Joe Sallustio: Transparency in Higher Education; How Universities are Evolving

Disclaimer: Transcripts were generated automatically and may contain inaccuracies and errors.

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Dr. Joe Sallustio. Thanks for jumping on learning from others. Thank you for having me. It’s an honor. I appreciate your time. And, um, as I said before, we jumped into this, I’d like to ask, I guess two questions. Question number one is why are we listening to you today? What’s your background? What are we going to learn?

Well, you know, I’ve been working in higher education for about 20 years specifically. Excuse me, an online.

But with everybody being at home and kids getting sent home K through 12 craziness, all of that. And, uh, uh, I’ve uh, spent my time in education, growing schools. Um, I, uh, it’s the Y Y listening to me, that’s the funny part is because I hated education. I hated education and I work in education, which, uh, which doesn’t make much sense, but, you know, I hated school wanted to get out as quickly as possible.

Uh, the only things I ever got A’s in my undergrad were ballroom dancing and. And a racketball. I basically got a, B or C and everything else, a D and yoga. If you could tell you what my engagement, the, it looked like when I was in an undergrad and then I got out and they worked and I went back to school, got a master’s and a doctorate.

And here I am 20 years working in education and I could have never imagined that ever happening. So I have, I think I have more credibility than most people because absolutely hated school. And I could tell you all the things that you’ve been on both sides, you’re like, oh, you’re like the, uh, The fitness instructor that went and gained a hundred pounds, so he could better understand his audience and the trials they go through to lose a hundred pounds.

That’s right. And that’s funny because before this, I was talking to like a group of high school kids tell him, they’re asking me, you know, how did you know you’re going to work in education? I just had no answer for them. I had no. Yeah, right. I’m going to actually make a note to come back to that. How did you know you’d be in it?

Because that’s actually something that I’m pretty passionate about talking about. It was kind of the path. We can go down with that one. So, but not until I ask you question number two is we know that you suck at lots of things that you’ve already told us, but what else, what do you suck at specifically?

You know, I specifically suck at balancing my work. And my home life. I’m, I’m a sucky work-life balance person. I overwork, um, I got two little kids. I probably, you know, I hate to do the self-evaluation on your podcast cause I told them gushing now, but I probably need to do a little bit better, uh, spending time with them and getting off my devices when I’m with them.

I really suck at that. I’m always stay connected. I’m looking at my email when I’m trying to play, you know, superheroes with my little boy. So I, I really suck at that. You and I are going to have a therapy session because I’m on the other side of the mic. That is my area of expertise. Is that right? Yeah.

All right. Well maybe it is, but maybe we’ll table the discussion for after we’re finished recording. Like it. All right. So this is an interesting topic because I’m just, so it will be familiar with my background, but I’ll kind of give you the crash course. So, so it’s relevant to the discussion. So I went to college, um, and then I ended up not returning.

I was probably only like a semester short before I started my business. And then I found success in there and, you know, largely you go to college to, um, figure out what your opportunities are and hopefully end up in a successful position. And so. Ran with what was in front of me and was fortunate that way.

So I’m, I’m not the, the lover or the hater of college. I’m somewhere in the middle where I don’t. Um, I do, I do find it has value for certain circumstances and other circumstances. I don’t think it’s the solve all be all. And, um, so that’s my kind of position on it. So this will be cool to talk about with somebody.

Can actually bring some credibility to the discussion. So, um, what start with how you said, you know, you didn’t know you were going to get an education, so what is your doctorate in it’s in education? No, it’s an organizational leadership. Um, so, and this is th this. I mean, this is the part where you start thinking through these things.

You know, I was in, uh, when I got my graduate degree, my masters, I was working in education obviously. And I was managing like, I don’t know, like 200 employees and I was having all these human resource issues, hit me, slap me in the face. Things like, uh, you know, my neighbors wearing too much perfume and it’s, and I’m allergic to the smell and I’m ha breaking out in hives.

You know, what, what do I do with that? You know, you’re going to go talk to somebody about not wearing a specific perfume. I mean, so I’m like ill equipped to deal with this level of issues for these, these employees that I have at the time. And so I’m like, I got to get a graduate degree with a S with a focus in human resources, but I got an org leadership was the macro focus because I wanted something that was transferable in case I didn’t make an education.

And it was the same type of decision-making through my doctorate was. I don’t want to get a doctorate in education. What happens if I stopped working in education and I have a doctorate in higher ed. So I got, I got an educational doctorate in organizational leadership because if I go to work for a, if I go to work for a marketing company or Pepsi or somebody like that, it’s still relevant because it’s about leadership in an organizational culture.

Yeah. So what do you do about excessive incorrect? Perfect. Um, you don’t even want to know what those conversations look like, and I’m giving you the most of my eyes.

There’s, there’s a lot of relevancy to the types of things that we can talk about. You know, some of them being obviously COVID going on, uh, some of them being. Online, um, education is kind of encroaching on the footprint of traditional higher education. Um, like what’s, you know, the other big one is student debt.

Um, I don’t even know those are all relevant topics. Why don’t we stop with COVID or stop with COVID let’s just stop COVID right now. Okay. Why don’t we let’s kill COVID let’s start with COVID and how has that impacted higher education? If any. It’s impacted it quite quite a bit. I mean, you know, I think you have, uh, oh shoot.

Uh, Damon, can I, can I stop this for a second? I hate to do this to you. I’ll just make a note for my editor. I can put you on mute real fast. Hold on. My boss is calling. If I don’t take it, I’m going to I’ll have my

okay. Okay.

thanks.

Dude. I’m totally sorry about that now. You’re cool. You’re cool. I made a note to how my editor cut it out. Right. Um, I’ll have you pick up when I’m talking about what affecting higher ed. Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, uh, COVID has affected higher ed in every way that you could imagine, and it’s affected, uh, on-ground universities first, right?

Because. Stop having students on ground and you have to immediately move online. So, um, I have a podcast called the ed up experience that I do on the side and we talked to college leaders. And one of the things I can tell you is that we actually have chronicled this. We, we talked to college leaders when they still had students on ground and COVID was a, uh, just an exploratory disease that everybody was asking questions about, to all the way to now.

And, and, you know, you asked, um, about, about online. Um, I don’t know how you put it, but you said that online coaching on a traditional model, it’s, it’s actually in reverse now it’s on ground traditional higher education having to move into online. Um, they’re they’re they are having to. Uh, provide online courses to students for a number of reasons or, um, on ground.

Even in the limited fashion, we’re racing as fast as possible to Thanksgiving. They get to Thanksgiving, they get to send everybody home and disperse them off campus. And then they’re not going to take them back until after Christmas. Right. When kids would you go back to school and under. Cool between the holidays.

They’re not doing that anybody sort of sting way. So yeah, big traditional universities that would very quickly. And, um, in many cases to offer all everything online, talked to some schools and 500, 6,000, 10,000 courses moving them online, 400, 500 a thousand instructors. Now faculty members having to teach online that have never done it before.

So that amount of work that transition to online was very. A fast and traditionally higher ed doesn’t move fast. You don’t, if somebody said, you know, Damon, what industry do you think moves the fastest? Nobody, you know, is going to ever say higher education. Right? So, uh, it’s, it’s been affected we’re we’re still effective.

We’re still trying to. Well, it’s interesting that you say that because you know, one of the first things that I was going to talk about when you started talking was how I did online education. Um, twenty-something years ago when, when I first started my, my intro into college and universities and. When I’ve been exposed to like one example, I’m mentoring my nephew right now.

And so he and his girlfriend and their nice shoes and their paths, like, do I go to college? Do I don’t and you know, what are the pros and cons of both circumstances. And as I, as I’ve been exposed to things like that and talking with other younger people, um, and I’ve look at what they. Platforms are, and the online environments and the experiences are you’re totally right.

And, and this was pre COVID. Um, but yeah, I felt like the. Granted, I was probably exposed to online universities a lot earlier than most people, because it was in its infancy 20 years ago. Right. But I would have thought some ground would have been made up and it, and it largely could have, like you said, because you had to accelerate that because of COVID, but why, w why is that such a hurdle for online or for higher education?

Um, like, is it, uh, it’s not broke, don’t fix it kind of thing, or how come there’s not more opportunities for education to move a little bit. You know, we’re, we’re traditionally, um, held down by bureaucratic, you know, decision-making, it’s funny that you have. I talked to a guy at the department of education on my podcast recently, which the episode hasn’t come out yet, but I’ll um, I’ll, I’ll talk to you about the discussion.

And he used to work for a university, a very traditional university. So he goes over to the department of education. You’d think that the department of education even move slower and more traditionally. Yeah. Higher ed. And he said it was completely the opposite. So the government was moving way faster than the traditional higher ed institution.

It’s just bogged down with bureaucracy and committees and, and, uh, and senates. And, you know, you want to have shared governance, but you know, it’s very, very hard. It’s a, it’s a balance to have shared governance and speed. Um, at the same time are very difficult. So that’s why for-profit universities mainly about the university of Phoenix and, and now call them, um, nonprofit universities modeled after for-profit universities like Southern New Hampshire university in Western governor’s university are so huge.

It’s because they can move a lot faster than traditional higher ed. So, yeah, I mean, it’s some resistance to change. I mean, you know, when you think of traditional higher ed you’d picture like this. Bricks and a big clock at the top. Right. It’s uh, it just seems slow. Uh, um, but you know, COVID really pushed things forward by years.

So, uh, if COVID hadn’t happened, let’s, let’s go back in time a little bit because some of it’s probably still applicable even with COVID maybe assault some of it. Uh, what’s the fix. How, how, how do we bring higher education to a more current model? You know, the, the business model was already in question that the financial models within higher ed, you know, your, your tuition dependency or you’re dependent on having X amount of students that produce X amount of dollars.

Um, you have fundraising, which is always difficult in higher education and, and, you know, pre COVID, it was hard post COVID. When you see most of the dollars transitioning to healthcare and away from higher education, it becomes even more, uh, difficult. And then, you know, Always ask the questions within higher education.

How do we diversify our revenue stream? What else can we offer besides the traditional degree? So you’ve heard things like, uh, micro-credentialing badging non-credit certificates, all of those are ways for higher education to adapt, but because we don’t move. As fast as this is pre COVID, as fast as other industries, then you see Amazon investing millions of dollars into their infrastructure to train their own staff, Google coming out with non-credit certificates for cloud computing technology.

So you end up with competitors and other industries that hopefully move you along faster. So we were seeing that some pre COVID, but, but certainly now post COVID, a lot of that is happening organic. So, how do you discuss with, how do you approach the discussion with students? That because of COVID, I’ve seen news headlines where some students will say, well, I’m paying full price, but I’m not feeling like I’m getting the full price experience.

What’s the discussion like around that topic? Yeah. That’s um, that is, that’s a key discussion. And it, you know, I think largely depends on the brand, right? So you take a well-known Ivy league university that everybody probably listening to this would know charging $50,000 a semester or a year, um, for online classes, which is what they would charge if you were on ground.

And that’s just what they charge. If you want to go there, you’re paying for name, your quality of education. Actual quality of education by and large, no matter the type of institution, it’s pretty similar accreditation bodies that monitor the quality of education would oversee a community college and they could oversee a brand name, Ivy league university, but the quality has certain standards.

So you’re not really paying for an increase in quality as much as you are paying for brand recognition and networking. And so for students that want to limit debt, there’s so many ways to do it. To approach college in a different way. Um, so, so to get to your point, can you go online, if you have to, um, uh, and reduce your debt, do you want to go online to the brand name, university and pay thousands and thousands of dollars, or you want to go online to university where you can limit your debt and come out with a very similar education?

It does the name matter that much. You know how many people will look at your resume and go, oh, he graduated or she graduated from this university. So I feel like I should interview that person. I think by and large, they look for the checkoff that you have the degree, if it’s required and don’t necessarily care where it’s from.

 

So basically it’s because certain institutions are the Gucci and the Versace of the brand name awareness. Exactly. I think that’s that’s that’s right. Or at least, you know, the bag you have, it’s green. It doesn’t say Gucci on it carries your stuff the same exact way. It’s just the design on the outside that stuff.

Yeah. Uh, Joe, why are you so transparent about. Uh, you know, I think students are like a hundred times smarter than they used to be. Um, and that’s not to say that students are increasing in intelligence, but I think what’s happening is that the student, the average student is becoming much more a consumer of an education rather than somebody that’s chosen to attend a university.

Right. There’s a, there there’s a big difference. An active and passive recruitment, you know, uh, and COVID has really pointed a lot of that. Our institutions that just waited for students to knock on the door and come in now have to go online and market against big online universities and don’t have the experience to do that.

So my theory is the more transparent I can be about the educational experience, the more trust I’m going to gain. Both potential and current students about what I’m offering, because frankly, the online customer, which is an online student, right? They’re a customer dare, dare. I say it can very easily disappear and go somewhere else.

Just like you can order from Amazon and then move to Walmart. If you want to, it’s the same thing in higher ed, you can move anywhere in the country online now. Yeah. What, you know, it’s an interesting topic about customers coming, customers, students coming and going. And then you also touched on, um, the, the business model of schools and how they need to stay afloat and stay in the positive.

So what actually happens when a school goes under what happens to the students that had a degree? I assume that still counts. What happens to the students that we’re halfway through something, what all happens. You’ve asked me a question now that, um, I fortunately, or unfortunately have a tremendous amount of experience.

So when I was in the for-profit sector with the university prior to my current position at Claremont Lincoln university, I was at the for-profit university and we received, we were on the receiving end of eight, separate teach out in transfer agreement. Through over a three-year period. So I’ll just go to the first one you’re talking about, uh, uh, uh, it was a nonprofit college in, um, in Kansas city closes it’s about 1500 students.

All right. We take, uh, 700 a hundred of those students. So what happens is that institution just didn’t have the money to operate it. They look at options. Can we transfer students here? Does it make sense? Do we have the money to continue to operate through those transfers? When the answer is no, what happened was schools literally shut their doors.

They just shut their doors and the students disperse. And this particular case, we struck an agreement with this, this closing college. So what happened? Well, if you. Two weeks out from obtaining your degree, you actually have to go back and potentially take up 20 to 25% of a program somewhere else. So can you imagine being two weeks away from completion and having your school clothes?

It’s a feeling that I can’t even imagine. Um, but, but in, in those instances, yeah, those eight closing schools, we were able to, uh, take about 5,000 students through transfer a credit and graduate them off. So, you know, it’s an emotional rollercoaster, uh, for the students, for the, for the faculty and employees at the closing school.

But boy is it it’s craziness. It really is. But. But it can be done and those students have to become the priority as long as their priority. And they’re central to the decision-making. You can, you can do it in a way that polishes them off with their degree in the end. How long is a closing process?

Typically, I imagine it varies depending on the financial stability of the institution, but is there kind of like an average timeframe? Um, yes. Uh, uh, you’d hope that the, uh, there, there are a couple of those eight, um, Closed immediately as in Friday, rumor comes out, institution’s going to close. Monday.

Student walks to school and chains unlocks around the doors because the school is shut down is going through liquidation, filed bankruptcy and so on. So it could be completely immediate. Uh, I’ve also seen them go out a full term three, four months for students to finish out a term. And take that time to try to look at other schools.

So there’s been some that have done that, that have done, that were done very well, uh, by the institution that was closing. And we’re going to see a number of institutions close over the next 18 months in higher education, because it’s going to be hard to compete. I mean, there’s just less students to go around.

Right. So we’ll see it happen again. It’s just that we hope it happens in the room. Where, where does all the money go? Like when schools fail, but they’ve taken in money from tuition. They, they obviously also have outgoing expenses. What’s, what’s the biggest thing that what’s the biggest investment that schools have that in a normal circumstance and a pre COVID circumstance, like where does the money draining happen?

Employees usually it’s this, it’s the fixed expense of your employees. If you have buildings that certainly doesn’t help, right? If you’ve got rent, rent, expanse, or lease expense that, um, any kind of fixed expenses, really, what, what kills you in the long run for a lot of those institutions that, um, that I worked with that were closed.

A lot of, it was just the, the demand for online education over the long run. Now you’re stuck with all of these buildings and what are you doing? We’re seeing that happen now with traditional traditional universities where, you know, kids are not on campus. Now you’ve got this building that took you. You know, now you’ve got expense with that building, even if it’s just deferred maintenance and, and, uh, and that money is going to be drained out.

But typically it’s employees, it’s your salary expense that is draining. Um, and you know, we get high, you know, high red, any, I think it’s any business you hire, you hire, you hire to a certain amount and then the student count dips and it’s like, okay, we’re going to still want to keep everybody in. And it’s hard to make those decisions, I think, from a business business lens.

Yeah. So you’ve been super clear on, you know, super transparent on the ups and downs, which I appreciate. And so I want to give you the opportunity to, to share more of the upside you’re from Claremont Lincoln university. So. Kind of live and breathe. This. Why don’t you tell us the upsides of, of the entity that, that you’re kind of doing your thing.

Yeah. So Claremont Lincoln university is, um, uh, the reason I work here, there’s a bunch of reasons, but it’s, it’s dedicated. The university is really dedicated to social change and activism and meaning that we, we teach, uh, uh, uh, you would think of them as soft skills or many people do their essential skills and mindfulness dialogue, collaboration, and change these, these necessary human skills that are becoming more and more important as technology becomes the dominator.

Um, so our students are really into, um, and learning how to interact with each other, how to respectful dialogue and, and work together, even when you have differences with others. And we see society break down in those moments where it’s probably most important to collaborate together with people who disagree with.

So our students are really doing great. Um, the universities. Right. So I came from a, a couple of institutions that were, uh, startup, uh, in startup phases. And so you don’t think of a non-profit university typically as a startup, but when you think of it for a financial perspective, you have a certain amount of money.

You have to make a certain amount of money to pay your bills and all your expenses. And so have. You know, run the race, so to speak, to increase your revenue, uh, faster than your expenses increase. And so it’s been really fun to be in an institution when I came in in 2018 with literally, and I mean it, 10 paying students, we had about 35 students with only 10.

Right. And it was we’re scholarshipping everybody. Cause we didn’t know how to recruit a announced date at approximately 300 students, which, you know, 99% of them are paying. So, um, it’s pretty significant growth over a two year period. And so it’s been really exciting to operate in an educational institution that operates like a startup, but has the best interest of the students at the heart.

So it’s been. Yeah, that’s the entrepreneur in me that that does sound attractive getting in on something early in going through those, um, growth moments. It, it leads me to a couple of interesting questions. I haven’t thought about before who funds a school as a startup? Oh, we had, uh, well, that’s, uh, that’s, uh, a lot of, uh, different answers there, but we actually had a single donor.

His name was David Lincoln, uh, the namesake of the university. And he, uh, gave us, um, you know, really several years of operation. Uh, expense, uh, to, to see if we could move into the future in a way that is sustainable, but then not have to worry about those startup expenses entirely. We’d still be responsible, but we don’t have to worry about making payroll, um, you know, that kind of stuff.

So he was a brilliant, uh, man, I actually only knew him for about three months before he passed at 92. Uh, but, uh, Dedicated to, um, and he said, good ethics is good business. And that’s really one of the foundational tenants of our university. And what was his goal in w what was his dreams behind supporting a school?

Was it a business investment? Was it his way of giving back? Like what was his angle? It was, yeah, he, he didn’t, um, it was his way of giving back and him along with our other founder, Dr. Uh, uh, Reverend Jerry Campbell, it was okay. How the, how, how, you know, people are say they’re ethical or that you want to be more ethical, but how do you actually do it?

How do you teach people to actually do or be more ethical? How do you teach them to, um, have respectful dialogue? And so there was this, uh, point of. A ripple effect or magnify the magnifier effective. If you, if you teach somebody to be more ethical and to, to have better skills and understand differences, then that’s going to permeate through society eventually.

And so you’ll have sustainable societal change through education. Um, and so it was about him multiplying the effective of goodness. Yeah. How do you get those first 10 students? You said that you were scholarshipping a lot of them, which makes sense, but, um, the ones that are paid, how do you initiate that with a new school?

Like how do you, how do you sell them on the belief of trusting. Yeah. You know, I think, um, and you’ll appreciate this. When I came into Claremont Lincoln, we had only a few students, my, my charge was okay, take this university and grow it now, grow it. And so we had to create an infrastructure primarily in digital marketing, um, you know, PPC landing pages, and we had to get our message out.

Um, so social media expansion and so on, and, and you’re right. And it’s still, um, something we deal with today is you’re still in university years. Baby. Um, you know, we’re not a a hundred year old institution. We really became who we are and the way we are today in 2014. So generally people will go, oh, well, that’s not that many years of operation for a university.

So we do have that, that we have to overcome. Um, but you know, I think, uh, most people understand we’re a hundred percent online. Most people understand that that online. Is the future in some way, shape or form is going to be included in education. Even, even at those institutions that have operated a hundred percent on ground, right?

Operating online cuts a lot of those fixed expenses. And so I think universities are going to find that attractive for the long run we were designed to be online. So that’s really our value proposition is we were designed specifically for those adult students looking for online. What’s the head count goal.

Like where, where do you stand? What’s the quantity when you go. All right. We made it, um, you know, we, we really fashioned ourselves around 700 students to a thousand, depending on whether you have part-time or full-time right. All part-time students. It’s probably closer to a thousand. If you have a percentage of them going full-time, it’s, it’s probably closer to 700.

I really think that thousand student number is a sweet spot for us as a, as a, I don’t want to call us a niche institution, but certainly we don’t have programs in 150 areas. Right. It’s really, um, programs based in. You know, that have foundational human skills at their heart. Uh, and so, uh, so I think that’s really where we’re headed and we should be around 500 to hopefully by the end of 2021, still on our way.

And, uh, that that’s the goal, you know, 700, 200. Good for you guys has COVID had a neutral impact on you guys or up or down? Uh, minimal almost non-existent. I mean, we were designed specifically for a COVID situ I mean, we didn’t design the university for a COVID situation, but being online and everybody working from home, uh, we transitioned to home very easily.

Uh, it, it didn’t affect us at all. In fact, uh, I can’t even give you an example of how it has now. It affected our students, which affected us. Right because somebody was a frontline worker and contracted COVID and that affected our interactions with that student. You know, they’re going to drop, you know, stick out a term.

They’re going to get better. They’re going to come back. What’s it look like? So our operations had to change slightly to account for it, but certainly we didn’t have any interruptions. I got an offer. I have a question for you. So I’m looking at your podcast. I’m Dr. Ady Carson assistant professor of hip hop.

That’s a cool title. I want his title. Yeah. You got to listen to it. I mean, it’s amazing when he’s doing his, his dissertation was a wrap-up. That’s why he did his dissertation. Um, so he is super, super cool, um, guy, uh, really interesting. Um, so, you know, across higher education, w when my podcast, what I try to do is, is, uh, is bringing some fun into higher ed, which typically you don’t think of as fun, right?

It’s think of it as work. So we’ve tried to bring in some unique, uh, Well, that is cool. I did, I did seven years on air and radio and a hip hop station in salt lake city. Um, so that’s what caught my attention, but I actually have a relevant question to that is. How, how do universities not necessarily karma Lincoln specifically if it’s not applicable, but in general, like I had never heard of assistant professor of hip hop.

Uh, how, how can more wild card curriculum like that come into existence? What’s the process to go? Yeah, we can do a, some sort of degree or education on hip hop or something more abstract. Yeah. You know, that’s, uh, that’s a tough question because we’re still regulated. We still have accreditors. And so if you’re going to start a new program, it still has to go through an accreditation process, which typically can take like nine months from the, from when you’re finished creating the program.

Um, it can take you nine months to get that program approved. So you have to think really far ahead in higher ed. Uh, you know, you’re looking at, you know, for example, we’re, we’re finishing our 20, 21 strategic plan, but we’re already planning on new program, uh, research for 2022. Um, and what that looks like.

So you have to think way ahead, because if you’re going to design that program in 2021, you’re not going to have it until 2022. You needed to design it in 20. So it’s that, that forward thinking that, uh, you know, we’re really heavily regulated into higher ed. So there’s certain things that just take time.

You can’t just whip something out generally, um, has to go through its hoops and back to the point of why we move slow sometimes. But you can, you can conceptualize something. And if you have enough meat on the bone, you, you can theoretically create a degree for, I don’t want to say anything but like new, certainly.

Yep. Yeah. The learning outcomes have to be there. You you’ll have to, to, um, for the accrediting body, you’ll have to, uh, to, uh, justify outcomes, you know, can these people get a job and work? You can’t just create a degree to get it, to create a degree. Where are they going to work? What are they going to do with.

It’s always a good question, uh, that the accreditor is going to ask and, and hold you to some level of accountability or else you could create a, you know, uh, uh, a degree in standup desks and, uh, you know, nobody’s going to ever work, you know, so that’s, that’s an important part of it as well. Yeah, it’s, it’s interesting.

So, um, advisors, uh, um, for the digital marketing curriculum for a local college and, um, it really is fascinating how much goes into. Future planning. And I can only speak to what I’ve been exposed to, but when we do these semi-annual meetings and it’s like, here’s the curriculum, is it still relevant? Um, or is it going to continue to be relevant?

Like there’s so much forward thinking that you would kind of assume comes with territory, but it goes. Infinitely further than that, it’s been fascinating to be exposed to. I bet it’s it. You know, so much of this too, for, for higher ed and looking forward is we, we, and I say we, because the majority of colleges that are operating, even someone on ground, they, they have to look forward, but you know, your spring terms are baked in now.

You’re, you’ve got to be looking to fall 20, 21. To really have any type of creativity because that’s, you know, spring’s done, uh, for, for all intensive purposes, you know what you’re looking at? You know, what are you going to do next year? Are you going to do in spring of 2022? Those are the hard, hard questions to answer.

Yeah, well, super cool, Joe, I appreciate your time. Um, I want to give you the last few moments to tell our listeners how they can find out more about you find out more about Claremont Lincoln university and, uh, throw out your podcast link again or whatever else. Sure. That’s so, uh, thank you for listening everyone.

Um, uh, Claremont Lincoln university is claremontlincoln.edu offering graduate degree programs. Uh, we actually trademarked socially conscious education. So for those of you social, social, uh, people that really want some level of social awareness, we work all of that in dark. Correct. Which I think is important for the future.

And, um, you can find me on LinkedIn I’m, uh, uh, linkedin.com/in/josephsallustio. Um, follow me for all things, higher education. And then finally, my podcast is www.edupexperience.com. That’s the ed of experience and my co-hosts Elvin Freytes, and Liz Leiba with me on that as well. And I really appreciate your time, sir.

And for having me. Yeah, thanks so much Dr. Joe Sallustio, Claremont Lincoln University. Thank you.