2026 Title IV Changes and How Higher Education Can Adapt to the OBBBA

[Music] Welcome to Changing Higher Ed, a podcast dedicated to helping higher education leaders improve their institutions. With your host Dr. Drum McNaughton, CEO of The Change Leader, a consultancy that helps higher ed leaders holistically transform their institutions. Learn more at ChangingHierEd.com. And now here's your host, Drum McNaughton. Today I welcome back for part two, Dr. Andy Vaughn, the president and chief executive officer of Alliance University. We talked last time about the negotiated rulemaking and what's going on at the Department of Higher Ed. Today we're going to talk about how the OB-3 bill has changed higher ed and what a lion is doing to keep up with those changes. Andy, welcome back for part two. Drum, great to see you again and be with you again. Thank you. I'm looking forward to a great conversation. We always have had good conversations, haven't we? Going back 15 years we have. And if I knew you longer, I'd even say longer, but it's always a pleasure to talk to you. Well, likewise my friend, I appreciate that. We're going to talk about Change in this one. You were recently on the Negreg Committee that talked about student loans. And there's a lot of changes coming out of not only the Negreg, but changes that were implemented as far as the OB cubed. Before we get into that stuff, your background again in case listeners weren't there for the last time. Sure, I serve as president and CEO of a lion university, our headquarters in the end campus is in San Diego. We have seven campuses in two states, including Arizona and California. We specialize primarily in mental health licensure programs. About 99% of what we do is professional practice programs and lead the licensure. Clinical psychology is our largest. We also do a marriage family therapy, clinical counseling, social work. We're one of the largest providers of license K-12 teachers in California. Very proud of that. Very important job. And we recently branched out into health sciences within the nursing campus in Phoenix. Then in high red, a little over 30 years, mostly on the operational side. That's how we met originally drum and observed two institutions as president and CEO and just a pleasure to work in this fantastic sector. It just is amazing. For most people that I speak with, once you've dabbled your toe in higher ed, the water just grabs you and pulls you in. I called the vortex. It just sucks you in. My first job in higher ed was by accident. They told you, hey, if you work here, your tuition is free because I wasn't interested. I said, sign me up. No student loans. Yes. And I thought I'll do this for two years and get out. And then I fell in love with it in state ever since. Well, I've been able to bring both careers together between consulting and higher ed. And you know, I got my higher ed roots really starting at Trident back. That's right. That's where we met. Yeah. But it was even before then, your newman was the president CEO at the time. His wife was the provost. And I got hired on there. And that was primary my full time job in higher ed. That's right. And Trident did some great things and online education very innovative at the time. And you were a part of that. I was. It was. That was a fun time back at Trident. It was and Trident did things that no one else was doing at that time. Yes. And you know, that's hats off to your and Edith for what they did and Bernie was who was, you know, right there advising them along the way. Now great. I was tracking that from a distance. I did not work there yet at that time, but they had a great vision. And more importantly, they knew how to execute it. And that's the missing parts sometimes in higher ed. Absolutely. Oh gosh. I'm forgetting a quote, but it was he was a CEO of at AMD for many years Rogers. And he said, everybody can develop a great strategic plan. I put my best people on the execution, the implementation. And that's what makes the difference. It's the most important part of that I heard a quote once to that said, would you rather have 100% perfect plan or 100% perfect execution with maybe an 80% good plan. I'll take the 80% plan and 100% execution every time. Yep. A good friend of mine who was a VC back in the San Diego. That was his thing. I'll fund a great leadership team and a mediocre plan. There's no way a great plan and a mediocre implementation team. That is 100% true. So let's get to it. Changes are coming in higher ed from O triple B. The Negreg you were just on talking about student loans, professional loans, etc. High red doesn't like change. They do not. And I, you know, I'm not sure why, you know, like I mentioned in the last episode, the Navy, you know, 250 years of tradition, unhappard by progress. Higher ed is right there in many respects to say, say in the money years, same slogan. Don't know why either, but of any sector in the US higher education is the most persistent to change that is a factual statement. And there are safeguards in there and I don't want to say higher ed doesn't want change. I think in many respects they do, but they don't do a good job of bringing people along with the change. There is the shared governance piece of it, but it doesn't always work well. I think part of that is changes fine if it's the different department than mine. I don't know if the department has to change. I'm doing just fine. Thank you. But yes, they need to change that department over there. They're not doing it right. They need to change. So that's part of the two. Just not in my backyard is sometimes not in every case, but sometimes that's the case. But I think also people in higher ed sometimes equate change to lowering quality. And you know, that's not, that's not true. If you embrace change and innovation. And by the way, innovation is not always technology or AI many times it's not. It's about thinking differently. And I think what happens in higher ed, especially if you have a good track record of student learning outcomes completion rates in our case, licensure pass rates for licensure degree programs, then, oh, if we change anything that might falter. I don't think so if you do it right. And if you execute correctly. And that's where the collaborative process has to come in. If you really embrace change, here's everything. Higher ed is fantastic at forming committees exploratory groups. And we're going to study this for two years. Part of this comes from our research tethered ties. It research, you know, takes a long time. And that's great for certain things. But for the environment where laminated today in higher ed, we don't have two years folks. We don't have two years to plan these changes. We have about six months. If we're lucky. And so let's get to it. Let's not have committee after committee and pontificate about all the different things that might let's get to it. Here's the thing. You don't have to be perfect. You have to aim for excellence, not perfection. And I think we all wait for that perfect plan. Do we know everything you're never going to know everything you're never going to get there. Let's move and just know that you can re-aim move this ending point when you need to. Don't write your strategic plan and stone right in pencil erase it when you need to in the market changes. And I think that's the key to this change and speeding it up. And I think you're spot on with that. We in higher ed. And I think you hit the nail on the head. Whatever the saying is. That's right. You got a right. Okay. But when you stop and think about research and educators really are about research. It's not so much about business. You came from the business side of the house. You have a love for higher education. You think budgets. You think strategies. Educators primarily think about research. They think about teaching and with that. How many times have we ever seen breakthrough research that completely blows something out of the water. It's usually incremental change. That's the mentality that we have. And that's not what these times are calling. It's calling for transformation or even revolutionary change. That's right. I think that's dead on drum is these are not incremental. If you go incremental right now. You're not going to make it through what's about to happen over the next few years and higher education. So you really do have to think innovatively for transformational changes. That's the key word you used because small increments are not going to get you there. When I look at revolutionary change, I look at the iPhone. I look at AI, the internet. These are all revolutionary changes that's beyond transformational word. We're not at that point, although there's the adaptation for online education, COVID forced institutions to bring out online education. Some of them had to do it in two weeks because they didn't have any basis for it. We're at that point where we've got to do the transformational change. I think it's a great analogy. We're not in a pandemic, but we're in a place where an external force is requiring us to change and change quickly. I think that's great what you just said. I've not thought about that before. But during COVID, we had about a week to get everybody online and think about delivery of education in a very different way. And we're at that point now. with the federal changes, but not yet. I think we focus a lot on the structural changes of higher ed policy that were influenced by O-Triple B legislation, but it goes well beyond that. The consumer demand is changing. Creferences are changing. There's public angst about loan debt, which was what Congress was all about in writing O-Triple B. There are changes beyond the regulations that we have to pay attention to as well. The next generation of students is no longer millennials. In the next couple of years, it's going to be majority of the next generation down. Gen Z is about to become the majority. They grew up as smart phones that you mentioned earlier. They have a different expectation of us than how we deliver education. And they want it, by the way, at a lot lower cost, but they want to cloud it behind. That's no easy task, isn't it? These are a lot of changes that we have to creatively solve, and that's going to be key in the coming months. Absolutely. And with those changes, you've got to bring everybody on board. We may not like what's being done through O-Triple B. But guess what? It's here, and Jack Welch had a saying years ago, for those of you who remember who Jack Welch was. - I do. - I do. - Of course. When the change outside external to the institution exceeds that that's internal to the institution, you're heading to the cliff. - That's right. Very true statement. - And that's where we are. - Yes. And we're seeing that reflected in the number of institutions going out of business. The number of mergers are accelerating. We've got the demographic cliff, which we're in at this point. We're gonna have a solid decline of the quote, traditional age students. For the next 15 years, we have to be thinking about these things differently. Now that's based on those type of things, and what you learned back in DC, and you're not a rookie when it comes to working back in DC. You've done a lot of that. You came up with project evolve to help transform a lion. - That's right. So it was clear to our team at a lion in early 25. The analogy I use is the changes that apartment demanded in DEI that hit early 25 are quite important for institutions. There's no doubt about that. I'm not trying to reduce the impact of that change. But that was a thunderstorm coming through. At the same time, a category five hurricane was forming about 500 miles away. And so when you pay attention to the thunderstorm warning, which is pretty significant, by the way, maybe even a tornado watch or a tornado warning. Okay, that's important, and I agree. We should not ignore that. But at the same time, our eyes were out in the Pacific Ocean and a hurricane category five forming that's about to hit us in about a year. That's where we spend the majority of our attention because there is no mission to achieve if you have no funding to do it. That's a period end of story. And so we learned early on back in February of 25 about chatter happening in the congressional committees on the House and Senate side and the Republican side about major structural changes to title four in new loan limit caps. That got my attention. I was on the first plane at DC in February 25, talking to policy advisors and writers once we learned that. So project evolved has been evolving since that time. And it really is shaped on several different reasons. One is the federal changes, especially for institutions that have gradual level programs, the elimination at grad plus, lower loan limits for most programs, institutions have to navigate through that. And for the nonprofit world, there's the reductions in federal grant funding that's significant. What's coming up this summer is accreditation reform, but that's not just about a crevator's. Institutions are involved in this too. A accreditation reform may be good news for institutions in many ways. And one of those is allowing them to be a little bit more innovative. I don't think it's so much about institutional accreditors more than it is programs, specialty creditors in my opinion. And I'm not on that Negred Committee, so I don't know all the nuances, but I think that's where they're going with that. Market demand is changing. I think you're seeing students choose master's programs over doctoral now. That'll only probably get heightened after the new loan limits going to affect this July 1st of 26, modality, preference of students. They want more online and hybrid. And then there's just a change in demand, and a demand for innovation and the way we deliver education. It's not just for students. Employers are telling us in service. We're not meeting their needs either with what students know and they get out. And again, we're tethered to, as the Undersecretary of State, we're tethered to bygone policies and traditions that may not make sense anymore in all cases. So let's think differently. And I think that's the biggest purpose about the why behind Project Evolve at Align. So what are you doing? What does Project Evolve look like? Yeah, so the first part is taking care of students. One is looking at the new realities of federal student loan funding specifically at the graduate level. Let's face it, undergrad funding wasn't changed all that much. There's some trimming of parent plus loans, nothing that's going to cause angst. The staffer direct loans are really untouched. The grants seem to be fine and in place and actually expanding in some program areas. The focus really of Congress and therefore the department was more the graduate level institutions and programs. So what we're doing is really increasing our access to private loan funding and looking at creative ways, our biggest concern about students after July 1st or 26 are those that may not have credit to qualify for private loans. The federal loans are pretty much signature loan. That yeah, there's kind of this credit check but not really private loans are a lot more choosy and who gets them. And we've gone through model after model and iterations of this. What we've figured out is this isn't just for a line, it's really a national numbers because graduate students tell me about 30 plus years old and what we've figured out is 30% of graduate students will not qualify for private loans based on their credit score. Half that group will not qualify or will not be able to secure a co-signer or not want to get one. But maybe another 5% are not going to go to higher ed in this program just because they don't want private loan loan terms, higher rates, longer or shorter payment return terms of payment. And so pick your numbers. A 10, 15, 20% impact, the answer's yeah, there's going to be some impact there. So our job right now is to figure out how do we really solve to that population without getting them into a private loan debt? And we've got some really creative ideas that are brewing on that. Yeah, let me interrupt you real quick if I may. Sure. Do you see with these limits on the student loans, especially at the graduate level? Do you see more corporations stepping in and funding their employees education? Yes, I do. We've talked to almost every private lender that's currently in the market for higher ed. Not all of them, but almost all. And they've all assured us that there's enough funding with the current tranche of lenders to be OK for the elimination of grad plus. And that's really where the program is going to come in. Remember, grad plus is largely used in programs where you cannot work full time. And students take loans out on that side of it to often fund living expenses. That's medical doctor, DDS, osteopathic, clinical psych, and other programs where for four or five years, you really can't earn money by even working part time. That's a lot of use in grad plus. There are certain programs that also use it for tuition and fees. But in our experience, it's mostly in the living expense that programs where you can't work. And that's the biggest challenge, I think, to solve for. So I think in the short term, we're OK on private lenders. But yeah, I mean, think about it. I don't know the exact number. I don't have it in my fingertips right now. But the elimination of grad plus is billions. And so somebody's going to step up. Many will step up. I've talked to private equity firms about that. There are already farm lending ideas about new corporations being funded, funding coming in for graduate loans. It's a pretty good value proposition for most programs, not all that most. I mean, think about it. If you are lending to a future medical doctor or clinical psychologist, if you look at the federal default rates on those programs, they're less than 1/2 of 1% in those cases. Now, that doesn't always equate to private loan defaults, because private loan defaults are measured differently than federal loan defaults. But still, it's a pretty good value prop, because these are students that come out making six figures within a couple of years of their graduation. And so it's a pretty good business model for private lenders to consider. But not every private loan is going to cover that, because of the co-signer issue, if the credit scores are too low. So we're also looking at creative ideas like selling bonds on the private market at a certain interest rate to fund institutional loans possibly that fund some of those higher risk students that maybe we have some risk share involved with that. Institutions are going to need to be very creative. There's some federal legislation that's running through Congress right now that may help that aspect of the bond sale for institutional loan programs. And we're tracking that very closely. But I think that's where the creative times being spent right now. OK, thank you. That's a good explanation. Pillar 2 is innovation and access. And I think, look, when the department-- as you mentioned, I served on negotiated rulemaking committee in late '25 on the title four regulations, which are dictated by Congress or O-Tribal B, great experience, by the way, probably the most valuable experience I've ever had in higher ed. And after 30 years, that's sezalod. Just an amazing experience. And people I met, people I work with, fantastic. I think what we're seeing, though, is we're missing a party at the table to affect change. And the department looked at me during a Negreg session on the record and said, well, you're a CEO. Just lower your tuition. I said, Jeff, I'd love to. I'd love to. We can't do this in a vacuum. You see, at our institution, Our programs are all specially accredited. And we have really prescriptive standards, which I agree with. They do deliver high quality, but I think it's time to think about them a little differently. Because we can't just lower the cost when a program margin is low single digits, and some of the most expensive programs in the country, especially at doctoral level, are very low single digit margins for universities. They're still very expensive to the student I get to add. But to lower those, we're going to need the accreditors to be at the table with us. And I told Jeff that day, we're missing the most important party at this table for that discussion. It's got to be not the universities in the department, universities, accreditors and departments sitting down together to figure out how we can lower the cost of delivery of education and then effectively lower tuition rates once we do that. There's different levers you can pull in that. Our programs too long, I think they are. I think lower and credit, and without lower quality or outcomes, I think in some cases, at the graduate level, there's a repetitive nature of things you already know from your undergrad, or maybe even under job experience. Could that be publicly based? Could it be just lower credits? That's the biggest lever to pull to lower the tuition cost. One is looking at technology to enhance, maybe lower cost of delivery on salaries. Do we need as many training staff? Maybe? Depends on the program, maybe not. But we have to look at this together. There's different ways you can lower the cost of delivery with that impacting quality. To this date, we've really not done that altogether and it's time we do. That's number two. Three, and I think this is where institutions need to spend the most of their time as, and I spent 10 years of cheap marketing officer in higher ed. Differentiation is really not seen. Everybody says we have smaller class sizes. We got great faculty. We have, in the law and it's true. We have titled, for student loans and those who qualify blah, blah, blah. Everyone, that's like saying, hey, buy this card as windshield wipers and a gas tank. So before we dive into that deeply, what do you mean by differentiation? Because if you come from a marketing background, I do as well. That's second nature to us. Yeah, sure. It's creating a value of proposition that is different than your competitor. So if somebody says, why should I go to your school? You can articulate things that are not cliches. And by cliches, those are the ones I mentioned earlier. You could say something like, we have been around for over 100 years and have a track record of x, y, and z on graduation rates, licensure pass rates, and whatever your programs are. Or maybe you have some sort of differentiating factor that very few people have, at least in your market or your sector. It's coming up with a unique selling proposition. No one likes the word selling in higher end. I get that. But you kind of have to go that direction now. A USP unique selling proposition or unique value proposition. It doesn't mean that you're the only one that doesn't, that maybe you're the only one of us few. But there are certain things you could trademark. I mean, there are certain institutions that have done a nice job of coming up with a trademark term that no one else has. Flex path is one of those. Brilliant move on that university's part. And so are there things you can package that you do really well that you're better than most? It doesn't mean you have to be number one in the category. This means you've got to be in the top five, ten in the category brand. It come up with a term, put it into a trademark even and say, we have this and nobody else does. That's differentiation. Okay. So continue on with that because that's a great explanation. And I think a lot of listeners may not know the details behind differentiation. Higher ed not only is resistant to change, but embraces a sea of sameness and our messaging. Everyone says, no, we really have the best faculty. Well, that school over there just said that to me. So who's right here? No, but we do. We have, we our faculty are the, okay, everyone's saying that. Yeah. And even when you roll a new program out, which you and I have both done in higher ed, the accreditors want to say, show us five other institutions who have a program similar to yours. It's like, come on, where's the innovation there? That's right. That's exactly. That's when I get to the accreditation reform. Higher ed does need to become a little bit more like private sector in certain ways. Yeah. For that reason. Yeah. That's it too. Our fourth pillar is then really about growth and expansion and investment. So we've opened a couple of new campuses in the last couple of years. We have all new facilities now. Our Sacramento campus just had their grand opening last month with new students. We opened our Phoenix campus, which is our debut into physical health sciences with the nursing program, their pre-licensure. We've spent millions on renovating, coming up with new programs, new program deliveries. And I think for us, our next look is expansion on the physical aspect on some new campuses and new states in the next couple of years. So I think the important thing is expansion is the headline of Project Evolve. The other thing we're very proud, our debt is now zero. We paid off our debt much like anyone in individual life when you're going up into a time of unknowns, which 2026 and 27 is for higher ed. It is really nice to come into that with no debt. And that's something we really paid attention to. Like, okay, hey, we need some money to invest in innovation and expansion. And wouldn't it be great to have no debt to do that? That really helps a lot. And that was another thing we're very proud of. And then finally, on the downside, we have three very small branch campuses that represent about 6% of our student population. And as you know, you've probably seen the headlines. Small branch campuses are just not typically any more a viable model. When's the last time you heard the University, hey, I got a great idea. Let's open a small branch campus somewhere and launch that. This is not something people really do anymore. A lot of that's because of the move to online and hybrid. And some of it's just the changes in higher ed. Some of that's real estate cost. It really becomes unsustainable. Penn State just announced about a half a dozen of their branch campuses are closing, too. And it's done in a lot of subsidized universities as well. And so for us, it's three of our smallest locations that represent about 6% of our student body. We're not closing overnight. We're actually going to keep them open for another four, maybe five years until all students finish. And that's the downside of project evolve. It's not a fun side of it. But when you look at the greater good for what makes the institution healthy in the long term, our goal with project evolve is to make sure we're around for yet another 100 years. We had our 100 year anniversary just a couple of years ago. And project evolves by line is to ensure the sustainability for another 100 years. And that's, unfortunately, the downside of it. But again, these are instant. They're rolling down, winding down over a period of about five years on that aspect. So project evolve looks at the big picture. And again, I was so forced to have a front row seat in BC. I think I learned more in private conversations and meals shared with fellow negotiators than I did in the formal sessions. And you really have this time in late 25 when we could see the change in front of us. And I'm still drum shock today. How many presidents will call me? They want input about the changes in title form. I'm happy to share that with anybody that asked. And they're just learning about some of the nuances of it. Okay, it's not too late, but it's almost getting there. And having this front row seat really put us on the forefront of what needs to be done in long term for structural changes in I read. And the thing that you've impressed upon me and I've known this is because this is not done by executive order. It's not done by negotiated rulemaking. It's done by legislation. So this is in essence a reaffirmation, a reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, something that hadn't been done for a decade or more. That's right. We can't unwind these things. These are permanent. Yeah, that's right. It's technically separate from the HAA, but however, it's just impactful. And the most asked question I got as a federal negotiator is, hey, if the midterms change and one of the chambers goes D, well, that, no, that's, oh, it's not going to, that's not going to change us. And then someone else asked me, hey, if a Democrat wins the White House, well, that change, no, no, the way this was done is very differently in the past. This was an act of Congress. That's not typically how Negreg is dictated. As a negotiator, we had a lot of bumpers that Negreg teams don't typically have. When Congress speaks, you can't go against the will of Congress. And most Negreg is a blank slate, a blank canvas where you can play with almost anything. We didn't have that luxury here. The Congress spoke and we had very strict parameters. And to your other point, these changes are at least a decade, but I think they're actually semi-permanent, not permanent. So word institutions. If you think you're getting a last minute reprieve, that's not coming. It's not coming. Embrace the change. That's the choice you have. And so when did you roll out project evolve? Last September is when it started, but we didn't know, we didn't know. And it gets back to the master calendar. Typically, Negreg happens in the winter and spring months. And then you get the final draft published sometime in late summer. And then the final rule is published November, the first in the federal register. This time around, because it was an active congress, the master calendar was bypassed. So these came out a little bit later. So we really couldn't finalize project evolves design until the final draft came out in late January. So what I say to our faculty and staff is project evolve is evolving. It itself is evolving and we learn something every week about what's coming next and it's not all federally driven. It's also market driven. Perspective students are speaking loudly about what they want and largely higher it is not delivering that. Employers are speaking what they want. Largely we're not there. We have to quickly get there and the department is demanding that too. So with that, you rolled it out last year. It's still evolving. That's the point that I was wanting to make is it's not suffering the spot syndrome. The strategic plan on the top shelf gathering dusk. It's a living breathing document and you're going back and reviewing it sometimes on a weekly basis but at a minimum every six months. Am I correct? That's right. I think the challenge with many institutions is that they have these fantastic brochures on a PDF file on their website. For my taste, most institutions are a little too abstract in their goals though. We try to write ours with very specific quantitative outcomes and you can, if you can't answer it, did you meet this goal in less than five seconds? It's probably not a goal. It's probably more of an abstract idea or vision and that's fine in a vision statement but for a goal you want to anchor that in a quantitative outcome. And so for us, it's also important to be don't write strategic plans in stone. They're written in pencil. Why? Well, ask Blockbuster, Wool Wars and a few other corporations and go deck how that worked out when they wrote their strat plan in stone. It didn't work out because they didn't adapt to changes that were right in front of their face and Hyeret has a habit of doing that. So for us, it's important you stress to faculty and staff. Hey, this plan may change in a year. It may change next week. That's because we have to be adaptable to the changes the market is screening about. That is a critical point for people to understand. Now it wasn't developed in a silo. You had multiple stakeholder groups working together to develop the plan, correct? Yes. The strategic plan process and a lion focuses on two different groups before it gets to the board. The administration certainly drives it. But we have a faculty committee on strategic planning, which is appointed by our faculty senate, and then we have a staff council that are elected by their peers to serve as representatives of all staff. And we have not done this for a while yet that we will. In the past strategic planning process, we have elected student government association members to share governance as different meetings. Pinsley, who you ask? I think some people think shared governance means we get the final say and that's not true. Shared governance means you have a seat at the table and you're thoughtfully listened and all ideas are welcome. And so for us, we're not perfect at it, but we really try to maintain that shared governance as we develop these plans as well. And that's so important as we say at our firms, people support what they help create. That's right. That's right. So Andy, thank you so much. This has been again a fascinating conversation. I always learned things from you when you're on the show and I greatly appreciate that in you and you're being on. Likewise, I've learned a lot from you over the last 15 plus years in our relationship together too and it's always a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you. I appreciate that. Three takeaways. Well, takeaway one is these changes are permanent folks. If you think that last minute Hail Mary is coming, it's not. I'm talking about the structural federal changes that Congress spoke. The Department responded to and being on that front line team, I can tell you, these changes are here to stay. Don't underestimate your planning process. Number two, it's late, but it's not too late. If you've not started changing your institution, getting ready for it, not just federal changes, but for demand and what the consumer wants. That next generation of student is demanding more flexible learning pathways. It's late, but it's not too late. You can still get started now and know you can affect change in a very good way for what's coming next. Number three, plans are great. So you got to have a plan. But what's more important is execution. Higher education has a historical habit of having the best looking shiny strategic plans that sit on the top of a shelf on your website at the front door while they look great in that PDF file and that full color brochure. They do look great, don't they? The two things about those. One, have measurable goals. Yes. Don't confuse a vision statement for a goal. They're very different. And unfortunately, I see our goals are we're going to become the best abstract, abstract abstract abstract and you go, well, okay, well, how do we measure that though? And I got to measure that somehow. And number two, have an execution team. Have someone own it and not a group of people because if everybody owns it, nobody does. One person doesn't mean they have to do it by themselves to meet the goal, but one person needs to be accountable party to meet that goal, assign it to one person that you can go to saying, are we meeting this goal and have regular updates? I think those are my three takeaways, Trump. Thank you. Those are great. I feel like you're preaching to the choir here because that's exactly how we do planning work is the racing model vision statement. How do you measure it? You've got to have your key success indicators, goals, all of these kind of things. So thank you. Always a pleasure and it's like writing a dissertation. There's not one right framework. There's a lot out there. Just pick one and stick to it and execute the heck out of it. Exactly. The dissertation is the one that's finished. That is right. Execute. Very good, sir. Well, Andy, thank you so much for being on the show. Any last minute thoughts for us? Embrace the change, everyone. There's no stopping it. Innovation, creativity, and execution are key and good luck to everyone. Thank you, sir. Always a pleasure, Andy. Same here, Trump. Thank you. Thanks for listening today and a special thank you to my guest, Dr. Andy Vaughn. Andy, always a pleasure having you on the podcast. Thank you so much for all you're doing, especially with the Negreg. I look forward to the next time our paths cross. To my listeners, thanks for tuning in. See you next week. Changing higher ed is a production of the change later, a consultancy committed to transforming higher ed institutions. Find more information about this topic along with show notes on this episode at changing higher ed dot com. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe to the show. We would also value your honest rating and review. Email any questions, comments, or recommendations for topics or guests to podcast at changinghighered.com. Changing higher ed is produced and hosted by Dr. Drummond Norton, post-production by David L. White.