College Counterpoints

Gary (00:02.73)
Welcome to another episode of College Counterpoints for January 25th, 2024. It's the podcast where we dive into the challenging world of higher education, exploring the critical stories, issues and debates that shape, I think, the future of learning in the United States.

Joseph Pellerito Jr. (00:22.199)
And I'm Joseph Pellerito Jr. and joining me is the eternally inquisitive and very handsome Mr. Gary Stocker. Today we'll make the points and counterpoints from a labyrinth of ideas, discussing the latest news, controversies, and insights in higher education in the United States.

Gary (00:43.186)
And each episode will take on a set of topics. We'll examine it from our different perspectives and trust me, they are different. Whether it's the role of technology in the classroom, the value of that liberal arts education or the ongoing trend of college finances and closures will provide you with a comprehensive and we think balanced view.

Joseph Pellerito Jr. (01:03.275)
Absolutely, Gary. We believe that the best way to understand the complexities of higher education is by engaging in thoughtful and we hope entertaining dialogue. That's why we've designed this podcast to feature point and counterpoint arguments giving you a 360 degree view of each issue. Sometimes Gary might be right, might be, but most of the time it will be me on the correct

Gary (01:33.142)
So get ready for an in-depth conversation, expert interviews, and lively debates as we navigate the ever-evolving landscape of higher education. Whether you're a student, an educator, a parent, a college teacher, leader, or just someone curious about the future of learning, College Counterpoints is a podcast that will give you an A for being informed and we hope entertained.

Joseph Pellerito Jr. (01:57.763)
So let's get into it, shall we, Gary? Today we're exploring the exciting and really transformative role of artificial intelligence or AI in higher education. And so Gary, let's kick things off with a personal take. Let me ask you, how much did you engage with AI this past week? Let's say, chat GPT or Bard or any of those new platforms that we're engaging with now.

Gary (02:19.49)
See you.

Gary (02:25.681)
Well, thanks for asking me an easy question to start off with. Joseph, I used Chad GPT quite a bit last week, the week before that, this week, and next week.

Joseph Pellerito Jr. (02:33.811)
Well, I thought so, Gary, because you know, that's fantastic. AI is proving to be definitely a revolutionary force. I for one am just thrilled about it. I think it's an amazing tool and with its ability to personalize learning, streamline administrative tasks and open up really new frontiers for research, data analysis, and the list goes on and on. I am a huge proponent and couldn't be anything but optimistic.

So today let's delve into these groundbreaking developments and discuss how AI is not just a futuristic concept but a present reality. What do you think, Gary?

Gary (03:14.29)
Well, Joseph, I like to paint the big picture, but in this case, you're painting such a big picture on artificial intelligence, you're missing the nuance. And the nuance you're missing, Joseph, is the capacity for college students and other high school students as well to think on their own two feet. You and I went through that experience. We learned to think on our own two feet. And I really believe that using artificial intelligence in an academic setting

is going to damage the capacity of individuals and ultimately our country with the capacity to think outside the proverbial box.

Joseph Pellerito Jr. (03:51.703)
Well, listen, here's the thing. It's a revolution, Gary. And just like, you know, the industrial revolution when buggy whips went bye-bye and when radio came in and then we had, you know, the computer revolution and the internet. What did people do when cameras went from traditional film development to digital? There were...

Gary (03:56.558)
Yeah.

Joseph Pellerito Jr. (04:17.443)
those of you that pushed back and said, no, we need to keep it the same way because it's not pure. And then there's people like me that are early adopters that say, wait a minute, maybe this is a better way of doing things. So listen, if I have to dig a hole, Gary, I'd rather use a shovel and be told that I'm cheating with a shovel than use my bare hands. So yeah, I think AI is already revolutionizing many sectors, including

higher ed. And you know, the thing I will admit though is, you know, most of us aren't really sure how to use it effectively yet. But I think our students and faculty alike are going to come up with the answer to that. And we're going to have fun getting there.

Gary (05:05.602)
Well, Dr. Pallarito, I think I heard you very indirectly calling me antiquated. Maybe, maybe, maybe not. You used examples, Joseph, of buggy whips and radios. And yes, that argument has been used forever and ever. Nothing wrong with the argument, except that those items were

Joseph Pellerito Jr. (05:14.156)
It wasn't indirect.

Gary (05:33.106)
We went from buggy whips to cars into what we drive now and fly now and all those kinds of things. And AI in a chat GPT format, which I assume most folks are using, it's a supplement. And I don't know if it's a supplement that we need for the same reason I shared before and I'll share over and over again. And that is what we gain in AI we lose in the capacity to think outside the proverbial box.

Joseph Pellerito Jr. (05:59.607)
Yeah, you know, it's interesting whenever anybody uses that phrase, think out of the box. I think to myself, they're not thinking out of the box. It's a it's a it's a it's an interesting and overused phrase. But listen, here's the thing. AI is going to help students learn. It's going to revolutionize how we teach. It's going to help replace

Gary (06:18.17)
Good.

Joseph Pellerito Jr. (06:25.019)
frankly, human beings having to do certain mundane tasks, just like robotics on the assembly line and so forth, it's going to improve quality of life. But here's the thing, here's how we can ensure that students are actually thinking for themselves, Gary. There's a simple solution. It's called return demonstration. If a student of mine writes a paper and I suspect they're using AI, I'm gonna commend them for it, first of all. Secondly, though, I'm gonna ask them now tell me

what you wrote, what does it mean? I wanna know ultimately they can apply what they've learned. So to get to that knowledge, that application, that's what we're talking about. AI is a vehicle to get there. It's a really great shovel, and we're gonna be able to dig holes a lot more effectively.

Gary (07:16.606)
Yeah, but you know, Joseph, when you dig holes with that shovel that you keep talking about over and over again, it's a... We'll get a different analogy someday. Don't worry about that. But let's see, you touch on the academic piece a little bit, but you're still painting big pictures on efficiencies and utility and that kind of stuff. Let's talk about the biggest concern that I and I know many, many other faculty have throughout the country. And that is using...

Joseph Pellerito Jr. (07:25.22)
Hehehe

Gary (07:44.818)
artificial intelligence, chat, GPT, without citing it as a source and claiming it as your own work. Now, I know there's work on that, I know, but I don't have time to cite that stuff.

Joseph Pellerito Jr. (07:50.179)
Yeah. And that's fair. Yeah.

Joseph Pellerito Jr. (07:56.719)
Well, you know, I agree. I agree, Gary. There's a couple of concerns with that. When people create something that's original, we have to honor that, for sure. We need to recognize who that author, original author is. And I can tell you that the AI platforms are improving. Bard, for example, is now citing their sources.

Gary (08:01.214)
Good luck.

Joseph Pellerito Jr. (08:24.835)
It's something that they're working on and that you can request AI to cite their sources. But there's also a problem in that because they're going to sources that are out there on the web and they're not the real guarded sources behind the paywalls such as research articles and so forth. So there are problems for sure and I give you that.

But I think we are evolving and I think again, faculty, students and other users of AI are going to sort of develop policies and procedures over time that will ensure we have equity and fairness. And I'm optimistic about that. In the meantime, hey, I'm having fun using it. It's stimulating, it's exciting. And hey, you know, if you ask me to...

give you a representation of something I'm looking at and I draw it, you're going to get a house with a little curly Q smoke because I don't draw it too well. But if I grab a camera and take a picture of it, I'm going to give you a much better representation of it. Using a camera, does that mean I cheated? No, it meant that I'm being more efficient and now I'm giving you a much more effective product.

And it's no different with AI. AI is helping us get to that end point, that applied point where we really wanna apply knowledge. And I'm just, I can't tell you how excited I am.

Gary (09:56.526)
Well, I'm going to move on to the next topic, but let's do this in the future. You use AI all you want, Joseph. I'm going to use my brain to come up with ways to respond to the characterizations you have in the coming podcast. So we'll just leave it at that. And the last topic, second topic we want to talk about today is, it's kind of harsh. And the term we're going to use is bait and switch. Anyway, it's along the lines of colleges when they're promoting their majors. I don't believe...

They're being upfront with all the details. They're doing just enough to share with their students and their families to commit to going to a college. But they're vague. I think in many cases, they're not evilly misleading, but not sharing all the information they need to. And I know you don't agree.

Joseph Pellerito Jr. (10:44.311)
Well, first of all, I'm not going to say that higher ed isn't without fault. You know, the student debt crisis is in fact a crisis, but to vilify higher ed in any way is just simply not fair. Higher education provides a wonderful pathway for thousands, tens of thousands of students within this country and around the world to gain a better life for themselves and their families.

Gary (10:48.206)
Thank you.

Gary (10:58.146)
system.

Gary (11:05.71)
Thank you.

Joseph Pellerito Jr. (11:11.867)
to go out and make a difference in the world in terms of contributing to society and the people perhaps that they're privileged to serve. And, you know, I believe that colleges, at least in my experience, are working diligently to really refine their messaging so that students can make more informed decisions about their pathways that hopefully will lead to a career.

and not necessarily a job at Starbucks. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but when students pay the kind of money that they pay, they deserve to end up with a career that can support a good life for them.

Gary (11:55.478)
No, no, a thousand times no. And here's why. Here's why. It's a number thing. And you know the work that I do on college finances and their viability. And you know that I, from all the podcasts and all the media that I produce, that I have monstrous, as do many others, concern about the viability of hundreds of colleges.

Gary (12:20.182)
And they can edit that out. Hundreds of colleges in the future. This is not an issue of marketing. This is an issue of finances. Colleges are saying what they need to because they want each and every student they can to pay the tuition so they don't have to look at financial cutbacks and layoffs and ultimately college closures. That's why, again, I don't envision this as intentionally and unethically misleading.

They're just stressing the truth because they need that tuition revenue.

Joseph Pellerito Jr. (12:50.959)
Well, first of all, I understand alternative pathways. I wanna just mention very quickly, the trades, I have nothing but respect for trades folks. I understand that some young people and others take more of an entrepreneurial path that might not include a pathway into higher ed, but let me tell you, higher education brings huge value for students. And first of all,

The maturation that occurs over that three or four or five years that students are on campus is something that's highly valuable. I believe in a strong liberal arts education and I believe that the relationships that are formed are invaluable. Now, as far as this notion that there should be somehow consolidation and there are too many schools and the rest of it, that Amazonification.

of higher ed, I couldn't be more opposed to it. I believe in diversity. I believe in more is better. Give the consumer that is prospective students and their families and their parents and others who have a stake in their wellbeing more choices. Now, as far as the data goes, yeah, I say look to the data. We need to do a better job.

Publishing the data, and I mean this with sincerity, Gary, I hate to admit it, but I love the work that you do with college viability and it's needed. It is, it's really, it's needed. And I can see that point. But again, Deville-ify colleges and universities, to think that somehow there's, students are being misled. I don't think that's fair. I think there are people who are all in on creating pathways toward meaningful careers.

for Americans of all ages. And so I fall on that side of it. I'm gonna stand by that all day long.

Gary (14:55.358)
You know, if I could, without worrying about injuring your leg, I'd ask you to hold your shoes up, Joseph, so I can see if there's any taps on the bottom of those shoes. Because you're tap dancing around the financial issue. Yes, you make points that there's a lot more to it, but the market's changing. We're in the middle of the higher education market consolidating. There's nothing I can do to change that. There's nothing you can do to change that. There's no programmatic changes.

Joseph Pellerito Jr. (15:05.59)
I'm sorry.

Gary (15:24.134)
Any college can make to change the fact that there are the basic economics of higher education, too many college seats and not enough students willing to pay the tuition for those college seats. But let's take it one step further. And we talked about you talked about the college viability app and I appreciate your kind words on that. I'm working on another product that takes iPads data and counts the number of completions and majors for each and every public and private college in the country. Now here's why I bring that up. Number one, I want to sell the product somewhere down the road.

But number two is if you are looking for yourself or a child or a grandchild or whatever the case may be to go to college and they wanna be a journalism major. And college one shows five journalism majors graduating each of the last three years. And college two shows 50.

Don't you think the college with 50 students has more faculty, more support, more intellect? And it goes back to the analogy of brain surgery. You've heard this kind of analogy before, but if you and I need a brain surgeon, we probably want one that's done three a week, not three a year. And I think that's the point that you're seeing on program completions and what these colleges are trying to sell.

Joseph Pellerito Jr. (16:36.675)
I think we have to be careful not to take too much of a positivistic approach to assessing and assigning value to a particular institution based on numbers alone. Those small numbers may or may not indicate or have a correlation with resource availability. For example, the big what I call designer public schools, you know,

My son went to Michigan State University. It's an amazing place, but there's 40,000, 50,000 students. Sure, their numbers are through the roof. The smaller privates are going to be nowhere near that. But let me tell you something, smaller privates, you're never going to have your adult child sitting in the classroom with 200 students like you are at the bigger publics. You're going to have much more one on one.

you know, individual attention. And that's the qualitative side that we've got to remember to look at. So, no, I, I really think it depends on a lot of factors and numbers do not tell the whole story by, by a long shot.

Gary (17:31.406)
Thank you.

Gary (17:46.546)
Let's take this one other place and it's kind of tied to the bait and switch topic and that is projected revenue. And state agencies, federal agencies are trying to work toward a place where they can say, hey, this major needs to be earning or this major earns $40,000 a year, one out of college. First of all, the numbers are pure bunk because they're based on a limited set of data. It's not universal. It is typically based on lower end colleges and higher end colleges.

There's some data behind that I'm not going to go over today. But I would also make the case that even though those numbers are flawed and really have next to no value, might be a little bit of value, it's not the one year numbers that matter, it's the 10 year. What's that income going to be in 10 years or 20 years? And even if you and I right this minute decided to start doing those projections, it's not going to be much more than throwing a dart at an income dartboard to see what each individual's...

Income will be 10 or 20 years after college. I don't know that even that has viability.

Joseph Pellerito Jr. (18:48.767)
No, and I think you're getting into another great point. You know, in the old days, we'd look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, right? That was our go-to and to try to sort of track trajectories for different professions and incomes and what's the mean and what's the expected growth and so forth. We have something else happening now, which is we have shifting industries, shifting expectations from consumers, shifting needs of society, shifting technologies.

The biggest issue for higher ed today is we've got to be able to keep up with those changes and be on the progressive cutting edge of understanding how to harness those changes for the benefit of ultimately society, but really to upgrade programs so that we are really preparing tomorrow's sort of learners. And sometimes higher ed is behind the ball.

really frankly, they're not necessarily leading. In the old days, it was the research that sort of drove innovation. But today it's more in the natural world that these changes are occurring. We're using AI every day now. And who's driving that bus? I'm not sure. I think we need to take a greater role and a greater look and get more involved to affect that change and harness those benefits.

Gary (20:10.803)
Thank you.

Gary (20:15.394)
So there it is, the January 25th podcast of College Counterpoints. Joseph, you'll be pleased to know that I'm keeping track of the score here, and I think I made eight good points. I have you down for three good points. So we'll go with that as our scorecard for today. And take it from there.

Joseph Pellerito Jr. (20:31.747)
And I want to thank you for your generosity of giving me three. I wouldn't have expected that Gary. So thank you. Uh, so, so next week we will talk about free college for all, which not unlike accessible and affordable healthcare, I believe should be a right and not a privilege for all Americans. I know Gary, you're going to agree with me on that one, aren't you? And accreditation agencies, which

Gary (20:54.562)
Thanks.

Joseph Pellerito Jr. (20:58.243)
Gary calls iDotters and T-Crossers, but I believe, of course, hold the line in maintaining excellence in higher education standards in the US. I think they're a critical component to making the US education system the best in the world. So we'll talk about that, and it'll be fun to hear Gary make the points that he will try to make, and he'll be completely wrong about.

We will also review weekly college stories. So for Gary Stocker, I'm Joseph Pellerito Jr. And we'll be back next Thursday with another stimulating episode of College CounterPoint podcast. Stay smart, everybody.