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Project Dillard · Revisionist History

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Bushkin.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: In New Orleans, a few miles from the French Quarter,
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: there is a small liberal arts college called Dillard University.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: The campus is an elegant cluster of one hundred year
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: old white buildings bordering a large lawn. Long rows of
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: live oaks run down either side of the green. It
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: looks like a postcard from the nineteen thirties. And because
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: this is New Orleans, the school choir is amazing. The
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: president of Dillard is Walter kimbro Tall, mid fifties, close
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: cropped hair, pencil thin mustache, Bachelor of Science from the
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: University of Georgia, master's degree from Miami University, PhD from
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Georgia State. Your father is a very well known pastern Atlanta.
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: He's Walter Senior. You're Walter Jr.
• 1:22
  Speaker 4: Well, we have different middle names, so he's Walter Lee
• 1:25
  Speaker 4: and I'm Walter Mark. Because he felt like Walter Lee
• 1:27
  Speaker 4: was country, so he didn't give me that. But yeah,
• 1:30
  Speaker 4: that's that's my dad.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I would encourage you, should you ever be in
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: New Orleans to pay a visit to Dillard, hear the
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: choir perform if you can, and walk around the campus
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: as I did with Walter Kimbro. Yeah, we're in this
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: area of New Orleans is Gentili's Callegenttillity.
• 1:55
  Speaker 4: The area is very residential. It was middle class African
• 2:00
  Speaker 4: American community, So a lot of things. I want to
• 2:02
  Speaker 4: sort of walk this way and make a loop.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: Then, when you finished your roller on campus, look up
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: Dillard on the US News and World Report Best College's
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: Rankings website. They're on the Liberal Arts college list, which
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: usually has some combination of Williams, Amherst and Swarthmore at
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: the top. But keep going down the long winding road
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: of elite private American education, gilded with Ivy Granted and Tweed, Pomona, Wellesley, Bowden,
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: keep going, and after you get to the fancy schools,
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: and the tier below the fancy schools, and the tier
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: below that tier, there is a bottomless pit into which
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: US News dumps all the colleges that they considered too
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: mediocre to marit proper assessment. Dillard is in the bottomless pit.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: My question was why. That's the mystery that led me
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: all the way down to New Orleans to see Walter Kimbro.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: What does America's premier ranking system have against Dillard University.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: My name is Malcolm Glawe. You're listening to Revision's History,
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: my podcast about things overlooked and Misunderstood. This episode is
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: a continuation of my investigation of the strange annual American
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: ritual known as the US News Best Colleges Rankings. I
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: decided I'd pick a school in order to better understand
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: how the rankings work, make it a case study, analyze
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: its performance on the bewildering set of metrics used by
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: the mysterious US News algorithm. Let's call this investigation Project Dillard.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: About three quarters of the student body at Dillard are
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: Pelgrant eligible, meaning they qualify for federal assistance. The average
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: family income of the students is just over thirty thousand
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: dollars a year. A third of them are the first
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: in their families to go to college. Virtually all are black.
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: Dylan is a part of a group of HBCUs they've
• 4:12
  Speaker 4: called the Black Ivy League, so more House, Spelman, Howard Hampton,
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: Dillar was in their group too, and so some people,
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: you know, buy into that a lot and take pride
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: in that, and when they're broke, you won't necessarily know
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: that this is a student that comes from a family
• 4:26
  Speaker 4: they're really sort of struggling because they put it together
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: and they are able to carry themselves like they've been
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: solidly middle class all their life, and they haven't.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: US News tells us that schools ranked higher on their
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: list are better than schools ranked lower on their list,
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: And I want to figure out what US News means
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: by that word better. Why is it that the black
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: IVY League is not treated with the same reverence as
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: the white IVY League. I started this story on a
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: little bit of a lark because I thought it would
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: be fun to make fun of US News. But the
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: more I did it, the angrier I got. A not
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: very sophisticated group of people in Washington, DC came up
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: with a by which we measure higher education in this country,
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: and that standard is massively biased against people who want
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: to serve underserved populations, and they have made the lives
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: of people like you and your students more difficult as
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: a result.
• 5:22
  Speaker 4: Right, That's what it is, exactly, That's I mean, that's
• 5:25
  Speaker 4: exactly what it is. I call, you know, the US
• 5:28
  Speaker 4: News ranking is a perpetuation of privilege. That's what I've
• 5:31
  Speaker 4: always called it is. That's all it is. It's a
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: perpetuation of privilege.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: In last week's episode, I consulted with a group of
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: statisticians at Reid College who had hacked their way into
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: the secret US News algorithm. I decided to call on
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: their services again, this time to help me with the
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: puzzle of Dillard University's rank.
• 5:58
  Speaker 5: My name is Lauren Reebe. I am an environmental studies
• 6:02
  Speaker 5: economics major at Read College and I'm a senior.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: Tell me how how did Kelly recruit you for this project?
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: Kelly Kelly McConville, a professor at Read who enjoys conjoling
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: her students into various acts of statistical mischief.
• 6:20
  Speaker 5: Kelly just messaged me one day and was like, hey, you,
• 6:23
  Speaker 5: I have a project that might be fun for you.
• 6:25
  Speaker 5: We just get to play with data and make some
• 6:27
  Speaker 5: models and try to predict some things.
• 6:29
  Speaker 6: And hold on, hold on. Your first question was can
• 6:32
  Speaker 6: I make graphs?
• 6:35
  Speaker 7: That's true.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: I think we need to go back to the mysterious
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: variable that makes up such a large portion of the
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: US News algorithm, the Peer Assessment Score. US News asks
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: every college president, provost, and admissions dean in the country
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: to rank the academic reputation of every other college in
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: their category on a scale of one to five. If
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: you listen to the previous episode, you'll know that I
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: couldn't figure out how all those college presidents came up
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: up with their peer assessment grades.
• 7:11
  Speaker 8: I tried.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: I interrogated Bob Morse, who runs the rankings. I had
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: a long interview with a mysterious deep throat figure named
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: Dean as we did a peer assessment lightning round. I
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: looked into whether hot sauce could sway the graters in
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: the end. Let's be honest, I got nowhere. But then
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: I realized I could ask the read college hackers to
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: do a statistical analysis what factors actually correlate with the
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: peer assessment score. That was my assignment for Lauren Rabe.
• 7:45
  Speaker 5: We were focusing on a few variables. College endowment, which
• 7:48
  Speaker 5: is just how much money they have in the bank.
• 7:51
  Speaker 5: We were looking at tuition, so how much it costs
• 7:53
  Speaker 5: for a student to attend, the percent of students that
• 7:56
  Speaker 5: are white, the percent of students that receive PEL grants.
• 8:00
  Speaker 5: And I found that endowment by itself, just the size
• 8:04
  Speaker 5: of the endowment predicts half of the peersssessment score, So
• 8:10
  Speaker 5: we can explain half of the assessments. The peer assessment
• 8:14
  Speaker 5: scored just by how much money a school has in
• 8:16
  Speaker 5: the bank, and then once we start adding the other
• 8:19
  Speaker 5: the remaining school characteristics, we end up with over ninety percent.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: Ninety one point three percent to be precise. It seems
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: pretty clear that you can predict the reputation assigned to
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: every college in the country with almost perfect accuracy, just
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: by spending a few minutes on Google. Dillard's reputation score
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: is two point six a terrible score, by the way,
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: but now we know why. It's not because there's something
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: very wrong with Dillard's reputation. It's because Dillard falls short
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: in all of the areas that make for a high score.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: There aren't a lot of white people on campus. The
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: tuition is low compared with top liberal arts colleges. It's
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: nineteen thousand dollars a year, and Dillard's endowment is a
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: minuscule one hundred and five million dollars. A top rank
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: school like Williams College has two billion more dollars in
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: the bank than Dillard. The next thing US News really
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: cares about is graduation rates. What percentage of a freshman
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: class get their degree within six years. US News rewards
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: schools for having high graduation rates, and they punish schools
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: for low graduation rates on the theory that a school's
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: graduation rate tells you something about how well it educates
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: and inspires its students. This metric seems to make a
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: lot more sense than peer assessment scores. Right at Dillard,
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: the graduation rate is around fifty percent. How can we
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: call a school good if half its students don't graduate?
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: But when I asked Walter Kimbro about this, here's what
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: he said.
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: I was doing one of my one meetings with a
• 10:09
  Speaker 4: freshman student last week and the question I asked, what's
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: the best part about being a college student?
• 10:15
  Speaker 8: Was the worst part?
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: And she said the worst part for her was Thanksgiving
• 10:18
  Speaker 4: and Christmas. It's like why, she said, because I had
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: to figure out what I was gonna do, where I
• 10:22
  Speaker 4: could live. It was very powerful the way that she said.
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: I was like, because I was like, what.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: Do you mean?
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: Why is that the worst part of college? She said,
• 10:29
  Speaker 4: I didn't know where I was gonna stay.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: Think of how difficult it must be for that student
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: to focus on staying in school. How can you plan
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: for the future when your life right now is so unstable?
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: And what happens when someone in your family gets ill,
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: or loses their job, or has an accident, and all
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: of a sudden, the cost of sending you to school
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: becomes overwhelming. If the average family income of your student
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: body is just over thirty thousand dollars a year, there's
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: going to be a lot of that.
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: For a school like us that you're seventy five percent
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: pail grant eligible. If you have a six year graduation
• 11:06
  Speaker 4: rate that's over fifty percent, it's almost miraculous because there
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: are so many other factors that I just can't control.
• 11:11
  Speaker 4: I can't control those family pieces, and I just can't
• 11:15
  Speaker 4: control that.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: Just for contrast, the graduation rate at a school like Boden,
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: currently number six on the Liberal Arts College Rankings, ninety
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: five percent. Everyone graduates, maybe because one in every five
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: students at Boden comes from a family with an income
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: in the top one percent. The worst part of Christmas
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: for a Boden student is deciding which of their houses
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: to go to. No one's dropping out of Boden, not
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: with Daddy paying for everything. Graduation rates don't tell you
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: how good a school is. They tell you what kind
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: of students a school is admitting. My first conclusion in
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: the Project Dillard investigation, why is Dillard at the bottom
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: of the rankings? They enroll the wrong kind of student.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: Halfway through Project Dillard, I had the idea of conducting
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: a thought experiment. Most of the things that US News
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: cares about have to do with money. That's how you
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: raise your academic reputation score. Wealthy students are also way
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: more likely to graduate from school. That boosts your school
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: as well. But there are many other variables in the
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: US News rankings that are also really just about how
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: much money a school has in the bank. Variables like
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: faculty resources, financial resources per student, average, alumni giving rate,
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: graduate indebtedness, and on and on. Since I was curious
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: about this, I asked Robert Morse, who runs the US
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: News rankings, what is the basis for the assumption that
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: the more money school has, the better quality of the
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: education the school is providing.
• 13:14
  Speaker 9: There's a number of points. One is that you hardly
• 13:18
  Speaker 9: ever hear a college president say cut my budgets, take
• 13:22
  Speaker 9: away my programs, fire my faculty, reduce my sports, and
• 13:28
  Speaker 9: I'll be a better school. It's rare that you see
• 13:32
  Speaker 9: higher education leaders say that less equals more. So this
• 13:37
  Speaker 9: is spending for students on academic programs and on aspects
• 13:43
  Speaker 9: of the education like that you have a greater chance
• 13:46
  Speaker 9: of having a richer academic experience. And if you have
• 13:50
  Speaker 9: less spending, then you're going to have less. And we're
• 13:53
  Speaker 9: saying that in this case, more is better than less.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: More is better than less. I mean, look, I mean,
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: let's assume I'm getting paid two hundred thousand dollars a year.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: If you can say, Malcolm, if I gave you four
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: hundred thousand, would you be a better writer? I would
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: say absolutely, I would be better. But that would be false.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: There's no correlation. But how much you pay Malcolm, how
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: good Malcolm's writing is?
• 14:25
  Speaker 9: Right? But that's I'm not sure that analogy works in
• 14:28
  Speaker 9: this particular case because you're dealing with, you know, a budget,
• 14:34
  Speaker 9: and it's buying many different things than one human's human
• 14:41
  Speaker 9: being skill. In your analogy, your article isn't going to
• 14:45
  Speaker 9: be any better, even though maybe you'd get some incentive
• 14:50
  Speaker 9: to work more.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: Oh right, all right, For the purposes of this thought experiment,
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: let's stipulate, as the lawyer say that more money is
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: better than less money and simply proceed with the question
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: of what would happen if Walter kimbro were to wake
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: up one morning and decide to do things the US
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: News way. Let's further stipulate that after this change of heart,
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: a miracle occurs and someone gives Dillard University a lot
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: of money, Let's say two billion, a nice round number.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: What happens in the real world If you gave Walter
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: Kimbroke two billion, the first thing he would do is
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: make Dillard bigger, give more students the benefit of a
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: Dillard education. The problem is that yet another of the
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: categories employed by the US News algorithm is student selectivity.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: How academically, elite is the freshman class you admit each year,
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: And the fastest way to an elite freshman class, of course,
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: is to let in as few freshmen as possible.
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: So I give you.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: Two billion, you would that would improve your scores on
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: their ranking. But if your goal is to get bigger,
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: then they would. They would ding you for that.
• 16:04
  Speaker 7: They would hurt me, they would hurt you.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: They don't want you to get Bigger's right, But that's
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: Walters nuts. Yep, that's right, Yes, it's nuts, of course
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: it is. And if you're confused right now, join the club.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: But let's put all that aside for a moment. We're
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: doing a thought experiment here a product Dillard, and we're
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: going to play by every rule for Dillard to rise
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: in the rankings. It's pretty clear that the school needs
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: to attract a different kind of student, the kind who
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: is wealthy enough that they give lots of money to
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: the endowment once they graduate. The kind who isn't worried
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: about when they're going to eat and where they're going
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: to sleep, the kind who checks all the US news boxes.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: And how do you attract that kind of student amenities?
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: The big part of this is that in order to
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: raise their ranking, this little black school in the South
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: has got to start attracting more rich white students. So
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: my idea is, well, the only way they're going to
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: attract rich white students is if they have fanciers. I
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: called up my old friend Vanessa, she's in the luxury
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: real estate business.
• 17:16
  Speaker 8: But why, I'm sorry, stupid question, but why does a
• 17:21
  Speaker 8: rich white student raise a ranking?
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: Oh my god, such a good question you have asked.
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: You have asked the question which is the central question
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: all this, which is you're absolutely right, it makes no sense.
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: Why does it matter that you have rich white students.
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: For some reason, the US News algorithm is calculated in
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: such a way that if you have rich white students,
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: you do better.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: But I wanted to get rich kids. You have to
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: you have to induce them to come to your school.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: And I would like to talk about an inducement, which
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: is suppose we were to build at Dillard and incredibly
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: fancy dorm the daughter of the hedge fun guy from
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: New York. I wanted to walk in and say, Wow,
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: how much is that gonna cost? What are we talking
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: about here?
• 18:09
  Speaker 8: You're saying that you want to provide a dorm that
• 18:11
  Speaker 8: looks like a hotel suite that they stay in when
• 18:15
  Speaker 8: they're with their parents on a luxurious vacation. Yes, and
• 18:20
  Speaker 8: what does that cost? Okay, So the way we calculate
• 18:24
  Speaker 8: pricing is cost per key, right, So we spend a
• 18:30
  Speaker 8: minimum of two million dollars per key, not including the land.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: Two million dollars per key. That's what the wealthiest are
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: expecting in terms of high quality living these days.
• 18:45
  Speaker 8: We have very fine materials that we have throughout the rooms.
• 18:50
  Speaker 8: You will never see dry wall, for example, no.
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: Drywall, so no dry wall.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: A two million per key.
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: Dry wall is like the boat dirty word.
• 19:01
  Speaker 8: Another example that we're doing is swimming pools on the
• 19:05
  Speaker 8: terraces recessed into the balcony. Oh wow, and in every room.
• 19:12
  Speaker 8: That's one of our new projects.
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: So wait, you could do this. You could totally do
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: this in the ORMs. Of course, to go to our college.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: Example, the college came to you and said, I want
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: a dorm for two I want a wow doorm for
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: two hundred students. You think you could do that for
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: four hundred million dollars.
• 19:32
  Speaker 8: Yeah, I think we could.
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you think you could. The kid, the eighteen year
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: old's going to walk in with daddy, and Daddy's going
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: to say, okay, you know, little what's her name? I
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: don't know, Jenny, Jenny. Jenny. Jenny's going to be happy here.
• 19:49
  Speaker 8: Jenny's going to be happy.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: We were laughing about this because it's absurd, right, But
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: just imagine that Walter Kimbro actually built the dorm that
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: Vanessa was imagining, and that little Jenny, the hedge funder's
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: daughter and all the other little Jenny's out there, decided
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: as a result to come to Dillard. Dillard would start
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: to rise immediately in the rankings. Why because those Jennies
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: are all going to graduate and the algorithm will love that.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: And after graduation, the Jennies will make generous gifts to
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: Dillard's endowment because Walter will give them naming rights for
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: the brand new Dillard University students BA. Then the other
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: college presidents will google that big endowment number and start
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: to give Dillard a higher peer assessment score, which will
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: in turn lead to more Jennies taking Dillard seriously, until
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: the parents of Beverly Hills and Palm Beach and the
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: Upper east Side will casually let it drop at the
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: country club. That can you believe it, Little Jenny has
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: gotten into Dillard. Remember Kelly McConville of Red College, the
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: leader of my consulting band of hackers, A call her
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: back in to double check the math run the numbers
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: on a Dillard full of Jennies through her simulated US
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: News algorithm.
• 21:20
  Speaker 10: So Williams is the top ranked liberal arts college with
• 21:24
  Speaker 10: an endowment of over two point eight billion dollars. So
• 21:30
  Speaker 10: if we take Williams financials and put them in for Dillard,
• 21:34
  Speaker 10: Dillard goes from one sixty one to being tied for
• 21:39
  Speaker 10: one oh three.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: So wait, this is positives is interesting. Yeah, So we
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: haven't changed any of the fundamentals in the classroom. We
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: haven't changed the enthusiasm of the teachers. We haven't changed,
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: you know, the spirit of the students. We haven't changed.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: All we've done is that we have plunked a very
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: large amount of money in the bank account of Dillard exactly.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: That vaults them from the bottom of the pass to
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: essentially the middle. Yep, Okay, okay, let's keep going.
• 22:13
  Speaker 10: Yeah, so next you gave us a slightly trickier one
• 22:17
  Speaker 10: where we're now going to layer on top of all
• 22:19
  Speaker 10: that the test scores.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: Oh I nearly forgot test scores another key US news factor.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: In all likelihood, our Jennies had private tutors to help
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: them raise their SAT scores. They went to private prep
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: schools that take standardized tests. Really seriously, this is a
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: variable with Jenny's name written all over it. So what
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: if Walter Kimbro told all of his lower achieving students
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: to go home and rebuilt all of Dillard around only
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: the highest test score Jennis? What would that do for
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: the school's rank?
• 22:55
  Speaker 10: Now, they went from one to oh three to forty three,
• 23:01
  Speaker 10: So that went up sixty slabs just by adjusting those
• 23:05
  Speaker 10: two variables.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: Just like, to hell with this antiquated notion of trying
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: to educate a large swath of students who want to
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: come to New Orleans to attend a HBCU. We're just
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: cream skimming from now on, right, Okay, can we get
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: them higher than forty three? She said, sure we can,
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: and began going through the remaining items on the US
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: News checklist, and lo and behold, this was a test
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: our shiny New Dillard. Haste. I mean, teach your student ratios.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: They're tiny. Now we told half our students to go home.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: Faculty resources ginormous. We're loaded.
• 23:49
  Speaker 6: I mean, I don't know what school we're looking at now,
• 23:52
  Speaker 6: but this school, after we Jared cranked all of those things,
• 23:56
  Speaker 6: turned all of those dials, means this New Dillard is
• 24:00
  Speaker 6: ranked third.
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 24:03
  Speaker 6: So that is how we can get Dillard into the
• 24:06
  Speaker 6: tippy top tier of the liberal arts colleges.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: So it's williams Amherst Dillard swarthwarw Yes project. Dillard has
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: given us a new school with a very different soundtrack.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: Can we convince Yale to lend them the Whiffin poofs.
• 24:30
  Speaker 7: Are a latche who.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: Have a preacher's kid like Walter Kimbro, would know the
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: Biblical lesson here Mark eight thirty six. For what shall
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: it profit a man if he shall gain the whole
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: world and lose his own soul? God have mercion.
• 24:51
  Speaker 8: Such as sweet.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: When Walter Kimbro gave me his tour of the Dillard camp,
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: he talked about the things that made Dillard special.
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: We have certain things. When I got here, I realized
• 25:15
  Speaker 4: that we have this physics program and people then talk
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: about it that at the time I think was number
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: two in the country for producing African Americans who get
• 25:23
  Speaker 4: undergraduate degrees in physics. I think right now we rank
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: number three, but if you do it per capita, we're
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: number one. We've been number one for a while.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: In twenty nineteen, Dillard produced thirteen African American physics grads,
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: according to Department of Education numbers, Harvard produced one. In
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: the past ten years, Dillard has graduated thirty five black
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: physics grads, Harvard five. Now you might say that's just
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: because Harvard doesn't have a lot of black students. That's
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: not true. Harvard admitted over three hundred black undergraduates this year,
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: which is about the same as Dillard. Okay, is it
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: because Dillard's students are smarter than Harvard's, more capable of
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: handling physics? Not true, Harvard's Harvard they get the best
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: high schoolers in the nation, So why is Dillard doing
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: so much better? It turns out that this same pattern
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: is true of HBCUs as a group. When it comes
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: to producing graduates in STEM science, math, engineering, and technology,
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: Black schools punch way above their weight. Walter Kimbro brought
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: up the other big HBCU in New Orleans just down
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: the road from Dillard, Xavier University. Not terribly big or
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: rich either.
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: Xavier wasn't form until nineteen twenty five, I believe, but
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: they've really gained a no variety because they really leaned
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: in on sending the people to medical school, and so
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: they send more people to medical school African America's any
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: school in the country.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: The explanation seems to be that at most schools, there's
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: a huge problem in STEM with what educators referred to
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: as leakiness. Students start out majoring in science and math,
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: but then they change may and the problem is most
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: pronounced at selective schools.
• 27:14
  Speaker 7: These institutions cream off the top, so to speak.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: That's Mitchell Chang, educational researcher at UCLA who has studied
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: the problem.
• 27:23
  Speaker 7: And those who don't make it to the top find
• 27:28
  Speaker 7: themselves losing the confidence to continue and leave STEM, the
• 27:35
  Speaker 7: STEM field and their pursuit of a STEM degree altogether.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: But at the one hundred or so historically black colleges
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: in the United States, places like Dillard, the STEM pipeline
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: isn't leaky. If I was a Martian looking at this,
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: I would say, well, Harvard should be able to identify
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: every one of these struggling students and encourage them and
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: help them and tutor them and get them through. That
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: doesn't happen.
• 27:59
  Speaker 7: I think you kind of hit on an important factor here,
• 28:04
  Speaker 7: the difference between what HBCUs do and what these highly
• 28:10
  Speaker 7: selective often referred to as predominantly white institutions or pwis do,
• 28:17
  Speaker 7: And one is, you know, more geared toward creaming off
• 28:22
  Speaker 7: the top, and the other one being much more developmental,
• 28:27
  Speaker 7: meeting students where they're at and lifting them and developing
• 28:33
  Speaker 7: them to achieve their potential.
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: Meeting students where they're at. Mitchell Chang is talking about
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: academic culture, about places that care and at this HBCUs
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: seem to excel. While I was visiting Dillard's campus, Walter
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: Kimber arranged for me to meet a group of students
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: eight or syllabus around a conference table, and this is
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: all the students ended up talking about what it felt
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: like to be at Dillard.
• 29:06
  Speaker 11: I could call it doctor Kimber right now and say hey,
• 29:09
  Speaker 11: I'm doing this, can you help me? And he'll answer
• 29:11
  Speaker 11: the phone. It's not straight to voicemail. So I think
• 29:13
  Speaker 11: that's a really big hug. My advisors are the best.
• 29:16
  Speaker 11: They invested me. If I missed class, she will call
• 29:19
  Speaker 11: me right after class is over to make sure I'm okay.
• 29:22
  Speaker 11: One and two, Why did I miss class? Because it's
• 29:25
  Speaker 11: important to go to class.
• 29:26
  Speaker 12: I feel appreciated, Like I mean, I can name pretty
• 29:28
  Speaker 12: much all the administration in this room, or like I
• 29:31
  Speaker 12: could walk in there and I could see somebody I
• 29:32
  Speaker 12: know for sure and just have a genuine connection relationship.
• 29:36
  Speaker 12: It's a true family, and I feel like as much
• 29:39
  Speaker 12: as I pour in, they pour back.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: Another student talked about how if you'd gone to a
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: big university, things happening back home might have gotten in
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: a way.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: I probably wouldn't be in school anymore. Unfortunately, because my
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: freshman year I experienced a loss in my family and
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: he was very, very difficult, And had it not been
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: for the faculty and the other students here who cared
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: about me, like some of the students here sitting next
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: to me, I don't think that I would still be
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: in school.
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: Do students at other small schools feel this way, of
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: course they do. Students at Williams and Amherston's Swarthmore probably
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: feel part of a family too, But historically black colleges
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: have managed to take that community feeling and translate it
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: into a very effective academic culture.
• 30:34
  Speaker 7: And they're doing it in a way where they're not
• 30:36
  Speaker 7: getting the same talent pool. They're getting students who are
• 30:41
  Speaker 7: more likely to be first generation students from lower income
• 30:45
  Speaker 7: families and who are not as well prepared to pursue
• 30:50
  Speaker 7: a science degree. So it's quite remarkable.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: A school helps its students succeed at the subject they
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: came to college to pursue. It creates a culture geared
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: to helping students reach their potential, and it does all
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: that for a price that working families can have forward
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: on a charming campus in the middle of an amazing city.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: Doesn't that sound like the definition of an elite school.
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: Some years ago, Walter Kimbro heard that an editor from
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: US News was coming to speak at a nearby event.
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: Well, I was like, cleit a schedule, I've got to
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: go here the US News guy. And I was like,
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: and I got to have a chance to ask him
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: a question. So I did, and I said, you know,
• 31:38
  Speaker 4: how do we, you know, justify having a ranking system
• 31:42
  Speaker 4: that basically measures privilege? And if I want to have
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: a good ranking, I need to make sure I keep
• 31:48
  Speaker 4: out poor students, black students, part time students, non traditional students.
• 31:54
  Speaker 4: If I do those things, my ranking is high.
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: And he couldn't.
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: Answer the question. He said, well, you know, it's America
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: and this is how we measure merrit and blah blah blah.
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: There's an older gentleman afterwards came and laughed at me.
• 32:07
  Speaker 4: He said he didn't want to answer that question because
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: that's the whole game. It's like, it's just the formula.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: It is the formula. Rankings place us all in a
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: world with a clear set of rules that more is
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: better than less, rich is better than poor, white is
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: better than black. None of us think we want to
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: be part of that world. But when college presidents dutifully
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: send in their forms every year to US News, when
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: high school students battle with each other over who gets
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: to go to the higher ranked school, when parents boast
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: about how Jenny got into this school or that school,
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: we're all complicit in the game. Will you promise me
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: that you'll just stand up and just say, ladies and gentlemen,
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: can we all just agree to drop out of the
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: US News thing right now?
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, I would love yeah.
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: But they're gonna be folks who, like I said, they are,
• 33:06
  Speaker 4: so this is this important.
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: You're a persuasive guy. I feel like you could do that.
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: You think I could do it.
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: You have a little bit of your dad, and you
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: just just stand up and preach.
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I wouldn't need to have that.
• 33:19
  Speaker 8: I need to have that.
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: So from it from the mount to really try to
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: make it happen.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: Revision's History is produced by Mio Nobel, Leeming, Gestu, and
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: Jacob Smith, with Elowise Linton and On a Name. Our
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: editor is Julia Barton. Original scoring by Luis Skara, mastering
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: by Flaun Williams, engineering by Martin Gonzalez, fact checking by
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: Amy Gaines Special thanks to the Pushkin Crew Had a Fame,
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: Carly McLear, Maya Knigg, Danielle Lacon, Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler,
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: Nicole Morano, Jason Gambrel, and of course, Jacob Weisberg. Special
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: thanks also to the Dillard University Choir and their director,
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: Samuel Davenport. I'm Malcolm Bammoll. Don't forget my latest book,
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: The Bomber Mafia, which is an expansion of several episodes
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: from the last season of Revisionist History. You can find
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: it wherever books are sold, but by the audiobook at
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: Bombermafia dot com and you'll get a bonus listener's guide,
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: and you can listen in the podcast app you're using
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: now