Dr. John Jackson:
I think some higher ed heres operating like a business. And they think of that as ruthless, only focused on money. No business that is sustainable thinks that way. Every business that’s sustainable, they focus on their employees first, their customers second, and their shareholders third. That’s a little bit odd to people. What do you mean shareholders? Third, that’s the people who provide the money. If you focus on your people, you take great care of your people. You hire great people, you make sure they know the mission, then you focus on your customers. ’cause great people are gonna serve your customers well. Your shareholders are gonna do just fine. And they have over the decades. So, I wanna say this, Joe, higher ed is a business. Yeah. And we need to run it as a business with a mission. And there’s nothing, uh, antithetical, nothing crossways of that. Running higher ed as a business with a mission is exactly what we need to do.
Joe Gottlieb:
That’s John Jackson, pastor, pastor preneur and president of William Jessup University, a nationally ranked Christian university located just outside of Sacramento, California. We talked about the threats facing higher ed today and how despite these threats, Jessup continues to grow, thanks to a very clear-eyed understanding of its identity, who it serves, and how it must continue to innovate or succumb to these threats. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Welcome to TRANSFORMED, a Higher Digital podcast focused on the new why’s, the new what’s, and the new hows in higher ed. In each episode, you will experience hosts and guests pulling for the resurgence of higher ed, while identifying and discussing the best practices needed to accomplish that resurgence. Culture, strategy and tactics, planning and execution, people, process, and technology. It’s all on the menu because that’s what’s required to truly transform. Hello, welcome and thanks for joining us for this special presidential series episode of TRANSFORMED. My name is Joe Gottlieb, president and CTO of Hire Digital. And today I am joined by Dr. John Jackson, president of William Jessup University. John, welcome to TRANSFORMED.
Dr. John Jackson:
Hey, thanks Joe. I’m really happy to be here. Hey, what do you wanna talk about?
Joe Gottlieb:
I’m glad you asked, John. We’ve got a playful title for this podcast episode. It’s called Barbarians at the Higher Ed Table. And what I want to talk about is let’s talk about those numerous threats that are impacting higher ed right now, and how you are responding to those threats via transformation at Jessup University. But before we get into that, tell me a bit about your personal journey and how it shaped the work you do in higher ed.
Dr. John Jackson:
Well, thanks Joe for that opportunity. And I would tell you that in my world, we often say that, uh, we’re a faith-based university. So we say God, uh, never wastes an experience. So my journey is this. I wanted to be a pro baseball player when I was a boy growing up. And I was really good. Uh, I was kind of good in school. So my parents said my life was, uh, described by books and balls and, and baseball in particular. I wanted to be a pro baseball player. Got to age 15. I was pretty analytical as a young kid, and I figured out, Joe, that I was good but not great. And so that became a life crisis age 15 and a half. I knew that only great ball players made it in the pros, and I just wasn’t great no matter how hard I worked.
Dr. John Jackson:
And so I had this life crisis, uh, long story short, by age 16 felt a strong a calling to become a pastor. I spent the next, uh, maybe 40 plus years, uh, 30, 33 years to become, uh, a pastor of multiple churches, a denominational leader. Uh, I was very entrepreneurial, by the way, in 2003, I wrote a book called Pastor Preneur. I wanted pastors to be more entrepreneurial. I wanted entrepreneurs to leverage their marketplace skills. So you could see kinda that interplay of business and church, uh, throughout my life. Long story short age 2011, uh, I became a college president. I was a reluctant and resistant college president. And, uh, to be frank, that’s part of why I think of myself even to this day as a barbarian at the higher ed table. So I, uh, finishing my 13th year of being a college president, starting my 14th year in March. But I still feel Joe like a barbarian at the higher ed table,
Joe Gottlieb:
Meaning you’re someone that is looking at higher ed and challenging the status quo. And so I wanna, I wanna give a little background for this, this fun little podcast episode title. We’ve come up with barbarians at the higher ed table. Um, really you’ve described the situation in higher ed as feeling a bit like barbarians at the gate. This is a book written by Brian Burrow and John Heller. I think we’ve both read it about the fall of r Jr Nabisco in the late eighties. And this really had to do with corporate rating and, and all kinds of things that were assaulting the, the, the corporate structure of that time. Very large one. Um, but let’s use that lens to talk about higher ed. Let’s identify some of these barbarians, first and foremost that are threatening higher ed as we know it. Why don’t you start us off there?
Dr. John Jackson:
Well, it’s, it’s a laundry list, but lemme just, uh, cite some things that people know. I’ll, I’ll mention one that’s cutting edge. Say ai. What’s the impact of artificial intelligence upon higher ed? Well, if you’ve taught the same way that people taught since 1300 in a university setting, and you assume that AI is gonna have no impact, then you might be in the same class as people who thought horses would never be replaced. Uh, automobiles ended up replacing horses by and large for transportation, or maybe the train industry. You thought trains would never be supplanted as the primary mode of transporting goods or people. Uh, you think about the cost of higher ed, Joe, the reality is, is that higher ed just costs too much. Uh, there’s a chart out there that sows the difference between medical costs over the last three decades and higher ed costs.
Dr. John Jackson:
If you’re mad at how much your doctor or medical insurance costs, did you know this higher ed is three x the rate of increase of what medical costs have been the last three decades? Uh, also, I just say this, um, today we’re in a social and atmosphere where competency is valued more highly than knowledge. I can get knowledge from Google, I can get knowledge from a variety of, of settings, but how do I know that what I know really can translate into competency? And I think that’s a big, huge situation affecting a lot of people. And then maybe just throw out a couple others. Uh, the reason why this is a barbarian atmosphere is, is student debt. I, I’ve lost track, but I think it’s 1.6 trillion, Joe, that’s a debt overhang that’s just literally crippling all kinds of folks. And then finally, uh, this is connected to the competency comment is the uncertainty of the outcome. If I get a college degree, am I really prepared and equipped not just for the job market, but for life in the future? And, and some would argue that four years of college these days is not producing what we used to believe was in the social contract. Uh, you’ve seen these days a lot of controversy with higher ed institutions. And sadly, even our most elite institutions are actually some of our most controversial these days. So we’re in this real vortex moment.
Joe Gottlieb:
Yeah. I, I love the way you describe it there as a vortex because it it, when these forces are compounded together in, in one place, IE assaulting the higher ed table, so to speak, right? There’s a lot of power, and it’s a pretty destructive force that we’re talking about. It’s, you know, we, it’s causing if you, if you thread in the pandemic, right? The pandemic then was a shock in this system that forced many to build new muscles that were very, very foreign involving change, involving a shift in how they were operating. It made many of those institutions stronger. But it’s also crippled several institutions. And we’ve seen a lot of fallout. It’s, it’s affected a large portion of the market never came back after Covid because their education experience was, was disruptive. So very disruptive. Uh, indeed.
Dr. John Jackson:
Uh, Joe, I think you’re spot on. I think we’re seeing that what Covid did, uh, and I’m not talking politics here, or even medical science. Covid was a revealer. It revealed a lot of things about economies and social structures, uh, as well as a host of other maybe medical issues. But it was a revealer. It also was an accelerator. Covid accelerated changes. Uh, think about remote work. How many of us thought teleworking was a thing in the 1980s, but then it wasn’t. But now with Covid, we’re in this moment where hybrid, uh, fully remote, those are in the conversation. They’re very real and very substantive. People rearrange their lives for two, three years, uh, during the covid, uh, pandemic. Uh, then you think about, uh, the challenges, as you said, economically, a lot of federal money got, uh, flushed into, uh, higher ed settings and business settings. But now what we’re seeing is that money didn’t fix problems. It just actually may be covered over challenging realities that already existed. Plus, you, your listeners probably know this, Joe, there’s a demographic cliff 2025 high school graduation rates literally go off the cliff. And so we know the supply of tr at least traditional future college students, is really gonna be challenged,
Joe Gottlieb:
Which I think presents another one of these. Some will become stronger, others will fail because of that challenge. I think about regional community colleges in particular, where their ability to have the, you know, the sort of scale economics to survive, that then also translates into another thing we’ve already alluded to, which is this notion of, I love the way you placed it. Competencies is being valued more than knowledge. Other guests on the podcast, and I have talked at length about this new emerging, uh, it’s, it’s, it’s the applied liberal arts versus the liberal arts knowledge, right? So it is thinking about what are the new skills we have to be able to apply with competency versus the knowledge we need to store up to fit what was has now become a pretty dated construct for being prepared to operate in the, in the, in the outside world.
Dr. John Jackson:
Well, and, and Joe, I wanna be careful that your listeners understand my undergraduate degree is in religious history. I have a, a doctorate from the University of California in educational administration organizational studies. I have a lot of appreciation for the humanities. And I do think that learning how to think and learning how to learn is really important. A lot of the data that we get in our day is quite frankly false. So how do I know when I, for instance, do a Google search that my results are accurate or not? Uh, we have to be able to have critical thinking skills. But if those critical thinking skills are not aimed in a trajectory towards something that has ultimate, uh, employment value, if, uh, I tell our math students here all the time, I, I can’t believe we have people who are math majors who are not considered nerds.
Dr. John Jackson:
Like when I went to school, our math majors today are highly sought after at Jessup. And the reason they’re highly sought after is because so much data analytics and data science involves, uh, sophisticated math that I don’t even understand, to be frank. But a math major can’t know just how to do equations. They’ve got to be able to interpret the data and analysis. So that’s a critical thinking skill. So it, it’s, it’s both. But Joe, if we just do traditional humanities and we have no, as you said, applied liberal arts, we have no application into the marketplace. I, I think it’s really dubious as as to how the market, how parents, and by the way, the market is parents and students, how the parents and students will value what it is that traditional higher ed offers.
Joe Gottlieb:
So we’ve set the table, uh, lots of threats, lots of barbarians at the higher ed table, so to speak. Now, let’s shift gears a little bit. You, you talk about, let’s talk about your outlook on the future of higher ed. I wanna give you a chance here to just really articulate some, some perspective on that. And I know you’ve got a, a handy acronym, um, a mnemonic if you will, FDA. So tell me what FDA stands for and the way you think about the future of higher ed.
Dr. John Jackson:
Well, lemme just first of all, start and say FDA is not food and Drug Administration. Uh, but I came up with this acronym when I first became a president. Remember, I was coming out of a church and pastoral setting into the, the collegiate atmosphere. I knew how to lead to cast vision, to raise money to, to oversee people. But what I did not know is a lot of academia, I had taught at the graduate level before, but I’d never been in academic administration. I think the future is this, FDA, the letter F stands for flexible. We have got to be able to deliver higher ed in a way that is flexible. If higher ed, it’s like, think about banking for a second. When I grew up, I’m 62. When I grew up, banks were open nine to three, and then they stayed open till five on Fridays, maybe six.
Dr. John Jackson:
Tell me about how you think about your banking hours today. Or is it even relevant to you? You don’t ever go to a bank branch because you have 24 hour access to banking. Flexible, higher ed has got to be flexible. The letter D stands for distributed. It used to be that you said, Hey, you want education from this college. You come to our campus, you come to our campus on our terms during our time, and you get our product. And you take it that way. Well, let me ask you this. When’s the last time you purchased something online and you purchased it from somebody other than Amazon? Even if you’re an Amazon hater, by the way, and you didn’t want the convenience that Amazon provided, the the one click shopping, the easy delivery to your house, sometimes even the same exact day. I mean, that’s just crazy.
Dr. John Jackson:
So distributed, we’ve gotta make it available and access. And that’s the third letter. Is the letter a accessible? But the distributed has to do with, we’ve gotta get it into the workplace. We’ve gotta get it into the home. We’ve gotta be willing to be, um, flexible and distributed as a university so that we’re not in our little cloister. The letter A stands for accessible or affordable. When I say accessible, I do mean not only the distributed part of it, I just means it has to be available. If I’m only serving, I’m gonna say something very controversial. Joe, you might wanna edit this out. If, if higher ed is only available to rich white people or affluent Asians, that is a very, very serious problem. Uh, I’m a little bit of a history major. So land grant institutions were developed in the 18 hundreds to be able to spread out the kind of applied knowledge that we knew our culture needed. I’m for higher ed, I just am not for higher ed. That’s solely exclusive. If you’re an exclusive institution, I celebrate you. But I’ll tell you what, we need to make higher ed accessible, do our very best, uh, to make it affordable. And I think that’s the future. Is FDA
Joe Gottlieb:
Well, you mentioned land grant, uh, institution history. I, I actually have encountered that. Um, more recently I’ve become a, a more aware of the wonderful history about that, right? I think it really came out of our need to feed the nation as we scaled and we needed to develop better agricultural science, right? And so the bargain was we’re gonna give you federal lands if you each state will get one, uh, land grant institution, right? We’ll give you federal lands if you, um, are, if you develop and maintain programs to advance our ability to feed the nation via agricultural science evolution. Right? And, and, and that was a, a certain availability of that to sort of attract. Now, as a growth industry, so to speak, the need to feed is is do I, first of all, do I have that right? You probably <crosstalk>,
Dr. John Jackson:
I think. No, you’re exactly, you’re exactly right. And again, I’m not an expert in this field, but I would just say that that that is exactly right. It was to get those agricultural specialties, but also to recognize as industrialization was happening more and more, we needed to get college level, uh, training in a variety of different fields. But distributed away from, to be frank, just the northeast, the northeastern corridor was where our, our nation was highly developed, but we needed to get out into the plain states. We needed to get it out into the western United States. We needed to get into the south. So that’s really what happened.
Joe Gottlieb:
And so it’s interesting to examine the current events as maybe presenting a similar opportunity slash challenge or challenge slash opportunity, which is back then it was, we need to diversify. We need to tap into our gene pool around the entire United States, because capable people can come from anywhere and people that are motivated to learn ought to be able to come from anywhere. So let’s make this distributed, available higher ed infrastructure happen in those places. A b let’s solve this problem that we have of also diversifying the, the, the, the way that we can start to produce productive participants in our scaling as a society, right? Well, now we have more frontiers we’re trying to open up. I, I propose, and then I don’t think I’m alone. Only one saying this, right? Which is let’s tap into more members of our society that a could produce productive output. And that’s back to the necessity equation for let’s say our nation or our planet. But b, let’s recognize that we’re actually serving a really important, what should be a ubiquitous service so that everyone can have a a on ramp into society, right? Whether they’re privileged or underprivileged, whether they’re concentrated in one location or another. And that’s a growth market, right?
Dr. John Jackson:
It really is. And I, I, as you’re talking, Joe, I’m thinking of a couple illustrations that will be very familiar to your listeners. Uh, think about MOOCs massive, uh, open online courses from some very, very, very fine institutions. And, and a lot of the, the institutions discovered over the years, I think this was mostly in the, in the two thousands, that, uh, MOOCs allowed them to reach a global audience and sometimes to discover the most motivated and and qualified students from across. But it also distributed education, uh, across the board. Now, think about this. Uh, I remember when Google bought YouTube and everybody said, oh, that’s crazy. I forget the number. It was 3 billion or $4 billion that Google paid for YouTube. And you thought, oh, that’s insane. Well, now, fast forward 10, 15 years later, YouTube has such phenomenally, uh, uh, available resources and people can learn.
Dr. John Jackson:
And you think about masterclasses and all of that. Uh, but I want to, I wanna give another illustration. When you think about the fact that part of the American experiment is that we don’t have hereditary, hereditary nobility. We don’t have hereditary, a right of king, divine right of kings, that kind of stuff. Part of the American experiment was to say, and we’ve imperfectly lived this out in our entire history, but if in the declaration, the words, all men are created equal, if, if that really means anything, it should mean that everybody should have opportunity. Now people choose what they make of that opportunity. And people make bad choices. I’ve made bad choices. Everybody has a challenge to make the right choices. But if we give people access, what’s been shocking in our history is how many people come from very difficult circumstances, but get access to an opportunity and their life is transformed. And Joe, what’s really motivational to me, their life is transformed for generations. Hmm. Legacy impact of transformation is for generations.
Joe Gottlieb:
Absolutely true. And I think that’s the most exciting part about what is happening increasingly in higher ed. Not everywhere, not across, not sufficiently across all the gaps that we’ve had for many, many decades. But there’s a lot of progress there. Um, and, and, uh, I know we’ll talk more about that. But, but for the sake of time, let’s, let’s now layer on another, another, uh, facet of our conversation. So you show up at Jessup originally getting into this world a bit reluctantly, having been a pastor for, for decades. Um, and lo and behold, you’ve led a period of enrollment growth at Jessup that has really benefited from a clear understanding of your differentiation as an institution. How do you see yourself differently from other institutions trying to attract new students? I wanna use that to set the stage for what’s going on at Jessup. Yeah.
Dr. John Jackson:
So thank you. Um, well, one of the ways I talk about is, is, uh, retail. And then one of the ways I talk about is winning. So let me use both those analogies quickly and you decide which one you want to go with. First of all, winning. Uh, I say there’s three groups of people that we have to win with. We have to win with families. So parents and students have to trust us and say, this is a safe campus.
Dr. John Jackson:
This is a safe campus. This is a campus where I can get the right education and training. We have to win with, uh, churches. This is part of what’s unique about Jessup, is we have a 900 churches that we’re in relationship with 50 denominations on our campus, over 500 churches represented in our student population every single semester. So we’re a very, uh, faith-based, church oriented. The third group, it’ll be surprising to your listeners, we have to win, uh, with regional employers. I personally believe a school like ours, which is not a huge large public institution, we’re not, uh, an institution that has a nationwide footprint. We have to win with regional employers. So we have to make sure that we do. Now, lemme give you a retail analogy. Um, Walmart, and I’m not bashing any of these entities. Walmart is, um, low price and convenience, and I go to Walmart, so don’t, don’t hear me bashing Walmart.
Dr. John Jackson:
It’s, it’s low price and convenience. But I don’t go to Walmart for quality. Let me give you the other end of scale. Nor Nordstrom. My wife likes to go to Nordstrom, and periodically I go to Nordstrom When I’m with my wife, Nordstrom is high quality, high cost. Yep. And by the way, if you ever buy something at Nordstrom and have a bad experience with it, you take it right back to Nordstrom, no questions asked. Because if you’re a Nordstrom shopper, it’s high quality, high cost, and absolute trust in their merchandise. I never go to Walmart expecting Nordstrom quality, right? I go to Walmart for convenience and cost. Now, there’s something in between those, and in my view, that’s Costco. Costco offers affordable excellence. Now you gotta buy a big, huge package of toilet paper, but you get really good quality toilet paper at a very reasonable price.
Dr. John Jackson:
People are always shocked by Costco. And how many households with incomes in excess of a hundred thousand dollars shop at Costco? ’cause it’s, it’s the normal goods and purchase they have to make. They’ll, they’ll spend a ton of money, high income households on vacations or cars or that sort of thing. But at Costco, they buy their cor goods. So at Jessup, we don’t have any other faith-based institutions within three or four hours of us. So we’ve said we’re not gonna be Walmart. We don’t, we, we get the cost and convenience issue, but we don’t want to sacrifice on quality. We also have said we’re not gonna be Nordstrom. Mm-Hmm. Nordstrom is very elite and we appreciate that. We understand the place for that. But because the fact that we don’t have anybody around us, we’re Costco affordable excellence. People are shocked at the quality they get when they come to Jessup. Mm-Hmm. And that’s part of the winning, by the way, with families and with churches and regional employers, is that we’ve just made a commitment, uh, for that last one, employers, we’re gonna be exceptionally employable. Our graduates graduate with degrees, they graduate with competencies for work, and they graduate with immediate employability.
Joe Gottlieb:
Well, I, you asked, you suggested that I might choose, I’m a hoarder, so I’m gonna, I’m gonna wanna advance both of these, but I’ll try to do it in concert. Okay. So, uh, I like both of these analogies and frames that allow you to think about your identity at Jessup. Yes. And really to me, what I’m hearing you say is that you, first of all, it’s a set of choices made in the context of that regional role that you’re playing, where you’ve already pointed out winning with regional employers is important and mutually productive. Right? So there’s a good thing that happens if, if a big way that you’re measured where the value of Jeff is, is measured by the employability of its graduates. Well, right there, if you have some ecosystem aware, flow and relationship based, uh, um, rhythm happening with regional employers, a lot of good can come from that.
Joe Gottlieb:
Your feeding and community ongoing support, you know, is so critical to family and church, right? And so that’s another thing that centers you. But to then do both, all three of those to win across those three, um, domains, if you will, with this Costco oriented model, affordable excellence model. It strikes me, you can tell me if you think of it in different ways, but you’re hitting that nice balance point between maximizing the number of students that might find themselves having a great outcome while still not, not sacrificing too much on, on quality, right? You’re hitting this balance point where you can scale that and you can have maximum impact with that.
Dr. John Jackson:
Yeah. I, I think you’re right. And I’ll tell you, this is where we’ve been more than a little intentional. The number one way that Jessup could rise in national rankings is to be more selective in who we admit. That’s a Nordstrom strategy. That’s what gets you, uh, rankings for best is if you are more selective, because that way, then your graduates are gonna be more selective. Joe, we’ve made an intentional choice. We, we get students, we’ve had a few in my 13 years who’ve been admitted to Stanford and they choose Jessup. Now, Stanford’s an amazing school. The most select university in the United States, less than 2% acceptance. So we have some Stanford accepted students who choose to come to Jessup. That’s very unusual, but that does happen. And we have kids who have 4.0, 4.3, 4.5 on an advanced grading scale. They’re uc accepted, and they, they decide to come to Jessup.
Dr. John Jackson:
But I’ll tell you this, and I say it without shame, we also have students who, uh, have a C average who get into Jessup. And we work really hard to understand every person’s story because we’re just missionally committed. We are not gonna shut the door on that kid who at age 15, 16, 17 doesn’t have life figured out. Maybe you did, Joe, maybe I did, maybe somebody else did. But there’s a lot of us who at age 15, 16, 17, did not have life figured out. And I want those kids to have a shot. I want them to have a chance, uh, first generation kids, kids who come from families where they don’t have college in their background, uh, kids from lower socioeconomic status where they don’t got a parent looking over their shoulder, filling out a FAFSA form. That that, that’s just the crazy stuff, by the way, that makes college very inaccessible.
Dr. John Jackson:
Uh, so we’re working hard to keep that Costco high quality promise. By the way, if you ever get a bad product at Costco, and that’s happened to me a couple times, you take it back to Costco, you treat it like a Nordstrom customer, boom, easy return at Costco, no questions asked. And that’s what we try to do. We try to make a really good brand promise. I I know a lot of people in higher ed don’t like those words ’cause it feels crass. But if I go to your university, Joe, I should understand what I’m getting. What’s the, what’s the value prep proposition? What am I, what’s the brand promise that you’re gonna make? And I, I used to say three things. May, I didn’t share this with you before, but I’ll, I this may help. Uh, number one, you’re gonna thrive spiritually at Jessup because we’re faith-based school faith’s gonna be built up, not torn down.
Dr. John Jackson:
Number two, you’re gonna master the fundamental disciplines. If you graduate from Jessup and you can’t read, write, think, or speak, well then you deserve a refund. Now, Joe, the lawyers don’t let me put that in writing. So I don’t, but I say it out loud, <laugh>, uh, read, write, think, and speak. Well, and then the third thing is that I’ve already referenced is exceptionally employable. You come, Jessup, you’re gonna get a job, you’re gonna get a good job. Now, I can’t promise you a third or fourth job, but you will be exceptionally employable coming right outta college.
Joe Gottlieb:
So you’ve just articulated some very clear, much like your identity as a, you know, relating to winning and relating to some of these retail, um, comparisons. Very clear. I not just the identity, but now, but now the, the outcomes you’re trying to make happen. And it’s always bothered me, this selectivity metric. And frankly, I think we’ve outgrown it as its usefulness, outgrown its usefulness. Because you’re punished in a way for being, for, for acknowledging fit and, and letting more students have an opportunity to find the fit that you recognize through your hard work evaluating students or at least the potential fit. Right? And, and not only that, you’re running an institution that sounds to me in a way that you, it’s designed to work hard to take perhaps more students that may need more help to get a positive outcome. And yet you see a broader funnel for the fit, and you’re getting punished by that via the traditional metrics.
Dr. John Jackson:
Yes. And it’s why I will say this in a common, uh, national scorecard that, that people, uh, like to refer to, uh, when our institution didn’t offer a lot of graduate degrees, we were in one category. Now we’ve jumped up ’cause of our size and scope into another. But we were, uh, number one in the western United States for what’s called social mobility. I was very proud of that ’cause my family was poor. Mm. And my life was changed as I went on to different forms of higher ed. And I want that for other people. So I, but social mobility is not highly ranked in the rankings of how you, you know, what are the best universities? It tends to be your income. That’s a big, huge factor. What are the income of your graduates? Well, okay, everybody should just go into finance and technology then if, if all you want is to change your ranking on, on, uh, earnings outcome.
Dr. John Jackson:
So we, we have a lot of, uh, a lot of desire to change those national rankings to be frank. And I think every parent and every student, every graduate student and undergraduate student should just think about a broader equation to pick the school that’s right for them. We tell students all the time, by the way, we want everybody here at Jessup, but it’s not the right school for everyone. So you have to decide whether this is right for you. And if it is, we’d love to have you here. If it’s not, we encourage you to go to that school that’s right for you.
Joe Gottlieb:
I dare say that social mobility metric is gonna, it’s gonna be more important in the future as we figure more of this stuff out. But, we’ll, we’ll park that for now. And I also want to say, and this will set up our last question here that I’d love to get into, which is, you called it potentially crass. I think you were trying to perhaps recognize that this conversation has been a little foreign to higher ed. But I love the idea of thinking about higher ed as more of a business, more of an operation that must serve a customer. Oh, by the way, who’s that customer again? The student. Oh, let’s map the rise in importance of, of delivering a student experience and a student outcome in strategic plans amongst nearly all institutions. So we’re getting that religion finally. But let’s, let’s segue into this last question.
Joe Gottlieb:
So you’re an author in addition to everything else, which is always fascinating to see other pursuits that, that are our guests have. Your most recent book is titled Grace Ambassador. And it speaks of God wanting to use us right now, right where we are to share the grace we’ve been given with a world aching for transformation. So I, I wanted to call that out because it has many interesting references to me. Um, but in the time we have left, describe how Jessup is harnessing this special blend of secular relevance and faith-based identity to really prepare its graduates with some superpowers for the world of today.
Dr. John Jackson:
Well, let me start by saying this, Joe, and I appreciate your kind words about the book. I wrote the book to help people in the faith community, but I, I think it could help anybody. But in the faith community, let me say this, I think it’s been our fault. In the faith community, we have sometimes bought what I think is a terribly destructive lie. It it’s, it’s just a wrong belief. And it’s called the sacred secular divide. We’ve divided life into sacred. When I go to church, when I demonstrate an act of compassion, when I’m doing my personal devotional discipline, meditation time, that’s sacred. But then I go to my job, then I mow my lawn, then I walk the dog in the neighborhood. Tho those are secular activities. I go to the gym that’s secular. And actually I think all of life is sacred.
Dr. John Jackson:
So how would that change my thinking as a higher ed institution? The people on the city council or the county supervisors in, in California government where I live, or the people in the business across the street who have a small mom and pop business, or the large corporate enterprise, they’re not other than me. They’re the same as me. We live in the same community. We’re sharing together in what it means to build up our culture. So rather than higher ed being isolated and detached from, I think we should be engaged with higher ed, should be seen as this huge valuable resource in our communities. And from a faith-based higher ed, I really want to push, if you’re a person of real faith, for me, I’m a Christian. If you’re a Christian, you should want everything that Jesus has given you to be given to others.
Dr. John Jackson:
So for us, we make no sacred secular divide, Joe. We say, look, your faith ought to be operating in the every day. And I think higher ed needs to think of it that way. Then one last comment. You, you said, business operating like a business. I think some higher ed hears ears here operating like a business and they think of that as ruthless, only focused on money. No business that is sustainable thinks that way. Every business that’s sustainable focuses on their, I’ll use Southwest Airlines as an example. They focus on their employees first, their customers second, and their shareholders third. That’s a little bit odd to people. What do you mean shareholders? Third, that’s the people who provide the money. Well, what Southwest knows is if you focus on your people, you take great care of your people, you hire great people, you make sure they know the mission, then you focus on your customers. ’cause great people are gonna serve your customers well, I sound like a Southwest pitch person right now. Uh, I fly Southwest a lot, that’s why. Uh, and, and then, uh, then all that happens, your shareholder’s gonna do just fine. And they have over the decades. So I wanna say this, Joe, higher ed is a business. Yeah. And we need to run it as a business with a mission. And there’s nothing, uh, antithetical, nothing crossways of that. Running higher ed as a business with a mission is exactly what we need to do.
Joe Gottlieb:
Couldn’t agree more. So let’s bring this home. What are three takeaways we can offer our listeners on this topic of barbarians at the higher ed table?
Dr. John Jackson:
Well, let me just, lemme try to be as succinct as I can. Number one, you have to know who you are and why you are. Do not assume your existence. Who are you and why are you number two, who’s your best customer? Who do you serve the best as a student? And then number three, and this is a hard one, be prepared to innovate or die. We are seeing higher ed closures, mergers, so be prepared to innovate or die.
Joe Gottlieb:
Great summary. John, thank you so much for joining me today.
Dr. John Jackson:
Joe, I just thank you for the conversation. I thank you for both your audience and, and for your, uh, preparation and for your hosting. Thanks so much. It’s a, it’s a joy and a privilege
Joe Gottlieb:
And thanks to our guests for joining us as well. Hope you have a great day and we’ll look forward to hosting you again on the next episode of TRANSFORMED.
Joe Gottlieb:
Yo Stop. Hey, listeners have transformed. I hope you enjoyed that episode and whether you did or not, hope that it made you stop and think about the role that you are playing in your organization’s ability to change in the digital era. And if it made you stop and think, perhaps you would be willing to share your thoughts, suggestions, alternative perspectives, or even criticisms related to this or any other episode, I would love to hear from you. So send me an email at Info@Higher.Digital or Joe@Higher.Digital. And if you have friends or colleagues that you think might enjoy it, please share our podcast with them as you and they can easily find TRANSFORMED is available wherever you get your podcasts.
