Higher Ed's Seed Round: How Universities Decide Which Programs to Build

Hey everybody. This is Darren Francis with Signals in Higher Education. And today my special guest is Fritz Andover. He is the director of online program support services at the University of Minnesota. Do I got that right, Fritz? That's me. That's you? Alright. Well, hey, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate the time, Darren. Yeah. Well, I loved being on your podcast, and so, selfishly had to bring you over on to to mine. But, you are the cohost of getting stuff done in higher ed and a great podcast. I think I was episode seven or eight, maybe? You were I think we're at seventeen or eighteen now. So Oh, okay. We're getting up there in the numbers, which is good. That's great. That's awesome. Well yeah. No. Super excited about the conversation we had. It led to us saying, hey. Let's do do this over here. What I'd love to do is actually, before we get into sort of the main topic and things that we wanna cover, I wanna go a little bit into your bio. You've got an interesting one in higher ed leadership. I people tend to enter into higher ed leadership and stay in it the whole time, and you did something unusual. You you were in the in at the institutional side doing some, work, you know, really inside of colleges to, that was really close to faculty and to teaching. And then you separated from the institutional side for a little bit and went into the OPM space, which I wanna talk about. But why don't you just start with, you know, going back to around two thousand when you were in the ed educational technology space where they convened for you, what was that like? What were you doing? And then what made you wanna kinda consider moving from that into into industry? We're gonna go way back. Okay. So in two thousand, I was a graduate student at Washington University in Saint Louis. So in the in history, American history, I I had started a PhD in American history that fall of two thousand at WashU. And, I did that I gotta go back a little further. So I was a history major in college, had a great experience, loved the writing, the research, all that. And I thought after I finished college, I thought, you know, this is something I I could see myself doing, being a history professor because it's something I'd been interested in history since as a kid. So, I talked to faculty where I went to a place called DePauw University, and they said, oh, you would be great at this, but it's really difficult to get a job, tenure track job otherwise. It's really hard. So if you wanna do this, be really good in the technology side, the technologies that are impacting higher ed. So this is nineteen ninety graduated, nineteen ninety nine when I'm having these conversations. And so and I was technically adept, you know, with computers at the time, tools on the computers. And so I went and became a web developer and deliberately to feed that side of their advice so that when I started graduate school and I was applying to them, I could say, I'm interested in this field, but I'm also have I have the tech chops to explore this. And they you know, this isn't no one knew what it was gonna be like. Web two point o, for those of you who know what that is, did not exist yet. So, I mean, Google was barely out of out of beta. So so in two thousand, I was at WashU. I was a I was a first year graduate student, and I I've told the story in other spaces like in our podcast when I did my about me, episode. But I was interested in that intersection of technologies and humanities and teaching and research. And so, I realized I was more interested in better than that, and I saw a better future for that for me in that space rather than continuing down trying to become a faculty member or and researcher in this field of history. So I actually that after my first year, that spring and summer of two thousand one, I shifted to a master's exit. Still did a master's thesis. Wrote that in two thousand one, two thousand two, and finished my master's in two thousand two that spring and had a job already lined up at WashU to just join their their staff at the College of Arts and Sciences in helping faculty figure out this this intersection and how to how to use tools in teaching, how to use it in research. And so that really started my path into educational technologies. I didn't come at it from a purely tech side. I didn't come at it, you know, from a tech outwards. I came from a disciplinary, and then I was which was very common then. You were just bolting knowledge on. Like, oh, I can learn how to do web development. I can learn how to build things in Flash and, other kinds of tools that existed back in the bad old days. So I kept pulling that thread and, was at WashU for about three years, but I still had an itch to not just have a bigger degree, but I was I wanted to have this bigger context about higher education, where technology can make its way into an impact and have a role in the teaching and learning and research in the whole enterprise. So, talked to my the people, my mentors again at DePauw. This is, like, two thousand four, I think. And said, I'm really interested. I don't wanna be a faculty member, but I'm interested in the administrative side of technology in higher education. And this professor, Dennis Trinkle, who's a French history professor who's big in the technology side of higher ed. He said, well, you should just get a PhD in higher education policy and administration. And I was like, I didn't know this field existed. So, that there was not a program for that in anywhere in Saint Louis where I'm from, where I was living. Not at WashU, not at Saint Louis University. I don't even think there's maybe there's one in University of Minnesota or Missouri Columbia. So but my wife, who's from Duluth, Minnesota, she was planning to move back to Minnesota after she finished her graduate degree in two thousand five. There's a program in educational policy administration at the University of Minnesota, which is right here in the metro in the Twin Cities. So I got into that, started my PhD, and the rest is history. So I I did that, finished my PhD. I I actually did go full time because there was no online courses. I was working, but I thought, man, I'm gonna putter my way through this one course at a time for eternity. So I got an assistantship and just went full bore four courses a semester, just plowed through the coursework in two years, and then went back into the workforce. I worked at McAllister College for nine years in the academic technology space, which is a great experience As I got to work closely with faculty every day, my office is in a in an academic building. I was among history historians and classics professors, and English professors. So I got I was still immersed in the technology side, but also immersed in the faculty side in that. I was with them all the time. I went to faculty meetings. I got this deep, basically, an education in the culture of higher education from the inside. As I'm finished my doctorate in thinking critically and learning about all of the all of the the whole enterprise of higher education. So but along the way, I thought, you know, even at McAllister, I'm I was interested in the in the, you know, the the program side, the strategic side. How do we how do institutions pick what they're gonna do on an academic program side or just a strategic side with technologies and beyond? And I'm I'm very interested in the online learning aspects of it. So but it was hard. I mean, honestly, I'll be I'll be honest. It was hard to break into that as someone who worked at a small liberal arts college. Slack is those if you know, you know. So, they're often a I mean, there's they're not There's a lot of them, but it's a very small slice of hire as far as student enrollments. And it can be hard to get off of get out of that orbit. You're very relevant in those institutions, but to to jump out to a different context can be hard. So I I did finally it took a while, but I got a role at the University of Minnesota doing academic technologies again at the College of Liberal Arts and kept doing that and but was still trying to get into this strategic space. So it got to a point where I was starting to do bigger analysis and looking into things like what kind of things can the college of liberal arts do with programs, but I still need I I actually had to to go out to come back into the space and have some build some other credibility. So this gets into the OPM that, you mentioned. So I worked for a small OPM called relearn it that is based in Saint Louis. I worked remotely from up here. And so they wanted a vice president of of academic solutions. So I was essentially leveraging my knowledge of inside higher ed and the technology use of technology into in it to, help institutions and clients structure, what kind of basically, research and what are the opportunities, helping them figure out what they could do and then how relearning it could help them do it. So, working with some small institutions, in health care in health care related kinds of fields, such as, kinesiology and exercise science. So it was a really good experience. I learned a ton. I learned I really cut my teeth with the market research side. It was I mean, I knew plenty coming in, but it certainly taught me how to take all the knowledge I had about data analysis and and understand how like, what are the inputs for that? So but then along the way, you know, opportunity came up at the University University of Minnesota that what was that? The spring of twenty twenty three. And so I, it is very high level. So and I'm in an office that's part of the provost's office and for the whole system. So I'm helping units across the entire five campuses do this kind of work. That's one part of what I do. Do the work of what can we offer online or across the university? What's the opportunity look like? How much does it cost to really get to the place we believe it can go? How do we help this unit do it with funding and capital and investment? And gathering partners along the way, a small bench of partners to help to help units do that so they don't have to go find a new partner or a partner every time they wanna do something. And that's one half. The other half of my role there in in this unit is I I manage the university's Coursera presence. So the, again, more identifying opportunities, what those can be, but the relationship with Coursera, the contractual side, the administration, so as new content is being developed, helping keep that moving along, the distribution of revenues that they come in every quarter. So I'm I'm the guy, which is cool. I'm learning a ton, and I feel like I'm I've got myself honed. I'm I'm honed at what I'm doing, but it's a it's a big, it's big because, you know, the university likes its presence. We have hundreds of thousands of enrollments in our content over the I mean, we've been in there over a decade, but, you know, we have many, many, many enrollments at any one moment. So, and this is, these are just people out in the world. We also have tons of people in our institution use that content. We have, people from other institutions in a consortium in in Coursera use that content. So it's a very it's a great interest I'm in a really great intersection in this role at the university. I love it. I have a great we're a small team. I really I really value my colleagues, and my supervisor, my boss is great, so it's it's good. That's awesome. Just to clarify, I think so so what you're talking about really is all online program development. Right? So or does some of it go into other program development, whether it's online or not? Like like, do you do you start with a fresh program that doesn't exist, or do you start with an existing program and you take it online? What both. I mean, really, there there's so much to do. As you can imagine, University of Minnesota has so many programs. It just technically in so many zip codes. We've got a lot of programs. So there's not a need there's not a big need to stand up a lot of new programs that maybe a smaller institution might be interested in doing. So there's plenty of work to be done in analyzing. And in my role, it's mostly looking at what are programs that could either online that can grow or could offer an online offering and grow or establish itself. So we do you know, the word distributed in our the the name of our office is deliberate. So we also are working on harmonizing the different campuses to off to have students take online primarily, but if they wanna transit between them, knitting together different expertise, teaching capacity, and programs around the university to knit them together. So if there's a program where a student does two years because they're living in the twin cities and then taking another course part of their course load from another campus online or, you know, students from outside the university doing the same thing. Like, two years of their online program is here and another is here. So we're trying to it's not just about online programs, although it is mostly, but about dis dis using the distributed resources of university to create programs that reflect that, but really make a smooth and, rewarding and effective experience for learners. Got it. And also one more note, because I think this is in your history if I read this right. Did you also what was your involvement with UpSea? So with Upsea, I over the past year or so, I was the chair of the Midwest region. So institutions that are Upsea members that are in the Midwest US, even in Canada too. So it's it's I'd call it it's a it's a volunteer affinity group. So, you know, we do some programming for members who are in that region. Like, we have a yearly salon where it's an online gathering. We meet up for those of us who go to the in person annual meet or annual meeting or any other meetings we meet up. So I I was the chair of that. I was the incoming and then the chair, and now I'm the past chair. So I I go to our meetings once a month and help our new chair make sure she's got what she needs to keep going. So that's been a really great experience. And I and I go to the annual meeting to represent our office. I'm one of several people go to the from the university to the annual meeting. It seems like a great organization. I, had the opportunity to interview Stacy Chiromante, from UpSea several months ago and just got immersed in in the the great impact that they're having. So when I had to kinda flag that, it does seem really relevant, to to your work and into ways that you can certainly contribute to the broader community. I went to solar. Actually, this is one of the last things I did before COVID landed. This was in February of twenty twenty. I went to the solar conference in New Orleans that February. Oh, what are they what does SOLAR stand for? Strategy and online learning and resources or something. So that was really again, that's when I was I was trying to build up my credibility and my skills and expertise to make this shift make this shift from academic technologies to online program support and administration, the kind of work I'm doing now. So I was able to go to that, and it really helped me understand that I had to meet people to get to make my way into this space I'm in now. And I I didn't I mean, it didn't convince me that I at that moment that, like, I need to go to a a firm to do that. But it was again, I was I was gathering information about how to do that. What kind of expertise do I need? What kind of knowledge do I need? And I did a lot of data work anyway in the work I was doing at the university at that point, so I realized I really needed to keep leveraging that and building on that among other things. Sure. Yeah. That makes sense. So so today, let's let's kinda go into the existing world because because really program development generally is a space that that presented with some fairly significant headwinds in higher ed. And so I'd love to kinda get your take. But, like, if a program comes to you asking whether there's an opportunity in the marketplace, I mean, what are what are they asking you for? And and then how do you go about helping them make that decision? What's involved? Yeah. So it can happen a bunch of different ways. I mean, so like I said, we're a small unit. There's one, two, three full time folks, and then we have our bosses. He's point six with us. The other point four, he's a he's a professor of, horticulture, and he he studies turf grass, and does research on turf grass. So we try as much as we can to make the rounds around different parts of the university. We're on different committees. We're part of different organizations. We just go to things, virtual or otherwise, to talk about what we do, especially my boss, Eric Watkins. He'll go to meetings with the deans and the chancellors and talk about what we do so that the the services that we offer, which are, by and large, free to the university. We're cost pool supported, so we're a public good, for the university. That gets filtered down. So the deans will talk to the department chairs and other unit heads and say, hey. We have this we have this resource that we can utilize to figure out, can we offer this program, or what's what are the opportunities? So it can come through that. Sometimes it's just in conversations I have with department chairs and other people, around the university. But either however it comes to us or sometimes we'll reach out to units, you know, a a department head or a program head might say, we think this program can do this. Is that valid? Or they'll say, you know, is there any opportunity? You know, well, one thing we do is, I said we try to get around. We do get around. We go to the once a year, approximately, we go to each campus. So we go get in the car. Sometimes all four of us get in a minivan, a university minivan, and off we go. I I like to call it the roadshow because it makes it sound funnier, and sometimes, you know, we have lots of funny conversations along the way as you might imagine. So, you know, we'll talk to we'll go there and we'll talk to each of the deans at a campus, or department heads or the chancellor there, the other campuses. And here, they'll what they'll do is they know we're coming, so they'll gather insights or gather things they wanna talk about from their leadership or their departments. And, you know, a lot of things will surface there. Like, oh, we have this program that we're proposing. Should we or could we propose an online offering at the same time? Or they're planning to. So, you know, sometimes we get in at the the start of a conversation about a program or it's already way underway and we're coming in late just to help see what we can do. But, you know, what we try to do what I do in the market research side is it just look and see what like most other individuals who do this work, you're looking to see what's what's I try to look at what's happened in the space, other similar programs. Who's out there? What have they done? What do they seem to be doing right now? What what are the jobs and if occupations into which people who have this credential can go into is broader horizons I can get it. Because I know look. I'm a history major. I have two history degrees. I know careers are meandering things. Not everyone goes to, like, I majored in bio, then I went to med school, and now I'm a doctor. Or I majored in whatever history or poli sci, then I went to law school. Not every career few careers are as linear as, frankly, a lot of people think they are or should be, which is part of what makes them interesting and sometimes an often very fruitful, interesting, lucrative, all kind of positive adjectives you can imagine. Not that they're all well, careers are hard, but people go in interesting directions. You never know where people are gonna go. I just I saw today that Alan Greenspan died, the former Fed chair. Apparently, he went to Juilliard and was a great saxophone and clarinet player. I would never have guessed until I read his obit on, NPR today. So, now I wanna know how he became an economist in the Fed chair with a Juilliard background, but that's I I think that would be a fascinating story in and of itself. Yeah. So, you know, what I try to do is, what my goal is to, as defensively as possible, figure out what could an enrollment look like for this program at the university, a number. And then I discount it because I don't wanna be too rosy pictured. And then I go backwards from that with the people I work with, a particular director of marketing, to find out, okay. What kind of what's what will it cost to do that? To get that many students per whatever the enrollment cycle is? Let's say it's once a year or twice a year. And then work with our so we're working with our partners that we have on the marketing and student support side, the external partners. What's that cost look like? And then I work with the program, whether it's the chair the the the head of the program, the department chair. Sometimes it's the budget director, the CFO of the campus. What is their costs right what are their costs right now? And how what would they need to do this new let's say we're increasing enrollment by fifty percent. Can you handle fifty percent more students? And then what what's the financial what are the financials internal look internally look like to do that? So I'm trying to get very granular out in the ether. What would it look like if you got this many students, and what are all the costs that go into that from in p personnel, any recurring cost, technology, any cost that they wanna put on top of that program, any cost that it should bear. And then what does that look like year over year just looking let's look out ten years and be conservative and see what it looks like. And if it starts if it looks good at this discounted enrollment and let's amplify the costs a bit, you know, and personnel and their the the cost of their wages and everything going up every year and the cost of marketing going up. And if it's looking solid because there's costs that are gonna be paid regardless of whether this program moves ahead like we're thinking or not. So then we feel like we're we're onto something. So then when we look at and this is gonna be changing a bit because of the strategic plan the university just approved last late last fall. You know, how can we help them? What kind of supports do they need to do this? Because very few to know units at university just have a a boatload of cash sitting around to invest like this, cause there's always a run up cost. You're putting out money to market something, and it's not gonna you're not gonna enroll any students or enough students yet to offset that right out of the gate. So, you know, our current structure is we have a we provide a a loan, a two year investment that that helps keep them, you know, afloat or a to limit losses. And then, once they have you know, it's like booster rockets. We help them get to escape velocity. They get going. We peel off, but the program the pro form a is built so that it can sustain the payback to us over, say, five years for the resources that we use to invest into them. So that's very quick overview. It's not always that it is never that a boilerplate recipe like that. So, you know, we we, but that's ultimately what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to I've been thinking about this as we approach our conversation today. I I feel like a I feel like an archer, and someone's throwing hoops, like little little hoops or, you know, like the rings you toss to at a carnival to to get on top of the bottle. Like, they're throwing them out in the air, and I'm trying to, like, you know, like, shoot an arrow through it because I'm trying to figure out what are the costs, what are the outcomes, financially for the program and the department? What are these people can these people do something with this credential? Can they elevate their career? Can they get a job? What are the earnings? And not that it's just about people's earnings, but, you know, like, you have to account for that. You just have to make it known that, you know, we would expect this kind of employment opportunities for this credential, and these are kind of earnings range you could see. People enter careers all the time not because they're lucrative, teachers, historians, whatever, But they need to know what the dynamics of it are. And and we and to know, like, look. This isn't sustainable cost wise, like, this tuition. Like, I just worked with a program, and it wasn't on my advice, but they they dropped their tuition by thirty five percent. It's a master's program that we, have been supporting. A thirty five percent drop. I mean, they were already below the new federal guidelines and limits on on professional master's programs. So this does not fall into that professional category. Now they're way below it. So, I mean, and that was just because they, you know, they wanna be competitive and they and but we still you know, we looked under the hood to make sure it worked financially. But, there's a lot, you know, there's a lot of different there's a lot of plates spinning in this, and now my my goal is to to have all that stuff visible. Nothing is nothing is opaque so that when the decision is made to invest in one of these, we know what we are we are risking financially. The program knows where, you know, where the risks are, what kind of what kind of risk they have to bear. And then, but any any outcomes potential outcomes for the program are clearly known for the people who wanna potentially take it. I mean, I don't wanna catastrophize based on just sort of generic understanding of the weight of the arguments pro and con towards someone's education today. But like so much of the news, so much of the attack on higher ed isn't helpful, isn't merited spreads problems at one end of the spectrum of higher ed across all of it as though it as as though every institution's the same and every program's the same. But, like, you as the archer have have this, experience successfully and over time helping to map onto a program some level of potential success. And so how much can you still rely on from history of of what has been, of what predicts success of a program versus, like, versus sort of now, like, a level of unknown or even just a perceived level of unknown amongst those that are holding this program that are like, oh man, I don't know. Like like what's, I guess what's new in terms of variables or what hasn't, what's no longer working as a predictive element that that had in the past? Well, yeah, this is this is an important point. And I I did a presentation about this at it wasn't up to you this year. It was at, InsightsEDU, which is a a conference offered every year by a company called EducationDynamics, which is one of our marketing partners. We work with them quite a bit. So I think of it like a three legged, foundation for program forecasting programs. You got your trailing indicators, so that's conferrals from whatever programs you wanna compare your program to, whether it's one ZIP code or a dozen. The current indicators, what kind of jobs do people in this category in this with this credential, what kind of jobs are they getting? And trying to really understand the range of those jobs, not just lawyers are getting law jobs. That's a, you know, a bad metaphor. But and then what is what does that occupational space look like in the future? And that is the hardest, and that is the one I'm still trying to become much better at because and it's always gonna be the hardest because the change the pace of change right now, even if you took AI out of it, the pace of change in the labor market was already going so fast because just computing power in general was changing how fast people can do their jobs, the kinds of the knowledge you need just to to be an expert. You can't be an expert in everything now. So you the turnover is so fast in in disciplines and professions. It's crazy. I mean, I read something we've all I I can't even remember where it came from, but essentially it said, you know, we people were used to getting a a job for their career. Maybe it was at one company. Like, my dad worked at one company effectively from nineteen seventy one. Truly one company from nineteen seventy one or two until he retired in two thousand seven. His graphic design was a small firm, so he worked his way up to become president, but people did that in corporations. Now people are having to they're adapting to changes in corporate world and just the business world that happened so fast. Like, they're they're getting laid off or they're having new jobs. And then now, you know, it it's the cycle is so fast. It's like we can't adapt. We can't learn fast enough. That's the hard thing. So what I try to do is, like, the the trailing stuff is important. How many history degrees have our competitor institutions conferred in the last ten years? That's helpful, but it's or in the last five years, but there's so much noise in there that it's hard to control for. Like, COVID is a huge disruption in there. They changed everything. It's it's almost not even worth. I'm always interested in, like, what's the last? And I don't have this in iPads, but what were enrollments? How can we how can we estimate enrollments? Because enrollments if you can if you can get an idea of what the enrollments are at your at institutions you're comparing to, then you start to understand what's the possible enrollment we can have because you start to line up, okay. Our here's a program that's doing well at whatever institution, University of pick a state. We have a similar curriculum. We have a similar structure, support structures. Maybe our tuition's lower. Maybe we look at it and we're like, you know, we have a we have better support structures or better curriculum. Wow. We have an internship that's part of it that's baked in that's we think is much better and we see it resonating. People are searching for these kinds of things because we're looking at search data that what people find for these programs. So I'm trying to figure out what could our enrollment be. And I'm looking at the most recent one that I can interpolate from recent IPEDS conferral data. Because if I can figure out, like, if they can get that enrollment and we see this kind of demand for these kinds of jobs and occupations, then we start to make some we start to make some educated, informed guesses. Maybe that's a bad word. Interpolations, deductions about what could our enrollment be at the most. And then what can we how can we tick it up? How much again, what would it cost to tick up our enrollment in that program space? So the historical stuff, even as historian, bad one, a lapsed one, I am. You know, that's the old saying. His history doesn't repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme. Yeah. But it's like I think of more like the stock market. Just because the stock did great ten years ago over the last ten years or five years doesn't mean it's gonna do well in the next five. Like, maybe the financials are all different or the markets change, whatever. So looking backwards, know, I I had a an image a graph in my presentation I did. It showed, you know, a conferrals a conferral's histogram. And it I and I made this fake dotted line that went out like this. I was like, you can't and I even put, don't do that. And it was a header arrow. Don't do that. Just because the slope is this, doesn't mean the slope's gonna be that. Slope can be, you know, Look at the slope of people buying CDs up until, like, nineteen ninety nine, two thousand, and then here's Napster, and it was like this. So, you know, in nineteen ninety nine or in ninety eight, they were looking at the record execs were like, we can't go wrong. You know? The slope's gonna go forever. So I try to look at the most recent enrollment data. So I have to interpolate enrollment data, which is its own algebra exercise in algebra to figure out, like, can we can we emulate that? Could we get there? Why isn't ours as like that if we're looking at similar, maybe competitors or just similar programs that we know are comparable? Why are we not there? Can we get there? And what are the features that appear to be helping them get there? Do they just advertise a ton? Is it a crappier program that just gets more advertising? That's a thing. You know? I can advertise a crappy car and people might buy it in droves. So it's a it is an it is an ever interesting and engaging exercise to do this work. I wonder if this is if this is, really off, but when you think about online program development, are those programs almost necessarily closer to the job getting the student, whoever that person is, that's gonna take these programs. Are they necessarily like more on the edge of employment or closer to employment outcomes than the face to face? In other words, do you, are you do, are you just by the nature of putting things online, are you doing more certificates? Are you doing more bespoke programs that are that someone's gonna enter on the graduate side or something that is just way closer to the job itself than than than, say, a student coming in first year, freshman. Right? Like. So it it's an important question. I think by their nature, a graduate degree is is is trying to prepare you for a a much more refined landscape and horizon of opportunities. So if you're getting a master's in we have a master's of strategic communications. If you're getting that master's degree, you know the kind of space you're going into. You're not gonna be a biologist or you're and, you know, you're not gonna go really broad potentially. So, by and large, these programs are at the graduate level. Certificates, you'd think so as well. We don't do as many of these yet in our unit. Our College of Continuing and Professional Studies does a ton of certificates. So they're I'm not saying they're handling all that now. They just, you know, they do a lot of them. And so we are as we prepare how we support certificates, which is its own different beast because trying to figure out that space is a is very hard. It's way harder than a a title for funded iPads tracked program space because it's just it's harder to predict and get a sense of what's out there, what have they been doing, what resonates because there's no data to really show it. You know, you're you're you're creating your own data to try and figure that out. So, yeah, I mean, that helps in that the master's programs we primarily are working with master's programs right now, but we are, you know, we're supporting we are there's an accounting program at our Crookston campus that's an accelerated online that we are helping to boost their enrollments. But, again, that's a that's an accounting bachelor's program. It's pretty clear where you're gonna go with an accounting bachelor's. So, but I still you know, I'm I'm all I'm still thinking about, like, you from a landscape of of opportunities, how do you best prepare even in that that more compact lane of of master's degree, how do you prepare learners for a broader horizon? And then I'm gonna say it's not my job to do that, but I advise the programs we're working with. Like, look, from a curricular perspective, this program that's doing well, because I know from recent conferral numbers, they've got a lot. This is what their structure looks like from a curricular perspective. They've got all these electives or these internships or whatever the features are that, again, in addition to tuition and brand equity and positioning and all that, like, this is what appears to be boosting them above others, including often us. So, I bring that to the attention of the program director just so they know, like, you know, it's not just about marketing dollars. Like, there's a there's a real the features are as as important as you know, we gotta we're we're highlighting the features of the program. So if there's something with what appear to be stronger features, I do bring that to their attention. Yeah. I mean, the yeah. It it just helps to kinda see the the guardrails of the the process that you're having to go through each time you go through this exercise. And I appreciate that the future leaning dataset is the scariest and least predictable in terms of the job market. But a couple of more questions on this, one would be, how do you gather sort of employer data feedback or do you gather employer related and data and feedback in process for some of these? Like, are there some somewhere it's so obvious? Oh, yeah. We we have this great employer partnership with x y z down the road. We're gonna involve them in this decision or whatever. Others might maybe that would be too opaque or difficult, but I'm just curious, like, where that comes in and if it comes in. Yeah. I mean, it really depends on the program. So we don't I I would say we don't host or run that kind of interaction because often a program again, like, I will point out, hey. This master's program has a you know, they're talking about how they have this employee employer advisory board or something. But often they are they have that. For master's programs, they have they have some inputs. And we'll we will what I try to do is at least bolster or provide inputs that, feed into and complement that. So and and and even and make them aware, you know, if you don't have this, this is something that is advisable. And there are other there are units at the university that help that help get those going and help sustain them. Often, they're at a collegiate level. You can imagine, like, our the Carls Minnesota Carlson, our school of business, they have a whole structure for supporting to creating and supporting those kinds of relationships. So, you know, the my goal is to to to complement and feed into that for those programs that have it and to strongly recommend that they stand that up if they don't, and it looks to be an important part of that program and professional space, at least the the programmatic side amongst other institutions I'm looking at. Because it is yeah. You have to get that feedback. You know, even I mean, you know, like, we're not really in the I wouldn't say we're in the liberal arts space. There's just not a ton of liberal arts online programs, especially at the undergraduate level, but, you know, even the graduate level. Although I am, you know, I'm I'm looking at one right now, a certificate in that space for, our Duluth campus. But, you know, it's that's really important because I feel like this is where there's a breakdown, and this feeds into that. I agree with you. I think there's a lot of just outright inaccurate information about higher ed in general. Yeah. It is expensive, and we could spend the rest of our lives talking about why it's expensive. There's a lot of good legitimate reasons it is. It doesn't mean it's right, but, like, we can talk about why it's expensive. But we can also talk about well, I won't get into that. I have strong opinions, but, I think one of the things for strong opinions, man. Let's see. Employers and institutions don't talk well together. Employers in general should be talking what they need. What do we need from people who are completing any degree, but certainly ones that are very career and job oriented. You know, what do you need from accountants? Tell us what you need. And we will if you're a regional employer or whatever, like, if you're what whatever scope geographically, like, we'll we want to provide learners who are coming out and they're ready to you know, they're turnkey. They're ready to go. They're adaptable. It's not just that they have, like, hey. I I developed stuff in COBOL or ColdFusion. I'm a ColdFusion developer. That's yeah. We wouldn't wanna do that. So so I I think there's a disconnect between institutions and employers that is I don't know if it's been wider. It just feels very wide right now, very big. And the institutions that close that gap, they you know, I'm not saying they're, like, absolved of all the the critique and the and the noise, but it seems like they they roll under the radar more. They're not getting they're not taking heat, certainly not from large employers or, professions that have a a collection of employers where you hear from a lot, you know, banking, for example, like Right. Yeah. No. I mean and really, I mean, gosh, there's really not a lot of place not a lot of usefulness for critique in this space. There's more a more wanna join you in this view into the unknown of where things go from. I can make reliable scientific predictions on the number of seats we could fill or the number of enrollments we could get to this tension that says, you know, how do we truly align the students' expectations for long term success? And that right now, to your point, there feels like this this widening gap. Do you have any suspicions? Like, you could run a a magic wand here and say, scenario, at least for these types of programs, this is how it should be done? I mean, do you have a even even if it's unreasonable that you could scale it or something, is there like is is there something that you could apply a magic wand to that would help help eliminate this in a in a different way for us? Well, I'll I'm gonna answer, and I hope I'm getting to your to your question. I I'd I'd mentioned how I have to interpolate guess at what are the enrollments that kind the programs we're looking at that we're evaluating ours against. Knowing enrollments across by ZIP code, I'll just say it for those who do that kind this kind of work, that would be immensely helpful to understand what the enrollments are. Because if you understand enrollments over time, you can see where they're when they're starting to fade or or it it it would just make it it it's more current because a a conferral is a trailing enrollment indicator. A a bachelor's conferral is that conferral could be from a student enrolled started six years ago, which means they were looking to enroll seven and a half years potentially before that. That's that that world isn't existing where seven and a half years ago, you know, the spring of twenty nineteen was pretty nice. I took my I went to Paris with my family. We flew for five hundred bucks a person. Can you imagine that now? That world doesn't exist. So, but if I knew the enrollments for this past year, that would be very helpful because then you can start to see, like, okay. Here's what people you know, given all the economic conditions and all the things that went into the inputs and why they potentially decided to enroll in this other institution's program a year ago versus two, three, four, five, seven years ago would be really helpful. That I would if I had a magic wand that I could wave, I would certainly tap that thing, tap that on the head first. I don't know if I don't know if I don't know if the federal government would ever require it, and I don't know if institutions will be willing to give it up. I mean, this was if they were required to, they would have to, but I imagine there'd be some pushback because that's that's that's market intelligence in a way. That's like giving you sales data out in every year in a way that institutions I mean, because trust me, they track it. They know what their enrollments are. Yeah. No. I I can see how it could be a conflict, but I could also see how it might need to be something forced on our a national strategy level for educating, and aligning education to employment, which seems to be the, the goal. It seems like that could could come and and and might might have some short term. Is that answer does that get to the question you're answering? Is that too granular? No. It it it does. It just it I I guess I wonder when you see something when when you mentioned the work that you did in in helping assess whether to bring a program online or not, it just your your work sits in the uncomfortable space of uncertainty in higher ed. Like, you you are in that space of it, and you're you're making rational, logical decisions with the data that you have, but you're also acknowledging at the same time that there's just this uncomfortable sense for, an inability to account for new variables that you know exists too. Yeah. And I and I do deliver bad news. I mean, I've I've there's plenty of programs I talk to. They say, hey. We think we see this. And I would say, I've looked across every facet I can see I can find all the kind of similar programs, the occupational outcomes. It's no one enrolls that many students in this program right now. And it's certainly not confer that many. I there I can't see an opportunity for that. I there's a doctoral program that someone, you know, the program director said, hey. We think we can enroll twenty students a year in this. And I said, no one has ever done that by what I can tell. And nothing indicates there's that much opportunity in the in the occupational space for people with that. So I I would not I'm not gonna attach my name to saying you can do this. And I you know, here's here's here's the the button up data that I've used to do this. Here it is for you. Because they have there's more and more as you might imagine, there's more and more requirements to do this kind of work when when a institution or department or college or program, whatever, is proposing a new program. So, you know, I've delivered plenty of tough news. Like, I would I think this is a very interesting field, but I don't the the universe doesn't seem to want that. So it doesn't I'm not saying cut the program. I'm just saying I don't see growth. I see stability. I try to give I've directional. Like, is this thing is it new it is it's neutral. Does it have a neutral outlook, a a growing outlook, or a diminishing outlook? That's sometimes that's the first filter. And then based on that, then we start looking more like going really deep dive into other kinds of programs to see what are other programs that seem to be doing well, or what can we do that we think would be really differentiating and and exciting to do for this particular kind of program? We connect to resources at the university, so we don't do instructional design. We connect to who does it. So it might be internal to their unit. A lot of colleges have their own teams, so we coordinate with them. It might be, that we tap one of the central instruction design units, the central one, there is one. Or we say, look. If if you wanna hire someone to come on, like, look. We'll pour that into the pro form a too. You wanna hire someone to do this thing? Maybe it's a professor, but it could be an enrollment support person, etcetera, etcetera. Look. We can bake in whatever cost you want and see what the impact is. Yeah. Well, you've been very generous with your time. I kinda wanna close on just this this what your where you're where you're placing your bets programmatically. And and now I would say you can still have your institutional hat on, you know, for the work that you're doing today, or you could broadly just look at the market and programmatically say, like, where is the biggest bang for the buck? I hate that term. But where is the the best opportunity for online programmatic growth at an institution? Like, in in and is it and is it an area, or is it like a boy, when programs have x, y, and z, they tend to do well. Like, I'm just curious. Like, how do you how would you try and just assess where the where the best opportunities are nationally even just to take your take the pressure off of your your own institution or you know? Yeah. This is a this is a fun one. So, I mean, I'm not gonna say anything that's surprising. I think, you know, taking calculated risk is nothing new, but I I think institutions that know what they're good at and lean into that. So, you know, it might be that they have a great program in whatever. I'm not gonna say, like, oh, we all need to, you know, need to be in accounting. Everyone needs it. You know, accounting is huge. It's big growth. It's big growth. Big growth coming. And I'm now I've put accounting out there. Like, I'm sure there's great opportunities in accounting. We seize them, but I'm not gonna say that, like, there's one area that needs to grow or will grow. But what I will say is that institutions that have deep expertise in something and and maybe it's horticulture, agriculture, whatever. Like, we're trying to bring and there's interest from Coursera to put we have a deep we have great ag school or college of food, agricultural, natural sciences. You know, we wanna put programming Coursera that leverages that because we have deep, you know, geospatial computing in agriculture. That's really interesting stuff. So and they they want it. So we're you know, so institutions that build on what they're already good at, they're trying to be good at something they have no background in. And I realized that's gonna overlap and not, you know, not gonna work for everyone, but building on that. And then making this the the programs you put out there online or otherwise really good, like a good experience getting in. And I don't mean like entertaining good. I mean high quality that people get something out of it, and they're telling you along the way and afterwards, I really got a lot of this. It helps supercharge my path into this program or this career or this whatever that their goal is. So, you know, instructional design, the experience has to be good. The technology foundation has to be good. I tell people when I'm when I'm doing market research, I think you can get to this number of enrollments and grow, etcetera. I'm basing it on the assumption that this is gonna be a kick ass program experience wise. I because I can't factor in otherwise. So that's it has to go in that assumption. Like, they're gonna have the supports they need to do well, whether it's academic support or, know, all the kinds of student supports that you see that frankly support great on ground experiences for students, students that learn in person or taking programs in person. The places that have or have deep resources, their students it's not a it's not purely predictive. I mean, there's socioeconomic predictors that are a huge part of it, but those kinds of internal supports and excellent experiences can overcome those socioeconomic realities and help people finish and elevate them and continue into flourishing careers and lives. So I tell me, like, I'm assuming this is gonna be great because I don't get to control whether it's great, but that's y'all's job. So I think as institutions lean into what they're good at, leveraging the programs they already have that or have a solid footing and grow on that, like, it's not gonna be explosive growth for everyone. It means stable or sustained sustained growth for them. It could be that they have some programs that do great. Others where they're often just gonna chug along quietly, but those those can do really well. I built the Performa. We have a program. It's a master's program. It's not that big. It's very pop it's very popular even though it's not that big. It's it's they get plenty of enrollments. It's very inexpensive to market, and it does great. They had enough room in their budget to hire a new tenure track professor. That's amazing. And we gave them a boost like, look. We'll fund it for the first year, that that position, and then you're gonna carry it after that. And it works. It's like they have I don't know. I don't know if they even have thirty students enrolled at any one time, maybe twenty five. I I don't know the numbers. That's why I'm not talking about the name of the program. But this is not a two thousand student mon monolith. This is like but it's doing what it's supposed to do. Right. Right. I I I can close my eyes when we're talking, and I can hear what you're saying is sounding extremely similar to someone who runs a startup accelerator. You know? Like, you're really at because because the same the same tension exists for someone who's going to maybe invest in a seed round at an early stage product idea. Right? That that you you you you say, yes. This has the the the the the market for it. This has the, you know, all the right ingredients from several different areas. But the truth of the matter is, it's all in the magic of what you bring and and share. At the end of the day, data data is only gonna get you so far. It's gotta be delivered on. But well, this is fascinating. I would love to actually, you know, continue this conversation and have iterations of looking at, development, and what's working in your space over time because I and I mean over the next six, twelve, eighteen months because I just feel like we're we are on a trajectory where things are changing fast, and you're obviously learning a ton as you go. Would would love to keep hearing about it. That I've first of thanks so much for having me today. I I've really just like our conversation on our podcast, Aaron, it's been really great to continue talking here. I really appreciate it. What I think would be really great about doing that is that the University of Minnesota, we are having just like I said, there's our strategic plan for twenty twenty or twenty thirty was approved last fall. Part of it is that is to develop a bigger structure for supporting online programs. So I can not that I'm gonna reveal everything, but, like, I can talk about we are tacking to try to do more. And here's what it's like as we're going. You know? Here's what it's like to be in that change. So we're gonna be changing. We're gonna depending on what the the final approval is, like, we're gonna grow our staff, and we're gonna grow the the scope of what we do. So I think it would be I can see talking like, oh my gosh. We're battling this right now, or we're working with this right now, and here's what seems to be working and stuff. I mean, I'd have to be careful what I say, but I think it'd be interesting to talk along the way about, like, here's what it's like as as an organ institutions trying to build up what they're doing. You can just tell this is a space that what there's no one to have this conversation as you can just tell this is a space that is not static. It is changing rapidly and yet it's hard to know exactly where it's gonna go. It's great that you have the trailing data and even the current metrics to sort of work from, but, I also appreciate just your honesty today and talking through like what you don't know and what, and where, and where the gaps are in the space. It's, it's a, it's a fascinating, field to be in, in higher ed today. And yeah, let's continue the conversation. I would love to. I'd love that. Awesome. Well, thanks again for taking the time, Fritz. Thanks so much, Darren.