
  60 percent getting a college degree is that that's pretty much like
• 21:14
  the highest level of any country.
• 21:16
  It's 60 percent with some post college arguably, like it's going to need to
• 21:21
  be potentially more than that to deal with the information economy, but we
• 21:24
  didn't even start to talk about AI.
• 21:26
  Jerremy Newsome: Mm
• 21:26
  Anya Kamenetz: And the demands at that place is in the potential for it to knock
• 21:29
  the teeth out of the white collar economy and really invalidate some of these.
• 21:35
  Dave Conley: So, thank you for bringing that up because, you
• 21:38
  know, we do, we do this in series.
• 21:39
  So, we're going to be talking about college debt for a bit.
• 21:42
  And we're certainly going to be coming around to it because this is a
• 21:44
  problems and solutions kind of podcast.
• 21:47
  something that comes up over and over again is, and you, you, you mentioned
• 21:51
  it a little bit before, You know, the, the alternatives are really clutch, you
• 21:56
  know, for a lot of people, college and a traditional college, it just isn't right.
• 22:00
  And they're everything from gap years or service or trades, trade schools.
• 22:07
  You know, I think I've personally talked at least three, three young
• 22:13
  people from going to college because they wanted, they wanted to go for
• 22:16
  business and I'm like, stop it.
• 22:18
  You know, take the, take the money that you're going to spend on going
• 22:23
  to college and start a business.
• 22:24
  You will learn, you'll get your MBA with, you'll get your MBA
• 22:28
  within six months, I promise.
• 22:30
  As somebody who's speaking with an MBA and wishing I didn't have it.
• 22:34
  So those alternatives.
• 22:35
  Can you talk a little bit about like, okay, I think about traditional college
• 22:38
  that a lot of us have gone through, but like, I'm coming back to like,
• 22:43
  what else is out there for people?
• 22:46
  Anya Kamenetz: Yeah, absolutely.
• 22:47
  The majority of post secondary learning in this country is not a
• 22:52
  four year degree program that besides the well known associates degrees
• 22:56
  programs, there are many certificates.
• 22:58
  And particularly in the post pandemic, a period the licenses and certificates
• 23:02
  and that's everything from, like a cosmetologist to a plumber to a
• 23:05
  solar panel installer, where it's a six week course, it's 12 week
• 23:08
  course, it's an 18 month course.
• 23:10
  But at the end of it, you are qualified for a very specific job, right?
• 23:14
  Those are really important.
• 23:15
  I think that there's a mismatch in terms of What is the awareness for students?
• 23:20
  Are they able to, how do they able in their high school years to get
• 23:23
  the idea of what's out there so they can make an informed decision
• 23:26
  about one of these programs?
• 23:27
  And that's why I'm really optimistic about dual enrollment, which is
• 23:31
  basically just simply providing exposure.
• 23:34
  In public high schools for students who want to get either
• 23:37
  job training or college credits.
• 23:40
  And sometimes it's a community college credit can be very practical and
• 23:42
  grounded as well as workforce, right?
• 23:44
  You want to have an internship opportunity, a co op opportunity
• 23:49
  in those high school years, because it's the only chance you're going
• 23:51
  to have To then make an informed decision about what is my next job.
• 23:55
  And this is not necessarily training for a lifetime, right?
• 23:58
  This is getting you started and having that mindset of being a lifelong
• 24:02
  learner and saying, Hey, I need to, I know how to learn what I need to know.
• 24:06
  Jerremy Newsome: Mm hmm.
• 24:07
  Dave Conley: I love that dual model at my European friends.
• 24:09
  That sounds very, very similar to how they went to school.
• 24:13
  Anya Kamenetz: Yeah.
• 24:13
  Yeah.
• 24:14
  It's one of the bright spots, actually, especially now we have seen starting to
• 24:18
  see a rebound in enrollment across the board post pandemic, but the most robust
• 24:22
  area is in this community colleges.
• 24:24
  And what's feeding that a lot of times is this high school dual enrollment.
• 24:28
  Yeah.
• 24:29
  Jerremy Newsome: I love doing enrollment.
• 24:30
  That's what I did.
• 24:31
  It was fantastic.
• 24:33
  I thought it was, I thought it was remarkable, but at the same time,
• 24:36
  like, you got a college experience, they're going to community college.
• 24:39
  And for a moment, I want to go, I'm going to go circle back to the individual who
• 24:44
  accepts the debt, because I think Dave, you asked a very interesting question.
• 24:48
  You said like, at what point is it too much to go into debt as a person?
• 24:53
  Because at some point it is the obligation of the person getting the debt, right?
• 24:58
  Just like credit card debt.
• 24:59
  And a lot of people saving us from that.
• 25:01
  So if we.
• 25:02
  circumnavigate like for an individual if we begin to get told or there becomes So
• 25:10
  much more credible information resources out there about why the majority of
• 25:16
  participants Probably should not go to college because they do not need to.
• 25:22
  And then if you have an experiential company that gets created saying,
• 25:25
  Hey, Instead of spending 9, 000 to go to college for experiences,
• 25:29
  you want to drink, you want to dance, you want to party, you want
• 25:31
  to do all the fun things, right?
• 25:33
  Like here is this company that exists so that you can do those
• 25:36
  things in three weeks or three weekends versus three to four years.
• 25:41
  And you can still experience and have and communicate and talk
• 25:44
  and go hiking and go playing.
• 25:47
  Have your experience of college and spending so much less that that almost
• 25:49
  be like a private company could get created but it's very very difficult
• 25:54
  for Someone who is 19 18 20 years old to get a business loan from a
• 26:00
  bank like an sba is almost impossible to get a 100 000 sba loan for 98.
• 26:09
  7 of any american Young adult from age 17 to 22 is almost impossible You
• 26:15
  But to get 90, 000 with a student loan is extremely easy.
• 26:20
  Extremely simple.
• 26:21
  So
• 26:22
  Who's the predator, but also the, that risk.
• 26:27
  If we start telling those individuals, listen, don't do this at all.
• 26:33
  It's just not worth it.
• 26:35
  That's the, that's the fence, the part of the fence that I'm on.
• 26:38
  The only people that go to, should go to college right now, to me, are the
• 26:44
  individuals that need handholding and that need, someone who is a high level
• 26:50
  apprentice, let's call it architecture.
• 26:52
  Let's call it anyone in the medical field, someone that needs to be exact,
• 26:57
  precise, surgical in their information and in their practice so that they can
• 27:03
  get hands on learning at that exact moment, at that exact time, through
• 27:06
  a longer period of time, because there's so much information to be had.
• 27:09
  Then our doctors, then our medical staff that goes into college could
• 27:13
  come out of college with a It's not going to be as expensive because it
• 27:16
  means less people go to school because in less college attendees, and then
• 27:19
  you can start using endowments that Dave, most large colleges have, right?
• 27:25
  Most private schools and Ivy league schools and D1 schools
• 27:28
  have very large endowment funds.
• 27:29
  They can start pouring into certain medical medical colleges, medical
• 27:34
  degrees, medical staff that are going to schooling and racking up hundreds.
• 27:39
  Of thousands of dollars of debt.
• 27:41
  So there's, there's an earlier stage in this at some point, in my opinion, where
• 27:46
  it starts with both the awareness of the general population being told, just don't
• 27:52
  do this, it's likely not the best route for you on a far margin of percentages.
• 27:59
  Dave Conley: Can I, let me, let me, let me see if I see what you're
• 28:03
  asking and to rephrase it and you tell me if I got this right.
• 28:06
  So, and you can can answer this.
• 28:09
  What I'm hearing is if you're, if you want to pursue a degree that has a licensure
• 28:15
  or a, a, a educational requirements, say the doctor, lawyer, accountant, engineer,
• 28:21
  or something that has a, that has a requirement of a specified training.
• 28:25
  Okay.
• 28:26
  Then sure, you know come on in if you want to pursue education in areas
• 28:32
  that don't require that then know that Know the consequences of those.
• 28:36
  Know that you're going to be going into debt, know that you may not be able to
• 28:39
  be making what you want, or you're going to have different, you know, choices
• 28:43
  coming on the other side of this.
• 28:46
  And otherwise you, you really should say, Hey, you should really
• 28:50
  divert people into other options.
• 28:52
  Is that, is that what you're saying?
• 28:54
  Okay.
• 28:55
  Anya, what, what do you, how do you feel about that?
• 28:57
  Knowing that also your work has been about accessibility.
• 29:03
  And barriers and systemic issues.
• 29:06
  Anya Kamenetz: Yeah, I guess I take a broader view, both of the
• 29:10
  function of education as well as this question of what should people do?
• 29:15
  I don't think I, I don't stand here to say I know what you should do.
• 29:19
  I'm passionately committed to having a society where young people
• 29:23
  get the support and the space to figure out what's right for them.
• 29:28
  And so rather than talk about.
• 29:30
  Ringing the alarm bell and say, don't go to college.
• 29:34
  My question is who's going to hear that sound.
• 29:37
  And what we know is that who is hearing that sound is the first generation
• 29:41
  students, the immigrant students, this person of color, the person from a low
• 29:46
  income background and increasingly boys, which is a whole other topic on its own.
• 29:51
  So we have a, 58 percent women in undergraduate.
• 29:55
  And so I don't like that cause I don't like how that lines up except for the male
• 30:01
  female split, which is on conversation.
• 30:03
  The way that this participation and success in college lines up with systemic
• 30:07
  inequality in society tells me that the wrong people are getting the message
• 30:11
  that they shouldn't go to college.
• 30:13
  Because it's not a foregone conclusion that they're not
• 30:15
  the ones that should be there.
• 30:17
  So that's one point I just want to make.
• 30:19
  I want to, I want room for everybody to think about whether college is the
• 30:23
  right thing for them, not to assume that it is, and not to assume that it isn't.
• 30:27
  And then this other thing about, okay, professional training, Yeah, definitely
• 30:32
  architects, definitely your brain surgeon, definitely your pilot, right?
• 30:35
  You want training.
• 30:36
  It's not college, but it's flight school and it's very rigorous.
• 30:39
  I happen to be a person who's a fan of the arts also, and I want historians
• 30:44
  and I want, scientists that are doing not just applied science, but research.
• 30:50
  So I think that there's room for all of those things, assuming we're willing to,
• 30:55
  we're not doing it right now in terms of subsidizing that and who is paying for it.
• 30:59
  And is the cost on the digital family?
• 31:01
  Is it on taxpayers?
• 31:02
  Like I, I'm into re jiggering all of that, but I,
• 31:05
  Jerremy Newsome: yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 31:06
  Anya Kamenetz: is for the people that can make it quote unquote pay.
• 31:08
  I think there's a broader one, one scheme.
• 31:11
  I was going to talk about this, but like in Australia, I really
• 31:14
  think they get this right.
• 31:15
  Because You go to college basically free.
• 31:20
  You pay when you get out something like a payroll tax.
• 31:24
  So it's a percentage of your income.
• 31:25
  And so the people that win the college lottery pay more.
• 31:30
  The people that are social workers and teachers pay less.
• 31:34
  Dave Conley: I like that.
• 31:36
  Anya Kamenetz: So you're distributing the benefit, and it pays for itself, just
• 31:39
  it also, it is a, it is an incentive for the college itself to say, What is the
• 31:43
  balance of programs that we're offering?
• 31:45
  Because if our students can't pay us back based on what they're earning,
• 31:49
  then this is not viable, right?
• 31:52
  Dave Conley: Yeah.
• 31:53
  Anya Kamenetz: So the question of how do we interrogate whether college or
• 31:56
  what else it is the right thing for me.
• 31:58
  I think it's really huge, and it goes to what's in our culture as well,
• 32:02
  because we have turned college into the place where you become an adult, right?
• 32:08
  And you do all this socialization and stuff, and I happen to think there's a
• 32:11
  heck of a lot better options for that.
• 32:13
  Things that really lead to cultivating values, agency,
• 32:17
  service, being close to a community, finding a real sense of purpose.
• 32:21
  Most of us don't know what the heck we're doing when we're 18 years old.
• 32:24
  We need a whole lot of help and support.
• 32:27
  And sometimes you can find that on a college campus, it's mixed up with
• 32:31
  a whole lot of other things too.
• 32:33
  Jerremy Newsome: love that you brought the Australian example
• 32:35
  to our, to our attention.
• 32:37
  Thank you for that, because that's so fun.
• 32:40
  Refreshing.
• 32:41
  Innovative.
• 32:41
  Unique.
• 32:42
  Cool.
• 32:42
  Are there other countries that you could point out that you could think of that
• 32:45
  are doing another twist or another, a different approach, if you will?
• 32:50
  Anya Kamenetz: Sure.
• 32:50
  I think across Europe, we alerted alluded to this, but there's a lot
• 32:53
  more what we would call tracking in the German system, for example, and
• 32:57
  the French system where you really have people identifying if there are you a
• 33:01
  polytechnic person, are you going to be doing something more technical or are you
• 33:05
  doing being something more liberal arts?
• 33:07
  England is interesting because they're very similar to us in a
• 33:09
  lot of ways, but they have much less of a college going culture.
• 33:14
  So even in the sort of The baby boomer generation, not a ton of
• 33:18
  people got a four year degree.
• 33:20
  And even now it's pretty normalized to get a shorter degree or even just
• 33:24
  a short course after graduation.
• 33:25
  So they have a big apparatus of, higher education counseling and obviously they
• 33:31
  have a lot of exams, which has its own issues, but getting people, making a
• 33:35
  decision right out of high school of, am I a technical math STEM person?
• 33:39
  Am I an arts person?
• 33:40
  Am I someone who's going to take a vocational course?
• 33:43
  And it's much more normalized.
• 33:44
  It's not stigmatized or separated.
• 33:47
  Jerremy Newsome: That's, wow, who do you think is, is
• 33:52
  Dave Conley: the United Kingdom actually came up as the second country
• 33:55
  with the most amount of college debt.
• 33:57
  I couldn't find out why.
• 33:59
  But it was like America is like the winner on that
• 34:02
  Anya Kamenetz: Yeah.
• 34:02
  Yeah.
• 34:03
  They've had a, they've had a privatization spree and this is a pretty new thing
• 34:07
  actually in the last decade and a half.
• 34:09
  Privatization and sort of liberalization of fees.
• 34:12
  And so that's led, and that, that combined with, Kind of the lid coming
• 34:16
  off in terms of what classes aspire to get higher education where maybe 20 30
• 34:21
  years ago It was not, not an assumed thing that you would do that Now it is
• 34:26
  and that's why people are reaching beyond their means to do it So yeah, they're
• 34:30
  not necessarily models in that way
• 34:32
  Jerremy Newsome: there anyone online that you think is just doing a great
• 34:38
  job at this approach that blends both the online, more economical model, more
• 34:44
  mass approach that still potentially blends this physical learning environment
• 34:50
  that allows cohesion and collaboration.
• 34:53
  Anya Kamenetz: So Western Governors, which I mentioned isn't all online
• 34:56
  and all online institution, but what they have is clinical rotation.
• 35:00
  So there's nurses, there's teachers.
• 35:03
  And so they're spending this time supervised before they go out and get
• 35:06
  their degree, either in the classroom or in the hospital or wherever it may be.
• 35:10
  So they do have that combination of experiential learning and
• 35:12
  online learning at the same time.
• 35:15
  Jerremy Newsome: Got it.
• 35:16
  So you would say that that they're doing a great job.
• 35:17
  Anyone else?
• 35:18
  Arizona, the, yeah
• 35:23
  Anya Kamenetz: Michael Crow is a big, he's a visionary, I think in a lot
• 35:26
  of ways, and he has offered a million different kinds of opportunities,
• 35:30
  including a lot of overseas programs, as well as online programs.
• 35:34
  So yeah, Arizona State University is a really interesting one.
• 35:38
  Yeah, there's a school called American College of Education.
• 35:41
  And they they founded on the premise of a 5, 000 master's degree in 2005.
• 35:49
  And currently the master's is a 10, 000.
• 35:51
  They've gone up, but they're still keeping it very low.
• 35:54
  And having very good results at the same time.
• 35:57
  Jerremy Newsome: that's fascinating.
• 35:58
  Anya Kamenetz: Yeah.
• 36:00
  Jerremy Newsome: What's, what is your opinion on some of the figureheads
• 36:04
  and individuals that are creating, call it their own universities,
• 36:09
  is that something that should be.
• 36:11
  The first person comes to mind, right?
• 36:12
  Jordan Peterson going from Harvard to also Toronto University to now creating
• 36:19
  an online university that's really geared towards his principles, his
• 36:23
  institutions, his practice, and they're charging, you know, he's charging hundreds
• 36:27
  slash thousands of dollars for all that and all that information as well.
• 36:33
  What's just your general, general take on that approach for a lot of people?
• 36:37
  Anya Kamenetz: I see that as a point in the broader influencer economy, right?
• 36:42
  So there is.
• 36:43
  A lot of, and there's a disintermediation.
• 36:45
  And it's like the transition from legacy media to this much broader
• 36:49
  world of traditional media, legacy media and then influencer media and
• 36:53
  direct to consumer kind of information.
• 36:55
  And I participate in that world.
• 36:56
  Like I've worked for big institutions.
• 36:58
  I also have my own newsletter.
• 37:00
  I respect that you guys are trying to do the podcast.
• 37:02
  It's very much.
• 37:03
  Buyer beware, right?
• 37:05
  In that situation.
• 37:06
  So when you have this intermediation, the benefit is you can find
• 37:10
  almost anything out there.
• 37:12
  And the negative is, you don't necessarily know exactly what you're getting.
• 37:16
  So people have to be, hopefully it's something that they can easily afford.
• 37:20
  I guess my question would be, for an offering like that.
• 37:24
  What are they getting in return?
• 37:25
  Is there something where, is he going to help people get a job?
• 37:30
  Are they going to get to, are people who are studying with this guy
• 37:32
  getting to get to know each other better and have a network that way?
• 37:35
  Or how is he cultivating it in a way that is actually of value to people?
• 37:39
  Because university, as we know, is not just information, right?
• 37:43
  It's not just classes or lectures.
• 37:46
  It's the community and the connections and the qualifications.
• 37:50
  Yeah.
• 37:51
  All three of those things so without that, I don't think it's a fair
• 37:55
  comparison sort of dollar to dollar.
• 37:57
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 37:58
  Yeah.
• 37:58
  It's to your point.
• 38:00
  It definitely can be generally usually is less expensive like the MBA degree.
• 38:07
  Just giving people to your point earlier, right?
• 38:10
  More access, more ability, more the way to tap into it.
• 38:14
  I know that there are also some colleges, Harvard being one
• 38:16
  of them that they actually do.
• 38:18
  list a lot of prior year semester.
• 38:22
  That might not be the right term, prior year resources that they
• 38:27
  created from all the lectures.
• 38:28
  They just start, they just start listing them online
• 38:31
  Anya Kamenetz: Yes.
• 38:32
  Jerremy Newsome: free,
• 38:34
  Anya Kamenetz: Yes.
• 38:35
  Jerremy Newsome: of my beliefs, This is a big one.
• 38:37
  Here it goes.
• 38:38
  I think education should be free and I think experiences should cost money.
• 38:42
  I think having someone giving the ability to educate should be a cost that is
• 38:51
  nothing because we are in the digital era.
• 38:54
  It's 2025 and beyond for whoever's listening to this into the future.
• 38:59
  We have so much power, so much access to amazing information that if you have
• 39:05
  a cell phone or internet connection.
• 39:08
  Which very, very many people do.
• 39:11
  You have access to any information that you want to truly learn, and
• 39:13
  it's probably generally for free.
• 39:15
  So the experience itself could or should cost some level of money, which would come
• 39:20
  back to the point that you mentioned of universities, of having the community.
• 39:24
  Having the experiential feel, that's gonna be the thing that people
• 39:28
  could or should be paying for.
• 39:30
  And I think that having colleges redesign that portion where people
• 39:37
  know exactly what they're paying for, this is the experiential part, and
• 39:42
  the education is almost negligible.
• 39:47
  Do you think that would add maybe even more excitement and, and also more
• 39:52
  accessibility for people to go to college?
• 39:54
  If they are aware of exactly what they're actually paying for, knowing
• 39:58
  that it's generally not education.
• 40:00
  Anya Kamenetz: I think that there's, so obviously we're about 10, 15 years
• 40:05
  into the MOOC revolution and the ability for anybody to learn anything
• 40:09
  online is very well established.
• 40:11
  There's, there's university courses in every topic that are
• 40:14
  freely available for people.
• 40:16
  So that does exist and I think it has had an impact.
• 40:18
  I think it's a quiet impact though, because it, the benefits
• 40:21
  are really for the most.
• 40:24
  Engaged, motivated learner who is willing and able to stay on track with something
• 40:30
  without any external motivation or, reward, and that's that tends to be
• 40:35
  like actually a much smaller percentage of people than we might have imagined.
• 40:38
  So in terms of the unbundling of benefits of institutions, I think probably the
• 40:43
  most robust example that I'm seeing is the growth of the low residency program.
• 40:48
  So my sister, for example, just got a counseling degree and she started
• 40:52
  it when she had a baby, which is pretty remarkable thing to do.
• 40:54
  So she had a little baby.
• 40:55
  She's I'll just get a grad degree, which is not something that would have been,
• 40:58
  and she lives in rural Mississippi.
• 41:00
  So obviously it's online, but then every semester or every six months,
• 41:06
  I think they spend a week together.
• 41:08
  And that's when they're doing the kind of experiential.
• 41:10
  That's where they're building the cohort, getting to know the teachers,
• 41:13
  getting to know the other students.
• 41:14
  And I hope and I believe that kind of program, they're very intentionally
• 41:18
  designing the in person time so that it feels like it's worth people's while.
• 41:23
  And and I did a social entrepreneurship fellowship.
• 41:25
  That was the same model.
• 41:25
  We got together twice the rest of the time we were on zoom and
• 41:29
  we're communicating virtually.
• 41:31
  So I think that's really the future of where things are going.
• 41:33
  Is that hybrid?
• 41:35
  Jerremy Newsome: I totally agree.
• 41:36
  And two things, number one, shout out to your sister.
• 41:39
  That's badass.
• 41:40
  That's amazing.
• 41:40
  Congrats for her.
• 41:42
  And also shout outs to your pops.
• 41:44
  Turned 75 this
• 41:45
  Anya Kamenetz: Thank you.
• 41:46
  Yeah.
• 41:47
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 41:47
  That's a really, really incredible, incredible accomplishment for her.
• 41:51
  And for him, I mean, shoot 75 years on this incredible, beautiful planet.
• 41:57
  Dave, I know you had something you want to say.
• 41:59
  Dave Conley: Oh, no, I was just smiling because I, you know, you,
• 42:03
  you being the, you know, the, the very accomplished capitalist, you're
• 42:07
  a, you're an education communist.
• 42:09
  And that just makes me laugh and smile.
• 42:12
  And so, so, so happy.
• 42:15
  It's like, it should be free for everyone.
• 42:18
  I'm like, Oh, that's amazing.
• 42:19
  And yeah, I'm kind of, I'm, I'm, I'm.
• 42:22
  I'm still kind of curious about like, like this, this big wad of debt
• 42:27
  that's sitting on American shoulders.
• 42:30
  It's, it's not going away.
• 42:32
  You know, like even with the previous administration, I think they, yeah,
• 42:35
  they, they really, they did try.
• 42:37
  And they made some, some inroads there.
• 42:40
  You're right, I have no idea what the next administration's going to do, who knows.
• 42:44
  You know, and if the laws are how they are, I, I guess who, okay, first question.
• 42:52
  Who is this affecting the most?
• 42:54
  Like, you know, like, is this, you know, is this an urban, is this a, a, a poor
• 42:58
  poverty, is this a, a person of color, like, who, who's, like, really, like,
• 43:03
  the most affected by this, what are those communities saying, if anything,
• 43:10
  and I'm still kind of stuck on, like, like, realistically, we might be
• 43:15
  able to stem the tide, but this, this albatross that's hanging right now, I
• 43:21
  Anya Kamenetz: Yeah.
• 43:21
  Dave Conley: Is there, it doesn't sound like there's an easy fix, right?
• 43:24
  I don't know.
• 43:25
  Anya Kamenetz: Yeah.
• 43:26
  Great questions.
• 43:27
  The people whose lives are most likely to be ruined by student debt are people, like
• 43:32
  I mentioned, who do not have a degree, so they don't have any earning increase.
• 43:36
  They might have one, one, two, three, four semesters of college.
• 43:40
  They might just have four figures of debt.
• 43:42
  Some of the people that are, have their, their assets ruined, their
• 43:45
  credit ruined, and are not able to make economic progress, it's not
• 43:50
  necessarily the lawyers and the doctors.
• 43:52
  The people who have these eye watering numbers at 200, 000, 100, 000, you're
• 43:57
  dentists, you're doctors, you're lawyers.
• 43:59
  For the most part, they manage to handle it because they have the money.
• 44:03
  big incomes too.
• 44:04
  It, it constrains their choices in terms of, I'm not going to
• 44:08
  be a family medicine doctor.
• 44:09
  I'm not going to be a public interest lawyer.
• 44:11
  And so it, it has a negative impact that way.
• 44:14
  It's surprisingly, maybe a large, overwhelmingly disproportionate percentage
• 44:21
  of black families, as well as Hispanic families who are suffering under
• 44:27
  comparatively small amounts of student debt that they just can't seem to pay off.
• 44:30
  Okay.
• 44:30
  And there is an understanding of that within the community.
• 44:33
  It does impact people's belief in the value of college.
• 44:36
  It makes people debt shy.
• 44:38
  To me, one of the hardest and most poignant confrontations or problems
• 44:44
  is, and I was just taught, I was actually just, I was in New Orleans.
• 44:47
  I'm in New Orleans.
• 44:47
  I was talking to a friend I went to high school with who came from, a less
• 44:51
  advantaged background than me and he didn't understand the college game.
• 44:55
  Nobody in his family really understood how it worked and he didn't understand
• 44:59
  the simple thing that A private university for someone such as himself
• 45:04
  would have lower debt coming out than a public university because guess what?
• 45:07
  They have more aid for you, right?
• 45:09
  Especially if you're coming from out of state.
• 45:11
  So there's a lack of understanding and the fear of debt that keeps
• 45:16
  really qualified students out of it.
• 45:19
  The overall impact on the economy is something that, Macro economic economists
• 45:24
  can understand better than I can, but basically, that you have people that
• 45:27
  are not starting businesses, not buying houses, not starting families, not even
• 45:32
  getting married because of this debt.
• 45:35
  And there's a disincentive to get married.
• 45:37
  If you have student loan debt, you don't want it.
• 45:39
  You're supposed to be on the hook for that debt or vice versa.
• 45:41
  So it's a, it's across the board, across the economy in terms
• 45:46
  of what we can do about it.
• 45:47
  Mass forgiveness.
• 45:48
  Yes.
• 45:49
  Is something that was advocated for, by a progressive activist during Biden.
• 45:54
  He took half steps and half measures that didn't necessarily have the economic
• 45:59
  stimulus that you would want them to because they were a little confusing.
• 46:02
  They were starting to stop.
• 46:04
  But, doing it all at once also has the moral hazard problem where it's how come
• 46:07
  there's amnesty for everybody from before?
• 46:10
  2016. But what about the rest of us?
• 46:12
  It came later.
• 46:13
  What are we going to do?
• 46:14
  So that's the mess that we've been in, but I've been at least
• 46:17
  happy to see over the last four years, some serious consideration
• 46:21
  of this on the federal level.
• 46:22
  And I think that started, of course, with Bernie Sanders in 2016.
• 46:25
  Dave Conley: We're talking about it.
• 46:26
  I, you know, even if people are like, no, no, no, they knew what they were doing.
• 46:29
  I don't know.
• 46:30
  I didn't know.
• 46:31
  I still don't know what I'm doing.
• 46:32
  Right.
• 46:33
  Jerremy Newsome: Well, I'll bring, I'll bring some numbers to the, what you just
• 46:36
  said a moment ago on your 85 percent of borrowers, like student loan borrowers.
• 46:41
  They report that they are not going to be buying a home for
• 46:45
  another 10 15 years because they probably don't feel like they can.
• 46:48
  So that's a large number.
• 46:51
  That's quite, quite substantial.
• 46:53
  And then from a racial disparity piece, black college graduates owe an average
• 46:59
  of 25, 000 more than white graduates.
• 47:03
  So just stating some of those kind of mentioned, like the individuals that
• 47:10
  know, and the individuals that don't know the individuals that are impacted,
• 47:13
  the individuals that are not impacted, what I'm really noticing is that probably
• 47:18
  relatively obvious, all of us have on this podcast have interacted with just
• 47:22
  debt in general, let's call it credit card debt, car debt, the debt that we got,
• 47:28
  and we don't like it, it stresses us out.
• 47:31
  And if we have debt we are going to feel more stress and this will
• 47:35
  be a question I'm going to ask you and I don't know if you know the
• 47:37
  answer But it'll be fun just to ask
• 47:39
  Everyone that has student loan debt if the federal government said, okay We
• 47:44
  are going to forgive Anyone who fills out this one particular form 100 of your
• 47:49
  Many people do you think would fill it out?
• 47:51
  Right It is it is
• 48:00
  Anya Kamenetz: to do anything that involves filling out a form?
• 48:02
  This is a major question.
• 48:05
  You have unclaimed earned income tax
• 48:07
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 48:09
  Anya Kamenetz: don't bother to file their taxes and they don't know that
• 48:11
  they're leaving money on the table.
• 48:13
  I think
• 48:14
  Dave Conley: my account, my accountant just, just told me I still had
• 48:17
  the stimulus check from COVID.
• 48:19
  Anya Kamenetz: yeah, wow, are you serious?
• 48:22
  Dave Conley: Yeah,
• 48:22
  Jerremy Newsome: Dave, I don't even know what that means.
• 48:25
  I think you owe an interest on
• 48:27
  Dave Conley: I, I I, I, I.
• 48:30
  Anya Kamenetz: Okay.
• 48:31
  So this, according to the tax policy center, there's 7 billion that people
• 48:36
  leave on the table every year on further earned income tax credit.
• 48:39
  Jerremy Newsome: Oh,
• 48:40
  Anya Kamenetz: 7 billion with a
• 48:41
  Jerremy Newsome: whoa.
• 48:42
  Yeah.
• 48:43
  That is a substantially large number, more than I would,
• 48:46
  more than I would have guessed.
• 48:47
  Anya Kamenetz: More than I would have guessed too.
• 48:48
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 48:49
  I mean, thanks for doing that research.
• 48:50
  I mean, but yeah, that's kind of the unique point because I, I do believe
• 48:54
  that if there was some, you know, large government swathing, you'd have.
• 49:00
  I don't know.
• 49:01
  I'm the reason I'm picking 50 percent is because half Americans don't vote at all.
• 49:06
  Like I'm out, I'm talking to vote.
• 49:08
  So I think probably not, not those 50%.
• 49:11
  I'm just saying that there's probably a number that's higher than we would
• 49:14
  think wouldn't even say anything.
• 49:15
  And then there would be a portion of the people that also wouldn't want to,
• 49:20
  cause they want to carry the burden.
• 49:22
  I know that sounds crazy, but I'm one of those people, right?
• 49:24
  Like if I had debt and someone said, Hey man, I'll pay off all of your
• 49:27
  debt for you and I'm the government.
• 49:29
  I'm like, Because that sounds like a free lunch to me and I don't
• 49:33
  really believe in free lunches.
• 49:34
  I think that the government is going to do something to get
• 49:36
  that money back for me later.
• 49:37
  So I'm just not going to accept that.
• 49:39
  I'm going to continue paying that off.
• 49:40
  That's just how I'm wired.
• 49:41
  And then a lot of people are wired that way.
• 49:44
  But for me, I go with the consequences and the decisions and the choices that I make.
• 49:48
  And I just really, really feel like there's can be a fun and super awesome
• 49:53
  solution earlier in this journey.
• 49:56
  That allows anyone to, to access college that allows people to access
• 50:01
  the information that allows people to participate in the educational
• 50:05
  environment and the experience and pay substantially less than they pay now.
• 50:13
  I just don't know exactly what that is.
• 50:15
  I'm gonna keep doing.
• 50:16
  Deep dives and researches and thoughts and just thought experiments and have
• 50:20
  perfect and wonderful conversations with people like you because I think that's
• 50:22
  really where it lays is it lays somewhere in that 16 to 19 right before you kind
• 50:28
  of start making that commitment right before you start making that change.
• 50:31
  There's something there where we can start making really, really big impacts
• 50:37
  that people spend less and charge less.
• 50:39
  Anya Kamenetz: Yeah, I think there's continues to be room
• 50:42
  for innovation in the market.
• 50:45
  I think it's worth noting that.
• 50:47
  There's been a little mini, a mini run of a boom and bust.
• 50:50
  So when a couple, 10 years ago, there was a lot of excitement about the bootcamp
• 50:56
  and that was the short programming immersive course that was going to let
• 51:01
  you get a hundred thousand dollar job.
• 51:03
  Programming.
• 51:04
  And that was when all of the tech companies in San Francisco and across
• 51:08
  the country were in massive hiring sprees because of what was happening
• 51:11
  in the developer world and maybe in the internet based economy totally.
• 51:15
  It's not like that anymore.
• 51:18
  And AI is disrupting a lot of coding.
• 51:21
  Coding has become in some ways more accessible in other ways.
• 51:25
  There's not, there's not as much hiring expansion in the tech job world.
• 51:29
  There's more up in more cycles of layoffs.
• 51:31
  That sure thing is not feeling like such a sure thing.
• 51:33
  And some of those bootcamps are shutting their doors because.
• 51:37
  They started with a promise to the student and now that they're not able to
• 51:41
  fulfill that 80 percent hiring rate They don't want to operate anymore, which is
• 51:45
  this testament their integrity of how they're operating But it's also wow,
• 51:49
  this wasn't so easy or at least we have to figure out what the next thing is
• 51:52
  Dave Conley: So we've talked a little bit about government.
• 51:54
  We've talked a little bit about students.
• 51:56
  I want to, let's talk about business, job creators, right?
• 52:00
  Anya Kamenetz: Yeah.
• 52:01
  Dave Conley: There are people who are in jobs that don't require degrees
• 52:05
  or people who are in jobs that have degrees and don't need them.
• 52:08
  I guess that's the other way of saying that.
• 52:10
  When I was in tech and when I had lots of people working for me, remarkably
• 52:14
  some of the very best and brightest people that did work for me in technology
• 52:18
  did not have technology degrees.
• 52:21
  White collar jobs often, for some reason, require degrees.
• 52:25
  Like it actually says it on there.
• 52:27
  So, okay, so where, where does business need to change?
• 52:31
  What's going on?
• 52:33
  Anya Kamenetz: Businesses hate this, but they need to invest more in in their
• 52:37
  hiring and recruitment practices and also in their training practices, right?
• 52:41
  The reason that they're listing BA required is it's a lazy way to
• 52:45
  screen for people that maybe are more similar to the people that they're
• 52:49
  already familiar with culturally, racially, economically, as well as.
• 52:54
  This is a very simple indicator as to, are you capable of finishing
• 52:58
  something that you started?
• 52:59
  Do you have a certain amount of, a ability to complete a goal or a task?
• 53:03
  And the BA kind of selects for that as well as we hope some level
• 53:07
  of communication skills, right?
• 53:09
  We hope some level of analytical skills, depending on, what the degree is in.
• 53:13
  So that's why they do it.
• 53:15
  Thank you.
• 53:15
  When we're in a kind of economic expansion mode, you hear companies like
• 53:20
  Google's really investing in much more elaborate kind of recruitment techniques.
• 53:24
  And they did a back analysis that I'm not, if I'm not misremembering
• 53:28
  several years ago and showed same thing as you, they had a lot of
• 53:31
  outperformers that didn't necessarily have degrees from the most prestigious
• 53:35
  institutions, or even some degrees at all, because there's always that self
• 53:38
  taught especially in the geek world.
• 53:40
  That's.
• 53:42
  That's a skill set that you want.
• 53:43
  You want those people that are like hackers or self taught.
• 53:45
  They don't fit in a traditional mode and you really need them
• 53:48
  in your culture, I think I would argue in a lot of businesses.
• 53:52
  But how do you find them?
• 53:53
  You can, and I think that there was an interesting development for
• 53:56
  a while where it was like I don't need to see your college transcript.
• 54:00
  GitHub profile.
• 54:02
  What have you actually done?
• 54:04
  And same thing for a social media job.
• 54:05
  If I was hiring, and I have, hired someone for a social media job, I don't care
• 54:09
  what they got, what grades they got.
• 54:10
  I want to know what does their TikTok page look like?
• 54:13
  Do they know how to do this, right?
• 54:15
  And do they know how to learn how to do the next thing,
• 54:18
  whatever the next thing is?
• 54:20
  But that takes a little creativity and it takes not a one size fits all model.
• 54:24
  And what we have now is, I'm going to say again, like a lot of AI and
• 54:28
  automation in job postings and resume submission, where it's machine learning,
• 54:35
  that's just scanning for certain competencies and certain buzzwords.
• 54:39
  And BA is one of those things rather than what is the thing that tells me that
• 54:43
  you can actually do this particular job.
• 54:46
  Jerremy Newsome: Amen.
• 54:47
  Yep.
• 54:48
  That's it.
• 54:49
  That's it.
• 54:50
  Speaking of that, you got me all fired up.
• 54:51
  I'm really pumped and I want to, I want to talk just, we've done a great job now.
• 54:55
  Almost 60 minutes of diving into this.
• 54:57
  I want to talk a little bit about you just because you have such a
• 55:00
  great background on this, right?
• 55:02
  Your work spans decades.
• 55:04
  Going through the challenges and transformation
• 55:07
  Anya Kamenetz: Only two decades.
• 55:08
  Let me just say,
• 55:08
  Jerremy Newsome: Sorry.
• 55:09
  Yeah, my bad.
• 55:09
  That did sound like 90 years.
• 55:11
  Sorry.
• 55:11
  Two, two decades, 20 years.
• 55:13
  Dave Conley: she started when she was six.
• 55:15
  Just want to make sure you know.
• 55:16
  Yes,
• 55:17
  Jerremy Newsome: That's what I'm saying.
• 55:18
  When she was, when she was two and a half years old,
• 55:21
  Dave Conley: it's been a good journey.
• 55:23
  Jerremy Newsome: you so passionate about tackling these issues?
• 55:26
  Mm
• 55:27
  Anya Kamenetz: No, I think I take a lot of inspiration from the people who
• 55:34
  are in this world, both the students, the learners, as well as the educators,
• 55:40
  because education is fundamentally such an optimistic enterprise.
• 55:44
  Like we are, it has two sides to it.
• 55:47
  It's really a split.
• 55:48
  It's a split model.
• 55:49
  The scholastic model, which is like the monks recopying manuscripts, they're
• 55:53
  trying to keep what's best from the past and make sure we don't forget everything
• 55:58
  that we've discovered as a civilization.
• 55:59
  And when you think about like Roman empire collapse, we went into the
• 56:03
  dark ages, these medieval monks, they're sitting in their castles
• 56:06
  and they're just copying things over by hand so that we do not lose.
• 56:09
  what we have learned.
• 56:11
  That's so important.
• 56:13
  And then on the other side, you have, was the alchemists, then the scientists,
• 56:17
  now the scientists and the engineers who are like, what do we not know?
• 56:22
  How can we get new knowledge?
• 56:24
  What new questions are there?
• 56:25
  What, edges of the universe can we explore?
• 56:27
  What's the tiniest little particle that we can find?
• 56:29
  What's the farthest away a star that we can learn more about, what is
• 56:33
  the new cure for the new disease?
• 56:36
  These ozempic drugs they're not just good for weight loss, they're
• 56:39
  actually good for addiction.
• 56:40
  They're good for many other things.
• 56:41
  And so an mRNA vaccine, like faster than anyone's ever done one
• 56:45
  before we created this vaccine.
• 56:46
  So there's science and progress and empiricism and learning and
• 56:50
  solving new problems, discovering new knowledge in the one hand.
• 56:53
  And there is bringing the best of the past.
• 56:56
  On the other hand, and when you put this two together, you get
• 56:58
  education and We have been talking about education in the context of
• 57:04
  people's goals, which is important, economic growth, which is important.
• 57:09
  But I'm one of those people who says, I think it's actually
• 57:12
  important for its own sake.
• 57:13
  Dave Conley: Hmm.
• 57:15
  I got, I got chills.
• 57:16
  That's fantastic.
• 57:17
  Jerremy Newsome: Me too.
• 57:18
  Me too.
• 57:19
  I like that.
• 57:19
  So what would you, what would you say to our audience is next for you?
• 57:24
  Are there projects, ideas, areas of focus that you're super excited to explore?
• 57:30
  Anya Kamenetz: Yeah.
• 57:31
  The work I've been doing with my newsletter, The Stolen Year, is about
• 57:36
  the bigger picture of how we thrive on this rapidly changing planet.
• 57:41
  And so beyond just what educational institutions can offer, it's
• 57:45
  really about how do we adapt?
• 57:47
  And I think we're going to need to bring in so many different
• 57:50
  superpowers to thrive in this world.
• 57:54
  And a lot of it is learning.
• 57:55
  A lot of it is our emotional truth and our emotional intelligence, as well as our
• 58:00
  practical capacity that we're managing.
• 58:03
  And so I'm really bringing all of those together and I'm putting it up
• 58:05
  against these threats, the threats, of what's happening with politics, with
• 58:09
  conflict, with climate with health.
• 58:13
  And moving forward into the future.
• 58:15
  So I've always been very future focused in my work and the size of that
• 58:19
  future, I think has just gotten bigger.
• 58:22
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah, it has for sure.
• 58:24
  It's going to be thrilling and exciting.
• 58:26
  And it gives me so many, I mean, again, the more we have these conversations,
• 58:31
  the more we dive into it, there really is going to be a fun new world of just
• 58:36
  people stepping up and saying, Hey.
• 58:37
  This isn't awesome.
• 58:38
  This isn't working perfectly.
• 58:41
  Nothing probably will work perfectly, but it's, the standard of what's
• 58:45
  working now is pretty, is pretty rough.
• 58:47
  I'm just going to throw a fun one at you.
• 58:49
  You got a magic wand.
• 58:50
  You found it in New Orleans, under your nine inches of snow,
• 58:53
  which is mind blowing still.
• 58:56
  You have a wand and you can fix one thing about the education system.
• 59:00
  What are you fixing?
• 59:02
  Anya Kamenetz: So this is a wildcard, but my answer to this question
• 59:05
  is I would fix early childhood and the reason for that is.
• 59:11
  The growth that a child goes through in the first thousand days
• 59:14
  of life, zero to three, zero to five, that is their foundation.
• 59:18
  And it is a brain, it's an explosion of brain growth and development.
• 59:22
  They need nurturing care.
• 59:24
  They need consistency, love, support, as well as intelligent communication that
• 59:29
  helps them learn how to communicate, learn how to read, learn how to write,
• 59:33
  learn how to engage with their world.
• 59:35
  And so the more, for every dollar that you put in those early years,
• 59:40
  you're going to get it back six fold.
• 59:41
  And that's, that's a real statistic from a real study.
• 59:43
  Like it is, but really the payback is incomparable.
• 59:46
  If we start to notice our littlest children more, we're
• 59:50
  going to get so much out of it.
• 59:52
  Dave Conley: Oh, I got an answer for this one too.
• 59:54
  Jerremy Newsome: All right,
• 59:54
  Dave Conley: Are you going to give me a magic wand?
• 59:56
  Jerremy Newsome: Okay, now you got a wand.
• 59:57
  Yeah,
• 1:00:02
  Dave Conley: a series that we're actually is, is airing now is, is all
• 1:00:06
  about school safety, school shootings.
• 1:00:08
  And we've talked to a lot of people on that.
• 1:00:11
  And I, reflecting on it afterwards you know, we've
• 1:00:14
  built a lot of prisons for kids.
• 1:00:16
  You know, like, and I, I think my magic wand would be to make cathedrals again.
• 1:00:21
  I had friends who went to school in Westchester County in New York, right?
• 1:00:30
  And the schools look like Hogwarts, you know, like it's, it's just,
• 1:00:34
  it's this beautiful architecture.
• 1:00:37
  I grew up in Washington DC.
• 1:00:38
  It's sort of hit or miss.
• 1:00:39
  Most of them sort of look like brick prisons,
• 1:00:42
  Anya Kamenetz: Yeah.
• 1:00:42
  Dave Conley: but some of them could be absolutely beautiful.
• 1:00:45
  So I would, yeah, I think I would, I would make them look beautiful.
• 1:00:50
  I think people would feel differently just being in them.
• 1:00:53
  Anya Kamenetz: I think it's a great idea.
• 1:00:54
  I totally agree with you.
• 1:00:55
  There's so much that you learn from your environment.
• 1:00:58
  Jerremy Newsome: I mean, first of all, who doesn't want to go to Hogwarts?
• 1:01:03
  But secondly, yes, I mean, just making it a place that's open, that's
• 1:01:07
  expansive, that's Loving that's at the exact same time safe and a
• 1:01:15
  place where people can roam and run and have fun and play and enjoy and
• 1:01:21
  communicate and collaborate and be kids.
• 1:01:25
  That's the other thing is I feel like a lot of times we, Hey, you're seven.
• 1:01:30
  Anya Kamenetz: Right.
• 1:01:31
  Jerremy Newsome: What you're supposed to do now.
• 1:01:34
  Don't lick that.
• 1:01:35
  It's like, dude, you're you're, you're seven.
• 1:01:38
  Like you do the M& Ms off the floor.
• 1:01:41
  You know, I got to remind myself of that too.
• 1:01:43
  It's.
• 1:01:44
  Like when, when my son eats his pasta and he throws his pasta on the wall, like my
• 1:01:47
  initial reaction is like, Oh man, I have to clean that pasta sauce off the wall.
• 1:01:52
  It'd be like, he just, he just having a party.
• 1:01:55
  This is just how this kid eats.
• 1:01:57
  Anya Kamenetz: Totally.
• 1:01:58
  Jerremy Newsome: And so it's, instead of reprimanding him, it's
• 1:02:01
  just like, Hey, I'm gonna take a pasta and throw it against the wall.
• 1:02:03
  It's been a long time for me too.
• 1:02:04
  I'm gonna clean it anyway.
• 1:02:05
  Might as well have fun with it.
• 1:02:06
  It's just tweaking and adjusting of getting people that I feel care
• 1:02:13
  passing the care down to others, right?
• 1:02:16
  Showing them that like, listen, we're in this for you.
• 1:02:19
  We're in this for your soul.
• 1:02:20
  We're in this for your transformation.
• 1:02:21
  We're in this for your transcendence.
• 1:02:24
  We're in this for the elevation of your spirit to shift love and create.
• 1:02:28
  Provide yes, yes, yes on you for listeners who want to dive deeper into these topics.
• 1:02:35
  Where do you recommend they start?
• 1:02:38
  Are there books, articles, resources?
• 1:02:43
  Anya Kamenetz: You mentioned my book, DYUI think that's a good intro to the topic.
• 1:02:46
  And I mentioned my newsletter the Golden Hour.
• 1:02:49
  I think Michael Horn has a great podcast on the future of education.
• 1:02:54
  He's got a and a substack as well, and I've been, we are.
• 1:02:58
  In the same cohort.
• 1:02:59
  And I think he's got a great, he really leans into the innovation side of things.
• 1:03:03
  So I think he'd be a good person for people who are curious about that.
• 1:03:06
  And another friend of mine is Brian Alexander and he does something
• 1:03:10
  called the future trends forum, where he looks at what's going
• 1:03:14
  on in next in higher education.
• 1:03:16
  So I think those two, Michael Horne and Brian Alexander
• 1:03:18
  would be good ones to look at.
• 1:03:20
  Jerremy Newsome: Okay.
• 1:03:21
  Beautiful.
• 1:03:22
  Thank you so much.
• 1:03:23
  We'll reach out to them as well and see if we can pick their brains and just have
• 1:03:27
  open, amazing, cool dialogue with them.
• 1:03:28
  Just learn.
• 1:03:30
  I truly respect your time.
• 1:03:31
  I respect your energy.
• 1:03:32
  Thank you for your passion.
• 1:03:33
  Thank you for saying, you know what?
• 1:03:35
  We can change.
• 1:03:36
  The educational system, we can make shifts.
• 1:03:38
  You're bringing the awareness, you're bringing light to this subject.
• 1:03:42
  I want to say light, not only exploration light, but just light
• 1:03:44
  of happiness and love and joy.
• 1:03:46
  But thanks for being your beaming self.
• 1:03:47
  We really appreciate it.
• 1:03:49
  Anya Kamenetz: Thanks so much for having me guys.
• 1:03:50
  It was great talking to you.
• 1:03:52
  Jerremy Newsome: Dave, that was powerful.
• 1:03:55
  That was fun.
• 1:03:55
  That was exciting.
• 1:03:56
  Thank you for all the listeners who are recently exploring how we are
• 1:04:01
  working on solving America's problems.
• 1:04:04
  And we all know, we all feel that one of the huge problems this country faces
• 1:04:09
  is the country one of the huge problems this country faces Is the inadequacy of
• 1:04:15
  education and inadequacy can be summed up in many ways, but one of those ways is
• 1:04:19
  just looming debts, very, very challenging economic crisis that cripples individuals
• 1:04:27
  going forward, allowing or disallowing them to either not even go into college
• 1:04:32
  or once they get into college on the other side, they get a job that might've
• 1:04:36
  been able to get without the degree.
• 1:04:37
  And then they got to pay for it for 18 and a half years.
• 1:04:41
  Years a total debt of 1.
• 1:04:44
  62 trillion dollars federally What i'm learning is that there are people that
• 1:04:51
  know that this is an issue There are people that are saying wait a minute.
• 1:04:55
  There has to be different ways.
• 1:04:56
  There have to be different Opportunities there needs to be not only more
• 1:05:00
  access To education for everyone, but at the same regard that these
• 1:05:05
  educational costs have to decrease.
• 1:05:08
  And one of my favorite parts of this podcast, Dave, is when you went,
• 1:05:11
  wait a minute, are you telling me that there's this random pocket of
• 1:05:17
  middlemen, middle businesses, making millions of dollars off of students?
• 1:05:27
  That's what I learned.
• 1:05:28
  I learned that you learned and that was really awesome to see.
• 1:05:32
  Dave Conley: yeah, that was, that was an angry learning.
• 1:05:35
  I learned
• 1:05:36
  that this is, this, this seems like a really complicated issue, right?
• 1:05:40
  Like, and it is however, a lot of places have kind of figured it out, right?
• 1:05:47
  Like there's a lot of countries that don't have people in a lot of debt
• 1:05:52
  and there are models that do work that where people get really great education.
• 1:05:56
  And they don't come out with a ton of debt and, you know, just hearing that, you
• 1:06:01
  know, like, let's try something, let's try something different with, like, Australia,
• 1:06:06
  it's like, yeah, come on in, it's free, whatever degree you want, you got it, and
• 1:06:10
  then when you get out, whatever job you get, it's, it's like a payroll tax, right?
• 1:06:14
  And that, that, that puts a, a market value on something and it means
• 1:06:20
  that you're not saddled with crazy debt for the rest of your life.
• 1:06:22
  So I, you know, I'm sure there's ins and outs to that, but I'm like, Oh,
• 1:06:26
  that's kind of an interesting idea.
• 1:06:28
  It doesn't stop somebody from going and getting a history degree
• 1:06:32
  because they think that they may not be able to feed themselves.
• 1:06:35
  It allows people to go get a history degree and say, no matter what
• 1:06:38
  you make, you'll be able to pay back whatever you can pay back.
• 1:06:41
  And you don't, you won't starve because you're, you're spending
• 1:06:45
  all of your money on debt.
• 1:06:47
  I also, I also learned that, like, the people who currently have debt,
• 1:06:50
  there's really, there's, there's only tough, you know, there's, that's,
• 1:06:56
  that's, that's actually complicated.
• 1:06:57
  Right?
• 1:06:58
  Like, if you already have this debt, that's not going to be an easy discussion.
• 1:07:02
  That was, you know, that wasn't fabulous.
• 1:07:05
  The other thing I learned was the biggest, People that, the biggest group that has
• 1:07:10
  the biggest problems with this are the people who didn't finish their degrees.
• 1:07:13
  So they started and then stopped.
• 1:07:15
  And I'm like, wow, that should be tack, tack, tack, tackable.
• 1:07:21
  We, we, we, we should be able to, we should be able to, you know, you should
• 1:07:24
  be able to do something with that one.
• 1:07:26
  It's like, well, you know, can we get these people finished?
• 1:07:28
  Or can we have that, you know, have that, have that go some other way?
• 1:07:32
  I don't know.
• 1:07:32
  This was great.
• 1:07:33
  I, I really, I really love talking to Enya.
• 1:07:36
  Any, anything else come up for you in this?
• 1:07:38
  Jerremy Newsome: Well, you mentioned it, right?
• 1:07:40
  But like love, love to hear that Australia is doing something
• 1:07:42
  totally unique and different.
• 1:07:43
  And I mean, Australia, obviously huge country.
• 1:07:49
  Can we do some level of that?
• 1:07:51
  I think that that would be really unique and giving people incentives and
• 1:07:57
  opportunities to finish their degrees and to continue and end and get to
• 1:08:04
  the culmination of, I have my degree and now I get this job and based on
• 1:08:07
  my income level, I then can pay back.
• 1:08:11
  So you get the experience, you get all the knowledge and information
• 1:08:14
  before you start paying back or.
• 1:08:17
  Because like right now you go to college and tons of times, very, very
• 1:08:20
  often you can get the experience.
• 1:08:22
  And you don't have to pay, but it's not based on I think it's based on the degree
• 1:08:25
  or it's based in your time in the college.
• 1:08:28
  It's not necessarily based on what type of job you got.
• 1:08:31
  And I, but I'm also sure there's probably a lot of fraud with that.
• 1:08:34
  There's probably a lot of misreporting and so on and so forth.
• 1:08:37
  It'd be interesting to see a lot of the numbers and I'm curious to see if
• 1:08:40
  we could probably get an Australian resident or professor to kind of like
• 1:08:43
  walk us through that a little bit.
• 1:08:45
  But there are and there has to be other countries that are
• 1:08:48
  doing it better than we are.
• 1:08:49
  And
• 1:08:51
  Dave Conley: Sorry, I, I, I, sorry, I, I'm just all excited about this.
• 1:08:56
  I think you and Anya really hit a hit on one thing that is important for me.
• 1:09:03
  And you, you said it one way, she said it another way.
• 1:09:06
  And it was like, Going into college and whether or not to choose to go into
• 1:09:10
  college or not go into college that sort of education of somebody who's in
• 1:09:15
  their teens that hand holding that that you know that really Understanding the
• 1:09:21
  consequences the debt the choices All of that, you know that that There's,
• 1:09:27
  there's not enough there, you know, that, that, that whole idea of what it is.
• 1:09:31
  And then she said it another way, which was like, well, if there's a big
• 1:09:34
  difference between going to a private school and going to a public school.
• 1:09:37
  And one of them was, which is, it seems totally counterintuitive is
• 1:09:42
  that you, you may come out of a private education with a lot less debt
• 1:09:45
  because they have a lot more programs.
• 1:09:47
  I'm like, Oh, Oh, okay.
• 1:09:49
  That's that would have never occurred to me.
• 1:09:51
  Right.
• 1:09:52
  So I, there's a, there's a real piece in there of.
• 1:09:57
  You know, knowing that an 18 year old, Oh, you said something brilliant.
• 1:10:01
  I thought, which was like, it's, it's impossible for an 18 year old
• 1:10:05
  to get a business loan, but to get, to get a hundred thousand dollar
• 1:10:09
  business loan, but to get a hundred thousand dollars in debt is no problem
• 1:10:15
  Jerremy Newsome: It's crazy.
• 1:10:16
  It's crazy, man.
• 1:10:17
  Dave Conley: Bonkers!
• 1:10:18
  Jerremy Newsome: And what's what?
• 1:10:19
  Yes.
• 1:10:19
  What's also wild, Dave, is it's not even 100, 000.
• 1:10:22
  It's like you can't even get 10, 000.
• 1:10:23
  You can't even get 15, 000.
• 1:10:25
  Like you cannot get a business loan as a first time.
• 1:10:29
  You want to create a new business under the age of 21.
• 1:10:32
  Like it's literally.
• 1:10:34
  The same odds as winning the lottery.
• 1:10:36
  I mean it is mine, but now it doesn't mean you can't get an investment from
• 1:10:39
  a friend or whatever I'm saying from an from a bank from an institution from
• 1:10:42
  the federal Local government that's supposed to support entrepreneurship.
• 1:10:47
  No zero chance And especially with the payback terms of 10 15 20 years like a
• 1:10:52
  student loan Also with the interest rates compiling and not being able to write off
• 1:10:56
  through bankruptcy There was a lot here and one thing and I will stand by this.
• 1:11:02
  I do not personally believe You That it should that is the role
• 1:11:05
  of the federal government to go.
• 1:11:07
  All right.
• 1:11:08
  Here's the one no one has to pay their debts I don't think that's the
• 1:11:10
  way to approach this I think because then that's just we throw it on the
• 1:11:14
  taxpayers We throw it on their backs.
• 1:11:17
  We throw it on the income of the country and we go.
• 1:11:19
  All right, we'll figure this out But really it's probably Let's
• 1:11:23
  start decreasing the amount that people can go into debt.
• 1:11:29
  That was something that you said, right?
• 1:11:30
  It was like, let's make sure that we even disallow them from getting a bunch
• 1:11:35
  first and foremost, like have some type of credit score rating agency, just
• 1:11:40
  like they do for a car or for a house.
• 1:11:43
  This allows you to go, can't go to Belmont university and get a commercial
• 1:11:48
  flute degree and go 300, 000 into debt.
• 1:11:53
  Unless.
• 1:11:54
  You and or your parents have three million dollars of liquid money to sink
• 1:11:58
  in the bank account It's like you're not allowed to do this because we know
• 1:12:01
  you're not gonna be able pay it back So there's also some level of that right
• 1:12:04
  some level of non Predatory loans to these students putting them in a place that
• 1:12:11
  they probably don't know a lot at 18 You said earlier like I'm still figuring stuff
• 1:12:15
  out now At 18, I was a giant dumb bag.
• 1:12:20
  So having, having that piece and having some people help us out as teenagers
• 1:12:25
  and as young adults is also going to be a really, really big component, but
• 1:12:28
  I do not believe the answer is wave the wand and have all the debt erased.
• 1:12:31
  I think it starts something earlier.
• 1:12:33
  I think it starts with a really, really deep ingraining of
• 1:12:37
  financial awareness in college.
• 1:12:39
  I think high school obviously Anya mentions like starting earlier, Giving
• 1:12:44
  kids three to five being their most prominent years, starting making financial
• 1:12:51
  optimism and financial literacy being a major, massive component to all
• 1:13:00
  educational intricacies being first and foremost and paramount, because if you're
• 1:13:06
  doing that in any age of school, As it builds throughout the school system,
• 1:13:12
  you know, that going into debt to that structure is probably not a good idea.
• 1:13:16
  And so then you start working through your community college, like I did for
• 1:13:21
  two years to decrease some of the, oh, you got to go to college and take these
• 1:13:26
  semi random classes that are kind of building blocks that are really just.
• 1:13:30
  You know exponentially more challenging versions of what you learned in high
• 1:13:34
  school But you don't really need them for jobs aka calculus too, right?
• 1:13:38
  Like, you know, you don't need that You don't need calculus too certainly
• 1:13:44
  so those aspects for me for sure is it's just a continuation and a
• 1:13:48
  reminder that as we Really buckle down on the financial Educational model.
• 1:13:55
  start thinking that financial literacy becomes such a foremost proponent of
• 1:14:00
  everything that we do and everything that we ratify that becomes the
• 1:14:04
  forefront of our educational piece.
• 1:14:06
  This problem dilutes and dissolves naturally over the next 5 to 15 years.