What Exactly Is College For? (Update)

0:00:02 (dramatic music)
0:00:05 – Hey there, it’s Stephen Dubner.
0:00:09 In a few weeks, a new batch of students will arrive
0:00:12 at the nearly 4,000 colleges across the US.
0:00:15 It has been a turbulent time for higher education.
0:00:18 Enrollment is up a bit over the past couple of semesters,
0:00:21 but that comes after years of decline.
0:00:26 Colleges are closing or merging at a rate of about one a week.
0:00:28 And the already heated conversation
0:00:30 about free speech on campus got even hotter
0:00:34 during the springtime protests around the war in Gaza.
0:00:37 Perhaps most important, trust in higher education
0:00:38 has been eroding.
0:00:41 First, on the right side of the political spectrum,
0:00:43 but the left is catching up.
0:00:46 Last week, we spoke with Tanya Tetlow,
0:00:48 the president of Fordham University in New York City,
0:00:52 about how she has tried to navigate the turbulence.
0:00:56 – We have always authorized any request to protest
0:00:57 on our campus at Student Spring Us.
0:00:59 But what we navigate with them is, you know,
0:01:02 you don’t point bullhorns at the library during study session.
0:01:05 – And earlier this year, we spoke with Michael Roth,
0:01:07 president of Wesleyan University,
0:01:10 about having hard conversations on campus.
0:01:11 – You can’t please everyone,
0:01:14 but I don’t think that’s an excuse to say nothing.
0:01:18 – Every college has had to wrestle with these recent events,
0:01:21 but some schools, especially some of the most elite schools,
0:01:24 have had a particularly tough time.
0:01:26 – It’s been a very difficult year
0:01:28 for higher education in general,
0:01:31 and it’s been an especially difficult year at Harvard.
0:01:34 – That’s Peter Blair, an economist at Harvard.
0:01:36 We spoke with him a couple of years ago
0:01:38 about a paper he had written called
0:01:42 Why Don’t Elite Colleges Expand Supply.
0:01:45 We called him back recently to check in.
0:01:47 – If the universities aren’t expanding,
0:01:50 what that does is it creates a tremendous pressure
0:01:52 in terms of getting into these universities.
0:01:54 And there’s a huge bottleneck
0:01:56 of just folks trying and clamoring
0:01:59 to get into a very small subset of universities.
0:02:01 – So one of the arguments in your paper
0:02:04 is that elite universities are super selective,
0:02:06 meaning they admit very few students
0:02:10 and don’t grow their student bodies by much, if at all,
0:02:14 in large part to maintain their reputations,
0:02:16 their exclusivity and so on.
0:02:18 Now, another thing that’s happened in the time
0:02:21 since we spoke is that there’s been a little bit of unrest
0:02:23 on some college campuses.
0:02:25 Most of it having to do with protests
0:02:28 surrounding the war in Gaza.
0:02:30 And relatedly, at your university, for instance,
0:02:31 your president, Claudine Gay,
0:02:33 was called upon to testify in Congress.
0:02:34 It did not go very well,
0:02:38 and she was ultimately pushed out of the presidency
0:02:40 for some charges relating to plagiarism
0:02:42 in her own earlier research.
0:02:46 So that’s a lot of turmoil for any one institution.
0:02:47 – This is bringing back so many memories.
0:02:48 Initially, I remember thinking
0:02:51 it was just so much positive optimism on campus
0:02:55 with the selection of President Claudine Gay.
0:02:58 Her inauguration happens, if I’m remembering correctly,
0:03:00 on September 29th.
0:03:04 October 7th happens eight days later.
0:03:10 And now a lot of latent issues that had been at work,
0:03:12 not just at the university,
0:03:15 but more broadly in the American society and globally,
0:03:17 they kind of metastasize.
0:03:19 What has happened since then
0:03:21 has been a wake-up call for us at Harvard.
0:03:24 Something that was a particular point of contention,
0:03:27 I think for a lot of people outside of the university,
0:03:29 was the fact that Harvard was speaking
0:03:33 very clearly and articulately around the war in Ukraine,
0:03:35 around the racial unrest,
0:03:37 especially with George Floyd’s murder.
0:03:39 And then on the issue of Israel and Palestine,
0:03:44 the messages came out with delay, and they were muddled.
0:03:45 And I think a lot of folks said,
0:03:47 well, what are the principles that the university stands on?
0:03:51 And I think that’s something that we were not prepared for.
0:03:53 And we’re still reeling in a lot of ways
0:03:54 from the aftermath of that.
0:03:56 In many ways, we’re trying to think about
0:03:59 how do we regain a lot of the trust that was lost.
0:04:03 And I hope that in this moment that we can think about
0:04:07 our responsibility to the broader society.
0:04:12 – Back in 2022, we published a series
0:04:15 called Freakonomics Radio Goes Back to School.
0:04:18 We looked at the role college plays in our society,
0:04:20 or at least is supposed to play.
0:04:22 We looked at the impact that college can have,
0:04:25 not just on students, but on society,
0:04:28 and the ways in which colleges often fall short
0:04:30 of their mission.
0:04:34 In this calm before the storm, this end of summer pause,
0:04:36 we thought it was the perfect time
0:04:38 to replay that series for you.
0:04:41 We have updated facts and figures as necessary,
0:04:44 and we added more from our recent conversation
0:04:45 with Peter Blair.
0:04:47 As always, thanks for listening.
0:04:55 What if I told you there was one economic activity
0:04:59 that is a silver bullet for income inequality?
0:05:01 – It is an equalizer, that’s really important.
0:05:03 – And it’s not just income.
0:05:06 – The monetary returns are really important,
0:05:08 but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
0:05:10 – Just about any economist you talk to,
0:05:12 they all come around to that same word.
0:05:13 – Incredibly important.
0:05:14 – Very important.
0:05:15 – immensely important.
0:05:19 – Can you guess the economic activity I’m talking about?
0:05:20 Here’s a hint.
0:05:23 – You learn more in those four years
0:05:26 than you do at any other point in your life.
0:05:34 – Yes, the activity we’re talking about is college.
0:05:35 You probably don’t need to be told
0:05:37 that going to college is important.
0:05:41 Given the demographics of the Freakonomics Radio audience,
0:05:44 it is likely that you have a college degree,
0:05:47 at least one, or you’re working on one.
0:05:50 Despite the cost in time and dollars,
0:05:53 our economist friends see college
0:05:56 as one of the best investments possible.
0:05:58 An investment for yourself.
0:06:00 – If you can get yourself a college degree,
0:06:03 your lifetime earnings are gonna be significantly higher.
0:06:05 You’re gonna have better health insurance.
0:06:08 You’re gonna be more satisfied with your job.
0:06:10 – And a good investment for society.
0:06:12 People who have higher education,
0:06:14 they’re much more likely to vote.
0:06:16 They’re much more likely to volunteer.
0:06:19 They’re much more likely to do all kinds of things
0:06:21 that enhance the democratic process
0:06:24 in the social fabric of the country.
0:06:27 – But what about people who aren’t economists?
0:06:32 Well, they are not quite as enthusiastic about college.
0:06:33 According to a recent Gallup poll,
0:06:37 the share of US adults who express either a great deal
0:06:40 or quite a lot of confidence in higher education
0:06:44 has been slipping, it’s now below 40%.
0:06:46 The decline is strongest among Republicans,
0:06:50 but Democrats and independents are also trending down.
0:06:53 So that’s the sentiment around college.
0:06:55 Let’s look at the data.
0:06:56 You may be surprised to learn
0:07:00 that only 38% of Americans over age 25
0:07:02 have a bachelor’s degree.
0:07:04 College graduates tend to bunch up
0:07:06 with other college graduates.
0:07:09 They work together, they intermarry, they socialize.
0:07:11 So if you do have a degree,
0:07:15 it’s easy to forget that most Americans don’t.
0:07:18 For decades, the share of the US population
0:07:21 attending college was rising.
0:07:24 But over the past decade or so, it’s been declining
0:07:28 and the pandemic has exacerbated the decline.
0:07:31 This year, undergraduate enrollment numbers moved up a bit,
0:07:34 but they’re still below pre-COVID levels.
0:07:37 In recent years, more and more young people
0:07:38 were either dropping out of school
0:07:41 or choosing to never enroll in the first place.
0:07:44 – What’s scary about that is that many of those students
0:07:48 may not make it back to college once they’ve stopped out.
0:07:50 – Catherine Hill is an economist
0:07:53 and a former president of Vassar College.
0:07:55 She now sits on the board of trustees at Yale.
0:07:59 – And as a country, we’ve been working really, really hard
0:08:01 to get educational attainment up.
0:08:04 And this is now pushing us in the wrong direction.
0:08:08 – During most recessions, college attendance rises.
0:08:10 When it’s hard to find a good job,
0:08:12 people are more inclined to go to school.
0:08:15 The pandemic recession has been different
0:08:17 and it has disproportionately affected
0:08:20 one cohort of would-be college students.
0:08:23 – They tend to be from lower income families
0:08:27 and they tend to be from black and Latino families.
0:08:31 – If college is such a powerful way
0:08:33 to shrink income inequality,
0:08:36 and if people on the lower end of the income spectrum
0:08:40 are becoming less likely to attend college,
0:08:41 well, you can see the problem.
0:08:45 Over the years, we’ve done several episodes
0:08:49 about higher education and we find ourselves coming back
0:08:51 to this fundamental conflict.
0:08:55 College is incredibly valuable for individuals and society,
0:09:00 but it’s still a somewhat rarefied activity
0:09:01 and even a shrinking one.
0:09:04 – So we wanted to go back to first principles
0:09:07 and ask a very basic question.
0:09:10 What exactly is college for?
0:09:12 – It’s a darn good question.
0:09:15 – Within that question are many others.
0:09:18 – Why are more women going to college than men?
0:09:20 – What happens when black and Hispanic students
0:09:22 lose admissions advantages?
0:09:23 – The title of the papers,
0:09:25 “Why Donately Colleges Increase Supplying?”
0:09:27 – And here’s one more question.
0:09:29 Since students from higher income families
0:09:32 are more likely to attend the better colleges,
0:09:34 how do we know that college itself
0:09:37 is such a magic bullet for income inequality?
0:09:38 How do we know that college
0:09:41 isn’t just another case of the rich getting richer?
0:09:44 We are going to spend the next few episodes
0:09:46 trying to answer all these questions.
0:09:49 We’ll hear from college presidents.
0:09:50 – My name is Chris Paxson.
0:09:52 I’m president of Brown University.
0:09:54 – My name is Ruth Simmons.
0:09:57 I’m president of Prairie View A&M University.
0:09:59 – We’ll hear from academic researchers.
0:10:01 – The US system is peculiar
0:10:04 for the astronomical levels of tuition.
0:10:06 – Typical boy behavior doesn’t fit as well
0:10:08 with good student behavior.
0:10:09 – And we’ll hear from people
0:10:12 who are trying to bust the old college model.
0:10:15 – All we did was borrow from nursing schools
0:10:17 and welding schools and electrical schools.
0:10:19 – This summer,
0:10:23 while you may be taking a break from work or school,
0:10:25 we are heading back to the classroom.
0:10:28 Here is the first episode of Freakonomics Radio
0:10:29 that goes back to school.
0:10:37 (upbeat music)
0:10:46 – This is Freakonomics Radio,
0:10:49 the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything
0:10:51 with your host, Stephen Dubner.
0:10:54 (upbeat music)
0:10:57 (upbeat music)
0:11:02 – I had a colleague at Williams
0:11:04 whose name was Gordon Winston.
0:11:06 – That, again, is the economist
0:11:08 and former college president, Catherine Hill.
0:11:12 – And he’s to refer to higher ed as part church,
0:11:14 part car dealer.
0:11:18 – It’s tempting to focus on the church function of college,
0:11:21 the quest for knowledge, for self-discovery,
0:11:23 for improving society.
0:11:25 But what about the car dealer part?
0:11:28 – They also ultimately have a bottom line.
0:11:30 They’re not for profit,
0:11:31 which does not mean they can’t make a profit.
0:11:34 It means they can’t distribute it to shareholders.
0:11:37 We don’t have shareholders, but we do compete.
0:11:40 – It may distress you to hear universities described
0:11:42 in terms of the profit motive,
0:11:45 but these are economists we’re talking to.
0:11:47 I do something which economists often do,
0:11:50 which is think of institutions a little bit like firms
0:11:51 that interact in the market.
0:11:53 – That is Miguel Urquiola.
0:11:56 He is an economist at Columbia University.
0:11:58 – My main work is on how schools compete,
0:11:59 how universities compete.
0:12:00 – And what do you mean by that?
0:12:02 How schools and universities compete?
0:12:04 Compete with whom, against each other?
0:12:06 – Yeah, basically compete against each other,
0:12:08 how they seek to differentiate their products,
0:12:10 how they might appeal to different consumers.
0:12:13 – Differentiation is what competitors do
0:12:15 in every kind of market.
0:12:18 They produce a variety of goods and services
0:12:22 to try to capture different segments of demand.
0:12:25 One way colleges differentiate is on price.
0:12:30 Community colleges on average charge less than $5,000 a year
0:12:32 when they charge tuition at all.
0:12:36 Nearly 30 states now offer free community college.
0:12:38 Four-year state schools might charge $10,000
0:12:42 or $15,000 a year for an in-state resident.
0:12:44 The average cost at a private university, meanwhile,
0:12:47 is around $38,000 a year.
0:12:50 In each case, prices have been rising.
0:12:54 The US system is peculiar for the astronomical levels
0:12:55 of tuition.
0:12:57 You could get a European parent to faint
0:12:59 if you tell them how much you have to pay
0:13:01 for a kid to go to college here.
0:13:05 – Public universities in Germany, for instance, are free.
0:13:09 In the UK, tuition is capped at around $12,000
0:13:13 for UK students, even for schools like Oxford and Cambridge.
0:13:18 The US system does not feature this sort of price control.
0:13:20 The US often relies on the market and on chaos
0:13:21 to configure its systems.
0:13:23 – What do you mean by chaos?
0:13:25 – Well, chaos, meaning you just leave the design
0:13:29 up to market players or to individuals, to churches,
0:13:30 to private institutions.
0:13:33 So, for example, one thing that happened in Europe,
0:13:34 starting with the late Middle Ages,
0:13:36 is that states tended to take control
0:13:37 of the higher education sector.
0:13:40 And then they designed it, as European countries often do,
0:13:42 in a fairly deliberate, fairly rational way.
0:13:44 This did not happen in the US.
0:13:47 – The earliest universities were founded in Europe
0:13:49 in the 11th and 12th centuries,
0:13:53 places like Oxford, the University of Bologna,
0:13:54 the University of Paris.
0:13:57 They were typically run by the church.
0:14:00 With the Reformation, 500 years later,
0:14:02 they were mostly taken over by governments.
0:14:05 And as Urkeola said, European governments
0:14:08 are still heavily involved in universities today.
0:14:10 This does have its upsides.
0:14:14 – If you were going to fall into a random German university
0:14:16 or a random American one,
0:14:18 you might want to choose the German setting.
0:14:20 There’s going to be a lot less inequality
0:14:22 and differentiation than in the US.
0:14:25 – So, the US has weaker colleges on average,
0:14:29 but more of the very top universities,
0:14:33 like Harvard, Stanford, the University of Chicago.
0:14:35 And there is a reason these places draw students
0:14:39 from all over the world, even with the high prices.
0:14:42 Their prestige is linked to their strength
0:14:44 as research institutions.
0:14:47 In a book called “Markets, Mines, and Money,
0:14:51 Why America Leads the World in University Research,”
0:14:55 Urkeola charts the development of these institutions.
0:14:58 – What you would have found is that around 1880,
0:15:00 the US was a very weak country
0:15:02 in terms of research output among rich countries.
0:15:05 And what you find is that by 1920, 1930,
0:15:07 it was pretty much ahead of the pack.
0:15:11 – What changed over just those few decades?
0:15:14 – To understand that, we have to go back to before the Civil War,
0:15:18 when there were roughly 900 colleges in the US.
0:15:20 – What were colleges doing?
0:15:22 They would teach a two or three-year curriculum
0:15:24 that was absolutely fixed, no choice about anything.
0:15:26 You were taking things like Latin, Greek,
0:15:29 things like rhetorics, some history and stuff like this.
0:15:32 – But after the Civil War, as the US industrialized
0:15:34 and as the economy boomed,
0:15:39 a host of innovators opened new colleges with new models.
0:15:41 They were more specialized, with more focus
0:15:45 on intensive graduate training for particular occupations.
0:15:49 Colleges scrambled to get the best faculty talent they could
0:15:51 in order to attract new students.
0:15:55 This created winners and losers.
0:15:58 Consider Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.
0:16:02 It was founded in 1887 as a graduate research institution.
0:16:04 – It had several good departments,
0:16:07 never was able to take hold fully as a research university.
0:16:09 It was victimized partially by Chicago.
0:16:11 – Meaning the University of Chicago,
0:16:15 which was founded in 1890 with Rockefeller money.
0:16:18 – And one thing that the first president of Chicago did
0:16:21 was basically go to Clark and raid various departments.
0:16:23 And so many people know less about Clark.
0:16:25 It’s still a good university, but it’s not Johns Hopkins
0:16:28 or it’s not Harvard, and it could have been.
0:16:29 – The competition for top talent
0:16:32 meant that by the mid-20th century,
0:16:36 there was an established tier of elite US universities
0:16:39 that had attracted top scholars and the best students,
0:16:41 and then came the Cold War.
0:16:43 The federal government,
0:16:45 eager to accelerate scientific
0:16:48 and technological innovation,
0:16:50 they looked around to see where they could get
0:16:53 the best return on their funding dollars.
0:16:55 The obvious answer, the universities,
0:16:59 where the best researchers were already doing the best work.
0:17:03 This led to the creation of the modern grant system.
0:17:07 The way this was set up is also somewhat peculiarly American,
0:17:10 is that the scheme was basically to give money
0:17:13 to the universities that present the best projects,
0:17:15 sort of meritocratic, if you will approach,
0:17:17 and that created a lot of concentration
0:17:19 in terms of who was going to get this money.
0:17:22 – The government wound up directing massive funding
0:17:24 to a select few institutions,
0:17:27 rather than trying to spread it around.
0:17:29 This imbalance still exists.
0:17:31 The University of Chicago, for instance,
0:17:35 gets around $350 million in federal research funding
0:17:37 in a given year.
0:17:39 How about Clark University?
0:17:42 It gets around $3.4 million,
0:17:45 or 1/100th the UChicago amount.
0:17:50 But Miguel Urkeola does not see this inequity as a bad thing.
0:17:52 – The genius of the US university system
0:17:55 is that research is funded on the backs of the wealthy.
0:17:57 – The wealthy families, that is,
0:18:00 who send their children to these universities.
0:18:03 Most students at the elite research institutions
0:18:05 come from well-to-do families.
0:18:08 Not only do they pay the full sticker price of the tuition,
0:18:10 unlike the lower income students who get in,
0:18:13 they pay much less and often zero,
0:18:16 but the rich families also donate a lot of money
0:18:17 to those universities,
0:18:20 sometimes before a student has been admitted,
0:18:22 especially if they are a legacy candidate,
0:18:24 and after, as well.
0:18:27 These donations help to further burnish
0:18:29 the reputation of their alma mater.
0:18:31 If you look at a school like Stanford,
0:18:32 it does a lot of research.
0:18:35 It’s mainly paid for by two agents.
0:18:36 The state has a role,
0:18:38 because the federal government gives Stanford money,
0:18:40 it certainly gives it tax breaks also,
0:18:43 but it’s a lot of private individuals giving it money,
0:18:44 wealthy people giving it money.
0:18:46 And if you have a system where wealthy people
0:18:49 are giving money that generates good things
0:18:50 for lots of people, right?
0:18:52 So like if it generates vaccine technology,
0:18:54 and we’re all better off because of that,
0:18:57 that system, to me, seems like it has properties
0:18:59 that you want to basically keep,
0:19:02 which is wealthy people giving for the common good.
0:19:05 – That said, this system does have its flaws.
0:19:06 – The U.S. has more inequality
0:19:08 than almost any industrialized country.
0:19:10 It’s not a coincidence that we have
0:19:11 an unequal educational system,
0:19:13 and that we have an unequal country.
0:19:17 – Coming up after the break,
0:19:21 a closer look at our unequal education system.
0:19:25 – Community colleges have significantly less resources
0:19:26 to devote to their students.
0:19:27 – I’m Stephen Dubner.
0:19:29 This is Free Economics Radio.
0:19:30 We will be right back.
0:19:43 One sign of the inequality in the U.S. university system
0:19:45 is how much time we spend talking
0:19:47 about a handful of elite schools,
0:19:51 which educate a tiny fraction of all college students.
0:19:53 The Ivy League schools, for instance,
0:19:56 Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard,
0:19:59 the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Yale.
0:20:01 They have a combined undergraduate
0:20:05 and graduate population of 145,000,
0:20:10 or roughly 0.8% of all U.S. college students.
0:20:14 Now, some of the attention paid to the elite schools
0:20:15 is warranted.
0:20:18 That’s where much of the best research is happening.
0:20:21 That’s why a research-based show like this one
0:20:24 features so many professors from UChicago,
0:20:27 and Harvard, and Penn.
0:20:29 But what are we missing when we pay so much attention
0:20:32 to the top of the pyramid?
0:20:34 For a good angle on that question,
0:20:37 we need to talk to this man.
0:20:39 – Morty Shapiro, I’m a professor of economics
0:20:42 and president of Northwestern University.
0:20:45 – That’s what Shapiro was at the time of our interview.
0:20:49 In 2022, he stepped down from the presidency,
0:20:51 but he still teaches at Northwestern,
0:20:53 which is considered an elite university.
0:20:55 It is ranked ninth in the country
0:20:57 by U.S. News and World Report.
0:21:00 And yes, the whole college ranking thing
0:21:02 is a weirdness unto itself.
0:21:05 We will touch on that later in the series.
0:21:07 Anyway, Northwestern is on everyone’s list
0:21:09 of excellent U.S. universities,
0:21:12 and it receives about a half billion dollars a year
0:21:14 in federal research funding.
0:21:16 And before Northwestern,
0:21:19 Morty Shapiro was president of Williams College,
0:21:21 not a research university,
0:21:24 but according to the U.S. News ranking,
0:21:27 the number one liberal arts college in the country.
0:21:29 So you might think Shapiro himself
0:21:32 attended an elite college.
0:21:33 He did not.
0:21:35 In fact, he barely made it to college at all.
0:21:39 – I went to a under-resourced public high school
0:21:43 and most of my friends were not college track.
0:21:46 – This was in New Jersey in the early 1970s.
0:21:48 – They had a very good auto mechanics thing
0:21:50 and they had a hairdressing thing.
0:21:54 I once spent a summer in the graveyard shift
0:21:56 of UPS loading trucks.
0:21:58 I made $1.71 an hour,
0:21:59 if I remember correctly, the minimum wage.
0:22:02 I worked as a dishwasher and a catering place
0:22:04 and I worked for one summer actually
0:22:07 on an assembly line in a factory.
0:22:09 – But Shapiro did have a strong incentive
0:22:11 to apply to college.
0:22:13 – I didn’t want to go to Vietnam.
0:22:16 I had no intellectual interest at all.
0:22:19 But fortunately I tested okay on SATs,
0:22:22 so I got a merit scholarship to go to Hofstra,
0:22:25 which was pretty much an open enrollment commuter school.
0:22:28 – Hofstra is a private university on Long Island.
0:22:32 Even today, its acceptance rate is around 70%.
0:22:35 So way less selective than elite schools
0:22:37 like Northwestern and Williams.
0:22:42 Their acceptance rates are respectively 7% and 8%.
0:22:46 At Hofstra, Shapiro was just trying to do well enough
0:22:49 to keep his scholarship and avoid Vietnam.
0:22:52 And then he found the economics department.
0:22:55 – I just kind of fell in love with the life of the mind.
0:22:56 – After graduating from Hofstra,
0:23:00 he got a PhD in economics from the University of Pennsylvania.
0:23:03 – It does show for me the randomness
0:23:05 and how many people who couldn’t have
0:23:06 pretty successful academic careers
0:23:09 who just never get the opportunities.
0:23:11 I don’t think I was the smartest of my friends
0:23:12 at Union High School,
0:23:15 but they never had the chance and I did.
0:23:19 So Shapiro is a quintessential college success story.
0:23:22 He went from loading trucks for the minimum wage
0:23:26 to making around $2 million a year as a college president.
0:23:29 But it’s no coincidence that the springboard
0:23:33 for this big jump was a school like Hofstra
0:23:37 and not an elite school like Northwestern or Williams.
0:23:40 Research shows that certain types of colleges
0:23:44 are much better at moving students up the income distribution
0:23:48 rather than simply taking in students from well-off families
0:23:50 and helping them stay well-off.
0:23:53 A 2017 study by the economist Raj Chetty
0:23:57 and several co-authors found that most top-ranked colleges
0:24:02 sourced their student population from wealthy families.
0:24:04 At both Northwestern and Williams, for instance,
0:24:06 around two thirds of the students
0:24:09 come from families in the top 20%
0:24:11 of the income distribution.
0:24:13 The researchers found 38 top colleges,
0:24:15 including five from the Ivy League,
0:24:20 where more students came from the top 1% of the income scale
0:24:24 than from the entire bottom 60%.
0:24:28 So most elite schools aren’t doing much heavy lifting
0:24:30 when it comes to addressing income inequality.
0:24:33 That task falls to what are called the mid-tier schools
0:24:35 like Hofstra.
0:24:37 – Here, New York City CUNY would be one example.
0:24:40 – That again is Miguel Urquiola from Columbia.
0:24:43 CUNY, or City University of New York,
0:24:46 is made up of several colleges, including City College,
0:24:48 which is just up the road from Columbia,
0:24:53 and has been called the Harvard of the proletariat.
0:24:55 One of its specialties, going back several decades,
0:24:59 was admitting Jewish students whom the Ivies wouldn’t accept
0:25:03 and watching those students go on to win Nobel Prizes.
0:25:06 While a school like Columbia may excel
0:25:08 on the research front, Urquiola says,
0:25:13 CUNY still does a better job at creating income mobility.
0:25:15 It’s taking lots of students who are not from wealthy backgrounds
0:25:17 and really making them better off.
0:25:20 That engine is part of the US ecosystem.
0:25:22 – So if we’re thinking about college
0:25:26 in terms of education that drives better life outcomes,
0:25:30 those elite schools are kind of a sideshow,
0:25:32 whether it’s a private school like Northwestern
0:25:35 or a relatively selective public school
0:25:37 like the University of Michigan.
0:25:38 Morty Shapiro again.
0:25:40 – I’m all for the Northwesterns
0:25:42 and the University of Michigan and everything,
0:25:47 but that’s just a sliver educating a very small sliver
0:25:48 of the American population
0:25:52 who already get tremendous resources allocated to them.
0:25:53 I’m not worried about them.
0:25:55 I’m worried about everybody else.
0:25:57 – So what about everybody else?
0:25:58 Where did they go to college?
0:26:01 Around 35% of college students these days
0:26:04 attend mid-tier publics and privates.
0:26:07 Another 10% attend for-profit colleges.
0:26:09 Some of those are controversial.
0:26:11 – The for-profit privates.
0:26:12 Since a couple of my friends,
0:26:14 including my best friend in high school,
0:26:17 went to one of those and it transformed them
0:26:20 and made up for the fact that he graduated high school
0:26:23 with very limited reading and writing skills, literally.
0:26:25 And then he, yeah, he had loans, he paid them off,
0:26:27 he got a job, he had a good career.
0:26:30 So I don’t have this, you know, knee-jerk reaction
0:26:33 that some people do that all of the for-profit sector
0:26:34 is an abomination.
0:26:37 There are abominations within it,
0:26:39 but it’s not all that bad.
0:26:41 And then there are community colleges,
0:26:43 about 2,000 of them in the U.S.
0:26:47 and they enroll nearly half of all college entrants,
0:26:51 a great many of them from low-income families.
0:26:53 Community colleges typically offer two-year programs
0:26:56 rather than four and an associate’s degree
0:26:59 versus a bachelor’s degree.
0:27:02 But only 40% of community college entrants
0:27:04 get their degrees within six years.
0:27:08 For four-year colleges, that figure is over 70%.
0:27:10 The economist, Catherine Hilligan.
0:27:12 – Something like 80% of students
0:27:15 who enroll in community colleges
0:27:18 say that they would like to go on and get a bachelor’s degree.
0:27:20 They understand the value of getting a bachelor’s degree,
0:27:23 their families understand it.
0:27:27 But we have a system that doesn’t make that work very well.
0:27:30 – Indeed, fewer than 20% of community college students
0:27:34 go on to get a bachelor’s degree at a four-year school.
0:27:37 – Community colleges have significantly less resources
0:27:39 to devote to their students.
0:27:42 They’re spending about $8,000 a year per student.
0:27:44 If you happen to get into one
0:27:47 of the selective private nonprofit institutions,
0:27:49 the IVs, for example,
0:27:52 they may be spending up to $100,000 per student.
0:27:55 Now, every dollar might not be used efficiently,
0:27:58 but I can tell you, you’re gonna have more success
0:28:01 if somebody’s spending $100,000 on you
0:28:03 than if they’re spending $8,000 on you.
0:28:06 – And Morty Shapiro again from Northwestern.
0:28:08 I’ve always kind of been in awe of them,
0:28:09 to be honest with you, you know,
0:28:11 they’re generally open in Roman,
0:28:13 and people look at them and say,
0:28:15 well, how come the percentage of people
0:28:16 who enroll in a community college
0:28:19 who aspire to a bachelor’s degree,
0:28:21 only what 19 or 20% get them?
0:28:24 And I’m thinking, that’s pretty good, you know?
0:28:25 The question I’ve always thought
0:28:27 about community colleges is,
0:28:32 how do they succeed so vastly in excess
0:28:34 of the resources that go into them?
0:28:36 They’re so underfunded.
0:28:38 Some people would like to see a lot more funding,
0:28:41 including certain members of the Biden administration.
0:28:43 Do you see that as a viable path,
0:28:46 or do you see that as potentially a waste of money?
0:28:47 Because there are those who say,
0:28:49 well, it could be throwing good money after bad,
0:28:52 ’cause those are not the most motivated students.
0:28:53 So what’s your thinking there?
0:28:56 – I love your question, the premise of the question,
0:28:58 given my background and my experience,
0:29:00 I think there’s a lot of people,
0:29:02 a lot of people who could have their lives transformed
0:29:05 if somebody took interest in them, invested in them,
0:29:07 and I’m not so sure that the people
0:29:10 at the flagship publics and the great privates
0:29:13 need a lot more government support.
0:29:16 – Coming up after the break.
0:29:19 – I understand the value of education.
0:29:22 It doesn’t all have to be the same.
0:29:24 – We’ll hear from another person
0:29:26 who was not a likely candidate for college
0:29:29 and went on to become the president of not one,
0:29:33 nor two, but three colleges or universities.
0:29:37 – I want students to succeed, period.
0:29:39 – Also, there’s been a revival of interest in
0:29:42 and funding of historically black colleges,
0:29:45 so where does that fit in?
0:29:48 Also, please leave a review or rating
0:29:50 for Freakonomics Radio on your favorite podcast app,
0:29:53 that is a great way to help the shows you love,
0:29:55 and check out the other shows
0:29:56 in the Freakonomics Radio network,
0:29:58 the economics of everyday things,
0:30:02 no stupid questions, and people I mostly admire.
0:30:03 We will be right back.
0:30:12 (dramatic music)
0:30:18 If you think about U.S. college education as a monolith,
0:30:19 you’re thinking about it wrong.
0:30:22 The elite schools that get so much attention
0:30:26 educate a tiny fraction of the college population,
0:30:27 and those students tend to come
0:30:31 from the upper reaches of the income distribution.
0:30:33 There is a vast middle of the spectrum
0:30:35 represented by public universities
0:30:38 and so-called mid-tier privates,
0:30:41 and on the far end of the income distribution
0:30:42 are community colleges,
0:30:46 which tend to serve lower income and minority students.
0:30:49 In fact, half of all non-white public college students
0:30:53 in the U.S. attend a community college.
0:30:57 As we heard earlier, only 40% of community college students
0:31:00 get their associate’s degree within six years.
0:31:03 There is, however, another group of colleges
0:31:06 that’s had more success at driving income mobility,
0:31:09 especially for black students,
0:31:14 HBCUs, or historically black colleges and universities.
0:31:16 There are just over 100 of them in the U.S.,
0:31:19 so only 2.5% of all colleges,
0:31:24 but they produce 20% of all black graduates,
0:31:26 including 25% of black graduates
0:31:30 in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
0:31:34 Mackenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos,
0:31:36 recently donated hundreds of millions of dollars
0:31:39 to a large group of HBCUs
0:31:43 and more money to community colleges and tribal colleges.
0:31:45 The federal government has also invested.
0:31:48 In 2019, Donald Trump signed a bill
0:31:53 to permanently provide more than $250 million a year
0:31:57 to the nation’s historically black colleges and universities.
0:31:58 The Biden administration has said
0:32:01 it wants to invest even more.
0:32:02 In the last three years,
0:32:05 they have invested a record $16 billion in funding
0:32:08 for historically black colleges and universities.
0:32:13 So how do HBCUs fit into the college landscape?
0:32:16 We called up the president of one to find out.
0:32:20 Hello there, it’s Stephen Dubner.
0:32:21 Is that Dr. Simmons?
0:32:23 – It is, hi, Stephen, how are you?
0:32:26 – Until 2023, Ruth Simmons was president
0:32:28 of Prairie View A&M University,
0:32:32 a public HBCU outside of Houston, Texas.
0:32:36 Simmons had not planned to become president of Prairie View.
0:32:38 She was happily retired.
0:32:40 She had moved back to her native Texas
0:32:43 after a long career in academia.
0:32:47 She worked as a professor and administrator at schools,
0:32:50 including Princeton, Spellman and USC,
0:32:52 and then became president of Smith College,
0:32:56 the elite all women’s school in Massachusetts.
0:32:57 After six years there,
0:33:00 she became president at Brown University in Rhode Island.
0:33:02 This made her the first black president
0:33:04 of an Ivy League school.
0:33:07 When Simmons retired some years later from Brown,
0:33:09 she thought she was done.
0:33:13 – I had been offered other jobs when I retired.
0:33:16 And of course I laughed each time somebody came to me
0:33:18 and said, would you be president of?
0:33:21 Because I had no intention to come out of retirement.
0:33:24 But then I thought about all the help I got
0:33:27 as a young person with people looking out for me
0:33:28 trying to help me.
0:33:32 And I thought, I owe something for that.
0:33:35 So I’m happy to be back trying to do my part.
0:33:37 – When Simmons talks about the help she got
0:33:40 as a young person, she’s talking about her teachers
0:33:42 growing up in segregated Texas.
0:33:45 – They were very devoted teachers,
0:33:47 the most brilliant teachers.
0:33:52 And they were focused not on how bad things were
0:33:55 at the moment and what we couldn’t do as African-Americans.
0:33:56 You know what they focused on?
0:33:59 They focused on a future that we couldn’t see.
0:34:03 And so saying to me, Ruth, you don’t have to be a maid.
0:34:05 You know, you can go to college
0:34:07 and you can do something else.
0:34:09 – Simmons was the youngest of 12 children.
0:34:12 Her parents were sharecroppers in East Texas.
0:34:14 – We lived on a large farm
0:34:17 that had almost a hundred sharecropper families on it.
0:34:19 You got up every day
0:34:22 and everybody went into the field to work.
0:34:25 I mean, first of all, we had a wonderful family
0:34:30 and we were all together for a very long time
0:34:33 in a rural area of Texas.
0:34:36 When I stepped outside the family, there was nothing.
0:34:37 There was danger.
0:34:39 There was denigration.
0:34:41 There was lack of opportunity.
0:34:45 But when I was in my family, that was a place of safety.
0:34:46 – Once she got to high school though,
0:34:49 Simmons did have those devoted teachers
0:34:51 who urged her to go to college.
0:34:55 In 1963, she got a scholarship to Dillard University,
0:34:57 an HBCU in New Orleans.
0:35:00 – So I was a spoiled brat
0:35:02 as the youngest person in my family.
0:35:04 And when I went off to college,
0:35:06 I behaved like a spoiled brat.
0:35:08 I thought I had the best ideas in the world
0:35:11 and nobody was as good as I was and so forth.
0:35:14 And education introduced me to the reality
0:35:18 of who I was in the context of the world.
0:35:21 And that was a very helpful thing for me.
0:35:22 – Are you saying it humbled you a bit
0:35:24 or it just broadened you?
0:35:25 – I would say it broadened me.
0:35:28 I had a wonderful teacher in college
0:35:30 who was a Latin American
0:35:32 and he told me I should go to Mexico
0:35:35 and live with a Mexican family.
0:35:37 I knew nothing about Mexico.
0:35:40 I knew about my country.
0:35:43 I knew how hard it was here.
0:35:47 I knew how I was treated here as an African American.
0:35:51 And I went across the mountains and into a place
0:35:56 where a person of a different race opened her front door
0:36:01 and let me in, showed me to my room
0:36:03 and made me feel as if I was somebody
0:36:06 who was actually worth something.
0:36:09 I mean, as a 17, 18 year old imagine
0:36:13 leaving a country where race was so prominent
0:36:18 and going to Mexico and then having Mexican people
0:36:22 not stared me as if I was an alien.
0:36:23 So that was phenomenal.
0:36:28 And my experience also in the class was very different
0:36:30 because it was the first time I’d actually been
0:36:32 in any classes with whites.
0:36:36 Many Southerners, because Mexico is very close
0:36:39 went to Mexico to study Spanish.
0:36:41 I was the only African American there.
0:36:44 Mostly it was white Southerners.
0:36:45 So that was my first experience
0:36:49 in a learning environment with whites.
0:36:53 And it wasn’t a uniformly happy experience, let me say.
0:36:56 – Now, if I had asked, let’s say 12 year old Ruth Simmons
0:36:59 back in the 1950s in Texas,
0:37:02 the likelihood that she would not only go to college
0:37:04 but become a college professor
0:37:07 and then become a president of three different colleges.
0:37:09 What do you think your younger self
0:37:10 might have said to that idea?
0:37:14 – Balderdash, ’cause I talked like that when I was 12.
0:37:15 – I believe you.
0:37:16 – I was a very odd kid.
0:37:19 I mean, the country was still deeply segregated.
0:37:23 I didn’t know people who were college educated
0:37:26 except the teachers in my public school.
0:37:28 So no, I would have thought it was preposterous
0:37:32 and somebody was really making fun of me by saying it.
0:37:35 So it’s very useful to get to know what’s important to you
0:37:35 and what matters.
0:37:39 When I was an undergraduate, I did some pretty dumb things.
0:37:42 But the one thing I learned to do as an undergraduate
0:37:47 is I decided that the required chapel at my university
0:37:52 was improper because I said, you know, it’s Protestant.
0:37:55 What about Jews and Muslims?
0:37:56 – Were there any Jewish or Muslim students
0:37:58 at your college?
0:38:00 – No, but it didn’t matter to me.
0:38:02 – It’s the principle, sure.
0:38:04 – It’s the principle.
0:38:09 And so that person in college who fought for that principle
0:38:10 and almost didn’t graduate
0:38:13 because I didn’t meet the chapel requirement
0:38:17 is the same person today sitting here
0:38:18 speaking out on issues.
0:38:20 That’s where I developed that.
0:38:23 That’s how I learned to protect who I was
0:38:24 and what I cared about.
0:38:30 – As much as Simmons already believed
0:38:32 in the mission of HBCUs,
0:38:34 that’s the reason she came out of retirement
0:38:37 to run Prairie View A&M,
0:38:40 she says this mission was further accentuated
0:38:41 a couple of years ago.
0:38:44 – The moment of the Floyd murder
0:38:49 was a very important moment for most HBCUs.
0:38:52 We thought we were out of that
0:38:54 and suddenly there’s this wake-up call
0:38:57 that says, no, we’re not there yet.
0:38:57 What do you do?
0:39:02 It reminds me of the moment in 1963
0:39:06 when John F. Kennedy was killed and I was in college.
0:39:10 And we huddled together as college students
0:39:12 to try to understand what was going to go on now
0:39:13 in the world.
0:39:17 We felt so shaken by what was happening
0:39:18 at that moment in time
0:39:21 and throughout the civil rights struggle.
0:39:24 So it’s not a flight from reality,
0:39:28 it’s an effort to become stronger to face that reality.
0:39:30 And that’s what we’re trying to do for our students,
0:39:32 help them face that reality.
0:39:34 – You said that you believe in the quote,
0:39:36 transformative power of education.
0:39:39 And in your personal biography,
0:39:42 it’s hard not to imagine that you wouldn’t make that claim
0:39:45 because it plainly did transform you.
0:39:47 Let’s talk a little bit more broadly though
0:39:50 and let’s bring it up to the current situation.
0:39:54 So a lot of economists spend a lot of time
0:39:56 doing very fancy econometrics
0:39:58 to prove the returns to education,
0:40:01 as I’m sure you well know, particularly college education.
0:40:04 I assume that you also believe
0:40:06 the returns to education are significant,
0:40:08 but you’re not using econometrics
0:40:09 to come to this conclusion.
0:40:14 So give me your argument for why education today,
0:40:16 particularly college education,
0:40:19 has the power to truly transform, how does that work?
0:40:21 – Well, I would start with the earliest education
0:40:23 to be perfectly honest with you.
0:40:25 So here are the fundamentals.
0:40:30 We’re all in an uneven situation no matter where we are.
0:40:35 Some of us may have immense privilege.
0:40:37 On the opposite extreme,
0:40:41 there are people who are born with nothing,
0:40:44 who have no one to care about them.
0:40:50 In both cases, these children have the opportunity to learn,
0:40:55 to be better people, to be more aware of the world
0:40:56 that they live in.
0:40:59 And whether they become that is highly dependent
0:41:01 on the kind of educational experience
0:41:03 they’re able to have.
0:41:07 And so a privileged child can be privileged,
0:41:09 but still not be educated,
0:41:10 although they have access to the books
0:41:13 and all the toys of education,
0:41:15 but they might not have an understanding
0:41:19 of how to be in the world as one of many.
0:41:29 – At Prairie View, the median family income of students
0:41:31 is just under $40,000 a year.
0:41:34 Only 11% of Prairie View students
0:41:37 come from the top 20% of the income distribution.
0:41:41 So unlike her students at Smith and Brown,
0:41:45 Simmons is not dealing with highly privileged students,
0:41:48 but she says her philosophy does not change at all.
0:41:50 – I’m doing the same thing I’ve always done.
0:41:53 I’m trying to make trouble if I can.
0:41:57 And testizing my students as I did at Smith and at Brown
0:42:00 to be better at what they’re doing.
0:42:04 I’m trying to set a model for them of what is possible
0:42:06 if they work hard.
0:42:11 And trying to insist that this university can be
0:42:14 as good as any other university
0:42:16 if we make the right decisions.
0:42:20 – So only about 10% of all African-American
0:42:24 college students in the US today attend HBCUs,
0:42:29 but those schools produce 25% of black graduates
0:42:34 in the STEM fields, roughly 80% of black judges in the US
0:42:38 have come from an HBCU, 70% of black doctors
0:42:41 on and on, 40% of the black members of Congress.
0:42:44 What does that mismatch tell you?
0:42:46 Is that a feather in the cap of HBCUs
0:42:50 or does it say something about the black students
0:42:52 that are going to non-HBCUs?
0:42:54 And why are there not, for instance,
0:42:57 more black STEM graduates coming out of those schools?
0:43:01 – Well, you know, these institutions are mission-driven.
0:43:05 Now, here’s the important thing to understand about missions.
0:43:08 Institutions have certain purposes.
0:43:12 And those purposes are reiterated constantly.
0:43:16 You hire people who understand the mission.
0:43:18 You evaluate people on whether or not
0:43:20 they understand the mission
0:43:22 and whether they’re committed to it.
0:43:25 And so what is the mission of HBCUs?
0:43:27 The mission of HBCUs is to make sure
0:43:30 that their students are successful.
0:43:35 Our motto is Prairie View produces productive people.
0:43:38 We’re looking to make sure that every single person
0:43:40 who comes into this university is successful.
0:43:43 Now, let me switch and talk about the other model,
0:43:45 which is a more competitive model.
0:43:48 So I used to complain about this all the time
0:43:51 at Princeton and all of these places.
0:43:53 And that is, what’s the model?
0:43:55 Well, the model is to eliminate.
0:44:00 So think of engineering at Princeton and Harvard.
0:44:04 You come in and you take prerequisites.
0:44:06 And what do those prerequisites do?
0:44:11 They knock you out of eligibility to pursue engineering.
0:44:15 And so most of the students coming in who want to do that
0:44:18 have to switch to some secondary interest.
0:44:22 So one model is about eliminating people
0:44:26 so that there is a special class of achievers
0:44:28 at the highest end.
0:44:30 And that’s where they make their reputation.
0:44:33 The other model is about making sure everybody gets through.
0:44:36 – You’ve been engaged obviously in both models.
0:44:38 Do you have a preference?
0:44:41 – I want students to succeed, period.
0:44:45 I understand the value of education.
0:44:48 It doesn’t all have to be the same.
0:44:50 (gentle music)
0:44:51 All right, one last question.
0:44:54 It’s very short and it’s very easy.
0:44:57 What is college really for, would you say?
0:45:01 – I would have said it’s to make us the best possible
0:45:03 healing being that we can be.
0:45:05 Developing our mind fully.
0:45:07 – So that’s a nice answer.
0:45:10 The only problem is that sounds like it may be describing
0:45:11 a certain kind of college,
0:45:15 like a very well-regarded public university or private.
0:45:18 But what about community colleges?
0:45:19 Are they serving that same purpose?
0:45:20 – Of course they are.
0:45:23 – And what about all those people who aren’t going to college
0:45:24 and they want to develop their mind?
0:45:27 – No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
0:45:32 I know people who want to be the best person they can be
0:45:37 and that doing it in different ways.
0:45:40 I have a niece who just for a while
0:45:41 couldn’t figure out what she was going to do.
0:45:46 So she went to a community college to do nursing.
0:45:48 And that’s been her journey.
0:45:50 And we’re very proud of her.
0:45:53 And that’s an incredible thing for her to do.
0:45:58 I have lots of family members who are doing it a different way.
0:46:00 I always encourage people no matter what course
0:46:03 they’re taking, however, to develop their minds
0:46:05 as fully as they can.
0:46:07 You can do that no matter who you are,
0:46:09 no matter where you are.
0:46:11 Some of the best people I’ve known
0:46:15 have been non-college educated people.
0:46:19 And so it’s not a matter of going to a particular college.
0:46:21 It’s not a matter of that at all.
0:46:23 It’s a matter of investing in yourself
0:46:25 and taking that seriously.
0:46:28 – When Ruth Simmons stepped down
0:46:31 as president of Prairie View A&M in 2023,
0:46:33 she left behind many students
0:46:36 who benefited from her philosophy
0:46:40 and people who weren’t her students too.
0:46:43 For instance, while preparing to interview Simmons,
0:46:45 I read and listened to a lot of other interviews.
0:46:47 In one of them, she said something
0:46:48 I’ve been thinking about ever since,
0:46:51 something so wise that I think it should be the motto
0:46:54 of every company and institution in the world.
0:46:57 She said, “I always tell the people that I hire
0:46:58 that I don’t hire them
0:47:01 because they’re able to follow rules.
0:47:04 I hire them because they have good judgment.”
0:47:08 Thanks for that great insight, Dr. Simmons.
0:47:10 But another thing I learned from her today
0:47:12 is the difference between what she calls
0:47:15 the mission-driven model of higher education
0:47:16 and the competitive model.
0:47:19 Plainly, they’ve both got their place,
0:47:21 but it does make you wonder,
0:47:25 since the competitive schools, the elite schools,
0:47:26 pride themselves on producing
0:47:29 the absolute best and brightest graduates,
0:47:33 and since a college education has been shown
0:47:36 to drive better life outcomes generally,
0:47:41 why aren’t those elite schools expanding?
0:47:45 Wouldn’t it make sense to offer their world-class knowledge
0:47:50 and their multi-billion dollar endowments to more students?
0:47:51 Most schools have been expanding,
0:47:53 except schools at the very top.
0:47:56 Why aren’t the top schools expanding?
0:47:59 With schools, reputation is going to matter a lot.
0:48:02 So does this mean that an elite education
0:48:06 is mostly one big, expensive signaling mechanism?
0:48:08 If it were only a signaling thing,
0:48:11 somebody would have been a less expensive signal.
0:48:14 – That’s next time on part two of our special series,
0:48:16 Freakonomics Radio, goes back to school.
0:48:18 And if you wanna dig deeper right now,
0:48:21 you can find some other college-related episodes
0:48:22 in our archive.
0:48:25 We did a two-parter back in 2012
0:48:27 called Freakonomics Goes to College.
0:48:30 Those were episodes 86 and 88.
0:48:35 Episode 377 was called the $1.5 trillion question,
0:48:38 how to fix student loan debt.
0:48:41 We’ve also interviewed a pair of Harvard presidents
0:48:44 in the past, Larry Summers and Drew Faust.
0:48:47 Those were episodes 303 and 218.
0:48:50 We spoke with Wesleyan President Michael Roth
0:48:53 more recently for episode 574,
0:48:56 and of course, Tanya Tetlow from Fordham last week.
0:48:58 We’ll be back next week with part two
0:49:00 of our college series.
0:49:02 Until then, take care of yourself
0:49:04 and if you can, someone else too.
0:49:07 (upbeat music)
0:49:09 Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher
0:49:11 and Renbud Radio.
0:49:14 You can find our entire archive on any podcast app
0:49:16 and also at freakonomics.com
0:49:18 where we publish transcripts and show notes.
0:49:21 This episode was produced by Zach Lipinski
0:49:23 with help from Dalvin Abouashi.
0:49:26 Our staff also includes Alina Cullman, Augusta Chapman,
0:49:29 Eleanor Osborne, Elsa Hernandez, Gabriel Roth,
0:49:32 Greg Rippin, Jasmine Klinger, Jeremy Johnston,
0:49:34 John Snars, Julie Canfer, Lyric Bowditch,
0:49:37 Morgan Levy, Neil Carruth, Rebecca Lee Douglas,
0:49:39 Sarah Lilly, and Teo Jacobs.
0:49:42 Our theme song is “Mr. Fortune” by the Hitchhikers.
0:49:44 Our composer is Luis Guerra.
0:49:46 As always, thank you for listening.
0:49:55 My wife is a Smith graduate before your time.
0:49:58 – Ah, you said the magic word.
0:50:02 (upbeat music)
0:50:05 – The Freakonomics Radio Network,
0:50:07 the hidden side of everything.
0:50:10 (upbeat music)
0:50:11 Stitcher.
0:50:14 (gentle music)