883: Cultivating Critical Thinking - with Salah Khalil, Founding Director, Macat International Limited

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Welcome back everybody. It's your time to ed up on the Ed Up Experience podcast where we make education your business. This is Dr. Joe Sallustio back with another episode fresh off our three days at Ellucian eLive where we podcasted 21 episodes in English. Our partners at Ed Up Español produced and released 10 episodes in Spanish, over 30 episodes to let you know what was going on at eLive. It was an exciting time. We're glad to be home and take a much needed week off before we get back on the microphone.

As you know, there is so much going on in higher education today. If you're in an institution or working with one, the word FAFSA means a lot to you right now as students can't get it, you can't get them out. And even if you do get them out and the student gets it, a lot of times they're not right. So as administrators, we're dealing with the consequence of this debacle from the Department of Education, and trying to forecast what our revenue is going to look like for a fall term, and we're completely blind to how we're actually going to do. Never has there been a moment like this in higher ed.

But we have ways around it. One of those ways is to have amazing partners and amazing people to bounce ideas off of. And I've brought one of those people here to the microphone as my guest co-host. It's been a bit, I would say it's been a minute or so since she was on the microphone next to me, maybe a year. But every time I have her back, it's like she never left. Ladies and gentlemen, she is Erika Liodice. She is the executive director for the Alliance for Innovation and Transformation in Higher Education, better known as A-Fit.

Erika, what's going on?

Erika Liodice: Hey, Joe, it's great to be back. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: And where are you these days, Erika? I know you're like a world traveler. You live in one place for a little while and move around. Where in the world is Erika Liodice these days?

Erika Liodice: Well, today I am in the beautiful sunny town of Kanab, Utah, in southern Utah, just outside of Zion National Park. But last week I was in San Diego. You said you were at eLive, and I was at ASU GSV in San Diego last week. So it sounds like we're both coming off some great conference experiences.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: How was it? Tell me how it was and how was it for AFIT?

Erika Liodice: The experience I always have at ASU GSV is just one of both overwhelm and excitement. Overwhelm being that there are just so many great sessions. It's hard to choose which one I want to go to. I wish I could duplicate myself and go to five sessions at the same time. And then I always leave with just my mind and heart full of ideas and opportunities. And so it's just such an exciting and interesting time to be in higher ed right now.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Yes, it is. And we have so much to talk about. As I said, there's a lot going on, as you know, with the leaders that you talk with. We're all struggling to figure out how to best serve students right now when it comes to affordability with the FAFSA. But that's not the only thing, you know, there's a relevancy piece to higher education right now. Is college worth it or are students getting the skills they need to succeed? Are they thinking critically? We're going to bring somebody to the microphone that's going to tell us a lot about what he has going on to answer some of these hard-boiled questions that we've been working on. Let's get him on the mic. Ladies and gentlemen, he's Salah Khalil. He is the founding director of Macat International Limited. Salah, how are you?

Salah Khalil: I'm good. Thank you. How are you?

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Just another day in paradise over here. Where in the world do you reside? Where do you office?

Salah Khalil: I'm in London now currently. London, United Kingdom. So yes, this is the base of the company. And this is where my home base is. I'm from Egypt originally. But yeah, the company I created in London in 2009. And we work to sort of promote 21st century skills.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: All right. Let's have that conversation. Let's get in deep. Tell us what that means. What do you do at Macat and how do you do it? And who do you serve?

Salah Khalil: So essentially we started out in 2009 with the concept of 21st century skills. And these are known in most circles as the four C's, which stand for critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaboration with machines. Now given that AI has taken a much wider role, it will have a complete effect on degrees, it will have an effect on employment, and it will have an effect on skills. As far as degrees are concerned, as you know, most degrees are built on very narrow subjects, so one subject, and it depends how deep you go into a subject, all the way to multiple PhDs.

So that's known as the industrial revolution model. There is the TikTok, YouTube, Instagram learning as well, which comes as wide and shallow. And you have the AI model, which is wide and deep. I mean, to know what ChatGPT knows, you would need to study for 10,000 years. So obviously knowledge-based education has to start inviting skills-based education.

The problem gets worse because when you talk about skills that are required for employment, most employers want you to basically practice education for employment. And that's not a bad thing to do if you know what jobs are going to come in the future. But unfortunately, we don't. 90% of the future jobs will be unknown to human beings.

Education for employment or knowledge-based employment, if you like, will also shift to skills-based employment as well. And that brings us to the final part, which is skills. And in this sense, AI will take away almost 80% to 90% of the skills that we've been investing heavily in to create, to develop, to assess and nurture.

And this leaves the four C's, which are critical thinking, creativity, communication with machines and collaboration with machines that do two things. One, they're durable. So they will actually flourish with AI and two, they will help us augment intelligence. And that's what we've been working on. We've been working on the foundational skill of the four C's, which is critical thinking and we basically worked on it since 2009 until today, and we've invested north of $50 million developing what we developed. And currently, Macat is building the next assessment tool to measure critical thinking and creativity in global higher education with the OECD. So that's where we are today. And actually, when we started, we started out doing research with community colleges, international development. So CCID. So that's one of, they were a very early partner in 2014 and 2015.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Amazing. What you said is pretty interesting because this is a conversation we have all the time here on the podcast. Students right now are interested so much in an ROI, that return on investment, that institutions are communicating that ROI in a degree to job context. If you get this degree, you will get this job. And this job will make you X amount of dollars and that X amount of dollars will help you pay your loans back and give you some certainty on your financial situation into the future. What I hear you saying is, yeah, that sounds pretty good for right now, as long as you know what the jobs are. But if you don't know what the jobs are going to be, we're being really short-sighted on what we're training for. I can train you in manufacturing. I can train you to be in criminal justice. I can train you in all these areas. But if AI takes away all of these skills I'm being trained for, what am I being trained for? I need to be trained for any job in the future and any of those jobs, critical thinking is the foundation. Is that correct?

Salah Khalil: Absolutely. I mean, AI is going to be the great leveler because essentially here what you will have, and this is a tremendous opportunity for community colleges and for other universities around the world as well, is that AI will give them this ability if they manage to bring in their curriculums up to date with skills-based curriculums that are going to be based on 21st century skills, they're going to be ahead of the game. And that's something that, you know, is known to almost everyone in this field. I'm not saying anything that is unknown. I mean, there is going to be a skills gap and crisis in 2030 that's going to affect 1 billion people. And it's going to cost north of $30 trillion if unaddressed. So you will need scaling, up-skilling or re-skilling. And obviously the sensible thing to do is pre-skilling. And that's a huge role for universities and also a tremendous opportunity for community colleges because scaling, up-skilling and re-skilling a billion people is no small feat. I mean, it's gonna take a lot of effort and we're gonna be depending on our educational institutions a lot more than we ever have imagined. So it's really a very exciting time, challenging, but exciting.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Erika, over to you.

Erika Liodice: Thanks, Joe. So we at the Alliance for Innovation and Transformation, this year we're exploring the impact and implications of AI and emerging technologies on higher education and industry through our learning design. But the skills that you mentioned that you're focused on, they're really deeply human skills. So I'm curious what advice you would give to some of the educators who are out there listening and trying to sift through what they can do to better promote critical thinking and the four Cs that you mentioned among students in this age where information is abundant and at our fingertips and generative AI is on the rise. What advice would you have for those folks?

Salah Khalil: So, you know, there is a number of things that I can think of. First of all, I think if you cannot measure it, you know, then you cannot really train it. It is just a fluffy thing. You need to be able to measure things so that you can help people develop these skills, right? So the most important thing is the ability to measure these skills. And you cannot measure skills without, first of all, having a proper definition, a construct definition of those skills that is done by a renowned academic institution so that you are academically grounded in your construct definition or in how you define the skills. So for example, we define critical thinking as the component skills of problem solving, analysis, creative thinking, interpretation, evaluation, and reasoning. An acronym that is called PACER, basically. And that is part of our solution, because once you have these six skills, then you can develop a definition for each skill, and then you can develop four sub-skills under each skill to create a PACER framework. So with six skills and 24 sub-skills.

So my advice is if you want to make your curriculum skills-based, you need to have this partnership. Someone who's invested already $50 million is working with OECD who invested $120 million. So a total investment in R&D exceeding $170 million is available at your fingertip if you partner with the right company. I'm not just promoting Macat. I'm saying we are specialists. So we don't do anything but critical thinking, creativity and communication and collaboration with machines. You need to partner with a specialist and you need to have a comprehensive solution where you test to set the baseline. You train to train those skills, both domain agnostic and domain specific.

By that, I mean domain agnostic, I mean teaching critical thinking or creativity as a standalone skill, but also teaching it within a subject to make that subject more comprehensible. So for example, critical thinking for engineering or critical thinking for medicine or critical thinking for history or critical thinking for finance. So that's really, and then you test again. So you can see here is my baseline, here is the training and here is the test.

So have a comprehensive solution that you can work with. And the best thing to do is look at partnerships and start being part of a global dialogue. You know, when we started talking with OECD, the conversation changed completely. They chose us because they knew we're specialists, we are careful about how we build critical thinking and they wanted to build creativity, a measure for critical thinking and creativity together. The next challenge for us will be collaboration with machines. The one after will be communication with machines.

Erika Liodice: I'm so curious to know what's your take on the state of critical thinking worldwide. The reason I ask is because I saw an article, I think it was through Forbes that was mentioning a study that Lenovo had released last year. They had studied millennials and Gen Z workers in the US, UK, Germany and Japan. And they found, not surprisingly, that many people are burned out, struggling to make ends meet, they're fatigued. And they were talking about that because of this, it's thought that they're really focused on their immediate challenges or survival thinking rather than the deeper, more meaningful types of critical thinking that can lead to some really profound outcomes in work and learning. So I'd be curious to know what's your take on the state of critical thinking worldwide? Is it declining as some believe?

Salah Khalil: Well, as you know, we are following the pandemic COVID. We have faced an infodemic. So essentially we were surrounded by misinformation, disinformation, malinformation from all kinds of places and all kinds of sources and you know it doesn't happen once every week, it happens once every five seconds. So you're just bombarded with a lot of information and how would you sift through all this? You know the right way to do is if you have a process and a system of checking your own thinking before you start engaging with such information. So you need to step back, look at your thinking and see how am I doing? What am I, you know, where, how do I get, how do I ensure that this argument is sound? What's the premise of it? What's the assumption? Where are the sources? You know, so this is stuff that seems like common sense, which is not very common, I'm afraid.

So that's what we need to do. So we might be thinking because we're involved in a job or in a course or something about doing things right. And that sort of takes us away a bit from doing the right things. And what we need to do is just step back and look at this carefully and see. I would say that probably there isn't such a thing as the comprehensive state of the global critical thinking. I wish there was. We don't have a global study that, you know, looks at a very large number. We've done at the moment, we've tested something like 200,000 people, right? And what we've seen is most people, in fact, graduates from very good business schools, don't possess the skills required because they were never exposed to direct training, whether as in, you know, domain agnostic, so subject agnostic or domain specific, so subject specific training or assessments even for that matter. So they wouldn't know where they stand in terms of skill. This skill has been implicitly imparted through generations and generations. But ask someone who claims that we are very good critical thinkers and they may be good critical thinker teaching institution, but ask someone about did you actually measure that? Did you actually assess it? And is the assessment proper? Are the psychometrics of the assessment, you know, is reliability solid? Is validity solid? Conversion and diversion validity. You will not get that as the straightforward answer to this question. And that's really what it is. People just get degrees and from degrees they want jobs and from jobs they want careers, but can they step back and look at the missed opportunities?

And now is really a great time to do this because honestly, if you can harness the power of AI and today, you know, we say that to be like, to learn what ChatGPT knows with all its biases and all its problems, it's 10,000 years. You take a, you know, one of the top professors in any field and they would have spent a maximum of 70 years studying this topic. So the difference is huge. It's really, really big. And that's 10,000 years today. I'm talking in maybe 10 years, it's going to be 100,000 years. So there is no way you can beat the knowledge learning curve. You cannot. You can only beat the skills that make this possible to harness this knowledge and harness this power to the benefit of human beings.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: You know, you need to trademark that. You can't beat the knowledge curve, but you can beat the skills curve. There's something there. It's interesting as we talk about this, because if you actually go back, what ChatGPT was what? December of 22, somewhere around there, January of 22, when it became, when it hit. If you go back before that, it was coding. If you can't code, you're not going to be able to have one of the jobs of the future. So there were, for what, years, there were explosions of coding boot camps. There was coding in kindergarten. There were toys that were created to help kids learn how to code. You don't need to learn how to code anymore. AI's gonna help you code, right? So what I hear you saying is critical thinking is what can't be replaced, right? You have to learn how to critically think. But then, then I would say to you, isn't critical thinking innate? Like I'm a good critical thinker and Erika just isn't. She's just, you know, she's struggling. No, or, or vice versa. Can, can, you know, I be taught to critically think better and how do I know?

Salah Khalil: You're right. So there's so many questions in there. Is it an innate skill? Well, the literature is very clear. The academic literature is very clear on this. Critical thinking can be taught and can be assessed. So there is no sort of second guessing this. This is very clear and the research is conclusive on this. What the research is not conclusive on is how it can be taught. Because part of the research says it has to be taught as a standalone topic and another part of the body of the research says it has to be taught within a topic. So that's where the difference is. But there is no debate about whether these skills can be assessed and can be taught. This is a given, it's no longer. And that's why they call it the new IQ. Because simply you can't change your IQ, but you can change your critical thinking skills. You can upgrade them, you can continuously develop them, which opens up tremendous opportunities, life opportunities, professional opportunities, learning opportunities. That's something that's really, really empowering.

If you look at it, I mean, you know, forget the different scenarios that people pose for us, you know, the superfluous human being, which AI will replace everything and we're all going to sit at home or do whatever we want to do and, you know, and live on universal basic income. That's one vision, right? But there is the citizen cyborg vision, which is a vision of, you know, hybrid intelligence. So yes, human intelligence created AI, human intelligence and artificial intelligence will create something even greater than AI. So that's what I really believe. And no one is saying AI will replace all, you know, will take away all jobs or will replace all jobs that are out there. I think what people are saying, and that's the sensible thing, and I think this was said also by IBM Research Insights is that AI will not replace jobs. People who use AI will replace people who don't. That's really what we should get through. And this is a level playing field. You know, whether you're in Harvard University or you're in a university or a community college in Egypt, it doesn't really matter. We're all going to have to use AI and we're all starting on one playing field. So it's a level playing field and we can all grow and excel if we're using the right assessment tools, if we're using the right development tools.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: That was a common - I would like to stay for the record. Hold on, Erika. Let me just stay for the record since I said an example of where you weren't thinking critically that at the beginning of this episode when we were trying to figure out the technology. Erika was the only critical thinker. I immediately went to, this isn't going to work. We're going to have to reschedule. Salah, you were going to record without volume. And Erika hooked us up in the end. So just for clarity's sake.

Erika Liodice: Thank you. Thank you for acknowledging me in front of the Ed-Up community, Joe. I appreciate that.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Well, I was just going to say - The only reason this episode happened is because of you.

Erika Liodice: Thanks for that. You know, I was just going to acknowledge Salah what you had said about people don't need to be afraid about losing their jobs to AI, but rather to people who use AI. That was a common refrain that I heard at ASU GSV Summit last week. And also the concepts that you just touched on of hybrid intelligence, not just AI standing alone, but it being humans with critical thinking skills, really supercharging AI and its capabilities because as you alluded to, AI is flawed. And so it's really humans with those critical thinking skills that can really supercharge the power of its application. So that really echoes what I heard at the conference last week. Can we turn for a moment to Macat? So my work, I focus on at the Alliance for Innovation and Transformation, obviously on innovation and transformation. We're very aptly named. So I'm curious to know a little bit more about your organization and what does innovation look like at Macat?

Salah Khalil: Okay, well, we started, as I said, in 2009, talking about critical thinking and the importance of 21st century skills. So the bedrock of Macat is actually trying to level the playing field. That's really what we wanted to do. We wanted to give every learner around the world the best possible set of skills that will be number one, durable, and number two, transferable. And obviously, skills that will keep going with you as time goes by. So that was the start. Macat as a name comes from ancient Egyptian mythology. It's the feather of truth and justice. So it's wisdom. It's essentially the wisdom that you want to, you know, the wisdom of equality, the wisdom of making everything accessible to everyone. It doesn't matter where you are, what your background is.

I mean, the research that we did when we started our concept, we chose community colleges for international development and AASCU, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, to shape our products. So we have three products. We have a library of analysis of seminal works in the humanities, arts and social sciences. These are 220 titles in at least two languages right now. More languages are coming in. English is obviously the first language. So these are analysis of, you know how most universities, elite universities use liberal arts to impart critical thinking. Well, this is a sort of a solution that provides access to these analysis of this seminal works, although there are 220 titles, each analysis of a seminal title across 15 disciplines, yeah, each analysis to write it, you need to actually use about 100 references. So although it's a 220 title library, it sits on a body of knowledge exceeding 20,000 titles. So this is what is known as wide and deep learning. So it's not, you know, so it's in line with AI. It doesn't reflect.

The other thing that we have is we have master classes that teach you critical thinking on a standalone basis and master classes that teach you critical thinking within a subject. And we've done, you know, it's all about research and development up to now. So the reason we chose AASCU and CCID was to actually find make sure that this product is not just for elite students, it's for every student with any ability. So we've created in video, we've created in audio, we've created an interactive mode. So all kinds of different modalities to make sure that the product is accessible by the largest population of learners.

Innovation for us is our lifeline. It's our DNA. We were born to innovate. You know, we moved from one research community. So we started our first community with University of Cambridge, helping us define what critical thinking is. Then build the library with 750 doctoral graduates from the top 100 universities around the world. Then we had University of Cambridge assess that the library improves critical thinking and comprehension by up to 12% per day, which was a proper claim. Then we got Routledge, which is the most prestigious brand on all our library. Then we built the assessment because when Cambridge University said, by the way, this improves critical thinking by up to 12% per day, we said, how did you measure it? So they said, well, actually we use these three tests. I said, why didn't you use one test? He said, because there is no one test that measures all skills. He said, you sure? He said, yes. I said, okay, please do a study to tell us what are the skills that make up critical thinking. And they came up with the PACER model. And then we started building a test for the PACER model. And then we started building a framework. Then we worked with OECD. So who are we working with? OECD, it's the Center for Innovation and Research. You know, so it's been a history of innovation and research. And I can say with a lot of confidence, there isn't one EdTech product on the market that has invested in it $170 million in research and development. We are that product. So I'm sure, you know, if you talk to Pearson, if you talk to McGraw Hill, if you talk to all the big publishers or the big education players, none of them would have invested that kind of money in one product.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Wow. There's a lot there, Erika. You asked, and he gave you a lot of innovative things that they're doing. How does all of this wrap up into higher ed? Salah, are we, is higher education not paying attention to this? Are we not putting enough emphasis on critical thinking? We talk about it, but we're not doing it. We're too much, too focused on the skill, other skills, you know, the job degree to job skills. Are we asleep at the wheel here? What's going on?

Salah Khalil: I don't think we're asleep at the wheel. I think it's more of the reality of academic life. I mean, you have to be patient with academic life in what sense? If you look at the debate for the definition of critical thinking, I'm just giving you an example. You know, there are basically the largest body of research on critical thinking can be found in three disciplines. Philosophy, psychology and education. Yeah, each of these disciplines have a different definition of critical thinking. So philosophy is all about perfections of thought. Aristotle, Plato, you know, the perfect thinker, the perfect thinking conditions and so on. Psychology is not interested in perfection. They're interested in the actions and behaviors critical thinkers do. Education is not interested in those two. It's interested in information processing like a pyramid with the base of the pyramid is regurgitating learning or rote learning, learning without understanding, and the top of the pyramid is analytical comprehension.

So now you stand on these three set of definitions, right, in three major disciplines, and you can get paralysis. But then if you go a step further and look deeper into the literature, they all agree that critical thinking is a set of skills and behaviors. If you focus on skills and behaviors, then you know, you can start going somewhere with this. And that's what we've done. So we didn't stop at the differences in debate and highlighted these difference. That's great that we recognize these differences because they have value. But you want to see what's common, what you can build on, what you can, how you can take this process forward to help assess number one and two, to help train or develop these skills.

So I don't think, I think, you know, education has been, educational institutions have been struck with countless challenges, one after the other, after the other, after the other, from funding to management to, you know, I don't have to say any of this, but you know, all the challenges and all what's being asked all the time is, you know, limitless needs for a limited budget. So it's really, we have to be gentle on educational institutions because they're the bedrock of society. I mean, how did we get out of COVID? It wasn't anything other than research that got us out of this huge pandemic, right? And how are we gonna get out of the next pandemic? It's gonna be universities again. So really, you need to understand the value of educational institution, whether it's a university, community college, a school, these are the bedrocks of society. And these are the ones that generate good thinking and good thinking creates good societies. So we need to nurture them, protect them, fund them well, and keep them going for as long as we can.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: So now let's put a global focus on it, because I know Macat has a global focus. You're an international company. I'm curious to know how different cultures and educational systems approach critical thinking and what we can learn from a global perspective on this skill.

Salah Khalil: So at the moment we're working with a very large publisher who is interested to create a leadership program for example in China and this leadership program for students studying abroad and this leadership program covers ages from 12 years old to 18 years old so 12 to 15, 15 to 18 and 18 plus. These are about 2.8 million students, right? First of all, they don't like the word critical thinking, obviously, right? For whatever, for the expected reasons. However, they call it creative thinking because they know it's a necessity, it's a must. So it's just the, you know, so essentially that's, that's the approach that some take. Although they don't like these words at the end of the day, they have to actually engage in this because it's not an option. If there are a billion people that are going to have a skills gap and crises, 300 million are going to be in China, 300 million are going to be in India, and the ROW, rest of the world, will have the rest. So you have to engage with this. You have no choice, really, not to engage. Not engaging means you're going to be those people who lose jobs to people who have engaged with these skills and engage with AI and managed to survive and managed to thrive in such a challenging environment.

So on a global level, I think we are looking so, for example, we've assessed 100,000 students in Egypt as a with the Ministry of Higher Education there. So, you know, everyone is looking towards this and they see it as an opportunity because if there is a billion people that are going to be affected by this, how I can Egypt can send 20 million people abroad if they have the right skills. If they possess the right skills, they're going to have jobs. They're going to be able to compete on the global stage and so on and so forth. So I think it's something that has been building, especially after COVID, because obviously with COVID we had a fast track digital transformation. You know, we were working online, you know buying things online shopping online meeting family online. So everything was almost our lives were turned upside down essentially moved from the physical space to the virtual space overnight and we had to deal with it and we had to work with it, right and that helped bring this power of AI to the forefront when it happened everyone was engaged you see the numbers of ChatGPT. I mean, the growth from launch to 200 days, it's crazy. I mean, it is absolutely mind boggling.

And that's what I think. I think it's really, it's a good debate to have. We need to think these skills and we've got organizations like OECD who are doing amazing stuff. You've got people like UNESCO. I'm sure the Department of Education and everywhere in the world, including the US is also struggling with these topics and trying to do things, it's partnerships. No one will solve this problem alone. This is a hand-holding, community thinking. This is really all about partnerships because this is a huge problem. You can think when we had five million people facing COVID at the beginning of the disease to 100 million. Imagine if this affects a billion, a billion people. How many families will be affected? How many children will be affected? This is the biggest thing that happened since 2008 crisis, financial crisis, 9-11, COVID put together times two. So it's really a big crisis and no one will be able to solve it alone. But we have actually taken a very good stab at it and we're reaching out to people who want to work with us. That's what I can say about Macat.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Well, there you have it, everyone. Erika, what'd you think of this episode and our conversation with Salah?

Erika Liodice: I loved it. It's such kind of a counterpoint. As I said, I've been thinking so much about AI and emerging technology. So then to shift my mindset to something that's so deeply human, critical thinking, this has been just a really enjoyable hour for me because it's gotten me out of the mindset that I've been in for the last several months. So I really appreciated hearing your perspective and your views and what's going on in your world, Salah. Thank you so much for spending this time with us.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Thank you so much for your help and for your genius solution at the beginning of the episode without which the episode wouldn't have happened.

Erika Liodice: That's right.

Salah Khalil: I really enjoyed it. I wanted to hear more from Erika though I spoke too much I think and you know next we need to have like a recap to hear more about the amazing work that you're doing, you know, with community colleges, because I feel like I feel very close to this, you know, to this association and I want to engage more. I engaged with community colleges for international development in 2015 heavily, but then, you know, with this problem getting like a global outfit, it's obviously, it makes sense to really focus on the large markets such as China, such as India, because they're going to be more than 60% of this problem. And, you know, the states have to respond as well to this, I'm sure.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Well, the great thing I can tell you about the Ed-Up community is that we're all connected once we do one of these podcasts. So you guys will have plenty of time to catch up into the future. My guest host, everyone, here she is. She's Erika Liodice. She's back after a year or so being gone. We're not going to let her go too long without getting back on a mic again soon. Erika, welcome back and thanks for joining me again.

Erika Liodice: Thanks for having me, Joe. Nice to meet you, Salah.

Salah Khalil: Lovely to meet you.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Ladies and gentlemen, our guest, he's your guest. He's Salah Khalil. He is the founding director of Macat International Limited. Check him out online, macat.com for more information. And with that, you've just ed upped.