SACSCOC Updates: Substantive Change, Standards, and Outcomes Transparency

[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. [Music] Thank you, David. My guest today is Dr. Stephen Pruitt, president of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, or known as SACCOC. Stephen assumed the role about six months ago taking over from longtime President Bell Wheeland. And since then he's been leading a focused 100-day plan emphasizing clarity, consistency, and institutional trust in accreditation. He's brought a lot of changes to SACC's. Since he took over the Commission's streamlined the accreditation pathways, modernized governance structures, and advanced the Student Senate approach to accountability. At the December Board of Trustees meeting, they approved major substantive change reforms, eliminating more than half the existing categories, and shifting others to presidential review, thus reducing approval times to as little as one week. Stephen's leadership reflects a commitment to transparent, efficient accreditation that supports innovation, protects academic quality, and centers on student success. And he joins me today to talk about SACC, COC, accreditation, what's going on there, and what's next for SACC's. [Music] Stephen, welcome to the show. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. I appreciate you letting me come. Well, it's my pleasure. I'm looking forward to a great conversation. You just took over for an institution at SACC, COC, Bell Wheeland. Big shoes to fill, but having gotten to know you a bit, I have no doubt you're going to be able to do that. Well, I mean, nobody can fill the shoes of Bell. I mean, she has been, like you said, an institution. I would probably dare say in accreditation icon for the last 20 years. And so stepping into that role, the good thing is she's a good friend. And so maybe not so good for her, but good for me. I have her cell number. And I am inheriting an incredible staff. And it's nice to walk into a situation where you know and felt so comfortable with a person who had such great leadership over the years. Absolutely. I couldn't have said it better. She was in the role for 20 years and has done an incredible job there. But now you've got the range you've been in there at about six months or so. And you had a hundred day plan. Before we get to all that, please give us a little bit of your background. Yeah, you know, this probably the hardest part I have is talking about me, but in large part because if I give you the full CV, it just sounds like I couldn't keep a job. But you need both. Well, I mean, at the end of the day, what I tell people is I'm a teacher. That was where I started. I fell in love with chemistry, but more important fell in love with the idea of teaching and the opportunities that afforded. And so even years away from the classroom now, if you see me present somewhere, you're going to go, yeah, he was a teacher. He can't stand still. He keeps asking people to get into groups. Yeah, all that kind of thing. So, yeah, after I left the classroom, I spent some time in two different state departments of Ed. I was in the Georgia State Department of Ed. And then I was actually the Commissioner of Education in Kentucky, depending on your vernacular, it's the State Superintendent Commissioner, whatever. But most recently, I was the president of the Southern Regional Education Board, which is an interstate compact of the 16 Southern states that was formed to support. And I was the head of the state of the Southern Regional Education Leaders and Policymakers in education as I used to like to say from pre-K to gray. So it was across that full spectrum, that full board. Well, that's certainly prepared you for the SACS job with those different type of regulatory bodies, compliance, but also to working with the states who really make up the predominance of the membership at SACS COC. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's nice to walk in with a rolodex for anybody under 50, go and Google that if you're not sure what that means. But it's nice to walk in and there's already a relationship with system heads, with legislators, with governors across our region. And so it certainly is a big benefit for me. And it was nice to be able to, having those relationships to not have to completely get rid of those relationships by moving into any position. Oh, absolutely. And you know, one of the things I found, and you tell me if I'm right on this, when you make a friend in higher ed, you've got a friend for your entire career, possibly even your entire life. I think that's true. I think that's very true. I have people in that rolodex that I met 25 years ago and still keeping contact with. They're not just those people that end up in your phone that you, as you scroll, you go, oh, I haven't heard from them in a while. They're actually people that stay on your radar. Exactly. It in a position where you are, you want them on your radar because you want good, timely feedback from them. Are we headed in the right directions with sacks? You know, what could we be doing better? All those things. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, sacks, COC is at the end of the day is a membership organization. And people would do well to remember that. And I come into this, but that full understanding. Yes, at the end of the day, of course, we're going to hold people accountable, but we do that by leveraging the membership that we have. And people don't remember that it frankly, it's not you or Bell or whoever the president of sacks is. It's the commission of what 75 different people on the commission. I think you've got one of the bigger ones. Yeah, I mean, we're the face of it. I'm the one that people are going to probably throw darts at at the end of the day, but it's not decisions that I'm making. These are committees. It goes through a three tiered process that goes through multiple committees through multiple iterations. And it's why you often see at the beginning, higher number of things that maybe an institution has questions. Our committee has questions about their compliance, but by the time it gets to the board, they may have none. Because in that process that they have better opportunities to explain or more information, get surfaced. And so it really does. It's a dynamic process. It's pretty fascinating to watch. It feels long. I can imagine if you're at an institution. Oh, yes. The dynamic of people coming together and doing this peer review. I mean, it's what makes American accreditation. It's the difference in a government accreditation where you've got people who are in living the same life you're living sitting in the same seat. You're sitting in who are helping evaluate that your institution against the set of standards that holds that quality across the board. And that is so critical. There is the compliance aspect, which as an accrediting body, you have to do. But that's one of the reasons that there is the triad, the department, the state attorneys general, and then the accreditors so that it's not all one institution or one part of the triad holding all the institutions accountable. It's supposed to be all three for different perspectives. Absolutely. And it does. And it served us well for 100 years. We were originally created by a set of what we now call R1 institutions who said we want somebody to be a third party that can come in and evaluate are we providing quality education to our students. And over time when the triad gets created, the reality that states rights do rule the day in terms of when legislation is passed, when regulatory things are passed. But that triangle, that triad is so important because I think you said it perfectly. It's the perspective. It's the different perspective that each group brings to the table. And sure is tell us a little bit about sacks, COC when I talk about different accreditors, sacks has been for better for worse, I use sacks as an example of more compliance based, whereas netchy or wasc or northwest tends to be baseline compliance and more innovation. So tell us about sacks and tell me that I'm wrong because sacks, COC is changing away from full compliance. Well, at the end of the day, that was pretty blunt. It's okay. It's okay. I've had so more questions before. At the end of the day, all accreditors are charged with the compliance aspect because it is the gateway to federal money for their students. So you're never going to get away from that completely. And I would say that SACC-C-O-C, by and large, historically has played much stronger role in on the compliance aspect of relationships with their institutions. We're not going to be that way in SACC 2.0. I mean, we are doing so many other things, we're getting some things planned that really do put us into a place of innovation. It puts us into a place of adding to the knowledge base of what quality higher education is. It puts us into a place where we can better serve our institutions. And while the compliance will always be an aspect of it, leveraging compliance to get to innovation is actually the place that we want to move. We want our institutions to say, yes, we've got to do these things for SACC-C-O-C, but how could we actually do something bigger, special, and more focused for our students and for our community? And ultimately, for the workforce, because at the end of the day, our institutions are preparing the workforce. So I don't want to ever hear, oh, well, we can't do that because SACC says we can. We're going to work hard to change that. And I see you doing that with your first six months or a hundred day plan, all of those things. You've made some amazing changes already. Some of the ones you've approved changes to the sub-change reforms, eliminating more than half of the existing categories, shifting others to presidential review, reducing timelines for approval. These are all things that are critical, especially in today's day and age of needing lightning fast changes. Yeah, we can't be in a business anymore of, all right, mail us what you need. Once we receive it in the mail, we'll do our evaluation. We'll take it to the board. I think that we're in a time of our lives, a time in our history where people need to be able to be flexible, mobile, and react quickly to the lay of the land. I know here in Georgia, for instance. Georgia, at least for a time, became Hollywood East. There was this huge boom of Marvel movies and all that stuff was being filmed in Georgia because of all the tax credits. Institutions needed to be able to respond, to offer new majors, to offer new degrees that met that industry need. I use that one because it's probably one of the biggest ones people will hear. But we're seeing the same thing across the board, healthcare. We're seeing more around logistics and advanced manufacturing and engineering. Just across that board, our institutions need to be prepared, need to be ready, they need to be able to recruit. And the flip side of that coin is we've got to be flexible enough internally that we're able to respond quickly and that we're able to provide support where necessary, maybe guidance where necessary. But at the end of the day, what we need to do is trust our institutions. And that is a component of where we are eliminated over half of the subchange. They were things that were not required by the federal government and they were things that I believe at the end of the day we've got to trust our institutions to do the right thing by their students and by their communities. And that is the key, by the students, by the communities. If you keep what's best for the student in mind always, then you're not going to go file. Well, generally, my number one rule, students first always. My first staff meeting and probably every day since then, somebody has to hear me say, students first always. Or I'm asking the question, how does this benefit students? And if the answer is, well, and there's a little hesitation, okay, then that's probably not something we need to be in the business of. We don't, of course, have direct facing with students. We don't educate students directly. But we can make decisions. We can provide a framework that enhances an institution's ability to do that. And that's where we really want to go. How is the role of your VP lay us on with the institutions? How has that changed in all the changes that you're making? Well, it's interesting because one of the things with our VP lay us on, and I assume you're asking about the ones that actually are Saccio CvPs. Correct. You know, Saccio C is, to my knowledge, they're the only ones who not just provide a VP to each institution. A lot of our credit partners do that. But we have a specific VP that gets assigned to a specific institution. And that becomes the mode of communication. They attend all the committee meetings. They are on the ground. They're not sitting in Decatur answering phones. They are actually out in the field. I mean, we actually have, we have four seasons in Saccio C, unlike Atlanta who only has four if you count football. We actually have four seasons, but they're called fall travel season, in-house season, fall in-house season, spring travel season, and spring in-house season. I mean, they are on the road constantly. In fact, they've already hit the road here in January. And so that part hasn't changed. And it won't because I believe that's been a staple for Saccio C. It's been something our institutions at this point. Not only do they enjoy it, they expect it. I think if I were to make some announcement that, yeah, you're not going to have your own vice president on the ground with you anymore. I think that would be a major issue. As far as how they have reacted to the change, let me just start with a quick anecdote that it was pretty emblematic of how this has worked with staff. We were all away at a conference, and so we had sort of a mini retreat. And that's where I rolled out the 100 day plan for the first time. So this was in, I guess, September, all right? And there's a scene in the West Wing where Bartlett and Leo call the senior staff in, and Bartlett says, "We're going to do these things." And he named off several policy things. And as he gets to the end, the senior staff turns away from the president and Leo and starts talking to each other about, "We need to call this person. We need to get this meeting." And so they start at that meeting, I had that same experience where I was telling them, "Hey, here are the things I want to do with our rollout or with our 100 day plan." And they immediately start jumping into the planning. There was no resistance. There was no bad body language. It was in me to say, "Yes, we want a roll on this. We see the benefit here." And it wasn't trying to just please the president because by the time we got back to the office, we had 13 committees that had been established. They were working on the implementation strategies within a week of those committees being done. I mean, it was just, wow, they are really getting up and going. They're excited about things like our rapid response initiative that we're just about to kick off. Where institutions who are struggling, we can send a three-member team in that can help be on the ground and help you think through having this issue with finances. Okay, well, who do we need to connect you with? Not just SaxeoC staff, but what other institution can we get on the phone with you right now and help walk you through this issue? We kind of do this informally already. We actually had a couple of institutions in the Decatur office in the last month that came in to meet with our director of institutional finance, our vice presidents. So we've kind of done that a while. It's just we're going to more formalize that. And the vice presidents are so excited about that. They're just beside themselves. Well, they have all of this great, and the VP's layasons for all of the accreditors have this great experience. And up until this point in many accreditors, it's been more from a, are you doing this? We're not allowed to be consultants to you. Whereas it sounds like you're taking that to the role, yes, you're in charge of compliance, et cetera, et cetera. But you're also there to help consult to make your schools under your portfolio successful. And you have these other resources that you can call in to help elevate the advice that you give. That's brilliant. Well, I never use the word brilliant when I'm talking about anything I came up with. But the thing is we've got these people who have this incredible knowledge base. They see what's going on. They lived it. I mean, a lot of them were layasons at their own institutions. We have a few former presidents that are vice presidents now. And so there's just this incredible breadth of knowledge. But more importantly, because of how we're structured, they see what other institutions are doing. And I believe SACCOC can be a center of best practice. that puts us into a different plane, that yeah, we can't, and the vice presidents won't say, if you do X, you will be compliant. What they can say though is our experience shows us that institutions that have done these things. And if you pull off the implementation of these, it tends to go over well with committees, right? And so it does put them into a place where they're not making determinations of compliance. And that's important that everybody understands. - That's the commission's rule. - It's yeah, exactly, exactly. Our role can't be helping or prohibiting anybody from being compliant. But what we can do is provide opportunities for conversation with other institutions and provide with a base knowledge that are a breadth of knowledge, I guess I should say, that just provides institutions with good guidance that then they have to take and localize to their own institution. The way I described it is, we should be about finding unique solutions to common challenges. A lot of institutions have common challenges, but every solution looks different. - Yes, it does. And the beauty of what you're talking about is, it's not necessarily striving for compliance. You're striving for what's best for the students, which is in itself compliant. - You know, way back when President Kennedy announced that we were going to go to the moon, no astronaut ever set the goal to get to the moon. They set the goal to get home. If we say our goal is compliance, we will never see excellence. And so my belief on it is, yes, compliance is part of a function of an accreditor. But if we simply stop at compliance, we're never gonna get the moon shot. - No. One of the things that really struck me when we spoke last week was you were talking about SACS becoming a sandbox for innovation. Tell me a little more about that, please. - I am so very excited about this. It's still in the baking stage. It's not out of the oven yet. But here's doesn't smell good though. - It smells really good. - Oh good. - And lots of chocolate and caramel to go with it. - I'm there. - What's exciting about it is, I mean, and we might talk about this at another time, but I started this series called Law or Law for the opposite reason. But a lot of-- - I'm sorry. - Was that law or law? - Yes, sorry. The Southern accent doesn't always play that. - It's not that bad. - But the idea is there's always this, well we can't do that because SACS won't let us. Or we can't do this because there's a standard against it, right? Now sometimes that's true, but a lot of the time it's the interpretation and unfortunately even more times it's where someone else had an interpretation that told that person about the interpretation. So it's actually two interpretations off, right? - It sounds like a game of telephone. It's a game of giant telephone. That's like the old laugh in. It's the party to whom I'm speaking. - Kind of thinking. - Yes. And I'm dating myself because I can remember Lily Tomlin saying that. - Me too. (laughing) And so the idea of the law or law was to get people to stop thinking about what they've heard is appropriate and start actually going to look about. So I do it in common language. I do it like I'm speaking except I take the extra syllables of my speech out when I'm writing. But the idea there is to get away from this mentality of we can't be cause, right? Well, the sandbox for innovation takes that and goes another step. The idea here is there may be legitimate things that an institution says we want to do this. But to do that, this or these standards, if we were to go through our reaffirmation right now, we might be found in compliant because of this new initiative. What I want to do is say, okay, if that's your case, come make the case. Come make the case that this is something you want to do and why these are in the way. Our question is going to be, so why are they in the way? So give us a good rationale. What are you going to do for students? What will this initiative do that's special for students for your community, for the workforce? And if we can come to an agreement that that's the case and the institution is willing to say, hey, if we do this, we will have 85% of our students graduate in four to five years. Our 90% will pass their industry credential or whatever. And we agree on that metric, then we set that aside for that period of time. And at the end of that period, there's a report that says, this is what we did for this initiative. So it's something that's completely for institutions, won't be required or forced to do it. But at the same time, you can no longer say, well, we're not allowed to do that because SACs won't let us. Come talk to SACs and let's figure out a way to get it done. What I've told our staff is I want us to be the organization that finds a way to say yes. This initiative sounds like something that Larry Schall would do from NETCHI. Maybe actually I haven't talked to Larry about this. This is something that kind of bubbled up. It's similar to actually similar to a law that I helped pass in Georgia back in the day that we did that, but it was in K-12, around K-12 accountability. And so I kind of took that and have expanded it now that I've come to SAC, C-O-C, to say, you know what, I think this is the same kind of deal. We can work directly with institutions and provide them with better opportunity, let them tap into their creative juices, and that's not be a hindrance, but actually be a support. - Well, to me, this taps right into your torch awards, well, I agree. So one of the parts of the 100-day plan was that we wanted to do more to tell the stories of our institutions. You know, higher ed, and you know, if I was up in public, I guess this is where I would be required to use a phrase like the value add of higher ed, or the, you know, something like that, right? Well, the whole, or the value proposition, I guess is the one that's the info now. So the value proposition of higher ed is in question, and not in politics, but across the general board, people are saying people are going to debt, the debt's not able to pay for their, or the new career's not able to pay that debt off in a reasonable amount of time. So higher ed, it's not meeting the needs. And it's just not true. I mean, Georgetown Center has, came out with a report recently that talked about, I can't remember the exact number, but over 80%, 85% of the jobs of the next 10 years are going to require a bachelor's degree or higher. And we know that you can accumulate and receive more wealth with a baccalaureate degree or higher, but still there's that thing, that nagging thing of well, it's not really meeting its need. So it's all about the money, exactly. And so for us, what we wanna do because of where we're positioned, right now, usually if you hear SACCOC in a news release, it's because somebody got in trouble. - This is true. - And I don't want that to be the only time people say SACCOC in the news. So we get to see these institutions doing great and wonderful things. So we wanna help tell that story. But more importantly, going back to something I said earlier, we wanna be that center of best practice. So not only do we want to celebrate the great story of an individual institution, we also want to be able to say to other institutions who may aspire to grow in a certain area. Hey, see these folks who got these awards, it wasn't because they needed new awards. It's because they had highlighted just doing some great things. So go and let us introduce you to them. And let's have a conversation about how you could improve in your campus, how to get there. So the torch awards really, and I'll just tell you the funny part about it is that meeting I was telling you about earlier that where I rolled out the 100 day plan, I looked at our guy, Alexi, who is in charge of our data. I said, Alexi, I want three data points that in December, we can roll out as recognition. Three, I just wanted three. Alexi comes to me two weeks later and he says, well, we've got 70. I don't understand what you're saying to me. 70, do you mean like point 70? What are you talking about? He said, no, we have 70. And he and his team had worked with this, with the recognition's committee and said, we got all this data in our fingertips. We can create three awards. awards that we can give out in December. There aren't based on one criteria, but they're based on a collection of criteria that's emblematic of student success, of affordability, and of post graduate success with regard to their money. I mean, not many places will you find any data that says you can repay your tuition in three months based on disposable income. We have that kind of data. So the torch awards really kind of came out of that, and it's really exciting, and our institutions, especially the ones that one have really appreciated it. - Yeah, please give a shout out to those three institutions. - Well, so here's the other cool part. It's not just three institutions. We actually were able to give awards in each of the, so we have six levels of institutions, and those levels go from institutions that don't give bachelor's degree through those that give more than four PhD, or a doctoral level. So for affordability, Trident Technical College and Level One, St. Petersburg College and Level Two, Level Three and Four, we actually collapsed because we have smaller numbers in one of those areas, but new College of Florida and Level Five, we had Fayetteville State University in Northern Kentucky University, and in Florida, University of Florida and the University of the Comberlands in Level Six. And just again, for affordability, just a couple of quick things, that looked at undergraduate tuition, it looked at institutional aid participation rate, it looked at average cost for low income students, it looked at the decade cost trend across low income students, so it was a collection of those things. Student success in completion, which deals with student faculty ratio, it deals with percent of academic and student support, expenditures in the budget, retention rates for full time, dynamics of retention rates, it looks at power-simpliants, part-time students, I'm not reading all the indicators, but you can see there's a hard range there. The institutions that get a shout out here in Level One, Buford County Community College, John A. Gupton College, Pemiko Community College, and Level One, and Level Two, we had the Carolinas College of Health Sciences, Center College, Davidson College, and Wolford College, and Level Three and Four, we had Thomas University, and Level Five, we had University of Richmond, and in Level Six, we had Vanderbilt University. - Wow. - Yeah, it's really cool. - Oh, impressive. - And then the last award was on post-college success, and here we looked at median earnings, we looked at the percent earnings above high school graduate, which is something that's getting banded to turn around a lot in DC, where we're already out of that curve. We already are collecting that type of data, and we looked at a number of years to recoup college investment with discretionary annual earnings, not just total, repayment rates, all that sort of thing. So for that, Level One, we had Mary and Military Institute, and Northern Virginia Community College, and Level Two, we had Virginia Military Institute, and Level Three and Four, we had Trinity University, and Level Five, we had Washington and Lee University, and in Level Six, we had Rice University, and the University of Texas Medical Branch of Calvallston. - Wow. - That's an impressive list of schools. - It really is, it really is, and it's fascinating. We actually even found in this data, which by the way, we're launching a new database that will be accessible to the public in the spring. And you'll be able to go see your institution, where you are in various measures and all that, but one thing's first as we found was in affordability. There's this opinion that, oh, the big R1 institutions are just too expensive for students to go to. We actually found where in some states, the community college was more expensive than the R1 institution, because of the different incentives that the R1 was able to provide. So it was really pretty fascinating to get into that level of data, and we're gonna be happy to share that data with others and with the public come in the spring. - That's gonna be great. I've always believed you get what you measure. - Absolutely. - And if you want to incentivize people to do better in certain ways, you recognize those who are doing a great job. - Absolutely, absolutely agree. I mean, data is, I mean, I'm a chemist, so naturally I love data, I'm also an assessment and accountability guy, so I love data. But you know, the thing is data in and of itself is stuff, it's numbers, it's stories. When data becomes evidence, it means you've applied some level of reasoning to it. And so we can look at this data. And the reason why I love these awards is because it's not on a single data point. Our Alexi and Godfrey did this incredible job of thinking this through, and because it became a collection, they applied reasoning to how those things fit together to tell a story of affordability, of student success. That becomes evidence that higher ed is worth the expense. It's worth what people are able to do. Do we have areas that we need to do better, of course? Do we need to do better with informing students coming out of high school, what career options are available to them, and which ones are gonna make more money? Of course we do. But it doesn't mean we don't have great things going on in higher ed right now. - Oh, absolutely, and that's the first key. I tell folks all the time, the biggest reason that the public perception of higher education is not where it was, is cost. - Absolutely. - And if we can do something about that, just like what you're doing and incentivizing institutions to keep the cost in line or even decrease them, there's other things going on though as well, and some of the changes you've got going at SAX, workforce issues. And for me, the big one, you're revising your standards. It's something that has to happen periodically in summits every 10 years. But looking forward in revising standards, what are some of the things you're looking at? - That's a great question. And it's actually one of the most exciting things that's going on right now. So we have been one of those institutions and you don't wanna change standards every year 'cause they become jealous. And the idea of picking up your president's crazy. - Exactly, exactly. It's eating Jello with a big fork. I mean, if you change it too often. Well, the normal revision time is actually a year away, but I didn't feel like we had time to waste. So I went ahead and called for a revision of the standards immediately. So that work has begun. We have a committee that's working that has representation of every level of institution and every type of institution. - Good. - And we're making this a pretty public facing event. So the standards can often be seen as insider baseball 'cause not everybody understands them. And then you add accreditation to that and it gets even more insider. But that's irrelevant to me. We've gotta be transparent with what we're doing. I've seen people do standards at both the K-12 and higher ed level that they do it in a dark room and they come out and say, yay, they're done. Well, what we're doing is we're working, we started with a giant survey of every single standard. And it took, I mean, to fill out the survey, it took people hour and a half, two hours. I mean, 'cause you couldn't just go in and click yes, no, or relevant and irrelevant. You had an opportunity to come in on every single standard. We've taken that, we've run it through qualitative analysis software, we're providing that to the teams. Well, as they do their work, we're gonna come out with a first draft and we're gonna post it on the web and we're gonna invite our institutions to comment, presidents, liaisons, deans, instructors, everybody. But we're also gonna have it on there for the public if they wanna make a comment. We're gonna take all the feedback, we're gonna go back, we're gonna do an revision, we're gonna post it a second time. And the reason that I do that is 'cause I believe you should give everybody a chance to say, I told you last time to do this and you didn't do it and here's why you should have. We'll take all the feedback that second draft and then we'll take it to the board in December of 26th. Things that we're looking at to really get to the answer of your question. We're looking at streamlining. We believe that frankly, we have too many standards. We can reduce the number of standards because we can make it less onerous but at the same time hold a high level of quality. I believe in rigor, I don't believe in rigor mortis. So we wanna keep rigor, we don't wanna have so much compliance and it becomes rigor mortis. We are looking at how we need to involve workforce. We actually have a committee that is gonna be reviewing the standards that are a workforce committee that's gonna give us feedback. Now, we talk about the contribution to workforce because that's gonna look very different. different in a community college setting versus an R1. So one size fits all. I don't believe that and I think our institutions don't believe that. So we wanna create a system that allows for us to acknowledge the workforce contribution of each institution. I think we have to, but I think it needs to be done in a way appropriate to the mission of that institution. We're looking at how we can differentiate, which goes along with what I was just talking about. The way it looks in a level one institution that doesn't provide even a back of our area degree, compared to the Duke's, Vanderbilt's, Auburn's, UGA's, - Your AAU institutions. - Looks very different. So we are having those conversations. Maybe it's, we already have a differentiated process for accreditation, but now we're saying maybe we need to go one more step and actually differentiate by institution level. So we wanna have those conversations. We are having conversations about length of time between accreditation. Ten years may be too long. Right now we have a fifth year and a tenth year. Maybe we need to drop that down to a seventh and get rid of the fifth year. I mean, so what we're talking about when we're looking at these standards is not tweaking around the edges and nibbling around the edges of the cookie. We're talking about a new cookie that hopefully is more robust, but at the same time more recognition that institutions, missions rule the day and that we need to support those institutions, missions. - As long as it doesn't put on too much weight, that cookie. - Well, yeah, yeah, but I'm not doing keto or anything like that because that's just not even good flavor. (laughing) - This has been fascinating. I, you know, so much have enjoyed this conversation. One last question for you, before we get to our takeaways. - Sure. - From where you sit, how does higher ed need to change to regain the public trust and public perception? - It's a great question. I mean, I think that we've got to be more transparent about the contribution to workforce, that it's not just signing up taking classes and getting a piece of paper walking across stage that it does lead somewhere. And even if, and again, I want to be clear, I'm not saying that you have to eliminate a bunch of programs, but at least students need to have the truth in advertising of this is what this is going to offer you at the end of your program. I think that you hit the nail in the head earlier, the issue around finances and affordability. It can't be that we put students in perpetual debt for the rest of their life, especially those coming from low income families. I think that's going to be really important. And this one, this may be more Stephen than the rest of the world. Those two are kind of common, I think. For me, I think it's really important that we are better and more thoughtful around articulating the pathways that get a student from high school through the workforce. In my career, I've always talked about the education to workforce system, not the K-12 system, the post-secondary system and workforce system, but the education to workforce system. So we need to figure out better ways that we counsel students in high school that are in dual enrollment or even just preparing for post-secondary. But even without the Georgetown study, what it does say is you may not need a bachelor's degree, but basically every career that has any possibility for a lifetime of decent wages is going to require some level of post-secondary activity, right? And so figuring out how to best articulate from high school through that workforce, and it can be things as simple as going, okay, when I'm in community college and I'm working toward this certificate or this credential, and we have examples of this. When that tech does this, for instance, where they have a position they're advising that they advise each student every semester that not just take these to get to an associate's degree, but if you take this one before you take this one, you can get this certificate, which gives you more financial room, which means you're taking on less debt. It can be something more elaborate that we start to think differently about how we advise students in that, right now we have a huge deficiency in truck drivers. Well, we know that with Waymo and with what's with already out in New Mexico, they're testing track trailers without drivers. So rather than just getting through the CDL license, what if we also help them learn logistics or help them learn business? So they could own their own business, right? What if we had a student that was getting a certificate in advanced manufacturing, if we really help them see the advanced manufacturing also leads to engineering? So you may decide you wanna go onto a four-year institution and get your engineering degree, which brings me to another key point. I think another part of this that gets to the financial part is if we embrace that idea, the education and workforce system, we've got to embrace the idea that credit transfer has got to be more embraced and just because you didn't take it on your, my campus doesn't mean it was bad course. Right. And the outside world really doesn't see that. They see the courses call this and it's call this at your institution, why are they not getting credit? And it's seen as a money grab, whether it is or not. And I get that there are things inside of that that may be different, but finding more effective ways to facilitate that credit transfer between institutions is huge. And I guess the last thing which people already know this is we don't have the traditional age of student anymore. So we've got to broaden how we approach higher ed to speak to people who are working full-time jobs and finding ways to help them get into higher education. And I think we've made progress on that, but we can do more. I think it's something we could actually really further accentuate. - Those are great things. What comes to mind for me is something that Gordon Geek told me years ago, right in the onset of COVID. He says COVID is accelerating, needed changes in higher ed by a decade or more. That was five years ago? - Yeah. - No, actually longer than that, it was almost six years ago. Well, what's the accelerator, artificial intelligence? - Yep. - That is doing, that's changing the way we think about these. And frankly, we need more folks who are thinking like you are that it is education to the workforce, to the gray hair or white hair in my case. It's the talent assembly line, essentially, is what it is. The higher ed is the institution, but you've got all this input, output, and it doesn't stop there. Michael Crowe to me has got the right idea. You sell your institution to somebody. Why is it after a graduate degree, that's it. You're there to provide lifelong learning for individuals. Because the jobs that high school students are coming in and we're talking trad students at this point, the jobs that these students are going to college right now haven't even been invented. - Absolutely. Absolutely. - Well, and you know, I think maybe a little shout out to my formal organization. In 2019, we released a report called Unprepared None Aware. And what was, was we did a study of individuals, ages 25 to 35, who did not have any level of post-secondary education. And it was eye opening. And of course, this was before COVID. And again, and you just hit the nail head, artificial intelligence and automation. Because everybody thinks of automation. And there's this perspective that, oh, technology's gonna kick people out of the workforce. It's actually opposite. It's gonna bring more jobs. The question is, are people ready to take them? And so, when you look at it, and you see these people that at the time in 2019, they were happy, their families are going on vacations, they're owning their own homes. But we call it Unprepared None Aware, because when you look at what's coming down the pipe, we saw this incredible percentage of people who didn't have any type of post-secondary education or specified training. And they were gonna be left out of the workforce in the future. And then we followed that up with an economic impact report and basically found that, and this was in the 16th Southern State. So, I know this sounds funny, but it's S-R-E-B, we did include Delaware and Maryland. You can't get sweet tea in their restaurants, but we love them anyway. So, but we found 18 million. million potential adults would be unemployable by 2030 18 million Unemployable not unemployed. They were talking about people who just simply did not have the capacity to be able to Hold the jobs because they didn't have the training for it. So and it was and again, this is before COVID Well COVID accelerated that to the eighth degree where we're seeing That happen now where if people aren't in some type of higher education program and again I'm not here proposing that everybody needs a bachelor's degree I think but I do think everybody needs something after high school if they think that they are going to have any type of possible career And we're seeing more and more states put together what I call the three-h list High-need high-skill high-wage career lists where they're prioritizing funding that if you go after certain of these degrees to fill Those needs you might get a little extra of your school pay for But imagine the economy of the South and subsequently the country if people completely say well high school to Paul must find It just can't work. Yeah There are certain skills that you learn. I remember that old adage hearing years ago You go and get a bachelor's degree to train your mind You go for a master's degree to get skills and you go for a PhD to bring new knowledge into being It's still basically boils down to that. Yeah This has been a fascinating Conversation for me, Steve and I really appreciate you taking time to go on the show. Oh, I've loved this has been great Thank you as we always do our two final questions Three takeaways for university presidents and boards what do I need to be aware of with the new sacks and with accreditation well Welcome to the new sacks is what I've been saying to everybody and so what they need to take away is we are Not just changing. We're changing rapidly. I've charged our staff to be and to become the accreditor who's never existed So we are going to push the envelope. I shared this with our membership at our annual meeting There's an old poem by Robert Frost that says the most difficult thing to do is to stay gold Well, Sack COC was seen as the gold standard for a long time But to stay gold it means you have to work at it So we're going to be bold and stay gold So that's one takeaway a second takeaway is that There are no silver bullets silver bullets are just good for werewolves That means that we're all going to have to take we're going to have to work hard We're going to have to do a lot to make sure that people understand the value and the importance of education And I guess the other part of this is I always like to remind people that Education is complex. It's not easy. I mean, it's not rocket science because rocket science is easier I mean we can predict what happens with hydrogen and oxygen, but we can't predict life is for people So because it's that way education really is a big mosaic If you think about it in art terms, it's a mosaic and the question is how close are you standing? So are you able to step back from that mosaic and see the bigger picture and how you can help the general populace See the importance and complexity of higher education That to me is a role that we all have to embrace Very very good. I'm gonna I'm gonna borrow the mosaic. Thank you. Feel free What's next for you? Oh? Goodness, well, we're continuing to work away. We Have some exciting things coming in the near future and in the distant future. I've already mentioned that we are Revising our standards next year. We're retraining every single Individual on the new standards. It's not going to be just kind of a rollover It's a cold hard stop because the standards are going to be different enough that we've got to really refocus and retrain and hopefully someday me stop riding an article a week on law or law Because everybody starts to understand what the law is We're gonna release a huge as I mentioned earlier a huge incredibly dynamic dashboard in the spring That's not just gonna bring to bear higher ed, but it's also gonna bring elements of the workforce that will give More support to all of our institutions into the general populace We're about to start putting together our legislative advisory council Which is something that I don't think any other group has really had is where we're gonna be asking Sitting legislators across all of our states that have institutions in them to come and be a part of helping us Evaluate our new standards implement our new standards and help guide us and then learn what accreditation is about So I'm really excited about the opportunity to continue to work with our legislators around the South and Beyond the South because we aren't just in the South anymore So keep an eye out on us. There's a fair chance the next time you see us. We may not look the side Just don't change the name Well, no promises What I've told all of our folks is Nothing is off the table if it moves or if it accredit we're looking at it Good well, Stephen. This has been a real pleasure for me. Thank you so much And I wish you all the best going forward. Thank you very much And thank you for having me on and I've loved getting to listen to the other ones that you've done So it's a real honor to get to be here Well, thank you. It's very kind. Take care of my friend. Thank you Thanks for listening today and a special thank you to my guest Dr. Stephen Pruitt Stephen I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. I look forward to the next time our path cross and keep up the great work down there at Sachs For my audience for my listeners. Thanks again for tuning in I hope this episode was as informative for you as it was for me and I look forward to seeing 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 changing higher ed dot com Changing higher ed is produced and hosted by dr. Drummond Norton post production by David L. White