It’s YOUR time to #EdUp
In this episode,
YOUR guest is Steve Hodownes, Non- Executive Board Chair, Corestream
YOUR guest co-host is Dr. Gregory Fowler, President, University of Maryland Global Campus
YOUR host is Dr. Joe Sallustio
YOUR sponsors is Ellucian Live 2024 & InsightsEDU
What leadership approaches are needed to guide higher education through disruption?
What does the future likely hold for the evolution of degrees, credentials & stackability?
What does Steve see as the future of Higher Education?
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Dr. Joe Sallustio: Welcome back everybody. It's your time to EdUp on the EdUp Experience podcast where we make education your business. Dr. Joe Sallustio back again, again, again. And yes, again, as we continue to interview the most amazing and innovative voices across higher education. If you didn't know, of course, I got to put in my self-plug here, but we wrote a book called Commencement: The Beginning of a New Era in Higher Education that came out this past year. It's not even a year old yet. We've sold thousands of copies across the world. If you get a chance to check it out, it's based on the first 125 interviews we did with college and university presidents on this very podcast.
In fact, I have one of those presidents back with me as a cohost today, which is always an honor for me. You can catch us live, ladies and gentlemen, if you want to catch the EdUp Experience live. We're going to be in a couple of places coming up. My co-founder, Elvin Freitas will be in Doha, Qatar or Qatar or however you say it in the Middle East, November 28 and 29 at the World Innovation Summit for Education. And he'll be podcasting literally at the Qatari Convention Center in the center of this massive ballroom area with the cohost of EdUp. Markham will be there instead of me because I'll be December 4th through 6th in Philadelphia at the Middle States Commission for Higher Education annual conference. And I will be running into people there.
And then of course, we're going to be at Insights EDU in February in Phoenix podcasting live. There's a hot mic going to be ready for you to sit down and tell us what you think is happening for the future of higher education. So we are going to be on the road and live, but that's not, that's just, let me get all that out of the way. I want to get to what we're going to talk about today. And I'm again, honored to bring back one of, I think this is third time he's hit two. Now this will be two of the checkboxes needed for the EdUp Triple Crown. He's been a guest twice. He'll be a co-host on this episode. And now we just got to get him to host his own episode on the EdUp Experience. Ladies and gentlemen, he is the one, he is the only Dr. Gregory Fowler. He is the president of the University of Maryland Global Campus. Greg, what's happening?
Dr. Gregory Fowler: Hey Joe, good to hear from you again. And I'm going to do that whole Secretariat thing someday. Hopefully for now, I'm just happy to be back and talking with you and somebody who I have the utmost respect for. It's very good to get started today with somebody who's been pivotal in my own career and just an amazing person and leader all around.
Dr. Joe Sallustio: Well, considering where you are in your career, I would say that this is going to be very interesting conversation to have, and especially when we can hear from somebody who influences today's incredible leaders. But before we get to this amazing guest, Greg, I want to ask how you are and how are things going at the University of Maryland Global Campus?
Dr. Gregory Fowler: So things are going very well here. We are in the midst of a number of various initiatives that we've had going on, everything from skills-based work to prior learning assessment. If you've seen our most recent commercials, we're trying to find more and more ways to give people credit for the experiences they bring into our university from the various jobs they've had. I just got back from spending some time with our European headquarters and some of the teams over there in Italy. Being UMGC, of course, we have about 200 locations around the globe. And as things have become more challenging around the globe, we have been very much tied to what our service members are doing. So clearly our teams in Italy are very much being deployed or being asked to deploy over the next period of time. So in the Mediterranean area, we're particularly focused on what's happening with our student experience, our faculty and our teams over there, but things are generally going well. We are well-prepared to help them in whatever comes forward and continuing to see some good opportunities to move in the future.
Dr. Joe Sallustio: How many of the 200 locations have you visited now?
Dr. Gregory Fowler: I have not kept track of them. I have now been to all three major regions. I have not gotten to the Middle East yet, but I've been to Asia and Europe certainly for graduations. And this last trip was in Italy. We have about seven locations around Italy. I went to the ones in Aviano, Vicenza, and Naples. Something that a lot of people don't know about UMGC is that we also do field studies in a lot of these places with our on-the-ground faculty. So some of our faculty who do the field studies in Pompeii took me through the Pompeian ruins. And some of them took me around the Venetian canals. Last time I was in Korea, they took me through some of the palaces that are part of what they take our students through who are physically on the ground there as well. So both the opportunity to see various types of modalities, but also different ways to learn things make this one of the best jobs in the world in my mind.
Dr. Joe Sallustio: That is amazing. We love it, it sounds like a vacation, but I know it wasn't, right? So you get to do the work, you get to see how students live in a global context, and that's important as we talk about the future of higher education because everything is globalized or becoming globalized. One person that knows a little bit about what we're talking about is our guest today. I'm gonna bring him in now. I think I'm gonna get everything right here. Ladies and gentlemen, here he is. He's the one and only Steve Hodownes. He is the former CEO of Southern New Hampshire University Online and Orbis Education. He is a board member of several institutions, organizations, and he is here today. Steve, how are you?
Steve Hodownes: I'm doing good. My travels, I've been back and forth to Greenville, South Carolina a couple times, so I can't quite compare it. Well, Greenville is kind of nice. That's kind of my world today. Thanks, Joe. Thanks for having me.
Dr. Joe Sallustio: Yeah, well, so, look, Steve, you've been around higher ed. You've been around for a while. You've done some incredible things. I was looking at your LinkedIn profile. You know, being at Southern New Hampshire, Orbis Education, you know, you kind of know the business inside and out. Why don't you just give us a little bit of context on you, your background, your higher ed experience. You know, what's gotten you to this point and what are you doing now?
Steve Hodownes: Just real quick, I won't go through all of it. I'm too old and we don't have enough time or we certainly don't want to dedicate time to me. I'm as old as dirt. But I mean, I gained a great appreciation for higher ed. I was the first member of my family to go to college. I went to a community college. I was an absolute train wreck, if you will, in high school. And there were certain professors through my career who made a huge impact on me. I went on to get a bachelor's degree in computer science from RIT. Although today my kids will tell you I'm totally technologically illiterate, which is probably close to true. I got an MBA from the University of Rochester, Xerox sent me there. So I have a great appreciation for higher ed and kind of always have, definitely had great respect for it.
I won't go through the early part of my career, but I spent a lot of time being a basketball coach, learned an awful lot about leadership, coaching AAU, quote, all-stars for over a decade. Spent probably close to 17 years in higher ed, first as president of MNVNAT, then CEO of SNHU's online division, then Orbis Education. I also worked for a couple of PE firms today, Vistria, who are involved in higher ed space and LLR. And I sit on several boards, I chair a couple for them. I do a little bit of consulting. My role predominantly as a board chair is less one of governance. It's more of a coach to CEOs and spending time, which I enjoy. It's a different role, but it's something I think I've adjusted to with a little bit of pain along the way. But that's kind of what I'm doing today. I live in South Carolina and kind of enjoying the semi-retirement.
Dr. Joe Sallustio: Yeah. So you're here today because Greg, you know, Greg has spoken very highly of you. He did at the beginning of this episode and, you know, leadership in higher ed is more important maybe than it ever has been. Not that it wasn't before, but considering where we are, and let's talk about where we are, the value of a higher education is in question, right? Students are saying, should I go to college or not? You know, the ins and outs are happening more often because people are going to work earlier. So the definition of retention changes for us as universities and as administrators. Is it bad retention or is it really a student who's stopping out that's gonna come back? We still define things around first-time, full-time freshmen, which is absolute lunacy when it comes to today's higher education. We have 40 million people with some college, no credential. Used to be some college, no degree, now some college, no credential. We have businesses that are saying students don't need a degree, but then they're simultaneously saying you gotta get a degree if you wanna advance. Very confusing space. Now, what do you think leadership is in higher ed? What connects you to Greg and then I'm gonna just pass it over to you guys and you take it from there.
Steve Hodownes: I mean, leadership in higher ed is really no different than leadership at any organization. The objective of a leader is to build a team and an organization where the whole is certainly greater than the sum of the parts and to get people focused in a particular direction and to believe in that direction. And that sometimes is very difficult in higher ed because change is very difficult in most industries and higher ed in particular. I think in a sector that is highly regulated, change comes very hard. I think those are the struggles that leadership has. I think what I've seen in general is a lot of times folks are afraid to really address the issues and state where they really are today and to be transparent with the organization to drive the change. Because if there's no impetus to change, people are very set in their ways.
Change is going to be even more difficult. And I think a lot of times we kind of kick the can down the road inside higher ed and say, it's going to get better. And my experience in saying no, it never gets better. It just gets worse. So I think there's definitely a ton of challenges today. You had mentioned value in higher ed. And also your questions around branding. Higher ed has a value problem today. Some would say demand problem, maybe supply. You know, if you look at the two sectors between the traditional student and the adult student, you know, when we were at SNHU back in 2009, the adult student was in their early 30s. Today they're in mid to even early 20s. And that line is really blurred. True, there are fewer folks going to college today. The demographics say that. Students are questioning the value of higher education. And I think that's a big challenge for higher ed.
People select where they're going to go, what they're going to do. It really comes down to how long is it going to take? What's it going to cost? How much effort's involved? Can I actually do it? And then when I get done, what's the value of it? Where does it put me? And I think people are making those value assessments today. I think a bachelor's degree is certainly worth more than a credential, but is it worth this much more with respect to pricing? People are trying to evaluate that. There are so many credentials running in the space. What's a good one? What's a bad one? So that's kind of the state, you know, where I sit at. It's fuzzy math.
Dr. Gregory Fowler: Well, I am excited, first of all, to be able to have this conversation with you because, as I said a little while ago, I think that you are one of post-secondary education's unsung heroes and the work that you have done in a couple of different ways. And you just talked a little bit about the education ecosystem. You and I have also talked about this compared to say other industries, whether you're talking music or newspapers or other things that people do. And in a lot of those industries, you had that situation where people were resistant. I have a number of friends who are journalists who said that there was a period where they said as newspapers and the hard copy became more digital, "Why won't people buy newspapers?" And it's not that people aren't paying attention to the news, it's that they're doing it in different ways. Same thing is true for music. Same thing is true for so many other things that we do now. I suspect that if we were really counting, more people listen to music now than have ever in human history. They just don't buy compact discs or cassette tapes or eight tracks, God forbid, from the past.
Steve Hodownes: But also don't forget albums. That's my era.
Dr. Gregory Fowler: Just to let you know, I still buy albums, Steve, because, you know, there's something about vinyl that never goes away.
Steve Hodownes: This is lunacy.
Dr. Gregory Fowler: It is amazing what the sound of vinyl is. You still can't quite get that anywhere, if you ask me. But if you're talking about trying to help an industry think about those things and all the anxiety that comes along with it, how do you approach that in a way that brings people who are either very comfortable or very anxious with where they are? You talked about your experience with coaching, and I'm glad you did that because in a lot of ways, it feels like a lot of this is less about traditional style leadership in a hierarchical way and a lot more about coaching people along. So can you talk a little bit about your philosophy on how to, what skillsets are required to actually have this conversation in an industry where disruption is happening?
Steve Hodownes: That's a long question, Greg. We can spend three hours on that. I'll try to...
Dr. Gregory Fowler: Well, you know I'm an English major.
Steve Hodownes: Yeah, I'll talk in bullet points in my grammar. Anyway, you know, it's interesting when I was at SNHU, I remember one of the interview questions from a woman who ran the centers, which was continuing education. And she said to me, "What are you going to do to get people to go to the centers?" And I said, "Nothing. The students are going to go where they want to go and whatever modality they want best." And that was the true statement. I think when you're trying to get people to change and to address change, it's difficult because nobody knows the outcome. Everybody's wondering what happens to me at the end of the day. And I think you need to be very, very direct with people.
When we came into SNHU, SNHU missed their start target by 33% for traditional. So while the school was going to lose money in this next fiscal year, it was a little bit of a blessing because it was a crisis and everybody knew it was a crisis. And we took advantage of that to say, we need to do these things in order for us to almost even survive. And you try to paint that picture, but it can't just be on the negative. It has to be on the positive. And I think the key to any change is driving engagement of the organization. To me, employee engagement is what culture becomes. Culture is what you do when no one's watching. But to drive engagement, everybody wants to feel important and part of the team. I don't care if you're the receptionist, janitor, or the VP of enrollment or chief academic officer, you want to feel that you matter too.
I think deep down, everybody wants to be part of something special, whether it's the biggest, the first, the most mission-driven, the best cause. And you can talk to someone who you meet at a dinner or party, and within two minutes, you know if they're jazzed about their job, because they'll talk about it that way. I think next, and this is where a lot of organizations fail, is how what I do ties to the success of the team. So if I'm the rebounder on the team or I'm the defensive stopper, if I do my job well, how does that help the team win? I think in general people want to be accountable, but they also want the decision rights. They don't want to be accountable where I'm telling them exactly what to do. Cause that's not very rewarding.
I go back to when I was a kid, I used to cut my grass. I hated it. We had a push mower. My father wouldn't even buy a self-propelled push mower. And I would run over hoses, rocks, bushes. I didn't give a damn. When I had my own lawn, it was different. I took a lot of pride in it. But my wife turned the tables on me and she used to do the lawn and she would do the same thing I did when I was a kid and she would run over everything. She had no accountability to it. She didn't care what the lawn looked like. I did. And I think last, you have to tie the individual goals and objectives of the person to the organization. If you wrap all that together, it's very hard to do and it takes time through action, not just words. You have engagement, people buy in, not everybody but most will buy in and then that drives the change. But you have to be brutally honest with where you are. And in Orbis, when we went into Orbis, it was a $20 million a year company losing double-digit millions in revenue. The organization was at a spot where it wasn't very good. We had a great business model. We were the only one in the space. Execution was horrible. I went into our very first board meeting. I hadn't even started. And it was a train wreck. The PE folks said, "We might as well have given you the money and burned it in the corner and we would have got a better return than what we've done today." I met with the team afterwards and I said, "Do you actually think we can win?" And it was quiet. It was like eerily quiet. And I'm thinking in my head, I just left the best job in higher ed and here I am in the middle of a freaking train wreck. And one individual says, "I think we can be successful." That person's bucking for a promotion, but I admire that they said it.
And then the CFO said to me something very important. He said, "We just need a win." And I said, "Okay, every win we get, we're going to celebrate." And what we did with that is every time we signed a new client, I bought the team a bottle of scotch or bourbon. Now they didn't drink it, but it went on the shelf as like a trophy. And as you start to win, just like in sports, you make some shots, you gain confidence, you take more. And that's kind of the process. Now that's a long answer, but in fairness, it was a long question.
Dr. Gregory Fowler: Yes, well, you know I'm an English major. You know, Steve and I have this long-running point when we used to work together. He'd be like, "Greg, can you give me a summary of this thing?" But I give him these things. And he'd say, "And give it to me in bullets." And then I give him this thing. And he'd point out, it's like, "Greg, that's a full essay." And I was like, "Yes, but it's got a bullet in front of it. So technically it counts." And he would say that that's not quite the way that works, Fowler. And it was great.
But I think your point there, Steve, was a big one. I was thinking about when you first hired me actually at SNHU and the conversation and you put me through a number of interviews over and over again, but it was critically important to you how I would fit in with the team and how I would relate to the other people on it. And that's something in higher education that sometimes is hard to do, particularly when you have student affairs and academic affairs and marketing and all of these various departments that don't necessarily see how they relate to each other and how they, what they do impacts the other members of the team or even see themselves all as a single team in fact at all. Some of them sort of, you know, when we first started working together, I asked you, so why do you have the marketing team and the enrollment team all working together? And your point was if I didn't, they point fingers at each other instead of actually understanding how each other impacts things.
So can you talk a little bit about that idea of you bring a new person into the team or you try to introduce new practices to it and how to make sure that that person on one hand is disruptive enough, but also is still going to be capable of enjoying the team. How do you look at that?
Steve Hodownes: I mean, in all fairness, when I first interviewed Greg, I was a little intimidated. He was a guy with a PhD, Fulbright scholar, MBA. And I was looking for someone kind of like a needle in a haystack. I wanted someone with the academic credentials, which was important. I wanted someone with a business background. I wanted someone who was innovative, entrepreneurial, would grow, would not necessarily be an obstacle, but figure out ways to fix things. And someone who truly understood the students. And I was not an academic. I had responsibility for the academic team. I was certainly a little bit of a fish out of water. So it was such a critical hire. So we put Greg through six freaking interviews.
And when I brought Greg in, it wasn't so much to get along. It's just, here's someone coming in with a PhD and they're going to work with the person in advising, who our advising organization, which was large, will they treat them as a peer with respect? And Greg did. So for me, that was a very critical point. I think, Greg, when you look at silos and higher ed is famous for them, I mean, what we tried to do with marketing and admissions, and to be honest, they still pointed fingers at each other at the end of the day. They both own the metric that said, did you get a student? What was the cost to get the student? And could we retain the student? So those are the three things that we tried to do.
And this is where leadership comes in. So if we're in a meeting, let's say our academic or retention is where we want it to be in graduation. And immediately, what typically could happen is we point to Greg in the academic. Greg then points back at admissions, saying, "You're bringing in poor quality students. You can't teach them." And things like that. That's a great James Earl Jones. Always on every podcast. But it's important for the leader not to point the fingers because it's our problem. And we had a bunch of those that SNHU came up over time. And what I always tried to do is say, we have an issue, we have a problem, let's work together.
And what I also tried to do is we would have segment reviews because it could be graduate business. And during those reviews, and we'd do them quarterly, we call them off-site reviews, we would have the academic team, we would have marketing, we'd have admissions, and also whatever our administrative functions were all seated in that meeting, and they all would present, because it was the success of it. And you could tell those, you just put the pitch together, because you'd have fonts that were different and stuff, and you could truly tell the folks that were working together. So it's up to you as a leader to always look at it and not point the finger, or hey, if someone does a great job, you can't put them up too much high on that pedestal, but hey, the star, you brought these people in. So to me, it's on the actions of the leader. And it's easy for the leader to point fingers and say, "Hey, you got to fix this, come back and tell me how you do it." And that's really weak leadership at the end of the day.
Dr. Joe Sallustio: Steve, one of the things, Greg, real quick, I just want to double down on something you said, because you're talking about visibility. You're talking about having visibility into the other areas that you don't technically manage. And if you don't have that visibility to see what you, the actions you take in marketing, for example, to generate interest, if you don't see how that interest funnels through the other parts of the organization, you don't have perspective. And so it becomes really easy to go, well, I generated enough interest. It's those other people that didn't do their job. But when you start to understand what other people have to do in their job, you start to go, wow, that's not as easy as I thought. I need to generate more. I need to give these guys more of an opportunity so that if there's no visibility into the outcomes, that's where the silos really get created. So you break that down by visibility.
Steve Hodownes: That's a great point. One thing that we did, we had a very talented group in our data team, which started as one. When I left, don't know, probably 25 people in our data analytics measurement team. The whole organization had access to everybody's data, whether it was apps, conversions, how they were doing on success. Everybody had the dashboard. Now, sometimes if you're a public company, you may not be able to do that, but as a nonprofit or private company, you absolutely can do it. So you didn't want to hide it. Everybody could see what's going on. And I think that was very, very important because the data and the measurements take all the politics out of everything. The data is the data. This is what it said. Now there's rationale and causalities behind it, but it's the data that drives it. So I think that's a good point, Joe. I think transparency is so, so important.
Dr. Gregory Fowler: You said over and over again, Steve, one of the, I quote you often when I talk to my team members about this. I get a couple of these podcasts more often. This is great. My wife just gives me grief all the time.
Steve Hodownes: Are you kidding me?
Dr. Gregory Fowler: Yeah, but it is that point that you just made, Steve, and you said it over and over again, if you aren't measuring, you're just practicing. And when we're talking about students being able to say, how are we measuring what the win is and what are the factors that are going into it are absolutely critical things that we don't always necessarily see. But it's sometimes very uncomfortable for an organization which has not necessarily used data to start using it because a lot of people feel like you're just going to use it as a stick to beat them over the head with as opposed to saying, I'm trying to create a space that's neutral territory that says we just want to know what the reality of these things are. So when you try to do that, do you find resistance in various groups as you're working with that?
Steve Hodownes: Big time. Big time. Measurement is a really, really scary thing. But if you think about it, everything you do in life, you measure in some way. So let's say you're a walker. It's how many steps did I take? If you're a jogger, how many miles? It could be if you're a frequent flyer, how many miles did I accumulate? We just measure lots of stuff. But when it comes to accountability, people are always fearful and you have to get them over the hump like in your organization. Great, we're measuring student success and we would see a particular section that had either way too high or way too low and you'd always get the thing from the faculty saying "You want us to pass everybody." No, we don't. So what did we do? We built these algorithms in these models that said based on the student profile, here's what we would expect the outcome to be. And it would give us a parameter with that. And there's always outliers all over the place, but you always want to keep track.
Except maybe the guys I golf with, may not count every stroke, but it's not terribly rewarding to go out and golf and not keep score. You just don't know. Even my wife, who just took up golf, used to be, you know, a social experiment. Now she comes home and she tells me every shot on every hole. It's like, honey, I don't care. I don't want to know about all that. But they all keep track of the score. And the interesting thing about it is once you get over the hump and people see the score, it's like, wow, I have confidence. So we talked about confidence in students, but there's also organizational confidence. And you want to have confidence. Again, I'll come back to sports. Joe, you'll see, I have two spots, business and sports, and that's it. But in sports, you don't want to practice because you're not a very good shooter. But if you practice, you make a few shots, you go to the game and make a couple. Hey, I want to practice more. I feel good and you're keeping track. That's metrics. So it's very, very important, but it is hard to get people over that, particularly in the academic community. But once you get everybody there and you don't beat on people with the metric isn't there, you try to understand why it's what you need inside every organization, any business.
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Dr. Gregory Fowler: Yeah, and you're pointing this... I gotta interject because I feel like we're glossing over a very important point about Greg. And that is when you interviewed him and you said, Greg, why should you have this job? He said this. Nobody can do that like me. So that's why I just want to make that clear. I think that's what he said.
Dr. Gregory Fowler: Yeah, that wasn't quite my voice. I'm going to make sure I disown that.
Steve Hodownes: Yes, yes, yes. But I do want to touch more of them.
Dr. Gregory Fowler: Yes. But it is important, Steve, to your point to be able to say, can we take a look at what these things are and how do we aspire to be better if we don't even know where we are today? And I think that's really one of the big challenges as we talk about particularly non-traditional students and adults who in many cases have, you and I were doing these surveys, you may recall we did one that was talking about our students and realized that some of them had been at five, six or seven different schools and still had no degree. And then the question is...
Steve Hodownes: Outrageous.
Dr. Gregory Fowler: How do we actually work on that? How do we make sure that we don't become just another mark against them? And how do we figure out what was it that didn't make them successful? And sometimes to your point about teams, it was sometimes that we could change things in the classes when it comes to the content or the learning resource. And sometimes it had nothing at all to do with the classes. But if we weren't having that conversation about why aren't these students being successful with the advising team, we'd all try to be solving a problem that may be something we could only solve together. Is that your recollection as well?
Steve Hodownes: Yeah, I mean, one of the things that Greg did, so when we first started hiring faculty, we built the faculty recruiting and ongoing entity. And we were looking for people who were highly credentialed, which is important. And what we found was we needed perhaps a different type of faculty member, not that they weren't highly credentialed, but to serve our student base, you needed someone with a servant's heart that said, as opposed to a faculty member saying, "You should have learned this when you took economics 101." Well, I took economics 101 four years ago. You needed someone with more of a servant's heart because of our student population. That's something that we entirely, that Greg entirely changed inside our organization. So yeah, that's definitely how I would see it.
Dr. Gregory Fowler: Yeah, we definitely spent a lot of time... We got lots and lots of applications. And one of the things we are often asked to talk about was what are the types of skillsets that it takes to serve the non-traditional population, many times the students who have not been successful. And it was exactly that. When these students struggle, how will we respond? Will we simply say sink or swim? Many of us have those stories of having gone to a college where at 9:05, if the class started at nine o'clock, the teacher would lock the door. And that's one approach that is certainly one approach, but it certainly does not help a student who's already scared, who's been told their whole lives they aren't college material, who just doesn't believe they can do it. And if you have an instructor who's willing to say look, you are not there yet... One of the things that I used to love about our work at WGU and other places is you may not be competent yet, but we don't doubt that you can get there. We just have to find the right way. We're not going to lower the bar. And Steve was always good about saying, this is never about diluting our expectations about lowering the bar, but it is about trying to find new ways to help students to be successful. That's going to be a critical piece of it.
Dr. Joe Sallustio: One of the things, go ahead, Steve, you like to say something?
Steve Hodownes: I was going to sort of turn to a minute to going back to that idea of measurement in this question I get a lot about student centricity. And I've been very happy to hear, even in the conversation today, Steve, that I don't know that you go more than a couple of sentences without referring back to what's right for the student, the student, the student. Tell it like it is. And then that's not always something that you hear a lot. I get a lot of institutions and executives who say, "How do we convince people that we're student-centric? How do we convince people that we're focused on the student?" And I don't know that it's one of those things that people really think a lot about, but when you put your team together, you spent a lot of time talking about how do we bring this back around to what's the right thing to do for the student? Can you talk a little bit about that idea and that approach?
Steve Hodownes: Yeah, I mean, where it all started in reality was being very metric driven. We would have, I'll just take this real quick, we would have these roundtables and people would always come and say, "What are you going to do to fix this?" And I would always say to them, "What do you think we should do?" Well, if you think this is the right idea, build a proposal as a pilot. People would always push and they were fearful of pilots because the measure of a pilot is did you move the big number? Well, to me, the true metric of a pilot is you're searching for information. Once you get that information, that's the success of the pilot.
So once we culturally got past that, there were two individuals in our organization that came to me with the proposal that says, "We want to use this fancy software to build a collaboration tool for students." I said no four times because they couldn't tell me how they're going to measure it. But they believed in it so much, they kept coming to me. And I finally said, I gave up. I said, "No, Maas, go do it." So they did it. And I said, "But I want to review it," of course. So we had a review. And in that review, we went through it. And they said to me, "Well, you might not like this because it's not doing..." People weren't collaborating. But what people were doing was providing support to other students. I.e. if I can do it with two kids, I'm a single mom. You can do it. Here's how I did it. And it was all over. That was the whole conversation.
And I said to myself, okay, that's our value proposition. We give a damn. Mark, what is it? We give a damn. We will care. We won't quit on you if you don't quit on yourself. That started our whole value proposition that built the culture. But it was because those folks wouldn't quit on something they wanted to do and take the initiative to go do it. That drove the entire culture. That drove our marketing campaigns. That drove everything. But people will watch. You could say you're being student-centric, but do you invest? We invested tons of money in learning resources, math labs, writing labs, increasing our advising staff. We did everything we could to support the student was, hey, we're going to take you, we're going to do everything we can to help make you successful, but it's also on you. So if you don't quit, we're not going quit. But that all started back from that initial conversation very early on, and these guys wouldn't get off the fact they wanted to try this. And that's why pilot, so the information was, are they going to use it for collaboration? No, they did not. They used it for support. And so we built a community for students supporting each other, but also for our advisors, being sure but if you will to help the students. So Greg, you bring up a really good point. It's what you did.
Dr. Joe Sallustio: Yeah, the point Greg brought up and you said Steve, what is student centricity? Because I don't think you would go to any president or any institution and say you know, are you student centric and the president goes, "You know, we're really not. We're not student centric." But there is a spectrum there. There is believing you're student centric and not being student centric and then there is being student centric and acting student centric. And I think a lot of it, this is my opinion, but a lot of it goes to proactive versus reactive. And I talk a lot about this, right? I'm not gonna wait for the student to figure out they're having trouble and call me and contact me, because they're not gonna do that. They're gonna go, you know what? I can't do this. I'm gonna disappear into the shadows and you'll never find me again because you weren't there when I needed you. I'm going to make that phone call. I'm gonna make that phone call before the student even thinks that they might be having trouble so that they know preemptive strike, right? So they know that I'm there if they do have trouble. That to Greg, when you talk about what does that mean? What is the definition? We do a really bad job in higher ed of defining that. And I think that dilutes the value conversation, right? It's this packaging and marketing problem we have in higher ed. And so I just wanted to add that because there's a big difference between saying it and doing it.
Steve Hodownes: Yeah, great point and proactive was a big part of what we would do in SNHU. Because people typically, you got an eight week course, people don't raise their hand, particularly males, based on their study and their information, would not raise their hand until week three, four. And it could be that, you know, hey, they couldn't figure out how to navigate the system. So we created courses to do that. But as the students go through that customer corridor, all the way from the first touch by this marketing campaign to the admission route to financial aid, all those interactions build your brand. It can help it, hurt it, or keep it there. So you could go to financial aid, you don't have the document. Financial aid could typically say, "Well, you don't have the document. Come back when you finish it." As opposed to saying, "Let me help and take you through it, and let me help and take you through understanding that you are taking on a debt." That's what you want to do.
So we put in place, you know, at SNHU, a whole consulting group on financial aid, not just the processing but the consulting aspect of it. And being proactive is critical. We had built models that said who's likely to defect, even before they started, we had a profile of the student coming in. Typically you would see a Pell student would be more at risk than a non-Pell student. You'd make sure you provide them a little bit extra care up front. And I think proactive's a big deal, because by the time a student realizes they're in trouble, it's all over.
Dr. Gregory Fowler: Yeah, it is. I laugh with my team a lot. My first job, my job in college when I was in college at Morehouse was I was working at Six Flags over Georgia. And so it was very much a place where you're often thinking about the user experience and how you're going about putting it together. And so when I think about student centricity, I often think about those days, because on one hand, you can say student centricity is everybody's focused in on the student and trying to see the student. And certainly that may be one element of it. But over the years, I've become convinced that the other element of student centricity is not so much everybody's looking at the student, but that we're seeing the world through the student's eyes and we're building experiences based upon what they need and see as they are trying to move forward, which is a very different way of looking at it.
I was looking at some of the feedback and communications, even in letters that we're giving or responses that we're giving the students about something. Sometimes the answer is no, but how you say no will matter to the student. And sometimes we give, someone who'd ask a student to ask a question and I'd read a letter that says the regulation says blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it turns into, yeah, that's technically what the regulation says, but if you're reading this as the student, how are you feeling about what you are seeing? Even if the answer is there, one of the things you hear, we talk a lot about USAA, because we see them as one of the great service institutions is sometimes the answer is no, but the answer is not, we don't want to help you or that we're not here for the next thing you're trying to do, is how do we build those out?
To Steve's point being able to say, you don't have your transcripts, okay, we can either have you try to go hunt them down or we can find ways to say, we'll help you get those transcripts if it will help you to move forward. Again, you never lower the bar on the expectations for the performance for the skills that you're trying to look for, but there are a whole series of other things that aren't tied to that performance that the institution can be helpful on if they are willing to do so. And we've tried to make sure we build those things as we continue to move forward. That comes with change back to the original point to get everybody moving in that direction.
Dr. Joe Sallustio: Greg, see this through the students' eyes, there's a mindset shift and leadership change that happens, Steve. How do you click that button? How do you turn that light on for somebody that's because you know what happens with change? They said, what about me, Steve? This change you're putting in, I know you're telling me we're going to get more students. I know you're telling me enrollment's going to go up and revenue and all these things. I don't really care all that much, how is it gonna affect me? But how do I get that light turned on to do what Greg's talking about and see everything through the students' eyes? Is it time? Is it perspective? What is it?
Steve Hodownes: I mean, it's a lot of things. What we tried to do is that every town hall, we tied back to our mission, which was basically we're here to help people give them a chance to transform their lives. I'm sure it's written much better than that, but that was our goal. Every town hall we would do is we would bring people up from the organization, give a quick overview of the business, but then we turn it over to the people who took the initiative to make things better and give them the podium to talk about what they were doing and to build the team around there. A lot of times cross-functional.
So when you do that, people say, okay. And when you see little things people do, like you might have a situation where an advisor says, "Hey, this faculty member hasn't gotten this exam back in four weeks." We had enough structure in place where that person could go to the academic dean and say, "Look, this does not support the mission." And so there's an advisor going to the dean saying, and they would take action on it. When you think about the individual, the thing I learned a long time ago is not everybody has the same goals and objectives you do with their career. It could be, I want to have a wider span of control, or more likely a smaller span of control. I may want to present to you. I might want to have time to do research. I may not want a promotion with that. So it's important to understand your team.
I can remember one time in my career way back when I promoted an individual who I mentored and gave them a promotion and a small little P&L on a Friday. On a Monday, they didn't show up and they had a resignation letter on my chair that said, "No way!" And I'm like, my God, you didn't even call me? Well, they didn't want to disappoint me, but I thought they wanted what I want. And that was not the case. So I think it's important to understand. You give people the opportunity. I was always looking for people that wanted to take the initiative. In roundtables, I'd walk into a roundtable and I'd say, "What do you want to talk about?" There was no agenda. It's just, what do you want to talk about? And they'd always say, "Here are the things that are messed up." And I'd say, "Okay, how do you want to fix it? Do you think we should fix it? Put a proposal together." The people that put the proposal together are those that truly wanted to change. And once we did those pilots and people felt safe doing the pilot, it kind of builds the change.
And then let's be honest Joe, when you're having success and winning, it's much easier to build culture and drive change. When you're losing and you have to cut people, that's a very tough conversation to have and been through those. So that also helps. And then when you're people below, down the organizational change, they're the people who are changing and people start to see that. I think that helps, but it's not something that happens overnight, whereas you put a couple of posters up and everything changes. It comes through time and they watch your actions. They watch what you do, not what you say.
Dr. Gregory Fowler: Yeah. And Steve, to your point though, one of the things I've always admired about your approach was your ability to be able to say, we are going to put both the wins and the challenges up in front of everybody. The fact you just mentioned, of course, Town Hall, the idea that literally everybody in the organization gets together on a regular basis to see and hear what everybody else is doing from the metrics perspective of here's what we are trying to do. Here are the places where we're winning. Here are the opportunities that lie ahead. And to then turn it back over to the team. You were never afraid to actually put both of those things out there as a team to actually approach them as they continue to move forward.
Steve Hodownes: They also be the leader you got to admit when you mess up. And Lord knows I messed up a bunch of times and where you made the wrong read and everybody has to see that, but it's okay to fail. It's not okay not to try.
Dr. Gregory Fowler: Yeah. Now looking at all of this Steve, of course we start off this conversation talking about the idea of how you have impacted higher education. You've been on a lot of different roles. You continue to contribute on a lot of different roles as well. Looking back at it, can you say there are things that have changed about that you have changed in some ways based upon your experiences with higher education, anything that you would look back and go say, I would have never anticipated that, but I'm different now in these ways.
Steve Hodownes: I think the biggest thing I walked away with is how powerful culture is. I always knew it mattered, having watched it at SNHU and also at Orbis and SNHU even more so, it is so powerful once it happens. And the organization that takes over and it changes everything and people believe and it's scary in some respects, but it's also incredible to look at. The other thing that higher ed does, it helps improve people's lives, there's no doubt about it, but also through the organization. What I always said, the best part of the job is people. The worst part of the job is the people. But watching people grow in the organization, gain confidence, was just, it's the best part. I mean, there's nothing better than that. When you watch someone who starts here and goes to here, my goodness. And they feel so good about themselves. They're grateful for the opportunity. But that also happens in higher ed, in the student, when they go from here to there.
And then you hear about all the students' stories. And I always used to be amazed at when these students would meet their advisors at graduation, when they would come in and they've never seen them live. They've never been, and they'd hug, it'd be emotional, people would have tears. And it's like, okay, that's what it's all about. We would see it at where we were training nurses. And these are people who are going through an 18-month accelerated ABSN or an OTA or PTA program. When they would go through graduation, it was so intense, it was so emotional, but now they're going off to help people who are in some pretty tough spots with their health. And then they come back and teach into some of the classes. I mean, that's incredible, powerful. I don't care how hardcore you are. It's very, very rewarding.
And I always get, I don't want to say agitated, but surprised when people say, "Hey, do you want quality or do you want profits?" To me, I don't know how you get long-term profits and value creation for shareholders or stakeholders without great quality. You can look back at history, everybody who just tried to screw the customer, not be concerned with quality goes out of business. From Enron to Corinthian to wherever you want, if you don't protect your brand and do the right thing, ultimately you're going to be in a bad spot. So to me, it's not a dichotomous situation. It's you got to have quality to build your brand and to drive long-term profits or reserves, whatever you want to call it, if you're in the nonprofit space.
Dr. Gregory Fowler: That is correct. You know, one of the things I really appreciate about the conversations we had from day one was your emphasis on what you just said, which was it makes no difference if we're bringing students in the front, if we're hemorrhaging them out the back. How do we make sure that the ones who are here are being successful? And how do we find the data that will help more of them be successful continues to be a part of that. One of the things I want to turn to quickly is this conversation, this idea that I wrap my head around the diversity. And I'm not talking diversity in the ways that we're talking about DEI so much that I'm talking about diversity of thought and perspective amongst team members and others. One of the things that I think makes it hard is that sometimes we say, I'm okay with diversity as long as everybody ends up thinking the way I do. Or if everybody continues to do things the way I do.
Being able to talk about innovation and change and disruption in the market also means being able to talk about, we bring different perspectives into the team and value those, even if the answer is that we decide to go in a different direction. And you never tried to shut down the conversation when people had a differing perspective. And in fact, I remember one time I raised the question of, are we a college or a business? And you said, let's talk about that. It's like, let's talk about that and have the conversation. And it was a good conversation around that. And I want to be able to, I would ask you to think a little bit and say a little bit about this idea of various perspectives and being able to value the skill of bringing in different ways of thinking as part of growth and change in the organization as a good thing and not a bad thing when people disagree.
Steve Hodownes: That's a great question. I mean, in higher ed and I've dealt with since I left SNHU probably, I don't know, 25, 30 different schools. One thing that I see again and again and again is everybody wanting to agree with the president of the university. And the way I always try to do it is look, I tried to hire and bring people onto the team that were 10 times better in their area than I could ever dream of being. And if people were not going to disagree with something I would say, sometimes I'd be provocative and say something out there. If you're not going to say "Steve, you're full of it, that's wrong," then I have the wrong team member because we're not going to be the best we can be. And it's by your actions. So if you shut something down and you say, "No, we're not talking about that." Then what happens to everybody else? Well, they got their head bit off or someone that gets fired for questioning what would go on. I think that creates a major, major problem.
And I think that so for any time you hire someone on your team, they should in reality really ruffle feathers a little bit or bring some different perspectives, not necessarily create a cultural issue for the team, but to shake things up a little bit. So as a leader, you've got to sit there and say, "Hey, what about..." I mean, Greg, you know, 10 times more than I could ever hope to know about, you know, managing an academic organization, assessments. I mean, I didn't even know what that word pedagogy meant before I met you. So I'm trying to hire people that were great at what they do. It comes back to the team analogy. Not everybody's Steph Curry, but guess what? Draymond Green is critical in the success of that team. Does all the dirty work, and it's up to the coach to recognize that. But you gotta give people an open forum. Sometimes it gets a little out of control, but in general, have to, if I had a meeting and nobody said anything, I'd be petrified. It's like, what's going on that I don't know? So you have to be confident enough in yourself.
Dr. Gregory Fowler: I think that one of the other great quotes that I quote you on from time to time is the one where you said, if you hire somebody and nobody noticed, you probably hired the wrong person. Being able to say, you know, I'm bringing people onto the team because they help us to grow. And some of that's going to require us to be able to adapt. And over and over again, there are plenty of times where I think that made the difference. So continuing to think through that conversation piece, we've got to find continued ways to think about what are the new skill sets that we're going to be dealing with? As the market continues to change, do you have any insights as you're looking at this and continue to talk to various parties on where you think this conversation with post-secondary ed, and I say post-secondary ed as opposed to higher ed because it may or may not be degrees, but it may be credentials, it may be other things. As the industry continues to change, any thoughts on where you see things going? Give us the crystal ball. Steve, what's the future of ed?
Steve Hodownes: I sit there and I go back and I think of all the things that were going to transform higher ed from MOOCs, the age of MOOCs. I remember being on a panel with the Coursera folks and edX, adaptive learning, all of that. I think AI is going to change things, whether it's in course development, helping build syllabuses. You know, change things to me at the end of the day, and still people making a difference in other people's lives. I think price compression, when I was at SNHU, I talked about it all the time, price compression is going to happen. Yeah. And it's going to continue to happen and price is going to drop. I think the credential market, from what I see, I mean, the numbers are in the hundreds of thousands to a million, depending on how you want to define credential. How do I know it's a good credential? You know, in a perfect world, if you could stack these things, I don't know anybody really doing it, that would be great because you could stack them because when you come back and you look at what people buy, cost, time to complete, work effort, can I do it, and what's it worth at the end? Those are the things that drive.
So whatever the offering is to do it, the conundrum today with credentials and stuff is it costs me as much to acquire a credential student as it does a degree student. A degree student is worth more than a credential student. When I went to SNHU, I killed every certification we had. And I remember them saying to me, "Why are you doing that?" I said, "Well, it's like you're selling them a washing machine and then a year later you're going to try to sell them a warranty. It ain't going to happen." If I look at transfer credits, there are some schools that take a student in and they don't even tell you the transfer credits until your second term. Well, that's like going to buy a car and they're not telling you the trade-in value until you've driven it 5,000 miles.
Those are just some crazy, crazy things going on. So I don't know, Greg, where it's going to go. I think, you know, the OPM space is going to see a ton of consolidation. I think you'll see more public-private partnerships. Hopefully the DOE doesn't get in the way of that because I think it's good. I think it drives innovation. I hope they don't kill that. But price is going to fall and see where all this credential stuff ends up. A degree is worth more than a credential in the marketplace. I don't care what anybody says. It does. But does it matter to take another two years to get it and spend X more than a credential? And what's the credential worth? So it's tough. There's very few businesses out there today that I'm aware of in any where you see boot camps being profitable. It'll be very interesting to see where that goes. I think higher ed, potentially if you could ever build these stackable credentials where people can actually give credit for these credentials and let them add up and people want to go for a degree, great. But it's going to be determined by the student in those five aspects of why people buy. So I know I rambled, but I don't have an answer to show in terms of where it's going to end.
Dr. Gregory Fowler: Great summary of everything that we're working toward to figure out though, isn't it? And it's your comment on change though. It's like, okay, I can't tell you the number of times when I was at Orbis. And it's like, "Hey, we got eight more nursing students. We have faculty that you guys will like that can do it." And I remember folks coming back to me on the other side saying, "We can't possibly handle eight more students." And I'm like, that was a bathroom break at SNHU, eight students. What do you mean we can't handle it? But it's that type of change in the resistance, mostly from the faculty side that has to change if we're ever going to get there. Thanks, Steve. And I'll go back to your coaching perspective on this. You've got a new series of players. They're getting ready to go out. It's a big game and you have lots of anxiety. They aren't quite sure what to expect. Even if you've told them here's the past and here's what it's like. So for all those people who are trying to take that next step, for all those people who see change and aren't quite sure what it means, how do you calm their nerves as they step out on the court? What do you tell them about what this next step means in a way that gets them, you know, ready to, you know, step on that court and perform.
Steve Hodownes: So I once had a kid I coached, Dane Miller. He was on our AAU team and he was the only division one prospect I had. And he went to Rutgers, four-year starter, tremendous kid, great player. And we're playing in an AAU tournament, I think eighth or ninth grade. He goes, "Coach, I can't start, I'm too nervous." I go, "Dane, you're the best damn player out there." He goes, "Coach, I can't start." I go, "Why?" He goes, "I don't want to screw up." I go, "Don't worry about screwing up, Dane." I go, "I'm going to put you in," he goes, "Coach, I'm afraid." So what I did is I set up a play to where Dave, we did a tip, we knew he'd get the tip, down and he got a dunk. And then he was kind of there.
So I think as people are afraid to change, you have to work with them and give them an opportunity to gain a little bit of confidence. The other side of it is if you don't change, problems are going to find you and you're going to have to change forced on you. You might not be there. You don't want to go in with that. But it's like, look at what we could do if we did this. But you have to be transparent and say, this is how bad it is that where this is where it's at. If you look at West Virginia, how many people got cut. They knew this was coming for years. Did they tell them? Look at all these schools that are cutting back programs. And I think it has to link to business in some way. I think you need a foundation on how to think. But I think there needs to be some tangential linkage to a job on the outside. Not that you're career training, but it needs to have some type of potential linkage where you can go.
Dr. Joe Sallustio: Well, listen, you guys, even though Dr. Fowler, your team offered you for another hour, I said, as your friend, as Greg Fowler's friend, I can't imagine. I don't want to set a schedule in a disarray like that. I want to let you know that I had your back. But your team was like, you can take it for as long as you want. Anyway, I don't want to disrupt your day because I'm sure you have a few things to do. But I do want to know what you thought about this conversation with Steve before we let you go, Greg.
Dr. Gregory Fowler: It was like, again, I continue to say so many of the things when people ask me about where I learned them. It's like the time that I spent with Steve learning from a person who knows a lot about coaching. And as you've heard, I use a lot of his quotes all the time in various things. He has helped in so many different ways and not just in the work that he's done directly, but in the leaders that he's developed across the organization. So I just wanna say thank you and keep doing what you're doing, cause we value the work that you're doing even now in all the various ways. So while you may be semi-retired, we all know that just means that you're just waiting for the next big opportunity and we'll hopefully find out what you're gonna do next. So thank you for all of that as you continue.
Steve Hodownes: Hey, we both learn, that's for sure.
Dr. Joe Sallustio: Speaking of people doing big things, ladies and gentlemen, my guest co-host, no, he is your guest co-host, the one and only Dr. Gregory Fowler. He is the president of University of Maryland Global Campus. Greg, thanks for joining today for our guest of honor. He's your guest of honor. He has done big things in higher ed and I have a feeling he'll continue to do big things. Find him on LinkedIn, ladies and gents. I did. He hasn't yet accepted my invitation, but I'm sure he will today.
Steve Hodownes: I did so. I did accept.
Dr. Joe Sallustio: You did. Live here on the EdUp Experience. Ladies and gentlemen, his name is Steve Hodownes, he is a former higher ed leader. He's got too many accolades for me to go into. Look him up. Look at his background, reach out to him. It's worth the conversation. Ladies and gentlemen, Steve, before I let you go, did you have fun at least here on the podcast?
Steve Hodownes: I did. I'll be honest with you. This is the first podcast I've ever done. I usually say no, it was great. It was fun. It was good to see Greg again. It's always great. It was very nice to meet you, Joe. And it was a great conversation. And hopefully people find some value in it.
Dr. Joe Sallustio: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, you've just had EdUped.