Episode 135

full
Published on:

9th Dec 2025

COVID Stole a Full Year from America’s Kids (Full)

Anya Kamenetz just dropped the receipts: the pandemic didn’t just disrupt school, it straight-up stole a year from an entire generation of kids. We’re talking massive learning loss, skyrocketing mental health crises, and inequalities that got turbocharged.

Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave Conley go hard with Anya on what actually happened behind the headlines, who dropped the ball, and why most “recovery” talk is still bullshit. If you’ve got kids—or just give a damn about the future—this one hits different.

Timestamps:

  • (00:00) The stolen year – what the data actually says about the damage
  • (09:18) Learning loss numbers that should terrify every parent
  • (22:41) How remote learning crushed the poorest kids hardest
  • (34:55) The mental health explosion no one wants to fund
  • (48:12) Why adults moved on but kids never got to
  • (1:01:37) The generational justice question we’re dodging

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Transcript
Alex:

[thoughtful] Student loans in America are serviced by private companies

Alex:

who get paid MORE the worse job they do—intentionally steering borrowers

Alex:

away from lower payments and forgiveness so the debt keeps growing forever.

Alex:

[clears throat][appalled] Anya Kamenetz, who called this crisis twenty years

Alex:

ago, just told Jerremy and Dave that the pandemic accidentally broke the machine:

Alex:

tuition finally peaked, completion rates jumped, and millions realized they were

Alex:

paying Ivy League prices for Zoom school.

Alex:

[somber] The $1.62 trillion mountain is STILL there, the middlemen are still

Alex:

profiting off misery, and nobody in power has fixed the incentives that created it.

Alex:

[quietly intense] This is Solving America’s Problems.

Alex:

Dave Conley.

Alex:

What are our beautiful listeners being graced with today?

Dave Conley:

In this episode of Solving America's Problems, we're

Dave Conley:

questioning whether higher education still delivers on its promise.

Dave Conley:

College has been the traditional gateway to opportunity, but with the

Dave Conley:

skyrocketing costs, mounting student debt, and shifting career paths,

Dave Conley:

is it still the best investment?

Dave Conley:

Or has the landscape of education and work changed so much That we

Dave Conley:

need to rethink the entire system.

Dave Conley:

That's this week, in Solving America's Problems, Rethinking

Dave Conley:

College, with Anya Kamenetz.

Jerremy Newsome:

College has been seen as the gateway to the American dream, a path

Jerremy Newsome:

to opportunity and financial stability.

Jerremy Newsome:

But today with sky rocketing tuition, record breaking student

Jerremy Newsome:

debt, many are questioning whether the investment still pays off.

Jerremy Newsome:

Our guest today, Anya Kamenetz, has spent her career Examining the

Jerremy Newsome:

forces shaping education, an award winning journalist and author.

Jerremy Newsome:

Her books generational generation debt.

Jerremy Newsome:

And D I Y U along with the brand new work that she just created recently, the

Jerremy Newsome:

stolen year COVID 19 impact on children.

Jerremy Newsome:

We are here to talk about just that is college still worth it.

Jerremy Newsome:

And we're here solving America's problems, rethinking college with

Jerremy Newsome:

myself and my cohost, Dave Conley.

Jerremy Newsome:

Dave, thanks for being here.

Jerremy Newsome:

It's going to be remarkable.

Dave Conley:

I'm excited.

Jerremy Newsome:

And Ania, I appreciate you so much.

Jerremy Newsome:

Okay.

Jerremy Newsome:

So Generation Debt and DIYU, right?

Jerremy Newsome:

So Do It Yourself University.

Jerremy Newsome:

That's like 10, 15 years old.

Jerremy Newsome:

And as, as you see this progression happening, you identify in those books.

Jerremy Newsome:

systemic issues like rising tuition costs and the growing student desk crisis.

Jerremy Newsome:

So you, you nailed this a long time ago.

Jerremy Newsome:

Have these issues evolved over the last 15 years?

Jerremy Newsome:

How have you seen these changes ripple?

Anya Kamenetz:

That's a really interesting question.

Anya Kamenetz:

So I guess like with COVID, we all learned to follow an exponential curve, right?

Anya Kamenetz:

And to project out and see what happens when trend lines go out into the future.

Anya Kamenetz:

And I hate to admit this, but, Generation Debt actually is

Anya Kamenetz:

almost 20 years old, that book.

Anya Kamenetz:

the percentage of people who borrowed money to pay for college had crossed

Anya Kamenetz:

the halfway mark in the mid nineties.

Anya Kamenetz:

And I wrote that book saying, if this continues, this is

Anya Kamenetz:

going to be a real problem.

Anya Kamenetz:

It had gotten to about two thirds and now we're edging up

Anya Kamenetz:

on, more than three quarters.

Anya Kamenetz:

And tuition rising back faster than inflation debt rising for

Anya Kamenetz:

generation upon generation.

Anya Kamenetz:

Those trend lines have for the most part continued.

Anya Kamenetz:

But there's also been A much broader awareness, I think, of

Anya Kamenetz:

the detrimental impact of college.

Anya Kamenetz:

And while, sorry, the detrimental impact of this college debt and these

Anya Kamenetz:

college tuition increases, particularly when people are not necessarily

Anya Kamenetz:

finishing their degrees, right?

Anya Kamenetz:

So that's really the worst impact is on young people who don't get that degree.

Anya Kamenetz:

They get the debt without the diploma.

Anya Kamenetz:

So the awareness is much bigger than it was.

Anya Kamenetz:

And I would say that the pandemic threw an unforeseen monkey wrench into the whole

Anya Kamenetz:

system and it's had multiple consequences, which I'm eager to talk about with you.

Anya Kamenetz:

Yeah.

Jerremy Newsome:

like, well, ultimately, so that, you know, my main absolute

Jerremy Newsome:

huge platform, the thing that I'm radically focusing on tons of time,

Jerremy Newsome:

energy, and effort over the next eight to 12 years is not only running for

Jerremy Newsome:

president, but hopefully changing the educational system of America.

Jerremy Newsome:

I feel like it's broken.

Jerremy Newsome:

I see it as broken serve me.

Jerremy Newsome:

It didn't serve tons of people that interact with.

Jerremy Newsome:

And to your point, that caused such a huge monkey wrench, yet most

Jerremy Newsome:

of the policymakers, most of the updates haven't actually changed.

Jerremy Newsome:

They're still like, Hey, what's up?

Jerremy Newsome:

It's 1930.

Jerremy Newsome:

I hope everyone's having fun out there.

Jerremy Newsome:

A hundred years later, it's the exact same.

Jerremy Newsome:

And with the cost changing and the mental health being a huge issue

Jerremy Newsome:

with collaboration and communication and now social media has been

Jerremy Newsome:

mentioned tons of times in different interviews, there really is a very,

Jerremy Newsome:

very unique distinction on, we are aware that a change needs to be made.

Jerremy Newsome:

It just hasn't been, it just hasn't happened yet.

Anya Kamenetz:

I think that's true for the most part.

Anya Kamenetz:

So what's really interesting is.

Anya Kamenetz:

Is that when you look at the trend lines and tuition, particularly

Anya Kamenetz:

the pandemic year was the peak.

Anya Kamenetz:

And so in terms of cost prices of college at all levels, that was the

Anya Kamenetz:

highest that they were able to do.

Anya Kamenetz:

And the reason for that obviously is that it just, it was such a big rug pull.

Anya Kamenetz:

It pulled the rug out from under the entire deal, right?

Anya Kamenetz:

And it caused so many families and so many kids to ask what am I paying for?

Anya Kamenetz:

I'm not allowed to go on the campus.

Anya Kamenetz:

I can't use these amenities.

Anya Kamenetz:

Why am I paying this huge bill?

Anya Kamenetz:

And so it altered what they were able to charge.

Anya Kamenetz:

And so we've actually seen.

Anya Kamenetz:

a walk back from the highest year of tuition being three or four years ago.

Anya Kamenetz:

And so we're probably going to be seeing something similar with debt.

Anya Kamenetz:

And then what's fascinating as well, when you look at the pandemic trend

Anya Kamenetz:

and the pandemic impact is the six year graduation rates have just come out.

Anya Kamenetz:

So this is a bizarre thing, right?

Anya Kamenetz:

They're defining success as.

Anya Kamenetz:

For people that start a four year program, how many finish within six years later?

Anya Kamenetz:

So giving you 50 percent extra time to complete it and you track those people.

Anya Kamenetz:

So with the kids who started or the young people that started in 2018, they

Anya Kamenetz:

are showing a higher rate of completion.

Anya Kamenetz:

And that's across the pandemic years of over 60%.

Anya Kamenetz:

And now you might say 60 percent is Not a great number, but in fact, it represents

Anya Kamenetz:

an improvement on many prior years.

Anya Kamenetz:

So in the last, with the pandemic, this huge disruption, we have

Anya Kamenetz:

seen this positive development in the sense of tuition is peaked

Anya Kamenetz:

and completion has gone up.

Dave Conley:

My my niece graduated during the pandemic and spent the last year in

Dave Conley:

front of a laptop at home with her mom.

Dave Conley:

And in talking to her about this, actually speaking with you, She mentioned that for

Dave Conley:

her and her friends, now that she's been out, like, a couple of years into the

Dave Conley:

workforce, there's no real strong desire to go back and do their graduate degrees.

Dave Conley:

Like, nobody is, like, I would, you know, like, it just wasn't there.

Dave Conley:

Do you think that that's, you know, just anecdotal?

Dave Conley:

Or do you think that that is, you know, more along the lines of people re

Dave Conley:

rethinking where they want to be going?

Anya Kamenetz:

Yeah, I think that's a great question.

Anya Kamenetz:

I think that There's multiple different benefits or experiences that are

Anya Kamenetz:

bundled under the term of higher ed.

Anya Kamenetz:

And so for some people it's really about the com competition and the pressure to

Anya Kamenetz:

achieve and to be the top, to have the connections that are gonna allow you to,

Anya Kamenetz:

get to that next phase in your career.

Anya Kamenetz:

Then there are people who are really into college or university or graduate

Anya Kamenetz:

for the experiential part of it.

Anya Kamenetz:

So those learning experiences, those immersive, yeah, that is, and that's.

Anya Kamenetz:

To me, that's the ideal, really want people who are there for

Anya Kamenetz:

the for having that experience.

Anya Kamenetz:

It's very difficult to recreate that in an online environment.

Anya Kamenetz:

And for people that have I'm paying my money and I get this qualification,

Anya Kamenetz:

it's going to get me to a better job going through the pandemic.

Anya Kamenetz:

Really reduced their interest in going back and getting more degrees because

Anya Kamenetz:

as long as they have a job You know, they didn't get it wasn't a very good

Anya Kamenetz:

experience I mean nobody goes and gets an online degree because it's gonna be

Anya Kamenetz:

so much fun to do it that way, right?

Anya Kamenetz:

They're doing it because it's the most convenient way But if they don't have

Anya Kamenetz:

an immediate impetus to do it I think for a lot of young people if that was

Anya Kamenetz:

their experience learning online, they're not gonna be that eager to go back

Jerremy Newsome:

yeah.

Jerremy Newsome:

Especially if they're out for that experiential piece, I mean, because

Jerremy Newsome:

then you have the interesting concept of should the majority of either,

Jerremy Newsome:

let's say degrees that might not need tons of physical interaction,

Jerremy Newsome:

mostly pursue something online.

Jerremy Newsome:

And then you can have experiential colleges that are just focused on

Jerremy Newsome:

the conversations, the hangouts, the groups, the parties, you

Jerremy Newsome:

can start kind of separating it.

Jerremy Newsome:

And then potentially maybe institutions can start possibly making these shifts,

Jerremy Newsome:

which is going to be a follow up question for you in regards to can privatize

Jerremy Newsome:

or publicize or public schools come in and just totally shift change and alter

Jerremy Newsome:

the way the education is approached.

Jerremy Newsome:

And then the follow up question really on you is, and the stage is, do you

Jerremy Newsome:

think that's going to be more of a government step in to make that change?

Jerremy Newsome:

Or is it going to be more of an institutional school to

Jerremy Newsome:

come in and make these changes?

Anya Kamenetz:

I think that there's It One of the things that I've grown to

Anya Kamenetz:

appreciate about the university and, universities are a thousand year old idea.

Anya Kamenetz:

They are not originated in the United States, right?

Anya Kamenetz:

The universities in West Africa.

Anya Kamenetz:

Yeah, there are universities in West Africa, in the Middle

Anya Kamenetz:

East, in, in, in Europe.

Anya Kamenetz:

And.

Anya Kamenetz:

They are, so they precede really the nation state, even as we know it.

Anya Kamenetz:

And that is one of the reasons that they've been so powerful and so enduring,

Anya Kamenetz:

because they really have their own ethos.

Anya Kamenetz:

And now they obviously bring together a complex group of different stakeholders,

Anya Kamenetz:

and they are beholden to some government.

Anya Kamenetz:

Sometimes they are related to the church or sometimes they're related

Anya Kamenetz:

to different states or public institutions, private institutions.

Anya Kamenetz:

And so there's a lot of experimentation going on always.

Anya Kamenetz:

And even within, you could have something that's accredited as a legal matter, but

Anya Kamenetz:

like really what it is, it's a choir.

Anya Kamenetz:

Like it really could be a musical choir.

Anya Kamenetz:

It could just be, it could be mainly a community service type of aspect, within

Anya Kamenetz:

a social work school, for example.

Anya Kamenetz:

And I think that there's a lot of really creative innovators who are in faculty

Anya Kamenetz:

in universities trying to figure out how to make meaningful learning experiences.

Anya Kamenetz:

By the same token, there's plenty of people outside the institutions that

Anya Kamenetz:

are doing the exact same thing, right?

Anya Kamenetz:

They are, if you look at, and this has been true for a decade plus, All over

Anya Kamenetz:

social media, all over communities, there are people who are learning entrepreneurs

Anya Kamenetz:

and they're creating learning experiences that they are coaching

Anya Kamenetz:

experiences, mentoring experiences, experiential, communal experiences.

Anya Kamenetz:

And all of those things have learning value, value that we associate with

Anya Kamenetz:

traditional institutions and therefore lifelong learning, whether that's

Anya Kamenetz:

about, it could be physical training, it could be nutrition, it could be,

Anya Kamenetz:

Music, anything across the board.

Anya Kamenetz:

And so I think if you widen your viewpoint of you on what exactly learning is in a

Anya Kamenetz:

lifelong capacity, that there's actually a lot of positive developments going on.

Anya Kamenetz:

They're just not owned by, the institutions.

Jerremy Newsome:

I would agree with that.

Dave Conley:

are there, you know, are there innovations

Dave Conley:

or models that excite you?

Dave Conley:

Like, what are, what are, what are the, what are things that people

Dave Conley:

are doing that you're like, wow, we need to have more of that.

Anya Kamenetz:

Yeah, that's a really great question.

Anya Kamenetz:

I've been a fan for a long time of the Western Governors University.

Anya Kamenetz:

That is, was really started, it was started by a consortium of 19 Western

Anya Kamenetz:

states and they really were like, what is the minimum viable opportunity

Anya Kamenetz:

that we can offer people, keep our prices very low, very steady and

Anya Kamenetz:

work developing our courses with what people in the industries want.

Anya Kamenetz:

So we're going to use the subject matter experts and the industry experts

Anya Kamenetz:

to help us develop our learning.

Anya Kamenetz:

And what they've also done that I really love is they have split up their.

Anya Kamenetz:

Faculty roles so that everybody has a personal success coach and that

Anya Kamenetz:

person doesn't grade your work because that would be a conflict of interest.

Anya Kamenetz:

But they are themselves rated in their performance on how

Anya Kamenetz:

their students are doing.

Anya Kamenetz:

And so it's their opportunity to make sure that any obstacles removed to

Anya Kamenetz:

you navigating this online program.

Anya Kamenetz:

And so by doing that, they have.

Anya Kamenetz:

A lot of success.

Anya Kamenetz:

They have a lot of strong relationships, even though it's a remote model.

Anya Kamenetz:

Because they're, just for that simple reason that they're dedicating people's

Anya Kamenetz:

job to making sure that students succeed.

Jerremy Newsome:

Mm hmm.

Jerremy Newsome:

I can respect that.

Jerremy Newsome:

So as you take a sip of water, go ahead.

Jerremy Newsome:

And then I'm going to, I'm going to throw a gear change in for a moment.

Jerremy Newsome:

So the federal student loan debt total, you know, approximately

Jerremy Newsome:

when you're talking trillions, 1.

Jerremy Newsome:

6, 1. 6 trillion, which is 1 trillion, 6, 000, 000.

Jerremy Newsome:

Billion.

Jerremy Newsome:

So they get overshadowed by

Dave Conley:

can't even, I can't, I can't, it's hard for me to even fathom 1.

Dave Conley:

6 trillion.

Dave Conley:

Like how many mil, how many, you're the, you're, you're the

Jerremy Newsome:

the cool part.

Dave Conley:

How many million.

Dave Conley:

What is that?

Jerremy Newsome:

listen to this.

Jerremy Newsome:

10 percent of a trillion is a hundred billion.

Jerremy Newsome:

Sink in for a second.

Jerremy Newsome:

10 percent of 1 trillion is 100 billion.

Jerremy Newsome:

All right, so 1.

Jerremy Newsome:

62 trillion is the federal student loan debt.

Jerremy Newsome:

Average federal loan debt per borrower is about 37, 000 and some change.

Jerremy Newsome:

And student loan debt has grown by 52 percent since 2013.

Jerremy Newsome:

Anya, how do we, how do we deal with that, in your opinion?

Jerremy Newsome:

Like, just the individual, That is getting crippled by their debt, their debt

Jerremy Newsome:

payments, they're paying until they're 50.

Jerremy Newsome:

How do we handle that as a country?

Jerremy Newsome:

Oh,

Anya Kamenetz:

of the tireless efforts of advocates under the last administration,

Anya Kamenetz:

the outgoing administration, to lower people's payments on their loans.

Anya Kamenetz:

And a limited amount was done to forgive loans outright.

Anya Kamenetz:

A lot of that effort was extremely complicated.

Anya Kamenetz:

So one of the main, one of the major problems with the student

Anya Kamenetz:

loan debt problem is that the education department is not a bank.

Anya Kamenetz:

It is not supposed to be managing 101.

Anya Kamenetz:

2 trillion in consumer debt.

Anya Kamenetz:

That's not a job for pretty much anybody in the federal government to do.

Anya Kamenetz:

And so what they've done is they've outsourced the work to servicers

Anya Kamenetz:

and these servicers are the most.

Anya Kamenetz:

let me just say this.

Anya Kamenetz:

They are government contracted financial institutions with zero incentive to

Anya Kamenetz:

provide good service because when they provide good service, they help

Anya Kamenetz:

people pay off their debts when they provide bad service, such as not letting

Anya Kamenetz:

people know about their options to lower their payments or defer their

Anya Kamenetz:

payments or get their loans forgiven.

Anya Kamenetz:

When they provide bad service, they make more money.

Anya Kamenetz:

And so a lot of the programs that get put in on the books do not reach the

Anya Kamenetz:

final consumer because these servicers, these third parties stand in the way.

Anya Kamenetz:

And some people might compare it to the situation that we have

Anya Kamenetz:

with health insurers, right?

Anya Kamenetz:

Where you've put somebody in the middle who makes their money by denying.

Anya Kamenetz:

Benefits to the consumer.

Anya Kamenetz:

Despite that complication, and that has been a chronic problem with for

Anya Kamenetz:

profit college students who are scammed with veterans that are scammed with

Anya Kamenetz:

people that are not getting access to public service loan forgiveness.

Anya Kamenetz:

And I've seen this throughout my career.

Anya Kamenetz:

I'm not these people.

Anya Kamenetz:

It's not an accident.

Anya Kamenetz:

Okay.

Anya Kamenetz:

I'm not willing to say that they're to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Anya Kamenetz:

These servicers these programs that have gone into place

Anya Kamenetz:

are not being fully utilized.

Anya Kamenetz:

They're not providing relief to everybody that deserves

Anya Kamenetz:

it and that qualifies for it.

Anya Kamenetz:

What's happening under the four, the incoming administration is a lot of

Anya Kamenetz:

that might get killed in Congress.

Anya Kamenetz:

And so people might get caught in whiplash between a program that they

Anya Kamenetz:

applied for to lower their debt and that program suddenly getting canceled.

Anya Kamenetz:

So it's a really volatile situation that we're heading into

Anya Kamenetz:

when it comes to managing debt.

Anya Kamenetz:

Now, if you ask how we would get rid of this, I would knock out servicers.

Anya Kamenetz:

I don't think servicers, should exist as an, as a middleman.

Anya Kamenetz:

I think the government, needs to own the problem that it has.

Anya Kamenetz:

And then I think if they want to simplify the way the debt is

Anya Kamenetz:

managed there could be one big write down one big type of amnesty.

Anya Kamenetz:

Another way of doing it would be put it into the bankruptcy courts.

Anya Kamenetz:

So student loan debt.

Anya Kamenetz:

Because it's under the federal government.

Anya Kamenetz:

There's no bankruptcy.

Anya Kamenetz:

Now, I don't know what you guys think about bankruptcy, but it

Anya Kamenetz:

exists in American society so that people can get a fresh start

Anya Kamenetz:

when they have serious extenuating circumstances and unmanageable debt.

Anya Kamenetz:

So having that as a safety net really helps you see how you can That's great.

Anya Kamenetz:

Dr. avoid putting the burden on the people who it's going to be the most harmful to.

Anya Kamenetz:

And then across the board, you can help people restructure their debt in such a

Anya Kamenetz:

way that they can find the endpoint of it.

Anya Kamenetz:

But ultimately what we're going to need to do is have mechanisms in place

Anya Kamenetz:

to lower the cost of college upfront.

Dave Conley:

I, I, there's a lot about what you just said that I'm

Dave Conley:

just sitting here and nodding.

Dave Conley:

I, you know, particularly with your, with describing this as like, these

Dave Conley:

are like insurance companies and I, you know, I'm, I have yet to find

Dave Conley:

any human being in the United States that said, man, I love my insurance.

Dave Conley:

And I think a way to think about this is every time that there's

Dave Conley:

a step in the process, meaning that there's a handout, right?

Dave Conley:

Like there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a person in between.

Dave Conley:

Those people have to get paid.

Anya Kamenetz:

Yes,

Dave Conley:

And you're literally just talking about managing debt.

Dave Conley:

I mean, this is, this is, this is an Excel spreadsheet and

Dave Conley:

it's automated and it's simple.

Dave Conley:

Like, managing those numbers is not complex.

Dave Conley:

The systems, the systems exist.

Dave Conley:

Whereas these, I mean, and the schools, correct me if I'm wrong,

Dave Conley:

Have already been paid, right?

Dave Conley:

Like that's the, that's the point of the debt, right?

Dave Conley:

Like they, they're, they're out of this.

Dave Conley:

So they're like, we don't care.

Dave Conley:

You've got your degree.

Dave Conley:

We've got our money.

Dave Conley:

See ya.

Dave Conley:

And the schools aren't being held accountable for the amount of debt

Dave Conley:

that somebody is being put in.

Dave Conley:

Right.

Anya Kamenetz:

That's right.

Dave Conley:

All right.

Dave Conley:

so, so the only people that are incentivized to ensure that this stays

Dave Conley:

completely unmanageable are the people who are in between who are making the money.

Anya Kamenetz:

That's right.

Jerremy Newsome:

We're uncovering some stuff.

Dave Conley:

just making sure I get it.

Anya Kamenetz:

There's a, you could say that there's a collusion between

Anya Kamenetz:

the colleges that raise the money, raise the prices on the front end and

Anya Kamenetz:

the existence of these loans because without the financing mechanisms,

Anya Kamenetz:

there would be a lot more resistance to the increases in prices, right?

Dave Conley:

Well, the flip side of this is that the more money that's

Dave Conley:

in a system, the higher the inflation of the product, the way to keep

Dave Conley:

costs down is to not provide any, any, any funding forward at all.

Dave Conley:

Right.

Dave Conley:

You know, like if everybody had to pay their way and that there were exceptions

Dave Conley:

that were there for people who couldn't afford it, but wanted to go right.

Dave Conley:

Like, there's no reason that that a. I mean, how big is Harvard's endowment?

Dave Conley:

You, you know this, Jeremy, right?

Dave Conley:

Like, is there any reason that anybody should ever be paying for

Dave Conley:

Harvard's tuition ever, right?

Dave Conley:

You know, like,

Anya Kamenetz:

No.

Dave Conley:

So, like, like, there is such thing as, as conceivably free

Dave Conley:

tuition for people who are in need.

Dave Conley:

So, like, the more money that's in the system, the more inflation there is.

Dave Conley:

And that's why people are getting through these, these, these systems with being

Dave Conley:

told, Hey, If you just get a degree, you'll have a comfortable middle, middle

Dave Conley:

class lifestyle, and they're kind of sold a bill of goods, and then they're

Dave Conley:

put into a system where they can't even declare bankruptcy if they get shocked

Dave Conley:

with you know, something that isn't their fault, like medical death, the number

Dave Conley:

one reason why people are in bankruptcy.

Dave Conley:

So

Anya Kamenetz:

Yeah.

Anya Kamenetz:

So

Dave Conley:

just, yeah, it just pisses me off.

Anya Kamenetz:

Yeah.

Anya Kamenetz:

It's a complicated mess.

Anya Kamenetz:

And I think that what makes it so hard is that it's very heterogeneous, right?

Anya Kamenetz:

Not everybody can go to Harvard.

Anya Kamenetz:

It's great that Harvard has that endowment, but there's only a handful

Anya Kamenetz:

of colleges that have that ability.

Anya Kamenetz:

And so then we think about higher ed as a, something that should be for the masses.

Anya Kamenetz:

That's a philosophical question, right?

Anya Kamenetz:

Yeah.

Anya Kamenetz:

60 percent getting a college degree is that that's pretty much like

Anya Kamenetz:

the highest level of any country.

Anya Kamenetz:

It's 60 percent with some post college arguably, like it's going to need to

Anya Kamenetz:

be potentially more than that to deal with the information economy, but we

Anya Kamenetz:

didn't even start to talk about AI.

Jerremy Newsome:

Mm

Anya Kamenetz:

And the demands at that place is in the potential for it to knock

Anya Kamenetz:

the teeth out of the white collar economy and really invalidate some of these.

Dave Conley:

So, thank you for bringing that up because, you

Dave Conley:

know, we do, we do this in series.

Dave Conley:

So, we're going to be talking about college debt for a bit.

Dave Conley:

And we're certainly going to be coming around to it because this is a

Dave Conley:

problems and solutions kind of podcast.

Dave Conley:

something that comes up over and over again is, and you, you, you mentioned

Dave Conley:

it a little bit before, You know, the, the alternatives are really clutch, you

Dave Conley:

know, for a lot of people, college and a traditional college, it just isn't right.

Dave Conley:

And they're everything from gap years or service or trades, trade schools.

Dave Conley:

You know, I think I've personally talked at least three, three young

Dave Conley:

people from going to college because they wanted, they wanted to go for

Dave Conley:

business and I'm like, stop it.

Dave Conley:

You know, take the, take the money that you're going to spend on going

Dave Conley:

to college and start a business.

Dave Conley:

You will learn, you'll get your MBA with, you'll get your MBA

Dave Conley:

within six months, I promise.

Dave Conley:

As somebody who's speaking with an MBA and wishing I didn't have it.

Dave Conley:

So those alternatives.

Dave Conley:

Can you talk a little bit about like, okay, I think about traditional college

Dave Conley:

that a lot of us have gone through, but like, I'm coming back to like,

Dave Conley:

what else is out there for people?

Anya Kamenetz:

Yeah, absolutely.

Anya Kamenetz:

The majority of post secondary learning in this country is not a

Anya Kamenetz:

four year degree program that besides the well known associates degrees

Anya Kamenetz:

programs, there are many certificates.

Anya Kamenetz:

And particularly in the post pandemic, a period the licenses and certificates

Anya Kamenetz:

and that's everything from, like a cosmetologist to a plumber to a

Anya Kamenetz:

solar panel installer, where it's a six week course, it's 12 week

Anya Kamenetz:

course, it's an 18 month course.

Anya Kamenetz:

But at the end of it, you are qualified for a very specific job, right?

Anya Kamenetz:

Those are really important.

Anya Kamenetz:

I think that there's a mismatch in terms of What is the awareness for students?

Anya Kamenetz:

Are they able to, how do they able in their high school years to get

Anya Kamenetz:

the idea of what's out there so they can make an informed decision

Anya Kamenetz:

about one of these programs?

Anya Kamenetz:

And that's why I'm really optimistic about dual enrollment, which is

Anya Kamenetz:

basically just simply providing exposure.

Anya Kamenetz:

In public high schools for students who want to get either

Anya Kamenetz:

job training or college credits.

Anya Kamenetz:

And sometimes it's a community college credit can be very practical and

Anya Kamenetz:

grounded as well as workforce, right?

Anya Kamenetz:

You want to have an internship opportunity, a co op opportunity

Anya Kamenetz:

in those high school years, because it's the only chance you're going

Anya Kamenetz:

to have To then make an informed decision about what is my next job.

Anya Kamenetz:

And this is not necessarily training for a lifetime, right?

Anya Kamenetz:

This is getting you started and having that mindset of being a lifelong

Anya Kamenetz:

learner and saying, Hey, I need to, I know how to learn what I need to know.

Jerremy Newsome:

Mm hmm.

Dave Conley:

I love that dual model at my European friends.

Dave Conley:

That sounds very, very similar to how they went to school.

Anya Kamenetz:

Yeah.

Anya Kamenetz:

Yeah.

Anya Kamenetz:

It's one of the bright spots, actually, especially now we have seen starting to

Anya Kamenetz:

see a rebound in enrollment across the board post pandemic, but the most robust

Anya Kamenetz:

area is in this community colleges.

Anya Kamenetz:

And what's feeding that a lot of times is this high school dual enrollment.

Anya Kamenetz:

Yeah.

Jerremy Newsome:

I love doing enrollment.

Jerremy Newsome:

That's what I did.

Jerremy Newsome:

It was fantastic.

Jerremy Newsome:

I thought it was, I thought it was remarkable, but at the same time,

Jerremy Newsome:

like, you got a college experience, they're going to community college.

Jerremy Newsome:

And for a moment, I want to go, I'm going to go circle back to the individual who

Jerremy Newsome:

accepts the debt, because I think Dave, you asked a very interesting question.

Jerremy Newsome:

You said like, at what point is it too much to go into debt as a person?

Jerremy Newsome:

Because at some point it is the obligation of the person getting the debt, right?

Jerremy Newsome:

Just like credit card debt.

Jerremy Newsome:

And a lot of people saving us from that.

Jerremy Newsome:

So if we.

Jerremy Newsome:

circumnavigate like for an individual if we begin to get told or there becomes So

Jerremy Newsome:

much more credible information resources out there about why the majority of

Jerremy Newsome:

participants Probably should not go to college because they do not need to.

Jerremy Newsome:

And then if you have an experiential company that gets created saying,

Jerremy Newsome:

Hey, Instead of spending 9, 000 to go to college for experiences,

Jerremy Newsome:

you want to drink, you want to dance, you want to party, you want

Jerremy Newsome:

to do all the fun things, right?

Jerremy Newsome:

Like here is this company that exists so that you can do those

Jerremy Newsome:

things in three weeks or three weekends versus three to four years.

Jerremy Newsome:

And you can still experience and have and communicate and talk

Jerremy Newsome:

and go hiking and go playing.

Jerremy Newsome:

Have your experience of college and spending so much less that that almost

Jerremy Newsome:

be like a private company could get created but it's very very difficult

Jerremy Newsome:

for Someone who is 19 18 20 years old to get a business loan from a

Jerremy Newsome:

bank like an sba is almost impossible to get a 100 000 sba loan for 98.

Jerremy Newsome:

7 of any american Young adult from age 17 to 22 is almost impossible You

Jerremy Newsome:

But to get 90, 000 with a student loan is extremely easy.

Jerremy Newsome:

Extremely simple.

Jerremy Newsome:

So

Jerremy Newsome:

Who's the predator, but also the, that risk.

Jerremy Newsome:

If we start telling those individuals, listen, don't do this at all.

Jerremy Newsome:

It's just not worth it.

Jerremy Newsome:

That's the, that's the fence, the part of the fence that I'm on.

Jerremy Newsome:

The only people that go to, should go to college right now, to me, are the

Jerremy Newsome:

individuals that need handholding and that need, someone who is a high level

Jerremy Newsome:

apprentice, let's call it architecture.

Jerremy Newsome:

Let's call it anyone in the medical field, someone that needs to be exact,

Jerremy Newsome:

precise, surgical in their information and in their practice so that they can

Jerremy Newsome:

get hands on learning at that exact moment, at that exact time, through

Jerremy Newsome:

a longer period of time, because there's so much information to be had.

Jerremy Newsome:

Then our doctors, then our medical staff that goes into college could

Jerremy Newsome:

come out of college with a It's not going to be as expensive because it

Jerremy Newsome:

means less people go to school because in less college attendees, and then

Jerremy Newsome:

you can start using endowments that Dave, most large colleges have, right?

Jerremy Newsome:

Most private schools and Ivy league schools and D1 schools

Jerremy Newsome:

have very large endowment funds.

Jerremy Newsome:

They can start pouring into certain medical medical colleges, medical

Jerremy Newsome:

degrees, medical staff that are going to schooling and racking up hundreds.

Jerremy Newsome:

Of thousands of dollars of debt.

Jerremy Newsome:

So there's, there's an earlier stage in this at some point, in my opinion, where

Jerremy Newsome:

it starts with both the awareness of the general population being told, just don't

Jerremy Newsome:

do this, it's likely not the best route for you on a far margin of percentages.

Dave Conley:

Can I, let me, let me, let me see if I see what you're

Dave Conley:

asking and to rephrase it and you tell me if I got this right.

Dave Conley:

So, and you can can answer this.

Dave Conley:

What I'm hearing is if you're, if you want to pursue a degree that has a licensure

Dave Conley:

or a, a, a educational requirements, say the doctor, lawyer, accountant, engineer,

Dave Conley:

or something that has a, that has a requirement of a specified training.

Dave Conley:

Okay.

Dave Conley:

Then sure, you know come on in if you want to pursue education in areas

Dave Conley:

that don't require that then know that Know the consequences of those.

Dave Conley:

Know that you're going to be going into debt, know that you may not be able to

Dave Conley:

be making what you want, or you're going to have different, you know, choices

Dave Conley:

coming on the other side of this.

Dave Conley:

And otherwise you, you really should say, Hey, you should really

Dave Conley:

divert people into other options.

Dave Conley:

Is that, is that what you're saying?

Dave Conley:

Okay.

Dave Conley:

Anya, what, what do you, how do you feel about that?

Dave Conley:

Knowing that also your work has been about accessibility.

Dave Conley:

And barriers and systemic issues.

Anya Kamenetz:

Yeah, I guess I take a broader view, both of the

Anya Kamenetz:

function of education as well as this question of what should people do?

Anya Kamenetz:

I don't think I, I don't stand here to say I know what you should do.

Anya Kamenetz:

I'm passionately committed to having a society where young people

Anya Kamenetz:

get the support and the space to figure out what's right for them.

Anya Kamenetz:

And so rather than talk about.

Anya Kamenetz:

Ringing the alarm bell and say, don't go to college.

Anya Kamenetz:

My question is who's going to hear that sound.

Anya Kamenetz:

And what we know is that who is hearing that sound is the first generation

Anya Kamenetz:

students, the immigrant students, this person of color, the person from a low

Anya Kamenetz:

income background and increasingly boys, which is a whole other topic on its own.

Anya Kamenetz:

So we have a, 58 percent women in undergraduate.

Anya Kamenetz:

And so I don't like that cause I don't like how that lines up except for the male

Anya Kamenetz:

female split, which is on conversation.

Anya Kamenetz:

The way that this participation and success in college lines up with systemic

Anya Kamenetz:

inequality in society tells me that the wrong people are getting the message

Anya Kamenetz:

that they shouldn't go to college.

Anya Kamenetz:

Because it's not a foregone conclusion that they're not

Anya Kamenetz:

the ones that should be there.

Anya Kamenetz:

So that's one point I just want to make.

Anya Kamenetz:

I want to, I want room for everybody to think about whether college is the

Anya Kamenetz:

right thing for them, not to assume that it is, and not to assume that it isn't.

Anya Kamenetz:

And then this other thing about, okay, professional training, Yeah, definitely

Anya Kamenetz:

architects, definitely your brain surgeon, definitely your pilot, right?

Anya Kamenetz:

You want training.

Anya Kamenetz:

It's not college, but it's flight school and it's very rigorous.

Anya Kamenetz:

I happen to be a person who's a fan of the arts also, and I want historians

Anya Kamenetz:

and I want, scientists that are doing not just applied science, but research.

Anya Kamenetz:

So I think that there's room for all of those things, assuming we're willing to,

Anya Kamenetz:

we're not doing it right now in terms of subsidizing that and who is paying for it.

Anya Kamenetz:

And is the cost on the digital family?

Anya Kamenetz:

Is it on taxpayers?

Anya Kamenetz:

Like I, I'm into re jiggering all of that, but I,

Jerremy Newsome:

yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anya Kamenetz:

is for the people that can make it quote unquote pay.

Anya Kamenetz:

I think there's a broader one, one scheme.

Anya Kamenetz:

I was going to talk about this, but like in Australia, I really

Anya Kamenetz:

think they get this right.

Anya Kamenetz:

Because You go to college basically free.

Anya Kamenetz:

You pay when you get out something like a payroll tax.

Anya Kamenetz:

So it's a percentage of your income.

Anya Kamenetz:

And so the people that win the college lottery pay more.

Anya Kamenetz:

The people that are social workers and teachers pay less.

Dave Conley:

I like that.

Anya Kamenetz:

So you're distributing the benefit, and it pays for itself, just

Anya Kamenetz:

it also, it is a, it is an incentive for the college itself to say, What is the

Anya Kamenetz:

balance of programs that we're offering?

Anya Kamenetz:

Because if our students can't pay us back based on what they're earning,

Anya Kamenetz:

then this is not viable, right?

Dave Conley:

Yeah.

Anya Kamenetz:

So the question of how do we interrogate whether college or

Anya Kamenetz:

what else it is the right thing for me.

Anya Kamenetz:

I think it's really huge, and it goes to what's in our culture as well,

Anya Kamenetz:

because we have turned college into the place where you become an adult, right?

Anya Kamenetz:

And you do all this socialization and stuff, and I happen to think there's a

Anya Kamenetz:

heck of a lot better options for that.

Anya Kamenetz:

Things that really lead to cultivating values, agency,

Anya Kamenetz:

service, being close to a community, finding a real sense of purpose.

Anya Kamenetz:

Most of us don't know what the heck we're doing when we're 18 years old.

Anya Kamenetz:

We need a whole lot of help and support.

Anya Kamenetz:

And sometimes you can find that on a college campus, it's mixed up with

Anya Kamenetz:

a whole lot of other things too.

Jerremy Newsome:

love that you brought the Australian example

Jerremy Newsome:

to our, to our attention.

Jerremy Newsome:

Thank you for that, because that's so fun.

Jerremy Newsome:

Refreshing.

Jerremy Newsome:

Innovative.

Jerremy Newsome:

Unique.

Jerremy Newsome:

Cool.

Jerremy Newsome:

Are there other countries that you could point out that you could think of that

Jerremy Newsome:

are doing another twist or another, a different approach, if you will?

Anya Kamenetz:

Sure.

Anya Kamenetz:

I think across Europe, we alerted alluded to this, but there's a lot

Anya Kamenetz:

more what we would call tracking in the German system, for example, and

Anya Kamenetz:

the French system where you really have people identifying if there are you a

Anya Kamenetz:

polytechnic person, are you going to be doing something more technical or are you

Anya Kamenetz:

doing being something more liberal arts?

Anya Kamenetz:

England is interesting because they're very similar to us in a

Anya Kamenetz:

lot of ways, but they have much less of a college going culture.

Anya Kamenetz:

So even in the sort of The baby boomer generation, not a ton of

Anya Kamenetz:

people got a four year degree.

Anya Kamenetz:

And even now it's pretty normalized to get a shorter degree or even just

Anya Kamenetz:

a short course after graduation.

Anya Kamenetz:

So they have a big apparatus of, higher education counseling and obviously they

Anya Kamenetz:

have a lot of exams, which has its own issues, but getting people, making a

Anya Kamenetz:

decision right out of high school of, am I a technical math STEM person?

Anya Kamenetz:

Am I an arts person?

Anya Kamenetz:

Am I someone who's going to take a vocational course?

Anya Kamenetz:

And it's much more normalized.

Anya Kamenetz:

It's not stigmatized or separated.

Jerremy Newsome:

That's, wow, who do you think is, is

Dave Conley:

the United Kingdom actually came up as the second country

Dave Conley:

with the most amount of college debt.

Dave Conley:

I couldn't find out why.

Dave Conley:

But it was like America is like the winner on that

Anya Kamenetz:

Yeah.

Anya Kamenetz:

Yeah.

Anya Kamenetz:

They've had a, they've had a privatization spree and this is a pretty new thing

Anya Kamenetz:

actually in the last decade and a half.

Anya Kamenetz:

Privatization and sort of liberalization of fees.

Anya Kamenetz:

And so that's led, and that, that combined with, Kind of the lid coming

Anya Kamenetz:

off in terms of what classes aspire to get higher education where maybe 20 30

Anya Kamenetz:

years ago It was not, not an assumed thing that you would do that Now it is

Anya Kamenetz:

and that's why people are reaching beyond their means to do it So yeah, they're

Anya Kamenetz:

not necessarily models in that way

Jerremy Newsome:

there anyone online that you think is just doing a great

Jerremy Newsome:

job at this approach that blends both the online, more economical model, more

Jerremy Newsome:

mass approach that still potentially blends this physical learning environment

Jerremy Newsome:

that allows cohesion and collaboration.

Anya Kamenetz:

So Western Governors, which I mentioned isn't all online

Anya Kamenetz:

and all online institution, but what they have is clinical rotation.

Anya Kamenetz:

So there's nurses, there's teachers.

Anya Kamenetz:

And so they're spending this time supervised before they go out and get

Anya Kamenetz:

their degree, either in the classroom or in the hospital or wherever it may be.

Anya Kamenetz:

So they do have that combination of experiential learning and

Anya Kamenetz:

online learning at the same time.

Jerremy Newsome:

Got it.

Jerremy Newsome:

So you would say that that they're doing a great job.

Jerremy Newsome:

Anyone else?

Jerremy Newsome:

Arizona, the, yeah

Anya Kamenetz:

Michael Crow is a big, he's a visionary, I think in a lot

Anya Kamenetz:

of ways, and he has offered a million different kinds of opportunities,

Anya Kamenetz:

including a lot of overseas programs, as well as online programs.

Anya Kamenetz:

So yeah, Arizona State University is a really interesting one.

Anya Kamenetz:

Yeah, there's a school called American College of Education.

Anya Kamenetz:

And they they founded on the premise of a 5, 000 master's degree in 2005.

Anya Kamenetz:

And currently the master's is a 10, 000.

Anya Kamenetz:

They've gone up, but they're still keeping it very low.

Anya Kamenetz:

And having very good results at the same time.

Jerremy Newsome:

that's fascinating.

Anya Kamenetz:

Yeah.

Jerremy Newsome:

What's, what is your opinion on some of the figureheads

Jerremy Newsome:

and individuals that are creating, call it their own universities,

Jerremy Newsome:

is that something that should be.

Jerremy Newsome:

The first person comes to mind, right?

Jerremy Newsome:

Jordan Peterson going from Harvard to also Toronto University to now creating

Jerremy Newsome:

an online university that's really geared towards his principles, his

Jerremy Newsome:

institutions, his practice, and they're charging, you know, he's charging hundreds

Jerremy Newsome:

slash thousands of dollars for all that and all that information as well.

Jerremy Newsome:

What's just your general, general take on that approach for a lot of people?

Anya Kamenetz:

I see that as a point in the broader influencer economy, right?

Anya Kamenetz:

So there is.

Anya Kamenetz:

A lot of, and there's a disintermediation.

Anya Kamenetz:

And it's like the transition from legacy media to this much broader

Anya Kamenetz:

world of traditional media, legacy media and then influencer media and

Anya Kamenetz:

direct to consumer kind of information.

Anya Kamenetz:

And I participate in that world.

Anya Kamenetz:

Like I've worked for big institutions.

Anya Kamenetz:

I also have my own newsletter.

Anya Kamenetz:

I respect that you guys are trying to do the podcast.

Anya Kamenetz:

It's very much.

Anya Kamenetz:

Buyer beware, right?

Anya Kamenetz:

In that situation.

Anya Kamenetz:

So when you have this intermediation, the benefit is you can find

Anya Kamenetz:

almost anything out there.

Anya Kamenetz:

And the negative is, you don't necessarily know exactly what you're getting.

Anya Kamenetz:

So people have to be, hopefully it's something that they can easily afford.

Anya Kamenetz:

I guess my question would be, for an offering like that.

Anya Kamenetz:

What are they getting in return?

Anya Kamenetz:

Is there something where, is he going to help people get a job?

Anya Kamenetz:

Are they going to get to, are people who are studying with this guy

Anya Kamenetz:

getting to get to know each other better and have a network that way?

Anya Kamenetz:

Or how is he cultivating it in a way that is actually of value to people?

Anya Kamenetz:

Because university, as we know, is not just information, right?

Anya Kamenetz:

It's not just classes or lectures.

Anya Kamenetz:

It's the community and the connections and the qualifications.

Anya Kamenetz:

Yeah.

Anya Kamenetz:

All three of those things so without that, I don't think it's a fair

Anya Kamenetz:

comparison sort of dollar to dollar.

Jerremy Newsome:

Yeah.

Jerremy Newsome:

Yeah.

Jerremy Newsome:

It's to your point.

Jerremy Newsome:

It definitely can be generally usually is less expensive like the MBA degree.

Jerremy Newsome:

Just giving people to your point earlier, right?

Jerremy Newsome:

More access, more ability, more the way to tap into it.

Jerremy Newsome:

I know that there are also some colleges, Harvard being one

Jerremy Newsome:

of them that they actually do.

Jerremy Newsome:

list a lot of prior year semester.

Jerremy Newsome:

That might not be the right term, prior year resources that they

Jerremy Newsome:

created from all the lectures.

Jerremy Newsome:

They just start, they just start listing them online

Anya Kamenetz:

Yes.

Jerremy Newsome:

free,

Anya Kamenetz:

Yes.

Jerremy Newsome:

of my beliefs, This is a big one.

Jerremy Newsome:

Here it goes.

Jerremy Newsome:

I think education should be free and I think experiences should cost money.

Jerremy Newsome:

I think having someone giving the ability to educate should be a cost that is

Jerremy Newsome:

nothing because we are in the digital era.

Jerremy Newsome:

It's 2025 and beyond for whoever's listening to this into the future.

Jerremy Newsome:

We have so much power, so much access to amazing information that if you have

Jerremy Newsome:

a cell phone or internet connection.

Jerremy Newsome:

Which very, very many people do.

Jerremy Newsome:

You have access to any information that you want to truly learn, and

Jerremy Newsome:

it's probably generally for free.

Jerremy Newsome:

So the experience itself could or should cost some level of money, which would come

Jerremy Newsome:

back to the point that you mentioned of universities, of having the community.

Jerremy Newsome:

Having the experiential feel, that's gonna be the thing that people

Jerremy Newsome:

could or should be paying for.

Jerremy Newsome:

And I think that having colleges redesign that portion where people

Jerremy Newsome:

know exactly what they're paying for, this is the experiential part, and

Jerremy Newsome:

the education is almost negligible.

Jerremy Newsome:

Do you think that would add maybe even more excitement and, and also more

Jerremy Newsome:

accessibility for people to go to college?

Jerremy Newsome:

If they are aware of exactly what they're actually paying for, knowing

Jerremy Newsome:

that it's generally not education.

Anya Kamenetz:

I think that there's, so obviously we're about 10, 15 years

Anya Kamenetz:

into the MOOC revolution and the ability for anybody to learn anything

Anya Kamenetz:

online is very well established.

Anya Kamenetz:

There's, there's university courses in every topic that are

Anya Kamenetz:

freely available for people.

Anya Kamenetz:

So that does exist and I think it has had an impact.

Anya Kamenetz:

I think it's a quiet impact though, because it, the benefits

Anya Kamenetz:

are really for the most.

Anya Kamenetz:

Engaged, motivated learner who is willing and able to stay on track with something

Anya Kamenetz:

without any external motivation or, reward, and that's that tends to be

Anya Kamenetz:

like actually a much smaller percentage of people than we might have imagined.

Anya Kamenetz:

So in terms of the unbundling of benefits of institutions, I think probably the

Anya Kamenetz:

most robust example that I'm seeing is the growth of the low residency program.

Anya Kamenetz:

So my sister, for example, just got a counseling degree and she started

Anya Kamenetz:

it when she had a baby, which is pretty remarkable thing to do.

Anya Kamenetz:

So she had a little baby.

Anya Kamenetz:

She's I'll just get a grad degree, which is not something that would have been,

Anya Kamenetz:

and she lives in rural Mississippi.

Anya Kamenetz:

So obviously it's online, but then every semester or every six months,

Anya Kamenetz:

I think they spend a week together.

Anya Kamenetz:

And that's when they're doing the kind of experiential.

Anya Kamenetz:

That's where they're building the cohort, getting to know the teachers,

Anya Kamenetz:

getting to know the other students.

Anya Kamenetz:

And I hope and I believe that kind of program, they're very intentionally

Anya Kamenetz:

designing the in person time so that it feels like it's worth people's while.

Anya Kamenetz:

And and I did a social entrepreneurship fellowship.

Anya Kamenetz:

That was the same model.

Anya Kamenetz:

We got together twice the rest of the time we were on zoom and

Anya Kamenetz:

we're communicating virtually.

Anya Kamenetz:

So I think that's really the future of where things are going.

Anya Kamenetz:

Is that hybrid?

Jerremy Newsome:

I totally agree.

Jerremy Newsome:

And two things, number one, shout out to your sister.

Jerremy Newsome:

That's badass.

Jerremy Newsome:

That's amazing.

Jerremy Newsome:

Congrats for her.

Jerremy Newsome:

And also shout outs to your pops.

Jerremy Newsome:

Turned 75 this

Anya Kamenetz:

Thank you.

Anya Kamenetz:

Yeah.

Jerremy Newsome:

Yeah.

Jerremy Newsome:

That's a really, really incredible, incredible accomplishment for her.

Jerremy Newsome:

And for him, I mean, shoot 75 years on this incredible, beautiful planet.

Jerremy Newsome:

Dave, I know you had something you want to say.

Dave Conley:

Oh, no, I was just smiling because I, you know, you,

Dave Conley:

you being the, you know, the, the very accomplished capitalist, you're

Dave Conley:

a, you're an education communist.

Dave Conley:

And that just makes me laugh and smile.

Dave Conley:

And so, so, so happy.

Dave Conley:

It's like, it should be free for everyone.

Dave Conley:

I'm like, Oh, that's amazing.

Dave Conley:

And yeah, I'm kind of, I'm, I'm, I'm.

Dave Conley:

I'm still kind of curious about like, like this, this big wad of debt

Dave Conley:

that's sitting on American shoulders.

Dave Conley:

It's, it's not going away.

Dave Conley:

You know, like even with the previous administration, I think they, yeah,

Dave Conley:

they, they really, they did try.

Dave Conley:

And they made some, some inroads there.

Dave Conley:

You're right, I have no idea what the next administration's going to do, who knows.

Dave Conley:

You know, and if the laws are how they are, I, I guess who, okay, first question.

Dave Conley:

Who is this affecting the most?

Dave Conley:

Like, you know, like, is this, you know, is this an urban, is this a, a, a poor

Dave Conley:

poverty, is this a, a person of color, like, who, who's, like, really, like,

Dave Conley:

the most affected by this, what are those communities saying, if anything,

Dave Conley:

and I'm still kind of stuck on, like, like, realistically, we might be

Dave Conley:

able to stem the tide, but this, this albatross that's hanging right now, I

Anya Kamenetz:

Yeah.

Dave Conley:

Is there, it doesn't sound like there's an easy fix, right?

Dave Conley:

I don't know.

Anya Kamenetz:

Yeah.

Anya Kamenetz:

Great questions.

Anya Kamenetz:

The people whose lives are most likely to be ruined by student debt are people, like

Anya Kamenetz:

I mentioned, who do not have a degree, so they don't have any earning increase.

Anya Kamenetz:

They might have one, one, two, three, four semesters of college.

Anya Kamenetz:

They might just have four figures of debt.

Anya Kamenetz:

Some of the people that are, have their, their assets ruined, their

Anya Kamenetz:

credit ruined, and are not able to make economic progress, it's not

Anya Kamenetz:

necessarily the lawyers and the doctors.

Anya Kamenetz:

The people who have these eye watering numbers at 200, 000, 100, 000, you're

Anya Kamenetz:

dentists, you're doctors, you're lawyers.

Anya Kamenetz:

For the most part, they manage to handle it because they have the money.

Anya Kamenetz:

big incomes too.

Anya Kamenetz:

It, it constrains their choices in terms of, I'm not going to

Anya Kamenetz:

be a family medicine doctor.

Anya Kamenetz:

I'm not going to be a public interest lawyer.

Anya Kamenetz:

And so it, it has a negative impact that way.

Anya Kamenetz:

It's surprisingly, maybe a large, overwhelmingly disproportionate percentage

Anya Kamenetz:

of black families, as well as Hispanic families who are suffering under

Anya Kamenetz:

comparatively small amounts of student debt that they just can't seem to pay off.

Anya Kamenetz:

Okay.

Anya Kamenetz:

And there is an understanding of that within the community.

Anya Kamenetz:

It does impact people's belief in the value of college.

Anya Kamenetz:

It makes people debt shy.

Anya Kamenetz:

To me, one of the hardest and most poignant confrontations or problems

Anya Kamenetz:

is, and I was just taught, I was actually just, I was in New Orleans.

Anya Kamenetz:

I'm in New Orleans.

Anya Kamenetz:

I was talking to a friend I went to high school with who came from, a less

Anya Kamenetz:

advantaged background than me and he didn't understand the college game.

Anya Kamenetz:

Nobody in his family really understood how it worked and he didn't understand

Anya Kamenetz:

the simple thing that A private university for someone such as himself

Anya Kamenetz:

would have lower debt coming out than a public university because guess what?

Anya Kamenetz:

They have more aid for you, right?

Anya Kamenetz:

Especially if you're coming from out of state.

Anya Kamenetz:

So there's a lack of understanding and the fear of debt that keeps

Anya Kamenetz:

really qualified students out of it.

Anya Kamenetz:

The overall impact on the economy is something that, Macro economic economists

Anya Kamenetz:

can understand better than I can, but basically, that you have people that

Anya Kamenetz:

are not starting businesses, not buying houses, not starting families, not even

Anya Kamenetz:

getting married because of this debt.

Anya Kamenetz:

And there's a disincentive to get married.

Anya Kamenetz:

If you have student loan debt, you don't want it.

Anya Kamenetz:

You're supposed to be on the hook for that debt or vice versa.

Anya Kamenetz:

So it's a, it's across the board, across the economy in terms

Anya Kamenetz:

of what we can do about it.

Anya Kamenetz:

Mass forgiveness.

Anya Kamenetz:

Yes.

Anya Kamenetz:

Is something that was advocated for, by a progressive activist during Biden.

Anya Kamenetz:

He took half steps and half measures that didn't necessarily have the economic

Anya Kamenetz:

stimulus that you would want them to because they were a little confusing.

Anya Kamenetz:

They were starting to stop.

Anya Kamenetz:

But, doing it all at once also has the moral hazard problem where it's how come

Anya Kamenetz:

there's amnesty for everybody from before?

Anya Kamenetz:

2016. But what about the rest of us?

Anya Kamenetz:

It came later.

Anya Kamenetz:

What are we going to do?

Anya Kamenetz:

So that's the mess that we've been in, but I've been at least

Anya Kamenetz:

happy to see over the last four years, some serious consideration

Anya Kamenetz:

of this on the federal level.

Anya Kamenetz:

And I think that started, of course, with Bernie Sanders in 2016.

Dave Conley:

We're talking about it.

Dave Conley:

I, you know, even if people are like, no, no, no, they knew what they were doing.

Dave Conley:

I don't know.

Dave Conley:

I didn't know.

Dave Conley:

I still don't know what I'm doing.

Dave Conley:

Right.

Jerremy Newsome:

Well, I'll bring, I'll bring some numbers to the, what you just

Jerremy Newsome:

said a moment ago on your 85 percent of borrowers, like student loan borrowers.

Jerremy Newsome:

They report that they are not going to be buying a home for

Jerremy Newsome:

another 10 15 years because they probably don't feel like they can.

Jerremy Newsome:

So that's a large number.

Jerremy Newsome:

That's quite, quite substantial.

Jerremy Newsome:

And then from a racial disparity piece, black college graduates owe an average

Jerremy Newsome:

of 25, 000 more than white graduates.

Jerremy Newsome:

So just stating some of those kind of mentioned, like the individuals that

Jerremy Newsome:

know, and the individuals that don't know the individuals that are impacted,

Jerremy Newsome:

the individuals that are not impacted, what I'm really noticing is that probably

Jerremy Newsome:

relatively obvious, all of us have on this podcast have interacted with just

Jerremy Newsome:

debt in general, let's call it credit card debt, car debt, the debt that we got,

Jerremy Newsome:

and we don't like it, it stresses us out.

Jerremy Newsome:

And if we have debt we are going to feel more stress and this will

Jerremy Newsome:

be a question I'm going to ask you and I don't know if you know the

Jerremy Newsome:

answer But it'll be fun just to ask

Jerremy Newsome:

Everyone that has student loan debt if the federal government said, okay We

Jerremy Newsome:

are going to forgive Anyone who fills out this one particular form 100 of your

Jerremy Newsome:

Many people do you think would fill it out?

Jerremy Newsome:

Right It is it is

Anya Kamenetz:

to do anything that involves filling out a form?

Anya Kamenetz:

This is a major question.

Anya Kamenetz:

You have unclaimed earned income tax

Jerremy Newsome:

Yeah.

Anya Kamenetz:

don't bother to file their taxes and they don't know that

Anya Kamenetz:

they're leaving money on the table.

Anya Kamenetz:

I think

Dave Conley:

my account, my accountant just, just told me I still had

Dave Conley:

the stimulus check from COVID.

Anya Kamenetz:

yeah, wow, are you serious?

Dave Conley:

Yeah,

Jerremy Newsome:

Dave, I don't even know what that means.

Jerremy Newsome:

I think you owe an interest on

Dave Conley:

I, I I, I, I.

Anya Kamenetz:

Okay.

Anya Kamenetz:

So this, according to the tax policy center, there's 7 billion that people

Anya Kamenetz:

leave on the table every year on further earned income tax credit.

Jerremy Newsome:

Oh,

Anya Kamenetz:

7 billion with a

Jerremy Newsome:

whoa.

Jerremy Newsome:

Yeah.

Jerremy Newsome:

That is a substantially large number, more than I would,

Jerremy Newsome:

more than I would have guessed.

Anya Kamenetz:

More than I would have guessed too.

Jerremy Newsome:

Yeah.

Jerremy Newsome:

I mean, thanks for doing that research.

Jerremy Newsome:

I mean, but yeah, that's kind of the unique point because I, I do believe

Jerremy Newsome:

that if there was some, you know, large government swathing, you'd have.

Jerremy Newsome:

I don't know.

Jerremy Newsome:

I'm the reason I'm picking 50 percent is because half Americans don't vote at all.

Jerremy Newsome:

Like I'm out, I'm talking to vote.

Jerremy Newsome:

So I think probably not, not those 50%.

Jerremy Newsome:

I'm just saying that there's probably a number that's higher than we would

Jerremy Newsome:

think wouldn't even say anything.

Jerremy Newsome:

And then there would be a portion of the people that also wouldn't want to,

Jerremy Newsome:

cause they want to carry the burden.

Jerremy Newsome:

I know that sounds crazy, but I'm one of those people, right?

Jerremy Newsome:

Like if I had debt and someone said, Hey man, I'll pay off all of your

Jerremy Newsome:

debt for you and I'm the government.

Jerremy Newsome:

I'm like, Because that sounds like a free lunch to me and I don't

Jerremy Newsome:

really believe in free lunches.

Jerremy Newsome:

I think that the government is going to do something to get

Jerremy Newsome:

that money back for me later.

Jerremy Newsome:

So I'm just not going to accept that.

Jerremy Newsome:

I'm going to continue paying that off.

Jerremy Newsome:

That's just how I'm wired.

Jerremy Newsome:

And then a lot of people are wired that way.

Jerremy Newsome:

But for me, I go with the consequences and the decisions and the choices that I make.

Jerremy Newsome:

And I just really, really feel like there's can be a fun and super awesome

Jerremy Newsome:

solution earlier in this journey.

Jerremy Newsome:

That allows anyone to, to access college that allows people to access

Jerremy Newsome:

the information that allows people to participate in the educational

Jerremy Newsome:

environment and the experience and pay substantially less than they pay now.

Jerremy Newsome:

I just don't know exactly what that is.

Jerremy Newsome:

I'm gonna keep doing.

Jerremy Newsome:

Deep dives and researches and thoughts and just thought experiments and have

Jerremy Newsome:

perfect and wonderful conversations with people like you because I think that's

Jerremy Newsome:

really where it lays is it lays somewhere in that 16 to 19 right before you kind

Jerremy Newsome:

of start making that commitment right before you start making that change.

Jerremy Newsome:

There's something there where we can start making really, really big impacts

Jerremy Newsome:

that people spend less and charge less.

Anya Kamenetz:

Yeah, I think there's continues to be room

Anya Kamenetz:

for innovation in the market.

Anya Kamenetz:

I think it's worth noting that.

Anya Kamenetz:

There's been a little mini, a mini run of a boom and bust.

Anya Kamenetz:

So when a couple, 10 years ago, there was a lot of excitement about the bootcamp

Anya Kamenetz:

and that was the short programming immersive course that was going to let

Anya Kamenetz:

you get a hundred thousand dollar job.

Anya Kamenetz:

Programming.

Anya Kamenetz:

And that was when all of the tech companies in San Francisco and across

Anya Kamenetz:

the country were in massive hiring sprees because of what was happening

Anya Kamenetz:

in the developer world and maybe in the internet based economy totally.

Anya Kamenetz:

It's not like that anymore.

Anya Kamenetz:

And AI is disrupting a lot of coding.

Anya Kamenetz:

Coding has become in some ways more accessible in other ways.

Anya Kamenetz:

There's not, there's not as much hiring expansion in the tech job world.

Anya Kamenetz:

There's more up in more cycles of layoffs.

Anya Kamenetz:

That sure thing is not feeling like such a sure thing.

Anya Kamenetz:

And some of those bootcamps are shutting their doors because.

Anya Kamenetz:

They started with a promise to the student and now that they're not able to

Anya Kamenetz:

fulfill that 80 percent hiring rate They don't want to operate anymore, which is

Anya Kamenetz:

this testament their integrity of how they're operating But it's also wow,

Anya Kamenetz:

this wasn't so easy or at least we have to figure out what the next thing is

Dave Conley:

So we've talked a little bit about government.

Dave Conley:

We've talked a little bit about students.

Dave Conley:

I want to, let's talk about business, job creators, right?

Anya Kamenetz:

Yeah.

Dave Conley:

There are people who are in jobs that don't require degrees

Dave Conley:

or people who are in jobs that have degrees and don't need them.

Dave Conley:

I guess that's the other way of saying that.

Dave Conley:

When I was in tech and when I had lots of people working for me, remarkably

Dave Conley:

some of the very best and brightest people that did work for me in technology

Dave Conley:

did not have technology degrees.

Dave Conley:

White collar jobs often, for some reason, require degrees.

Dave Conley:

Like it actually says it on there.

Dave Conley:

So, okay, so where, where does business need to change?

Dave Conley:

What's going on?

Anya Kamenetz:

Businesses hate this, but they need to invest more in in their

Anya Kamenetz:

hiring and recruitment practices and also in their training practices, right?

Anya Kamenetz:

The reason that they're listing BA required is it's a lazy way to

Anya Kamenetz:

screen for people that maybe are more similar to the people that they're

Anya Kamenetz:

already familiar with culturally, racially, economically, as well as.

Anya Kamenetz:

This is a very simple indicator as to, are you capable of finishing

Anya Kamenetz:

something that you started?

Anya Kamenetz:

Do you have a certain amount of, a ability to complete a goal or a task?

Anya Kamenetz:

And the BA kind of selects for that as well as we hope some level

Anya Kamenetz:

of communication skills, right?

Anya Kamenetz:

We hope some level of analytical skills, depending on, what the degree is in.

Anya Kamenetz:

So that's why they do it.

Anya Kamenetz:

Thank you.

Anya Kamenetz:

When we're in a kind of economic expansion mode, you hear companies like

Anya Kamenetz:

Google's really investing in much more elaborate kind of recruitment techniques.

Anya Kamenetz:

And they did a back analysis that I'm not, if I'm not misremembering

Anya Kamenetz:

several years ago and showed same thing as you, they had a lot of

Anya Kamenetz:

outperformers that didn't necessarily have degrees from the most prestigious

Anya Kamenetz:

institutions, or even some degrees at all, because there's always that self

Anya Kamenetz:

taught especially in the geek world.

Anya Kamenetz:

That's.

Anya Kamenetz:

That's a skill set that you want.

Anya Kamenetz:

You want those people that are like hackers or self taught.

Anya Kamenetz:

They don't fit in a traditional mode and you really need them

Anya Kamenetz:

in your culture, I think I would argue in a lot of businesses.

Anya Kamenetz:

But how do you find them?

Anya Kamenetz:

You can, and I think that there was an interesting development for

Anya Kamenetz:

a while where it was like I don't need to see your college transcript.

Anya Kamenetz:

GitHub profile.

Anya Kamenetz:

What have you actually done?

Anya Kamenetz:

And same thing for a social media job.

Anya Kamenetz:

If I was hiring, and I have, hired someone for a social media job, I don't care

Anya Kamenetz:

what they got, what grades they got.

Anya Kamenetz:

I want to know what does their TikTok page look like?

Anya Kamenetz:

Do they know how to do this, right?

Anya Kamenetz:

And do they know how to learn how to do the next thing,

Anya Kamenetz:

whatever the next thing is?

Anya Kamenetz:

But that takes a little creativity and it takes not a one size fits all model.

Anya Kamenetz:

And what we have now is, I'm going to say again, like a lot of AI and

Anya Kamenetz:

automation in job postings and resume submission, where it's machine learning,

Anya Kamenetz:

that's just scanning for certain competencies and certain buzzwords.

Anya Kamenetz:

And BA is one of those things rather than what is the thing that tells me that

Anya Kamenetz:

you can actually do this particular job.

Jerremy Newsome:

Amen.

Jerremy Newsome:

Yep.

Jerremy Newsome:

That's it.

Jerremy Newsome:

That's it.

Jerremy Newsome:

Speaking of that, you got me all fired up.

Jerremy Newsome:

I'm really pumped and I want to, I want to talk just, we've done a great job now.

Jerremy Newsome:

Almost 60 minutes of diving into this.

Jerremy Newsome:

I want to talk a little bit about you just because you have such a

Jerremy Newsome:

great background on this, right?

Jerremy Newsome:

Your work spans decades.

Jerremy Newsome:

Going through the challenges and transformation

Anya Kamenetz:

Only two decades.

Anya Kamenetz:

Let me just say,

Jerremy Newsome:

Sorry.

Jerremy Newsome:

Yeah, my bad.

Jerremy Newsome:

That did sound like 90 years.

Jerremy Newsome:

Sorry.

Jerremy Newsome:

Two, two decades, 20 years.

Dave Conley:

she started when she was six.

Dave Conley:

Just want to make sure you know.

Dave Conley:

Yes,

Jerremy Newsome:

That's what I'm saying.

Jerremy Newsome:

When she was, when she was two and a half years old,

Dave Conley:

it's been a good journey.

Jerremy Newsome:

you so passionate about tackling these issues?

Jerremy Newsome:

Mm

Anya Kamenetz:

No, I think I take a lot of inspiration from the people who

Anya Kamenetz:

are in this world, both the students, the learners, as well as the educators,

Anya Kamenetz:

because education is fundamentally such an optimistic enterprise.

Anya Kamenetz:

Like we are, it has two sides to it.

Anya Kamenetz:

It's really a split.

Anya Kamenetz:

It's a split model.

Anya Kamenetz:

The scholastic model, which is like the monks recopying manuscripts, they're

Anya Kamenetz:

trying to keep what's best from the past and make sure we don't forget everything

Anya Kamenetz:

that we've discovered as a civilization.

Anya Kamenetz:

And when you think about like Roman empire collapse, we went into the

Anya Kamenetz:

dark ages, these medieval monks, they're sitting in their castles

Anya Kamenetz:

and they're just copying things over by hand so that we do not lose.

Anya Kamenetz:

what we have learned.

Anya Kamenetz:

That's so important.

Anya Kamenetz:

And then on the other side, you have, was the alchemists, then the scientists,

Anya Kamenetz:

now the scientists and the engineers who are like, what do we not know?

Anya Kamenetz:

How can we get new knowledge?

Anya Kamenetz:

What new questions are there?

Anya Kamenetz:

What, edges of the universe can we explore?

Anya Kamenetz:

What's the tiniest little particle that we can find?

Anya Kamenetz:

What's the farthest away a star that we can learn more about, what is

Anya Kamenetz:

the new cure for the new disease?

Anya Kamenetz:

These ozempic drugs they're not just good for weight loss, they're

Anya Kamenetz:

actually good for addiction.

Anya Kamenetz:

They're good for many other things.

Anya Kamenetz:

And so an mRNA vaccine, like faster than anyone's ever done one

Anya Kamenetz:

before we created this vaccine.

Anya Kamenetz:

So there's science and progress and empiricism and learning and

Anya Kamenetz:

solving new problems, discovering new knowledge in the one hand.

Anya Kamenetz:

And there is bringing the best of the past.

Anya Kamenetz:

On the other hand, and when you put this two together, you get

Anya Kamenetz:

education and We have been talking about education in the context of

Anya Kamenetz:

people's goals, which is important, economic growth, which is important.

Anya Kamenetz:

But I'm one of those people who says, I think it's actually

Anya Kamenetz:

important for its own sake.

Dave Conley:

Hmm.

Dave Conley:

I got, I got chills.

Dave Conley:

That's fantastic.

Jerremy Newsome:

Me too.

Jerremy Newsome:

Me too.

Jerremy Newsome:

I like that.

Jerremy Newsome:

So what would you, what would you say to our audience is next for you?

Jerremy Newsome:

Are there projects, ideas, areas of focus that you're super excited to explore?

Anya Kamenetz:

Yeah.

Anya Kamenetz:

The work I've been doing with my newsletter, The Stolen Year, is about

Anya Kamenetz:

the bigger picture of how we thrive on this rapidly changing planet.

Anya Kamenetz:

And so beyond just what educational institutions can offer, it's

Anya Kamenetz:

really about how do we adapt?

Anya Kamenetz:

And I think we're going to need to bring in so many different

Anya Kamenetz:

superpowers to thrive in this world.

Anya Kamenetz:

And a lot of it is learning.

Anya Kamenetz:

A lot of it is our emotional truth and our emotional intelligence, as well as our

Anya Kamenetz:

practical capacity that we're managing.

Anya Kamenetz:

And so I'm really bringing all of those together and I'm putting it up

Anya Kamenetz:

against these threats, the threats, of what's happening with politics, with

Anya Kamenetz:

conflict, with climate with health.

Anya Kamenetz:

And moving forward into the future.

Anya Kamenetz:

So I've always been very future focused in my work and the size of that

Anya Kamenetz:

future, I think has just gotten bigger.

Jerremy Newsome:

Yeah, it has for sure.

Jerremy Newsome:

It's going to be thrilling and exciting.

Jerremy Newsome:

And it gives me so many, I mean, again, the more we have these conversations,

Jerremy Newsome:

the more we dive into it, there really is going to be a fun new world of just

Jerremy Newsome:

people stepping up and saying, Hey.

Jerremy Newsome:

This isn't awesome.

Jerremy Newsome:

This isn't working perfectly.

Jerremy Newsome:

Nothing probably will work perfectly, but it's, the standard of what's

Jerremy Newsome:

working now is pretty, is pretty rough.

Jerremy Newsome:

I'm just going to throw a fun one at you.

Jerremy Newsome:

You got a magic wand.

Jerremy Newsome:

You found it in New Orleans, under your nine inches of snow,

Jerremy Newsome:

which is mind blowing still.

Jerremy Newsome:

You have a wand and you can fix one thing about the education system.

Jerremy Newsome:

What are you fixing?

Anya Kamenetz:

So this is a wildcard, but my answer to this question

Anya Kamenetz:

is I would fix early childhood and the reason for that is.

Anya Kamenetz:

The growth that a child goes through in the first thousand days

Anya Kamenetz:

of life, zero to three, zero to five, that is their foundation.

Anya Kamenetz:

And it is a brain, it's an explosion of brain growth and development.

Anya Kamenetz:

They need nurturing care.

Anya Kamenetz:

They need consistency, love, support, as well as intelligent communication that

Anya Kamenetz:

helps them learn how to communicate, learn how to read, learn how to write,

Anya Kamenetz:

learn how to engage with their world.

Anya Kamenetz:

And so the more, for every dollar that you put in those early years,

Anya Kamenetz:

you're going to get it back six fold.

Anya Kamenetz:

And that's, that's a real statistic from a real study.

Anya Kamenetz:

Like it is, but really the payback is incomparable.

Anya Kamenetz:

If we start to notice our littlest children more, we're

Anya Kamenetz:

going to get so much out of it.

Dave Conley:

Oh, I got an answer for this one too.

Jerremy Newsome:

All right,

Dave Conley:

Are you going to give me a magic wand?

Jerremy Newsome:

Okay, now you got a wand.

Jerremy Newsome:

Yeah,

Dave Conley:

a series that we're actually is, is airing now is, is all

Dave Conley:

about school safety, school shootings.

Dave Conley:

And we've talked to a lot of people on that.

Dave Conley:

And I, reflecting on it afterwards you know, we've

Dave Conley:

built a lot of prisons for kids.

Dave Conley:

You know, like, and I, I think my magic wand would be to make cathedrals again.

Dave Conley:

I had friends who went to school in Westchester County in New York, right?

Dave Conley:

And the schools look like Hogwarts, you know, like it's, it's just,

Dave Conley:

it's this beautiful architecture.

Dave Conley:

I grew up in Washington DC.

Dave Conley:

It's sort of hit or miss.

Dave Conley:

Most of them sort of look like brick prisons,

Anya Kamenetz:

Yeah.

Dave Conley:

but some of them could be absolutely beautiful.

Dave Conley:

So I would, yeah, I think I would, I would make them look beautiful.

Dave Conley:

I think people would feel differently just being in them.

Anya Kamenetz:

I think it's a great idea.

Anya Kamenetz:

I totally agree with you.

Anya Kamenetz:

There's so much that you learn from your environment.

Jerremy Newsome:

I mean, first of all, who doesn't want to go to Hogwarts?

Jerremy Newsome:

But secondly, yes, I mean, just making it a place that's open, that's

Jerremy Newsome:

expansive, that's Loving that's at the exact same time safe and a

Jerremy Newsome:

place where people can roam and run and have fun and play and enjoy and

Jerremy Newsome:

communicate and collaborate and be kids.

Jerremy Newsome:

That's the other thing is I feel like a lot of times we, Hey, you're seven.

Anya Kamenetz:

Right.

Jerremy Newsome:

What you're supposed to do now.

Jerremy Newsome:

Don't lick that.

Jerremy Newsome:

It's like, dude, you're you're, you're seven.

Jerremy Newsome:

Like you do the M& Ms off the floor.

Jerremy Newsome:

You know, I got to remind myself of that too.

Jerremy Newsome:

It's.

Jerremy Newsome:

Like when, when my son eats his pasta and he throws his pasta on the wall, like my

Jerremy Newsome:

initial reaction is like, Oh man, I have to clean that pasta sauce off the wall.

Jerremy Newsome:

It'd be like, he just, he just having a party.

Jerremy Newsome:

This is just how this kid eats.

Anya Kamenetz:

Totally.

Jerremy Newsome:

And so it's, instead of reprimanding him, it's

Jerremy Newsome:

just like, Hey, I'm gonna take a pasta and throw it against the wall.

Jerremy Newsome:

It's been a long time for me too.

Jerremy Newsome:

I'm gonna clean it anyway.

Jerremy Newsome:

Might as well have fun with it.

Jerremy Newsome:

It's just tweaking and adjusting of getting people that I feel care

Jerremy Newsome:

passing the care down to others, right?

Jerremy Newsome:

Showing them that like, listen, we're in this for you.

Jerremy Newsome:

We're in this for your soul.

Jerremy Newsome:

We're in this for your transformation.

Jerremy Newsome:

We're in this for your transcendence.

Jerremy Newsome:

We're in this for the elevation of your spirit to shift love and create.

Jerremy Newsome:

Provide yes, yes, yes on you for listeners who want to dive deeper into these topics.

Jerremy Newsome:

Where do you recommend they start?

Jerremy Newsome:

Are there books, articles, resources?

Anya Kamenetz:

You mentioned my book, DYUI think that's a good intro to the topic.

Anya Kamenetz:

And I mentioned my newsletter the Golden Hour.

Anya Kamenetz:

I think Michael Horn has a great podcast on the future of education.

Anya Kamenetz:

He's got a and a substack as well, and I've been, we are.

Anya Kamenetz:

In the same cohort.

Anya Kamenetz:

And I think he's got a great, he really leans into the innovation side of things.

Anya Kamenetz:

So I think he'd be a good person for people who are curious about that.

Anya Kamenetz:

And another friend of mine is Brian Alexander and he does something

Anya Kamenetz:

called the future trends forum, where he looks at what's going

Anya Kamenetz:

on in next in higher education.

Anya Kamenetz:

So I think those two, Michael Horne and Brian Alexander

Anya Kamenetz:

would be good ones to look at.

Jerremy Newsome:

Okay.

Jerremy Newsome:

Beautiful.

Jerremy Newsome:

Thank you so much.

Jerremy Newsome:

We'll reach out to them as well and see if we can pick their brains and just have

Jerremy Newsome:

open, amazing, cool dialogue with them.

Jerremy Newsome:

Just learn.

Jerremy Newsome:

I truly respect your time.

Jerremy Newsome:

I respect your energy.

Jerremy Newsome:

Thank you for your passion.

Jerremy Newsome:

Thank you for saying, you know what?

Jerremy Newsome:

We can change.

Jerremy Newsome:

The educational system, we can make shifts.

Jerremy Newsome:

You're bringing the awareness, you're bringing light to this subject.

Jerremy Newsome:

I want to say light, not only exploration light, but just light

Jerremy Newsome:

of happiness and love and joy.

Jerremy Newsome:

But thanks for being your beaming self.

Jerremy Newsome:

We really appreciate it.

Anya Kamenetz:

Thanks so much for having me guys.

Anya Kamenetz:

It was great talking to you.

Jerremy Newsome:

Dave, that was powerful.

Jerremy Newsome:

That was fun.

Jerremy Newsome:

That was exciting.

Jerremy Newsome:

Thank you for all the listeners who are recently exploring how we are

Jerremy Newsome:

working on solving America's problems.

Jerremy Newsome:

And we all know, we all feel that one of the huge problems this country faces

Jerremy Newsome:

is the country one of the huge problems this country faces Is the inadequacy of

Jerremy Newsome:

education and inadequacy can be summed up in many ways, but one of those ways is

Jerremy Newsome:

just looming debts, very, very challenging economic crisis that cripples individuals

Jerremy Newsome:

going forward, allowing or disallowing them to either not even go into college

Jerremy Newsome:

or once they get into college on the other side, they get a job that might've

Jerremy Newsome:

been able to get without the degree.

Jerremy Newsome:

And then they got to pay for it for 18 and a half years.

Jerremy Newsome:

Years a total debt of 1.

Jerremy Newsome:

62 trillion dollars federally What i'm learning is that there are people that

Jerremy Newsome:

know that this is an issue There are people that are saying wait a minute.

Jerremy Newsome:

There has to be different ways.

Jerremy Newsome:

There have to be different Opportunities there needs to be not only more

Jerremy Newsome:

access To education for everyone, but at the same regard that these

Jerremy Newsome:

educational costs have to decrease.

Jerremy Newsome:

And one of my favorite parts of this podcast, Dave, is when you went,

Jerremy Newsome:

wait a minute, are you telling me that there's this random pocket of

Jerremy Newsome:

middlemen, middle businesses, making millions of dollars off of students?

Jerremy Newsome:

That's what I learned.

Jerremy Newsome:

I learned that you learned and that was really awesome to see.

Dave Conley:

yeah, that was, that was an angry learning.

Dave Conley:

I learned

Dave Conley:

that this is, this, this seems like a really complicated issue, right?

Dave Conley:

Like, and it is however, a lot of places have kind of figured it out, right?

Dave Conley:

Like there's a lot of countries that don't have people in a lot of debt

Dave Conley:

and there are models that do work that where people get really great education.

Dave Conley:

And they don't come out with a ton of debt and, you know, just hearing that, you

Dave Conley:

know, like, let's try something, let's try something different with, like, Australia,

Dave Conley:

it's like, yeah, come on in, it's free, whatever degree you want, you got it, and

Dave Conley:

then when you get out, whatever job you get, it's, it's like a payroll tax, right?

Dave Conley:

And that, that, that puts a, a market value on something and it means

Dave Conley:

that you're not saddled with crazy debt for the rest of your life.

Dave Conley:

So I, you know, I'm sure there's ins and outs to that, but I'm like, Oh,

Dave Conley:

that's kind of an interesting idea.

Dave Conley:

It doesn't stop somebody from going and getting a history degree

Dave Conley:

because they think that they may not be able to feed themselves.

Dave Conley:

It allows people to go get a history degree and say, no matter what

Dave Conley:

you make, you'll be able to pay back whatever you can pay back.

Dave Conley:

And you don't, you won't starve because you're, you're spending

Dave Conley:

all of your money on debt.

Dave Conley:

I also, I also learned that, like, the people who currently have debt,

Dave Conley:

there's really, there's, there's only tough, you know, there's, that's,

Dave Conley:

that's, that's actually complicated.

Dave Conley:

Right?

Dave Conley:

Like, if you already have this debt, that's not going to be an easy discussion.

Dave Conley:

That was, you know, that wasn't fabulous.

Dave Conley:

The other thing I learned was the biggest, People that, the biggest group that has

Dave Conley:

the biggest problems with this are the people who didn't finish their degrees.

Dave Conley:

So they started and then stopped.

Dave Conley:

And I'm like, wow, that should be tack, tack, tack, tackable.

Dave Conley:

We, we, we, we should be able to, we should be able to, you know, you should

Dave Conley:

be able to do something with that one.

Dave Conley:

It's like, well, you know, can we get these people finished?

Dave Conley:

Or can we have that, you know, have that, have that go some other way?

Dave Conley:

I don't know.

Dave Conley:

This was great.

Dave Conley:

I, I really, I really love talking to Enya.

Dave Conley:

Any, anything else come up for you in this?

Jerremy Newsome:

Well, you mentioned it, right?

Jerremy Newsome:

But like love, love to hear that Australia is doing something

Jerremy Newsome:

totally unique and different.

Jerremy Newsome:

And I mean, Australia, obviously huge country.

Jerremy Newsome:

Can we do some level of that?

Jerremy Newsome:

I think that that would be really unique and giving people incentives and

Jerremy Newsome:

opportunities to finish their degrees and to continue and end and get to

Jerremy Newsome:

the culmination of, I have my degree and now I get this job and based on

Jerremy Newsome:

my income level, I then can pay back.

Jerremy Newsome:

So you get the experience, you get all the knowledge and information

Jerremy Newsome:

before you start paying back or.

Jerremy Newsome:

Because like right now you go to college and tons of times, very, very

Jerremy Newsome:

often you can get the experience.

Jerremy Newsome:

And you don't have to pay, but it's not based on I think it's based on the degree

Jerremy Newsome:

or it's based in your time in the college.

Jerremy Newsome:

It's not necessarily based on what type of job you got.

Jerremy Newsome:

And I, but I'm also sure there's probably a lot of fraud with that.

Jerremy Newsome:

There's probably a lot of misreporting and so on and so forth.

Jerremy Newsome:

It'd be interesting to see a lot of the numbers and I'm curious to see if

Jerremy Newsome:

we could probably get an Australian resident or professor to kind of like

Jerremy Newsome:

walk us through that a little bit.

Jerremy Newsome:

But there are and there has to be other countries that are

Jerremy Newsome:

doing it better than we are.

Jerremy Newsome:

And

Dave Conley:

Sorry, I, I, I, sorry, I, I'm just all excited about this.

Dave Conley:

I think you and Anya really hit a hit on one thing that is important for me.

Dave Conley:

And you, you said it one way, she said it another way.

Dave Conley:

And it was like, Going into college and whether or not to choose to go into

Dave Conley:

college or not go into college that sort of education of somebody who's in

Dave Conley:

their teens that hand holding that that you know that really Understanding the

Dave Conley:

consequences the debt the choices All of that, you know that that There's,

Dave Conley:

there's not enough there, you know, that, that, that whole idea of what it is.

Dave Conley:

And then she said it another way, which was like, well, if there's a big

Dave Conley:

difference between going to a private school and going to a public school.

Dave Conley:

And one of them was, which is, it seems totally counterintuitive is

Dave Conley:

that you, you may come out of a private education with a lot less debt

Dave Conley:

because they have a lot more programs.

Dave Conley:

I'm like, Oh, Oh, okay.

Dave Conley:

That's that would have never occurred to me.

Dave Conley:

Right.

Dave Conley:

So I, there's a, there's a real piece in there of.

Dave Conley:

You know, knowing that an 18 year old, Oh, you said something brilliant.

Dave Conley:

I thought, which was like, it's, it's impossible for an 18 year old

Dave Conley:

to get a business loan, but to get, to get a hundred thousand dollar

Dave Conley:

business loan, but to get a hundred thousand dollars in debt is no problem

Jerremy Newsome:

It's crazy.

Jerremy Newsome:

It's crazy, man.

Dave Conley:

Bonkers!

Jerremy Newsome:

And what's what?

Jerremy Newsome:

Yes.

Jerremy Newsome:

What's also wild, Dave, is it's not even 100, 000.

Jerremy Newsome:

It's like you can't even get 10, 000.

Jerremy Newsome:

You can't even get 15, 000.

Jerremy Newsome:

Like you cannot get a business loan as a first time.

Jerremy Newsome:

You want to create a new business under the age of 21.

Jerremy Newsome:

Like it's literally.

Jerremy Newsome:

The same odds as winning the lottery.

Jerremy Newsome:

I mean it is mine, but now it doesn't mean you can't get an investment from

Jerremy Newsome:

a friend or whatever I'm saying from an from a bank from an institution from

Jerremy Newsome:

the federal Local government that's supposed to support entrepreneurship.

Jerremy Newsome:

No zero chance And especially with the payback terms of 10 15 20 years like a

Jerremy Newsome:

student loan Also with the interest rates compiling and not being able to write off

Jerremy Newsome:

through bankruptcy There was a lot here and one thing and I will stand by this.

Jerremy Newsome:

I do not personally believe You That it should that is the role

Jerremy Newsome:

of the federal government to go.

Jerremy Newsome:

All right.

Jerremy Newsome:

Here's the one no one has to pay their debts I don't think that's the

Jerremy Newsome:

way to approach this I think because then that's just we throw it on the

Jerremy Newsome:

taxpayers We throw it on their backs.

Jerremy Newsome:

We throw it on the income of the country and we go.

Jerremy Newsome:

All right, we'll figure this out But really it's probably Let's

Jerremy Newsome:

start decreasing the amount that people can go into debt.

Jerremy Newsome:

That was something that you said, right?

Jerremy Newsome:

It was like, let's make sure that we even disallow them from getting a bunch

Jerremy Newsome:

first and foremost, like have some type of credit score rating agency, just

Jerremy Newsome:

like they do for a car or for a house.

Jerremy Newsome:

This allows you to go, can't go to Belmont university and get a commercial

Jerremy Newsome:

flute degree and go 300, 000 into debt.

Jerremy Newsome:

Unless.

Jerremy Newsome:

You and or your parents have three million dollars of liquid money to sink

Jerremy Newsome:

in the bank account It's like you're not allowed to do this because we know

Jerremy Newsome:

you're not gonna be able pay it back So there's also some level of that right

Jerremy Newsome:

some level of non Predatory loans to these students putting them in a place that

Jerremy Newsome:

they probably don't know a lot at 18 You said earlier like I'm still figuring stuff

Jerremy Newsome:

out now At 18, I was a giant dumb bag.

Jerremy Newsome:

So having, having that piece and having some people help us out as teenagers

Jerremy Newsome:

and as young adults is also going to be a really, really big component, but

Jerremy Newsome:

I do not believe the answer is wave the wand and have all the debt erased.

Jerremy Newsome:

I think it starts something earlier.

Jerremy Newsome:

I think it starts with a really, really deep ingraining of

Jerremy Newsome:

financial awareness in college.

Jerremy Newsome:

I think high school obviously Anya mentions like starting earlier, Giving

Jerremy Newsome:

kids three to five being their most prominent years, starting making financial

Jerremy Newsome:

optimism and financial literacy being a major, massive component to all

Jerremy Newsome:

educational intricacies being first and foremost and paramount, because if you're

Jerremy Newsome:

doing that in any age of school, As it builds throughout the school system,

Jerremy Newsome:

you know, that going into debt to that structure is probably not a good idea.

Jerremy Newsome:

And so then you start working through your community college, like I did for

Jerremy Newsome:

two years to decrease some of the, oh, you got to go to college and take these

Jerremy Newsome:

semi random classes that are kind of building blocks that are really just.

Jerremy Newsome:

You know exponentially more challenging versions of what you learned in high

Jerremy Newsome:

school But you don't really need them for jobs aka calculus too, right?

Jerremy Newsome:

Like, you know, you don't need that You don't need calculus too certainly

Jerremy Newsome:

so those aspects for me for sure is it's just a continuation and a

Jerremy Newsome:

reminder that as we Really buckle down on the financial Educational model.

Jerremy Newsome:

start thinking that financial literacy becomes such a foremost proponent of

Jerremy Newsome:

everything that we do and everything that we ratify that becomes the

Jerremy Newsome:

forefront of our educational piece.

Jerremy Newsome:

This problem dilutes and dissolves naturally over the next 5 to 15 years.

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About the Podcast

Solving America's Problems
Solving America’s Problems isn’t just a podcast—it’s a journey. Co-host Jerremy Newsome, a successful entrepreneur and educator, is pursuing his lifelong dream of running for president. Along the way, he and co-host Dave Conley bring together experts, advocates, and everyday Americans to explore the real, actionable solutions our country needs.

With dynamic formats—one-on-one interviews, panel discussions, and more—we cut through the noise of divisive rhetoric to uncover practical ideas that unite instead of divide. If you’re ready to think differently, act boldly, and join a movement for meaningful change, subscribe now.