842: The Barbarian at the Higher Ed Table - with Dr. John Jackson, President, Jessup University

Joe Sallustio: Welcome back everybody. It's your time to EdUp on the EdUp Experience podcast where we make education your business. Joe Sallustio here again, again and again. You know, recently, you guys passed four years of this podcast. If you could believe it, I can't. But four years of this podcast and we've interviewed approximately 810 people in and around higher education in that four years. 

What's amazing about that is when we reflect back, we used to release weekly. We used to release one episode a week. So we'd record two, release one, record two, release one. We did that for a good year before saying yes to everyone that said they had something to say. And so people would say, "Hey, do you want to interview me about this?" Or "Can you interview my president about that?" And we'd say, "Yes, yes, yes." Next thing you know, we had 45 episodes recorded in the hopper, so to speak, with only releasing one a week. So you could imagine how hard it is to catch up. So then we went to six a week.

And we got some emails from people saying, "Please don't do that. There's no way we can catch up." So we finally found our sweet spot at three per week. We release three episodes a week. And our president series, among all others, is our most popular. Whenever we're interviewing college and university presidents across the world, that's where we're really getting deep listens to this podcast. Because you know what? That's a hard stinking job for anybody that doesn't know how hard it is to be a college and university president.

We've had some presidents that were literally retiring right after COVID. They had gotten their institution through COVID and we've interviewed them a week before they were going to retire. And we've said, "What got you to this point?" "Well, it's just time for me to move on." We've interviewed other presidents who made it through COVID and now they're reimagining their institution again. It's almost like a rehiring, if you will. You fired yourself after COVID because those are different programs. You rehire yourself and say, "What are we going to do now?"

And it's almost like looking at it fresh again and that's with all the headwinds. You know what? It's funny because I was talking to my guest co-host before this episode and he was talking about empathy for those in this job as higher-ed presidents and he's helping those institutions now navigate these uncharted waters that we're in now. Ladies and gentlemen, he's now what I would call a frequent guest co-host.

He's Chuck Ambrose, Dr. Chuck Ambrose. He is a senior higher ed consultant at Husch Blackwell, former university president. Chuck, what's going on?

Dr. Chuck Ambrose: Joe, good to be with you. And when you say frequent, it's a matter of just who can you get to help you, right? So I know it's kind of slim pickings today and you've ended up with me, but I learn something every episode. I continue to learn, just listening. So especially to be in this conversation today, I'm just humbled to be here. So thanks for inviting me.

Joe Sallustio: Well, Chuck, you've got to know that you are not the 50th person I called. You're the 49th person I called for help. No, that's not true. That's not true at all. Chuck, you've been amazing to be able to jump on. And by the way, you've just before we get to our guest, you've written a book called "Colleges on the Brink: The Case for Financial Exigency." I think I got it that time. How's it going?

Dr. Chuck Ambrose: It's going well, right? In fact, and we can discuss this a little bit with our guest, but you know, all of what we do is mindset, right? So usually, when we say financial exigency, we have fear, but it can be a tool to consider creating a viable future. I do believe that there is a growing very dynamic pool of leaders who now understand that and we're gonna get to the other side of the storm.

Joe Sallustio: Love it. Well, everybody, it's called "Colleges on the Brink: The Case for Financial Exigency." Chuck makes me promise to plug the book every time he comes on as co-host. He doesn't, but I do it anyway because I like him and it's an important book. Of course, you know, I wrote one called "Commencement: The Beginning of a New Era in Higher Education" that you can pick up based on the insights of 125 college university presidents.

Maybe there will be a part two. If there is, this gentleman's going to be in it. He is Dr. John Jackson. He is the president of Jessup University. John, how are you?

Dr. John Jackson: Hey, Joe, I'm doing fantastic. And you and Chuck sound to me like my brother and I. You're back and forth, back and forth. You don't sound like my sister, though, because my sister would smack down and she'd win the argument in one sentence. So thank you guys for what you do. Thanks for the conversation and looking forward to the discussion.

Joe Sallustio: Same here. And, you know, of course, I have to ask you to lay the foundation for us first before I jump in and ask you the hard stuff. Talk about Jessup University. What do you do? How do you do it? Who do you serve? How do you serve them?

Dr. John Jackson: Fantastic. Jessup was started back in 1939, was a Bible college. In 2004, moved to Rocklin, California, which is right outside Sacramento. So today we really have Sacramento, San Jose, and then a recent development, which I think will play into our conversation is Multnomah University, a long established Christian university in Portland, just gave themselves to us. And I can talk about some of the intricacies of that. 

But very quickly, roughly 1,600 students today. We're up at 1,800 just before COVID, because we had one partnership that went away. But our traditional population looks like it's really growing strong, bucking the national trends, which we're excited about. Online, we haven't been able to make near the inroads that we wish we could. And then grad is doing OK. 

But let me say specifically, we're a fairly good sized, decent sized, religious nonprofit educational institution. But I'm a barbarian at the higher ed table. I was a pastor for many years. I was an entrepreneur. I wrote a book in 2003 called "Pastorpreneur." John Maxwell wrote the foreword. So I'm a leadership guy. I'm an entrepreneurial guy and a barbarian.

Joe Sallustio: I love it. By the way, I forgot to mention that I use in-episode sound effects. So as a barbarian for higher ed, I have to say "amazing" because you know, it's... and I have to... I'm going to ask you what it means. I'm going to actually leave it to Chuck to ask you about the university you mentioned that kind of gave themselves to you, because I think that's a space that he has played in before. But I'm going to ask you about leadership here, since that's what you want to talk about. You've been a university president at Jessup since 2011. That's a long time in the role. What, two and a half times more than the national average for presidents in the role? How do you pull that off? What does it take?

Dr. John Jackson: Well, fantastic question. I say this with some measure of kindness, but you'll like this. My first five years, I survived two assassination attempts.

Joe Sallustio: Yikes!

Dr. John Jackson: Not real assassination attempts, but you know, faculty and board going like, "Hey, we think you're done." And to be frank, I was like, okay, shoot me now and then I can go back to doing what I know how to do. But I would say from my background that God prepared the pathway. But in 11 years, I think I've had at least three presidencies. You mentioned COVID. Oh my goodness, COVID was a revealer and it was an accelerator. Lots of changes have happened that have been accelerated because of COVID. I think that's actually a really good thing. 

And then I would also tell you that in leadership, we talk about transformative leadership a lot here, but adaptive leadership, man, if you don't shift with the tides and the winds, if you're not ready to respond to the changing realities on the ground... Peter Drucker said back in the nineties, the three hardest jobs in America in the nineties, at least was to be a mega church pastor, a hospital administrator, and a college president. This was back in the nineties. Well, I've done two of those three roles. My wife wants to know when I'm going to run a hospital. And I tell her, no, not going to happen. I don't understand anything about that industry. But it's hard. I must not be smart enough to figure out how to terminate my role after 11 years, but we're trying to make it work.

Joe Sallustio: I like your style, dude. I'll tell you that's... what I like about that... What you said is the assassination... assassination is... that's funny, but real. That's real. Because if you come in and you're a university president and you really come in knowing what needs to change... It doesn't take a genius to look across higher ed and go, "Wow, this needs to change. That needs to change. We can't do this process if we want to serve our students." Then you actually go and try to make the change. And it's like you heard somebody go, "Well, we can't do that. And we have to go to the Chuck committee. And if it makes by the Chuck committee, we've got to go to the John committee. And then the Joe committee's got to look at it." And it's like, "OK, next year, this is done, right?"

How do you get through those assassination attempts and still get to the innovation on the other side?

Dr. John Jackson: And I don't want to say this with kindness. Again, it'll sound like I'm dissing the past. I'm not... huge history, wonderful stuff, but there needed to be desperate change. When I came in 2011, no math, no sciences, no arts except for music, no grad programs, no online. How was this going to be Jessup University, which is what their name and what the board told me is, "Well, our name is aspirational."

I was very fortunate in that I had a board chair, Pat Gelsinger. It's a weird quirk of history that Pat would have any involvement with a small school like this. Pat is now the CEO of Intel Corporation. So he's got the chops. But here he was involved with this tiny little school and he and the board provided me the cover. Even when we had challenges on the board to say, "Look, we've got to see these changes. That's essential." And then I think ultimately at the end of the day, Joe and Chuck, you've got to be able to have a clear vision and you got to get some wins.

This is a leadership principle. You get some wins and get some momentum. Then you can stand against either assassination attempts or resistance. And resistance is baked into higher ed... just is. That's why I didn't want to be a college president. I'm not a bureaucrat. I'm a barbarian. I'm a leader. I want to get stuff done. And higher ed is all about studying stuff for two years, writing a paper, and then taking two years to make a decision. And that is not who I am and probably not who Chuck is either.

Dr. Chuck Ambrose: Well, I tell you, John, chapter six in our book is the resistance. So there's something about that that I'd have to claim that we must be brothers from a different mother, because I do know you, even though we've not met. I'm a preacher's kid.

Dr. John Jackson: Love that.

Dr. Chuck Ambrose: Either the best or the worst on the street, right? Who's who or most wanted. Just depends. And some days both. Right? And life influenced, right? By the church life influenced by a father and especially church related higher education. So I'm taking a little bit of a turn with you, but I also had the privilege of serving a faith-based institution for 12 years and United Methodist. There's something special, John, right? I mean, the combination of head and heart, hands... What kind of bridged your ministry to leadership to college?

Dr. John Jackson: Yeah, so when I was early in my life, I went to a school that had religious heritage but was not very currently religious at that time. And they looked down on Christian education, just to be frank. And so I determined I have to get a degree from a public university so that that issue of credibility wouldn't... so I went from that college to a theological seminary, because I was gonna be a pastor, and then I got a PhD from the University of California. 

So the reason I tell you that background is I walked in the door knowing a lot about leadership, a lot about momentum, about raising money, about galvanizing people towards a vision. I walked in with all of that. What I did not know was academic process. I had no idea about faculty councils and about tenure and about student life standards. I had to learn all that.

Joe Sallustio: Outrageous.

Dr. John Jackson: Yeah, I think what I had to do was I interviewed 29 presidents in my first year. I just called them up, visited their campus. I did a lot of conversations with people to help me understand the context. So I knew I could get some quick wins by raising some money and raising the profile. Those quick wins helped me get the time to be able to make the lasting changes. 

The advantage of somebody who comes inside of higher ed to be a president is they know how it works. The disadvantage is that they're inside higher ed and they know how it works. And I think that's a challenge to say, that's why, by the way, we're seeing a lot of people come to presidency from advancement, the fundraising side, and we're seeing a lot of people come from outside higher ed who are business execs. They gotta be schooled up in the institution.

And again, because I was a church guy, I had sensitivity to the history here. I still do. I want to honor the history. But I love that Pat Gelsinger, our chair, to refer to him again, he's at the time when I was hired, he said, "We honor our past, but we're not constrained by it."

Dr. Chuck Ambrose: Yeah. So you're somewhere in serving in a way that I never had the opportunity, but you're in California, right? Clark Kerr, the overall master plan of higher ed was something like shaped and formed and then you overlay your faith, your church mission. What's distinct about Jessup and how do you compete?

Dr. John Jackson: That's great and by the way, my dad was a conservative growing up in the 60s, 70s, conservative Republican. My mom was a moderate and their best friends were liberal Jewish Democrats. So I've lived in California virtually all my life. I know what it's like to deal with people with diverse opinions. And my dad, even though he's a conservative Republican from the East Coast, came to the West Coast, he loved the master plan of higher ed. California has an unparalleled community college, state university, and UC system that's amazing. And I honor that. 

Here's how we compete. Three groups of people we gotta win with. We gotta win with families. Families gotta trust us. They gotta say, "When I send my son or daughter there, they're going to have an awesome experience." The secret, and "they're going to be safe" and all that. The second one, the secret sauce of Jessup, even different than other Christian colleges, is we got to win with the churches. We have 50 denominations, 500 churches on our campus every semester in our student body, and 900 churches that we have a relationship with. So we win with families, we win with churches, they trust us. 

And number three, we got to win with regional employers. The only way we differentiate ourselves in our area from Sac State, from UC Davis, from San Jose State, from Cal Berkeley, is that we gotta say, regional employers, we're producing the people that you wanna hire. Now, we don't have a school of engineering, so we can't compete with Cal or Sac State or UC Davis on those things. We don't have it. But I tell you what, you hire our business grads, you hire our criminal justice grads, you hire our education grads, our psych grads, our leadership grads, you're getting a quality human being who's had faculty pouring into them.

I use a phrase, exceptionally employable. 85% of Jessup grads on the day they walk across the stage, shake my hand and get a fake diploma. And by the way, I tell people the reason you get a fake diploma is we're not giving you the real one until you pay every last red cent you owe us. But they shake my hand, 85% have a full-time job or they have full-time admission into graduate school. Because their field requires that and...

You know, I was a parent a long time before I was a college president and I was a pastor. I sat in people's living rooms and kitchens as they looked at pieces of paper. This is 20, 30 years ago and said, "How can I send my kid to a college?" And they'd weigh public college, private college, private faith based. Private faith based costs a lot of money. So we get everybody out in four years. We make sure they're exceptionally employable. We make sure it's... that we win with parents, you know, with families, churches and regional employers. And it looks like you pour yourself into your students. That's just a great way of thinking, but looks like you do a really fine job of getting them across the finish line with that degree.

Dr. Chuck Ambrose: Well, and I would say this, Chuck, and thank you for honoring and affirming that. This is where I often will say, look, faculty, I got all kinds of issues if it comes to leading the institution. But faculty are the heroes when it comes to student success. Our faculty here, man, they shape and pour into our kids. We've got student success coaches. Every kid who comes to Jessup has a success coach who walks alongside them. And we're working really hard. We're imperfect. We got all kinds of flaws, but we're working hard to pour into these students and shape their lives for the future.

John, you know, we used to think that the church college was meant to save the church as much as the church was meant to save the church college. But do those churches invest themselves with some resources to make it affordable for your students?

Dr. John Jackson: Yeah, it's a great, great thing. We've got about 130 churches who give about $350,000 a year. So that's that's a good number. It's not radical. But I tell you the more important thing, every single kid who comes from one of those colleges gets a couple of... one of those churches gets a couple thousand dollar scholarship. And so we work hard to say, look, we want your kids to come here. They got access to all the great public schools. They got access to other private schools and even other private Christian colleges. Why would you want them to come to Jessup? We're going to be in great relationship with you. You get an automatic scholarship here. And so we work hard on that and do our best. 

But so, yeah, 130 of them make a financial investment and then periodically we'll have churches even go beyond that sort of basic investment and they'll make a large investment. We've even had churches that have closed and they've given themselves their property and the proceeds of that to Jessup as part of our endowment. That's been really...

Dr. Chuck Ambrose: It's kind of a painful thing. On the other hand, really exciting that they had a vision for the future.

Dr. John Jackson: It was an extension of their ministry.

Dr. Chuck Ambrose: Yes, that's right. That's right. That's a good way to do it. Let's talk about this institution that gave themselves to you. Those are your words. Gave themselves to you. What is this? What are you talking about?

Dr. John Jackson: Well, at the very beginning, back in 2011, when I was coming in, I said the financial model is broken. The future of higher ed is FDA, flexible, distributed, and affordable, not food and drug administration, flexible, distributed, affordable, but also said there's going to be closures, there's going to be mergers, and there's going to be consortiums. So now 11 years or 13 years later, we're seeing that. 

A school up in Oregon named Multnomah University, they were having a lot of enrollment problems, they're having a lot of fundraising problems, and they just were having some operational challenges. So through an intermediary, they reached out to us. The lawyers, by the way, and I think it's good for your audience, the lawyers wanted us to do an asset purchase or they wanted us to do a merger. In both cases, we looked and said, man, that's like a two-year process. It's tens of millions of dollars. 

Given my nonprofit background, especially in the religious sphere, I said, wait a minute, we're not gonna do it that way. We're gonna structure this as what we now call a contribution agreement where that university, Multnomah University, gave themselves to us - all their assets, all their liabilities, about 60 million in assets, 5 million liabilities. Now here's my commitment. I've not committed that we're gonna keep running them just as they were and losing millions of dollars a year, but I wanna honor their legacy. They have an amazing legacy, awesome people, lot of really good things on the ground. 

So what we're gonna do is this, we're gonna keep this as the Multnomah campus of Jessup University. I think it's a way to honor their legacy while at the same time correcting some of the things that have caused them to lose so much finances and enrollment over the years.

Dr. Chuck Ambrose: So just to add for... Go ahead, Chuck.

Joe Sallustio: With a marriage mission, were they church based or?

Dr. John Jackson: Yes, so that's so important. I'm so glad Chuck, you obviously have been a college president, right? But what made this work is that this was a merger of mission. We were not trying to, one of my friends has put a dog and a cat in a paper bag and hope they reproduce. We were bringing together two like-minded schools where we could just hand in glove. They've said to us, "My goodness, you guys are so much like us." And we go up there and say, "My goodness, you guys are so much like us."

So it would really a merger of mission, not like a takeover. This is not a hostile takeover. This is not an asset purchase agreement. This is not even a merger with a strong and weak partner. This is a merger of missions, but through a contribution agreement.

Joe Sallustio: So you are the sole member. Correct. Jessup University is the sole member. So in layman's terms for those that are listening that wonder about the space. So Jessup University then owns all the assets, liabilities everything of the other... What's it called? Multnomah?

Dr. John Jackson: Multnomah. M-U-L-T-N-O-M-A-H. Multnomah.

Joe Sallustio: And that's a way as being a sole member, it's a way for Multnomah to be able to operate as an independent institution. But their board then, their board is a subsidiary of your board. Your board would be then controlling.

Dr. John Jackson: Well, actually, what's what's happening, you're almost there. But what's happening is Multnomah University as a legal entity will go away eventually, and there'll be a single board. But we're having two Multnomah board members. I think they had five, but we're having them come on to our board. Now, by the way, just so that listeners know, there is a federal Department of Education, and then in our case, state Oregon Higher Education Coordinating Commission. They're the last two regulatory dominoes that have to give approval to this. We're confident of it, but our regional accreditor, WASC, their regional accreditor, Northwest Commission, and the Oregon Attorney General have all already signed off on this. So we feel very confident. It's just the process has to work out with the federal and state.

Joe Sallustio: Are you kidding me?

Dr. John Jackson: No, I'm not.

Joe Sallustio: What's the intermediary, John. How did... You can't go online to one of the dating apps and identify, so...

Dr. John Jackson: You can't?

Dr. Chuck Ambrose: Okay, Chuck, there's a business for you.

Joe Sallustio: No kidding. Thank you, John. How did you find each other?

Dr. John Jackson: So what happened was a guy knew me and it's a guy I'm not even going to mention his name because he's a guy who's been behind the scenes on lot of stuff, but he knew me and somebody from there got them connected to him. Multnomah didn't even know this guy. They got him connected. Believe it or not, I'll just say this, cause this will be interesting. I won't say the name. They actually tried to do this with another school, but it was in another part of the country. And what the regulators, the, sorry, the accreditation agency said, "No, it would take a couple of years. We don't know if we can approve it." 

When they came to us, because we're in the same basic geography and we have a really great relationship with our accreditor... By the way, a little pitch here. I want religious schools to have a really good relationship with their accreditors. Instead of being seen as step-sisters or weak and non-participatory, I've decided, hey, the old saying is, if you're not at the table, you might be on the menu. So I'm going to be at the table. We're going to advocate. We believe in religious liberty. But to me, accreditation is not a religious liberty issue. We're going to comply with all the standards. 

If I was operating a hospital, that other entity I described, you can't look at the hospital regulations, go like, that's not religiously... You know, maybe you got a couple of small areas, but sanitary conditions, training of doctors and nurses, all that is just the law. And so that's how we're trying to treat accreditation as well. That's part of what came to us. The intermediary just shopped it and said, "Okay, John, think you could do this." And he gave me the background, told me about this other institution who I know, great people. They just couldn't do it because they were in another part of the country. And so I think it's worked out well.

Dr. Chuck Ambrose: I think we need to underline, what John just said. It's incredibly much better to play offense than defense. And that proactive approach for accreditation is simply quality assurance. And if they're on your side, most regionals are trying to help schools innovate or trying to, like we do, try to clear the path as much as they can, but you've got to work at it. You can't fight it.

Dr. John Jackson: Yeah. And I guess I don't understand the mindset that says I'm just going to, want it. I want accreditation, but now I'm going to be resistant and unengaged. That's just like you said, it's better to play offense. Now I don't spend all my time thinking about accreditation, but it's probably once a year, once every other year, I agree to chair a panel and go to another institution. It just keeps me engaged. I can't keep my brain with all the accreditation standards. So we have an accreditation person that lives and breathes that, but she'll educate me on a regular basis if there's a big change. And you just gotta be willing to play ball in the field that you're in. 

You would never, I can't imagine a small private school would never think about ignoring the city council or the county government or the key business leaders of the region that they're in. You have to build trusting, positive relationships. And by the way, we feel very fortunate, at least here in our Sacramento area campus. Man, we have such a great relationship with our county with our city with the economic folks. And we're just so grateful for that.

Joe Sallustio: You know, one of the... that's an important point. And I want to take that further because I have had the honor of getting to know... I've interviewed Jamienne Studley from WASC and Barbara Gellman-Danley from HLC and very close with Heather Perfetti from Middle States. None of those individuals want any kind of closed institution in their midst. They will do whatever it takes to help institutions survive, including looking at partnerships, mergers, acquisitions and going, "You know what, this is better for this institution to survive." And I think you give a really good example of that.

Dr. John Jackson: Well, thank you, Joe. And at the end of the day, I'm not trying to be idealistic, but you got hundreds or in some cases, thousands of students on the ground. How disruptive is it to the student experience when you go, "Hey, sorry, it's Monday and we're closing our doors on Friday." And sadly, that's sometimes how it happens. It gets to the very end. And instead of saying, let's find a way so these students can continue their education, that's been my burden is hundreds of students on the ground are gonna have their lives and their educational process disrupted if we don't find a way forward here.

Joe Sallustio: Yeah, it's so true, by the way, a little known, I don't know if many people know this about me. You probably don't know Chuck either. When I was in the for-profit sector, which I come from for-profit, which is really interesting, a set for those that come from for-profit, you've got the business angle of higher ed, and you look at the nonprofit side of higher ed go, "How the heck do they get this done? How do you run with a deficit? What is that?" The executive board of the institution I ran with in the for-profit would have looked at us and gone, "You're all out." In fact, that almost did happen. But at the institution I worked for, we did six teach-outs of schools that were closing. Closed chapter seven bankruptcy chains on the door. And so I got to see firsthand those students who were able to get transferred. Which many just disappear. About a third of the students just completely disappear when an institution even just announces that they might close. That announcement alone disperses a third of the students. So if you don't have something like a sole membership or some way to ensure that that student continues, they disappear.

And they literally go crazy and not because of any fault of their own. I've seen kids, literally adults crying like something is happening to them. So I give you lot of kudos and credit for getting through that and helping that institution.

Dr. John Jackson: And I want to honor the people on the ground at Multnomah in Portland. They have literally... their retention from fall semester when it was announced to spring semester was in the high 80s, low 90s. So having that kind of retention fall to spring in any year, let alone when you've announced a disruptive change is amazing. After the end of spring semester, it'll go forward to be Multnomah campus of Jessup University. The Multnomah people on the ground have loved on, communicated, connected with, done everything they could to keep students there so they can finish well. And I think that's been an amazing testament to them. But again, that's all about relationships that you would have in a smaller private school setting.

Can I say a word about financial exigency?

Joe Sallustio: Of course. I think Chuck would love to hear you talk about that.

Dr. John Jackson: Yeah. So Chuck, I haven't read your book. I need to read it. I will... I wrote it down. I will be reading it. The financial model of private higher ed is, I think, irretrievably and fundamentally broken. This whole discount rate thing, you know, whatever your tuition is, then you give lots of institutional scholarship... that's broken.

Joe Sallustio: Beyond that, yeah, it is fuzzy math.

Dr. John Jackson: And then we're also looking at a fundamental disconnect between economics and... last 30 or 40 years cost of higher ed compared to cost of medical is 3X. It's divergent from everyday reality. And you know, if you're a multi-gazillionaire, okay, no problem, I write the check. But if you're not that, if you're most of the rest of us folks, you look and go, "Got one kid, two kid, three, four, how do I afford a college education for these kids?" And you look at what comes out of your pocket, it's just extraordinary. And then you think about the debt overhang. 

So exigency... Chuck, I thought your comment at the very beginning was spot on. I actually think we can utilize this financial pressure... And I would say this for Jessup. You could look at our books, look at our 990s. We are not Harvard. What does Harvard have to do to build their endowment? Open the mail. Because they have decades, decades of family and relationships. So no matter what happens to Harvard today, their endowment is going to keep growing. Same with Yale, et cetera, et cetera. Jessup's not that. They measure their endowments in Bs. Ours is in the small M's, like six, seven, eight million dollars. That's terrible. 

So how do you build a future? To build a sustainable future, we gotta look at financial reality. I think we're gonna see closures, mergers. I also think we're gonna see consortiums. I'll say this. You know what? We replicate at every single college, business services, HR, legal, marketing, and now I'd be really persnickety, enrollment. Your school does not compete with the school that's 200 miles away. You think they do in your mind, but you look at the records. They really are competing with the state institutions. You're not competing with the private institution 200 miles away. 

We got six Christian schools in Southern California, three or 400 miles away. Eh, onesie twosies. A few students go there, a few students from there come here. It's really the state university. So I think consortiums as a halfway step to reduce cost, centralize some services, decentralize others. I think that's a pathway to the future as well.

Dr. Chuck Ambrose: Yeah, you said it so well. And when... And of course, again, if you've got decades of miles on the wheels, it's interesting that we found the only solution, right, is to increase tuition on an industry where people already wonder about our value, right? Something... what's next is going to be exciting and dynamic, but talk just a little bit, because again, I'll give my close friend Rick Staisloff at RPK, he simply said, mission, market, margin. Right. And with Jessup, you do have something distinct. Right. And you talked about those relationships with the church. You talk about where private higher education is. Can you and I'm not going to use the word that came first in my mind because monetize is not the appropriateness because it's really the outcome and it's the blending right of learning. But being church related, having a mission, how do you quantify that, right? In an enrollment market.

Dr. John Jackson: So let me give you a number that's frustrating, but I think has been constant. More than 50% of our applicant pool always comes from organic relationships. We spend a lot of money on digital advertising. We spend a lot of money in other forms of presence advertising. If you're a school like ours, what matters is the graduates. What matters is the current students. What matters is the perception of your trusted partners, churches or business. 

And for us, the mission and market issue have so much overlap where we think about our mission. We say this, in partnership with the church, we educate transformational leaders for the glory of God. That's our mission statement. So when we talk to churches, we say, we're not opposed to... We're actually your... We say we're a child of the church. We're an adult child of the church. So we get a right to speak to the church. 

You're absolutely right, Chuck, that sometimes we have to say hard things to the church. Like, "Man, it's messed up the way you do this." But in that process, we're trying to actually be a servant to the church and to be a benefit to them, to be a leadership development factory for them. And in the process of doing that, we find a lot of churches that are willing to partner with us. Something that's changed a lot over the years is how would you supply church with church related vocations?

Dr. Chuck Ambrose: Wow, now you're touching that a sore spot.

Dr. John Jackson: It's really challenging because quite frankly, the era of the megachurch, we have several megachurches around us. I came out of a megachurch background, so I'm not anti-megachurch. A lot of megachurches will have people in key roles who have no educational framework, no higher ed, no graduate frameworks. And you wouldn't get that in a mainline denomination, Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran. But in a lot of these non-denominational interdependent churches, they won't look to colleges or to any formal degree granting. You'll have a senior pastor who doesn't have a college degree or doesn't have a graduate degree in some settings. 

So we do well there, but to be frank, I think an era of what used to be called bivocational, I think it's not gonna be thought of that way. An era of bivocational, I think it's gonna be thought of different. I work in the marketplace and I serve in a local church ministry. I think that's gonna be a future, which I think gives us a great opportunity. 

But I will say this, we're in a world where a bachelor's degree, a master's degree and a doctorate are still understood and still accepted in many industries, but an increasing number of industries are saying, demonstrate your competence to me, show me your experience. And I'll treat that as equal to, or in many cases, superior to at least a bachelor's degree.

Joe Sallustio: And you're saying, John, and this is just one of those aha moments, but you're saying that the church is one of those industries.

Dr. John Jackson: 100%. You give me a really great worship leader. I don't care what degree they have. You give me a really awesome person who works with children. I don't care. I'm not saying I don't care. I'm saying the church as an entity is saying, give me a great communicator, a great worship leader, musician, a great children's pastor, a youth pastor. It doesn't matter if they have a college degree. And that's...

Joe Sallustio: That's a total disconnect for me. I mean, I'm an old enough guy to go, you kidding? You can actually be that in a church with no training.

Dr. John Jackson: They train up homegrown training. I want to give you kind of a controversial illustration. If I told you a 22-year-old with a computer science degree and no experience was applying to your company that is a tech company. But then I also told you that a 22-year-old with no college degree, but who had four years of progressive experience in the tech world and who had six different industry recognized certificates, who do you hire?

Joe Sallustio: Hiring manager or hires? Go ahead.

Dr. John Jackson: The one caveat in that, which is really the interesting point and so many that I've talked to is the person who's hiring has to understand the value of those six stackable credentials, which is why the non-credit stackable or space is so confusing because the person who's hiring probably has a college degree and they look at this other side of bachelors and go, "I get that. I know what that is. I did that with these six certifications, Python, this was in a Ruby that... what the heck are those?" I... you know, that's the... that's the funny spot we're in, so to speak.

Joe Sallustio: You're 100% correct. 100%. I would say to you, that's why like I never look at other colleges. I look at corporations as the long-term challenge. Because if I have a Google certificate, or a Microsoft certificate or a Meta Facebook certificate, now all of a sudden or an Apple certificate now all of a sudden okay that's a multi-billion dollar... what that is... I even know what it is... I Google did it right...

Dr. John Jackson: Yeah, it's a multi-billion dollar global certificate and that's where I think badging certificates competencies is going to be really challenging our world that we live in for the most part is seat hours. Give me x number of hours, write these papers, read these pages, do this thing, we'll get you three units of a college class. That's not the world that the marketplace lives in for the most part. And it is confusing, very confusing, but we're seeing a shift to badging and credentialing and stackable. And I think we're gonna find a way to coexist. We just have to work hard on the higher ed side to say, what does it mean that you got a bachelor's degree in business or psychology?

Joe Sallustio: Yeah, which means you to a little bit faster. All of us need to move a little bit faster to keep pace with industry, just a little bit, if you will. And I always say, you know how fast you should move? About five years ago, you had Netflix and they forced you to listen to the intro of the episode. And now you could skip it because the users said, "I don't want to watch the introduction of my episode. I just want to go right to the episode." So it's frictionless. Right. And that's something that the higher ed is struggling with is how to bring a frictionless experience to... to getting what you need to get. So right, Chuck, you're nodding your head.

Dr. Chuck Ambrose: I am. And spiritualists, we just called get... you know, stay out of the student's way, right? I mean, let's let them lead. And John, got to... not to put pressure on our private sector colleagues, but with your background, how would you like to lead a small private university without a faith-based mission?

Dr. John Jackson: What's interesting is in my heart, I'm a... I was a pastor for many years. I still teach in... spoke this weekend in a church. It's always fun to speak on Super Bowl weekend because you wonder where people's heads are. But anyway, so for me, I'm really committed to the missional. For me, higher ed, well, I told you I was a barbarian, so let me say something else barbaric. I love Jesus, family, and the church. I don't actually love higher ed. I believe in it. I absolutely believe in it. I have pieces of paper on my wall. I believe in it. I've benefited from it and I want other people to experience it, but I don't love it. 

What I love is mission. I love Jesus family church. I want to see a community impacted. So for me, it probably wouldn't work to lead an entity. Although I will say this, can I use three words and I'll start with the letter S and Joe, okay, I can. And then none of them are swear words. And Joe, you... you facilitate this with your friction word. Here's three words. That's the future of Jessup. And I think might be the future of, of higher ed. 

The first word is seamless, which is really the same as you saying frictionless. You gotta be able to experience Jessup seamlessly. I gotta be able to talk to facilities people and enrollment and advancement and academic and have a seamless... Number two, this one's huge. And it's why the for-profit and it's why the private non-faith base has soared. It's the word scalable.

Joe Sallustio: Nailed it.

Dr. John Jackson: We do not think scalable. It just... just dagger in my heart, just kills me. So scalable. Here's the third one, and that's the word synergy. I am frustrated every week of my life when I see things happening at our school. I've been here 13 years. There are things that happen in our school today where every once in while I go like, "Well, most of us are going this way. Most of the school's going this way, but that thing over there, it's not profitable. It's not helping. And in fact, it's divergent. It's taking energy away. It's dissipating energy rather than being synergistic." I want everything we do... I don't want to do everything, but I want everything that we do to be going towards the mission and the vision. And boy, higher ed is resistant to that. We all want our little thing that goes off to the side. I just... so frustrated.

Joe Sallustio: It is lunacy. Yeah. Well, here's what I'll say in getting to know you here. I've interviewed 250 or 60 college and university presidents and I would say to the Jessup University community, you got a good one. Be glad you got this guy on your side because there are some that I've interviewed and you just go, "I don't know. I don't know if it's gonna work." You've got to have somebody that's willing to break some glass in higher ed who's gonna challenge the status quo, run the other direction, make you think differently because we get really comfortable in higher ed just going, "Well, this is the way we've always done it." The seven worst words in business. "This is why we've always done it that way," right? It's a variation of that. It doesn't work. We know it. What do you see for the future of higher ed, Dr. Jackson? What do you see?

Dr. John Jackson: I think we're going to see a concept from retail that's already present. We're seeing mass customization. How do I serve thousands of people one at a time? So we're going to see mass customization, individualized learning, experience and style. Second of all, I think we're going to say, do we do mass customization, the whole scalable thing, but also how do we do it in a way that's appropriate for the context? What's the future of AI and virtual reality and other things going to bring? I don't know, but I'll say this. You got to equip me, if you're a college or a higher ed, you got to equip me for the job I'm going to have now, but who knows what the economy is going to be like 10 or 15 years from now. So you got to equip me with the learning skills. We all talk about critical thinking. Just give me the fundamental discipline so that I not only have this customized experience, but that I'm equipped for now and for 20 years from now. At least know how to learn and how to think. 

AI, what's it gonna do? I can't tell you. I can just tell you that you better be ready. It's here. You better be interacting with it right now and thinking about the future. Here's the third thing. I hate to be a broken record. We're gonna see closures, mergers, and we're gonna see consortiums. And I think higher ed needs to start figuring out how to work together. How many grocery stores, sorry to be crass, how many grocery stores do you need in this town? It might be as 10 or maybe it's three or two. How many airplane lines, national airplane lines can continue to fly in our skies? And the answer is probably not 50. 

So I think the national... We're see Warren, or sorry, Christensen. Sorry, Christensen. Right, thank you, thank you, the disruptive innovation, innovative university, Clay Christensen. He said this, this is not original with me. The elite upper crust universities with massive endowments, they're gonna be fine. They'll step in it and they'll mess up and they'll do, but they'll be fine. They'll survive. It's the lowest of the low that are struggling with financial exigency right now. And Chuck knows this, there are schools all over the country that are ready to go out of business and maybe should have gone out of business a couple of years ago. 

Then there's a big, huge middle swath, Joe and Chuck that I think really, if they don't define your three words, mission, you know, market and margin, they're going to go... we're going to see a bifurcation of the higher ed market. You're either going to go up or you're going to go down. I don't think people can just kind of skate over the next 10, 15 years and be fine. You're going to go up or you're going to go down.

Joe Sallustio: You know, and I want to just say, cause you made me think how important a board is, if not the most important part of this, to be able to look at the institution and go, "You know what? Two years away... you know, two years from now, I'm not sure if we're gonna make it. Right now, we've got a lot to offer. But if we wait one more year, we won't have that much to offer. And no one's gonna wanna take us on as a sole member. We're gonna end up closing." That foresight for a board to be able to look... Multnomah University is a great example to be able to look forward and say, "We're not gonna make it."

Dr. John Jackson: The heroes of this when the story gets written a year or two, five years from now will be the board members, the staff and faculty who said, "We're not just going to spend the rest of our endowment. We're not just going to go into the ground and let the plane crash. We're going to figure out a way to be proactive." They're the heroes of this story.

Dr. Chuck Ambrose: So true. Go ahead, Chuck. You look like you're going to say something.

Dr. Chuck Ambrose: I just added that, John, for our encouragement to leaders, right, is just don't wait too long. It's in increments of days and months, not years, right? So this inflection point's coming at us very quickly. And that hope for college is desperately needed by the students we serve. And you mentioned that, right? I mean, I do think if we put students at the center of what all these pressures mean for the decisions we make, we would make different decisions.

Dr. John Jackson: I love that. By the way, just would say this to you guys, and you don't pay me to say this, the questions you've asked and the acumen, the capacity with which you've asked them, thank you guys for what you do. And thank you for stimulating the conversation. Even when the questions are hard and maybe controversial, we need to be having these kind of conversations. So thank you, Joe and Chuck, for the leadership you provided today.

Joe Sallustio: Well, when this episode comes out, if somebody listens to this and doesn't feel energized to take on... take on this challenge of serving students better than I don't know what other podcast out there you're listening to, because if it's a higher ed podcast and it's not this one, then it's not going to be as good. I'll just tell you that right now.

Dr. Chuck Ambrose: Yeah. Thank you. Right. I mean, we hear it in your commitment, your voice, action for mission. Right. And that's what you got to have. So thank you for what you're doing for Jessup and your students.

Dr. John Jackson: You're welcome.

Joe Sallustio: Ladies and gents, my guest co-host, you know him, you love him almost as much as I do. He's Dr. Chuck Ambrose. He is higher ed consultant at Husch Blackwell, former college and university president, a wealth of knowledge. Pick up his book, "Colleges on the Brink." I know I have and it is good. In fact, I had an advanced read on it. Chuck, thanks. And don't tell anybody that you gave that to me. 

Ladies and gents, my guest today, he is your guest today and boy, is he somebody worth listening to. He is Dr. John Jackson. He is the president of Jessup University, longtime president, another 10 years in his future, maybe 20. John, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the podcast today. We hope you had a good time.

Dr. John Jackson: Thank you so much. I've enjoyed every bit of it. And I don't know about that 10 or 20, but I'm going to do my best to end well.

Joe Sallustio: Ladies and gentlemen, you just EdUpped.