Let Colleges Fail! 84-Year-Old Professor Exposes the Truth

Universities are in the knowledge business, but one thing they don't want knowledge on, they don't want people to know much about what they're doing because it's embarrassing.

Today's guest is Richard Veter, who is a professor of economics emeritus and director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity at Ohio University, also a senior fellow at the Independent Institute. And he's the author of the new book, Let Colleges Fail: The Power of Creative Destruction in Higher Education. So, Richard, what are the main issues that you have with modern-day universities?

Well, where to start? That's a good question. There, uh, a lot of people feel like American universities are failing. And one just very simple piece of evidence of that that is enrollments today are lower than they were 15 years ago. Not dramatically lower, but that's never happened in our history. Typically, over time, population grows, college enrollments grow. It's been that way since 1636 when they founded Harvard. But now we have fewer going to college than 15 years ago. More and more people are saying no to college. So there is some, let's call it, disenchantment with colleges on the part of the students. There's disenchantment on the part of the public generally. And we see this of course most dramatically in the last year or so by the actions, most recently the actions of the Trump administration and Congress in constraining colleges, cutting off funds, uh, uh, attacks also at the state level on the over issues like diversity, equity, and inclusion, DEI, that's attracted a lot of attention. Uh, so, uh, Gallup polls and other polls have shown that a general, uh, confidence and, uh, trust in education, higher education, has declined. Now, I'll be fair, that trust in a lot of things has declined, not just colleges. Uh, so, and, and yet, so that's the one side of the story.

Now, the other side of the story, it's kind of a, a weird story in a way. On the, so there's a lot of negatives out there. But on the other hand, if you ask people around the world, what, what nation in the world has the greatest universities, most people would say the United States. Where are people, why do foreign students flock to the United States? Great, uh, not only teaching of course, but especially research, uh, opportunities are, are, are great. So we've got, it's, it's a, it's kind of a, a strange world. The best of all best of times, the worst of times, as, uh, Dickens said, I think, at the beginning of what was it, Tale of Two Cities? Yeah. I'm an academic, you know, I, I tend to talk and talk and talk and talk till someone shuts me up. So, I'll stop there and let you ask questions.

So, uh, Professor Richard Veter, what year did you start teaching at Ohio University?

We don't want to know that.

Yes, you do. Uh, 1965.

1965. And you still kind of, uh, teach some classes currently. You?

I'm not teaching regular classes, but I do teach. I'm sitting in a university office. I, uh, had students working on, uh, thesis, advanced projects. I take on one or two or three or four, a small number, a very good undergraduate students, sometimes a graduate student each year that I do some work with, but I'm not teaching classes. I occasionally go into classes as a visiting lecturer and occas, and once in a while I go, uh, to other places. And I'm going to Vegas and, believe it or not, giving a lecture at, of all places, Caesar's Palace. Uh, so, you know, I work different rooms still, but not very much. I'm out of the teaching. I started teaching, by the way, uh, I don't know if this would interest your, uh, listeners and watchers, but I, I was teaching class the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. I was a graduate student at the time, but I was teaching class then. So, that is well over 60 years ago. So, I've been around the block a bit.

Yeah. That's a, That's November 1963.

Yeah. Yeah.

So,

Yeah.

So, as I say, Richard, I mean, since you've been teaching since the early 1960s, now we're in 2025, so you're talking over 60 years. What's the difference between, uh, both the university and the students in that time frame? Cuz I mean, you basically say that you think education really got worse once they added the Department of Education in the late, uh, 1970s, early 1980s, but how has education changed from the university standpoint? And have the students also changed?

Yeah.

Um, and it's kind of a long, you know, question, but take this as you want.

Yeah. No, that's that's a good question. It's a superb question. Let's start with the students. That's who the universities are, are supposedly built for. Uh, the purpose of universities, uh, students today in many ways are much, some ways are much the same as they were. They're 18, 19, 20, 21-year-old kids. Uh, generally a little bit above average in terms of, uh, academic accomplishment based on their high school background and so forth. Uh, but, uh, I will say this, and, uh, I've watched this fairly steadily, and I, and I, my, my views on this are pretty much the same as many other long-term serving professors. Students today don't work as much. They don't put as much time in on academic, uh, uh, pursuits. And there's some empirical evidence on this, believe it or not, done by the US government on time use, uh, uh, of people. And back in the 60s when I was, uh, getting going and teaching, the typical student spent maybe 40 hours a week either in class or writing papers or reading or, uh, preparing in some way for their, their academic work. That 40 hours a week, kind of what the work week of a, a worker, most workers were. Today, those surveys show that th the amount of time spent is closer to 30. In fact, it's under 30, more like 28 hours a week. So, uh, and a big factor in this has been grade inflation. I think, I, I don't want to say it's all of it, but it's a large part. There's also, some people would say, the high schools are not preparing students for college as well as they were six years ago. I think that's a secondary thing. So between declining, uh, preparation coming in, as well as, uh, we're not pushing the students hard enough, or not demanding as much of them. We, we get, we're more readily willing to give A's out, B's out. So, you know, why, why study? I mean, uh, I'm going to get an A or a B no matter what I do. So why should I study? I mean, this is a more common student attitude than that. I think the best and the brightest students today are as good as the best and brightest students were 60 years ago. I don't think the quality of the human race has declined any, uh, per se, but I do deter, I, there has been some deterioration in learning. Students don't know as many just basic facts as they did. You know, I'm an economic historian. So my emphasis is on the past a lot, and the students are, I wouldn't say clueless about the 18th century and the 17th century, but they don't know as much as they did 50 years ago or 60 years ago.

Uh, on the, the faculty and the universities, administrations have changed too. We have one thing that's very, very obvious to anyone who's been around forever, and you, I get this when I talk to other old-timers like myself, and I don't, it doesn't matter whether they're Republican or Democrat or liberal or conservative, is that there has been an enormous increase in administration in universities. More and more people in universities have nothing to do directly with the students or, or with research. The other component of what universities do is, is try to expand the, uh, uh, pool or the frontier of knowledge, to, uh, discover new things, new, new discoveries. Uh, we're in the dissemination of knowledge business and the creation of knowledge business. Um, there is a little more emphasis on research than there was when I start, than when I started teaching. There's a bit more of a publish or perish dimension to college teaching. Uh, it's, it's always been there. It's a little more intense today, but, uh, the, the, uh, the administrative bloat in universities has, has really grown tremendously. And I've been, I think close to on, close to 400 campuses over the years. And, uh, I haven't been on 400 campuses in the last year. In fact, I've been hardly anywhere. I'm getting to be an old man. But, um, uh, it's, today, every professor at most colleges, for every professor there is, there's at least two other, three other people who are in some sort of administrative role in the dean of students office, in the, there, of course, this diversity, equity, and inclusion idea didn't even exist 60 years ago, didn't exist. And at some schools, uh, you're from Wisconsin, some of the Midwestern schools, uh, take especially the University of Michigan would be a good example. University of Michigan for a while had 225, 250 administrative people who were involved in diversity, equity, and inclusion. And in 1965, there were zero. So that, that's a pretty big increase. Maybe there were one or two people wanting to be sure that, uh, there was no overt racial discrimination going on even back in the 60s, but that area has just exploded. The athletic area, I mean, to turn to a totally different area, it's gotten bigger. Uh, the relationship between learning and being college athletics was always a little bit strained even in the 60s, but it, it's crazy today. I mean, the, uh, Big 10 and the Southeast Conference are, are businesses more than they are academic institutions. Uh, so there's quite a number of changes that have gone on. We're spending more than we did then. Or, uh, professors complain, you know, that they don't have this or that, but we're actually pretty well off in terms of, uh, you know, our amenities and whatnot. Uh, we still take three months, uh, four months off a year, just like we did then. Uh, in some ways, we're not teaching much different than say Socrates did 2400 years ago, except now we use PowerPoint. Socrates didn't have PowerPoint, but [Music] otherwise, it's pretty much the same.

Your book had a lot of great stats and just information and, you know, kind of one of the big things you mentioned was just kind of this administrative bloat. Yeah. And how like it's just, you know, back in the day, like you had, you know, what was it like, one administrator per five students, and now all of a sudden, there's a lot of, uh, universities where there's more admin, admin than there are actual professors.

That's right.

Which, which is insane. And then I was kind of looking at this stat that said in 2022, approximately 38% of the US population aged 25 and older had completed at least a bachelor's degree. And then, uh, in 1960, it was 7.7%. And then I was kind of thinking like, well, it's, and your book kind of alluded to it, seems like a lot of these admin jobs, like there's just so many like PhDs and master's degrees and kind of like quote unquote useless degrees. The only place they could go was into education. It's almost like a make-work program for their friends. And like, it's just like this bloat. Like, I mean, how many gender studies and how many different majors do we have that really aren't allowing people to actually get a job to make money? And even if you want to talk about like going back to the roots of academia and imparting this knowledge on people, they don't even do that because they're so biased anyways. Like, but it just seemed to me like we just have a bunch of make-work programs at the university level with six-figure jobs for admin. Or am I reading that wrong? That was kind of my take on it.

You're reading it exactly right. You should be the president of some university or something or other. Uh, you're reading it absolutely perfectly. Uh, uh, I couldn't have put it better. Uh, we, and not only that, it's, it not only are the, these administrators do they add to costs, which they do. They're expensive. They're not cheap. Uh, my university, I think, has roughly two administrators for every faculty member today, and when I started teaching, they had less than one, and that's pretty much the, the case. And that, of course, means a lot of extra cost. So, part of it, the cost side, but the administrators, many of them are actually anti-academic. I mean, they, they, they're not interested in student learning, they're not interested, uh, in their getting jobs. They're interested in meeting, uh, fashionable mandates. Some of them politically determined by society, some of them by, uh, you know, whatever, uh, and whatever is fashionable at the moment. And so we're spending a lot of money and, and we, and that's how a lot, a lot of these, uh, areas, you mentioned gender studies is one, I think that's a good one. A lot of the, we've come up with these trendy new majors that are, uh, to employ faculty, uh, and what, what happens to these people? How many people do you know that has succeeded in life after college as a gender studies major? Uh, uh, I, I don't know one. Uh, and, uh, uh, I, I've read, uh, some surveys, uh, one is Columbia University, which is kind of famous right now for other reasons, but for, what happens to their graduates, and their, uh, engineering graduates, they're, uh, um, people in nuclear engineering, for example, or whatever, I don't know if Columbia has nuclear engineering, but in the high-level engineering and computer fields, uh, you, right after graduation, they're making $100,000 a year. What are the gender studies majors making? $20,000 a year. $20. I mean, they, they would be better off after high school going to work at, you know, McDonald's or Walmart, uh, or be at least as well off. And, uh, so why are we doing all this? And who's financing it? Well, ultimately, the federal government to some extent with the student loan programs, and all kids can borrow their money, go to college. A few years ago, more like the kids didn't think, oh, I won't have to pay that money back. The government will forgive it, which they did, or I could just ignore it. Now they're cracking down on that. And so, I think the future's going to be rather interesting. I think colleges are in for decline, if I may add. Also, and the Wall Street Journal had a front page story on this yesterday, there's been a huge drop off in hiring of sort of entry-level people, and there are a lot of college graduates right now who are having trouble getting jobs because of AI because they're now, maybe, maybe we have come up with computers that can think. Uh, and when you have computers that can think, uh, maybe we don't have to hire people to think. And that's kind of a scary thought, uh, for, uh, young people who are going to college. So, they, some of those people say, "Well, AI can't solve plumbing problems. It can't weld. Uh, uh, so maybe I ought to become a welder, or, uh, maybe I ought to become, uh, uh, a plumber, because AI isn't going to solve that." So, technology, which historically worked to hurt unskilled people, they lost the job. Machines replaced workers who had physical skills. Now, we are, we're having machines replace people who have mental skills. They're replacing brains. I mean, this is the argument. And I think there's some truth. There's some concerns there that are legitimate. So, uh, if I were, I tell young people, he used to say, take my best and brightest students, I say, why don't you become a professor? Ah, the life is good, you know, every seven years, you'll probably get a sabbatical leave, and you can go to Europe and wherever you are, Asia, wherever you want to go. Uh, you get decent pay, you're not going to get rich, but you're going to live a good life. Uh, you, uh, you spend a lot of time right, you're your own boss more or less. You, you work a half of the time teaching classes, but the other half you're supposed to be doing research, but the research is whatever you want it to be. So, it's kind of a good life. And I, I think it is a good life. It has been. But now, I, there's very few young people I tell that to anymore because I can't see the future of higher ed is, is, is very bright right now. And I think there's a lot of people that are going to have a, be in trouble, um, going into the higher ed area.

What do you think about kind of like the adjunctification of professors? Cuz like, you know, I'll make comments where it's like, you know, you got a tenure professor who's teaching like one or two classes a year, making six figures and probably also has some like housing paid for and he's going on sabbatical. And then the comments would be like, well, yeah, that's true, but that's like the minority. So, I mean, what do you think? Like, is, is, uh, most professors nowadays an an adjunct, or do we have a lot of professors teaching the one, two classes a year and basically doing some research that's kind of pointless? I mean, what is, you know, how would you, you know, talk to the person that says this?

Uh, I think what you said is mostly correct. Uh, professors, the evidence is that, first of all, the evidence is very spotty on this. Professor, universities are in the knowledge business, but one thing they don't want knowledge on, they don't want people to know much about what they're doing because it's embarrassing. It's just downright embarrassing. Uh, teaching loads fell dramatically over the, from the middle of the last century to, to now. Now, uh, in the middle of the last century, uh, at a mid-quality state university, a teacher, some of them would teach four classes a semester, some even five classes a semester, 12 hours a week. Uh, today, then, by n, by 2000, 2010, that had fallen to two classes, from four classes to two classes. This is just for the average professor. And, uh, well, you know, it's nice to give low teaching loads to everyone, but who's going to teach the students? And that's to your point, we are using, we, many more, we use graduate students much more than we used to. We always have used them, some in teaching. As I mentioned at the beginning, I, I did a little bit of teaching in graduate school in the 60s, but very little, uh, and, uh, so, today we have, uh, uh, graduate students do a lot of teaching. And as you mentioned, adjuncts, the word adjunct professor was, I, I wasn't, was unheard of in the 60s much. Uh, we had a few profess, a few people who were in business in the local community or lawyers in the local community or whatnot would teach one course, say a course in business law or something like that, or an accounting, or an accountant who would teach one class. We would occasionally get things like that, but very little of that. And that has exploded because there is an academic underclass today. There's two, there's the, it's almost like the Middle Ages. There's the lords, and then there's the serfs. The lords are the senior professors. Uh, and this is especially true at the prestigious mainline universities, be it private or even public. The best, uh, state universities, uh, the, the University of Wisconsin would be an example. Uh, uh, the University of California, Berkeley would be an example. Uh, Michigan, so on, but all, and of course, the Ivies would be examples. The, the professors in those schools, some of them have never taught a, an undergraduate student. Uh, I have a little story to tell. A very, very distinguished professor of economics at Stanford University, no slouch of a university, I might add, and I got to be friends because we taught together in a summer program in Boulder, Colorado. Cool place to be, by the way. And so this professor, I asked him, "Do you have any children?" He said, "Yeah, my son's going to college next fall." I said, "I said, 'Are you sending him to Stanford?'" He said, "Well, my wife says I should because we get free tuition at Stanford and he can get in. He's a good student, but I wouldn't let him go to Stanford because the professors at Stanford, first of all, aren't teaching the students, the undergraduate students. He would get crappy, um, adjunct professors teaching him who don't care a bit about undergraduate teaching. I'm going to send him to a very good, uh, liberal arts college, uh, where I'll have to pay a huge tuition, but I, you know, I want him to get a good education, and I think there's a lot of that, uh, you know, going on. Uh, the best teaching, I think, by the way, is in the smaller liberal arts colleges because they still have a bit more of a emphasis on teaching. I mean, they care about it, and they don't use adjuncts as much, and so on. But it, it's, it's a sad situation, I think.

You know, I have two bachelors and a master's, and I, I went to, I originally started out in the state of Minnesota. I'm from Wisconsin, and then I went to, uh, Wisconsin, and some of my, uh, credits didn't transfer, which is, of course, fairly common. So I went to a junior college, a jo, cuz it's like, well, you know, it's just cheaper. Was closer to my, my house, or my, my parents' house.

And at this jo, I had like a former Michigan State professor. We had like a former professor from MIT that was retired that was basically moved back to Wisconsin to like take care of his mom. Got a part-time job. And I was in class with like 12 to about 18 students with a lot of professors from around the US that were very highly regarded in their field. And I remember one time I had the flu and I missed class, and the professor's calling me. He's like, "Hey, like, he's talking to my dad, and my, you know, my dad's like, 'Yeah, like your professor called. He's all like concerned like you didn't show up to class.' I mean, could you imagine in, you know, any other school where like the professor's like, 'Hey, why didn't, why didn't you show up? Like, I want to make sure that like, you know, you're okay. Like, do you need to get caught up on lesson planning?'" And it's the junior college. I said, "I went to a big school in Wisconsin. I got a master's degree at a pretty big state school in Kansas." And it was the junior college in Wisconsin, which by the way, is no longer there because it basically, Wisconsin has a net, uh, loss. You know, as you mentioned in the book, a lot of these university population is decreased. So, a lot of these smaller schools are kind of going away, and the best experience that I had is not even available.

And it's way better than going to some, you know, quote unquote prestigious school. The difference is the quote unquote prestigious school gets you a job, right? So it gives you the credential.

Yeah. You know, and that getting the job is the, the critical point.

Yeah.

It's a critical part. Yeah.

Now, the, the universities have managed to benefit from the fact that their graduates made historically made 50%, 100% more than high school graduates. And that's still true that college grants make more than high school grants. But the great advantage of going to co, college was from the business point of view, employer point of view, they said, well, college graduates are smarter. College was sort of a sorting device. We sort out the 18, 22-year-old population. Who are the smartest? Who are the hardest working? Who are the ones who, who do what they say they're going to do? And who are the ones who are goof-offs? And, and, you know, can't be counted on. Well, college graduates by and large are more dependable than, on average, high school graduates or even high school dropouts. So, people say, "Well, I'll hire XYZ, a person or an individual went to XYZ University." Uh, he may not have learned much at that university, but he's probably pretty good anyway because he, he made it through the university, which is, uh, you know, an accomplishment of sorts. And so colleges were a sorting device, a way to sort out the good from the bad. Uh, not because so much what they learned in college, but just from the, the general attribute of the students. Well, that college sorting device isn't even working as well anymore. I don't think. As I said, first of all, colleges are graduating. So, all, everyone, the Ivy League schools graduate 95, 98% of their students that come in. They give a grade of B is considered sinful at Harvard, and, uh, you know, I, it's shameful. And, uh, so why do it? I mean, why go to college? Um, yet, having said that, I'm going to contradict myself. No. Uh, which is what professors do all the time. That's why I'm

All right.

That's why I am what I am. Uh, a useless, uh, old man who's. But anyway, what the hell? You know, some of those classes I took in my freshman, sophomore year in college on things that are totally irrelevant to vocations. Uh, courses in Western civilization, a course in English literature. I studied, uh, uh, uh, Shakespeare with a crazy professor who, he was crazy. He was sort of a TV personality as well. Very famous guy. This is at a famous university, Northwestern University, 50 years ago. But his lectures were mesmerizing. I, I mean, I remember to this day stuff about Shakespeare that I would never have remembered otherwise, and about, uh, 15th century, uh, English, uh, history, which everyone says, why in the heck are you studying 15th century English history? But somehow, I, I didn't gain something from it. I learned something from it. I became a better citizen. I could understand different philosophies. I, when I traveled, and I've traveled all over the world, uh, uh, you know, I, I understood things better. So, there's a sort of a consumption value to college. There's, you go to college because you learn things which are kind of cool in the long run, not vocationally particularly good. So, uh, that, there is that aspect which is, uh, there. But, but, but an 18, 18, 21-year-old kid today, you know, that they need, ultimately, they need a job. And learning, learning about truth and beauty is nice, but that's secondary to getting the job. And, um, uh, I am not particularly optimistic about the future. That's why in this book, I said, "Let's kill off some of these colleges." I don't want to kill them all off. Uh, some people said, "You're trying to get rid of higher ed." I said, "No, I'm not trying to get rid of higher ed. We're trying to get rid of 10 or 20% of it and scare the hell out of them." These administrators who sit in their offices and have never taught a class in their life, they don't even understand it. Uh, uh, and, uh, ju, just try to keep the alumni happy and, uh, keep the donors, keep bringing in the money, and, uh, lobbying the legislature and state schools to provide money. Uh, uh, the, who are involved in everything but teaching or dealing with young people, uh, that they want the good times to roll. But now, as college enrollments fall, and your junior college went out of business, would be an example, uh, more and more schools are going broke, as it were, and this is historically was unheard of. And some states are just letting them go. Uh, it used to be it was a sin for a college to close. I mean, a politician would never want a state university in their district to close. But now, uh, it's happening, and it's going to happen more, uh, I think, based on the, the numbers. Uh, the Midwest, particularly New England, as well, having these dramatic population declines of 18 to 21, 22-year-old kids, uh, uh, because of human nature changing and lifestyles changing, and people don't want to have kids. They don't want to get married. And, uh, in my universities, by the way, this is not quite X-rated, but R-rated, I suppose, for your show. Uh, we, part of the administration's idea to be cool with the students is they hand them bags of condoms when they, uh, arrive on campus. I, Oh, that's great. Let's, let's inculcate a, a culture where we tell people don't have kids so that 25 years from now, there won't be a university because there won't be any kids to come to that university. We, we should be doing the opposite of what, I don't know what the opposite is, but, uh, uh, we, we have really lost sight of, of the public. Uh, universities are too far apart from the real world these days. They're just, they're in a world of their own because they've been subsidized to death. Governments have dropped money out of airplanes over their campuses, or the equivalent of dropping money out of their, so they, uh, over their campuses, so that people can act irresponsibly. We can hire all kinds of extra administrators we don't need. And it's time to scare the hell out of the universities. Um, I don't want to talk politics and about it, but, you know, and Trump has done a lot of things, maybe good, maybe bad. We won't, don't want to get too much into that, but he's, he sure scared the living daylights out of a lot of universities, and that is having an impact. And maybe, maybe he's gone, maybe gone too far and whatnot. So, it's a problem.

So, Richard Veter, since we're talking about your book, and the title is important to this next question, Let Colleges Fail: The Power of Creative Destruction in Higher Education. And basically, kind of, you know, you have solutions. Everyone can talk about the problems. Everyone knows the problems of higher education about universities, colleges. Uh, one of the big things that you kind of talk about in the book is just the fact that since 200, about 10, every year we, or not every year, but for the most part, we have a shrinking population of college attendance. And, uh, in 2025, we had the largest high school graduating class in US history. And over the next 10 years, that class is going to shrink by about 1%. But at the same time, we also have college attendance shrinking, which means that the, the magnitude will be quite a bit higher. But as the title, the, the last part of the, the title in your book is called is creative, the power of creative destruction in higher education, which means that these universities will be forced to change as they have less students, they have less money. You're going to have colleges fighting over students. So they probably don't want to change, but they will have to with the shrinking population. Like you're mentioning the fertility rate. Yeah, that's a whole separate issue. But there are good things to the shrinking fertility rate, and one is the college reckoning is already here. So, what are solutions? And you also talk about like the University of Austin. You have other examples in the book that, well, let's just pick one example. Uh, I'm sitting in an office where there are 32 offices on the floor that I bought. I think I'm the only one occupying one of those offices. Now, admittedly, it's August. But that's another part of the problem. How long does it take to get a college degree? Four years. How long does it take to get a, a bachelor's degree at Oxford University? Three years.

Three years.

Yeah. Why does it take four years in America and three years at Oxford? Uh, why is it that Thomas Jefferson got a bachelor's degree, uh, at, uh, the College of William and Mary, which still is going strong, by the way. Uh, Jefferson got a degree in two years. Now, Jefferson was pretty bright dude, I, I think, based on the Declaration of Independence and a few other things he did, he was no dummy, and he worked, he's a weird guy in a way, he worked extra hard and all. So, two years, maybe is asking too much for someone to get what those in a bachelor's degree in two years, but maybe three? Why not three? Uh, you go to school, when do you start school? Well, the, the calendars have changed, changed a little bit, particularly with air conditioning. Now, some kids are starting school even in, in August. But historically, you go to school about the 1st of September. You, the semester into about mid-day, towards 1st of June. You have June, July, August off. You have a lot of December off. You have a spring break somewhere in there. So, you're in class seven and a half months a year for, uh, four years. 30 months total. You're in class 30 months, but it takes you four years to get a degree. Maybe we can make that three years. That would cut costs 25%. This, this isn't a, you know, rocket science. This isn't requiring high technology. This isn't requiring spending money. If anything, it's, it, you don't need the, you don't need to start building more buildings and all because we have, uh, we can use the buildings more efficiently and utilize them 12 months a year rather than 8 months a year, and, uh, maybe, uh, that could be done. That's just one example, uh, of things, uh, that we could do. Um, so, uh, the, you know, there, there's a whole, maybe we could get rid of 25% of our administrators at colleges. If the numbers went up, why can't they go down? Most occupations in America, today, it takes fewer people to make whatever they're doing than it did 50 years ago. Technological change. We have found better ways to do things. Uh, it takes, if you're making widgets, I don't know what a widget is, making steel, and in America, steel is not our big industry in this country, but even the steel industry, backwards as it may be, it takes far fewer workers to make a ton of steel today than it did 60 years ago when I started teaching. Why can't we do, uh, use technology more in higher ed? Uh, uh, and, uh, why can't we give exams to kids who are very, very bright and learn on their own, and there are a few of those kind of kids, or who learn, uh, through, uh, sort of nerdy kids who are computer experts who sit at home, they know a lot of stuff, but it's not formal learning. Why can't we give them examinations after, what, whenever they want to take them, really, that give them the show that they have the equivalent of what a typical college-educated person has? Why can't we have, I call it a college equivalent examination, uh, uh, examination, uh, why, in other words, why can't we do things differently than we're doing them now? Why do you have to go to one university, four years, monopoly university? Why don't you go to five different universities, and maybe two or three in one at the same time? And why do we have all these credit requirement restrictions? You mentioned alluded to this at the beginning of the program. You had to, you know, I, they wouldn't accept all my credits. Why do we have all of that stuff going on? Uh, uh, there's just so many things we could be doing that we're not doing, and, uh, because we've never done them before, what have you. Wh, why, why do we give professors sabbatical leaves every seven years at, at the better schools? What do they do with that time? What about these articles they write for the journal of last resort that no one reads? Professors got lower teaching loads and lower teaching loads and lower teaching loads so they could publish. Well, what are they publishing? What are they publishing? Some of it is good. I'm not, you know, research is an important component of, of learning and of higher education. The, the creation of knowledge is important, but, uh, have we overdone it a bit, or two bits, or three bits? Uh, we have academic journals that no one reads. Um, my book, I, there, there was a study done, uh, some years ago about Shakespeare. Uh, there was a 20-year period where a professor counted the number of papers written about Shakespeare. There were over 20,000 academic papers written about William Shakespeare in a 20-year period. That's a thousand a year. That's three a day. Every day, there would be a morning paper on Shakespeare, an afternoon paper on Shakespeare, and an evening paper on Shakespeare. Now, Shakespeare is a great guy, you know, I, you know, he's pretty, pretty cool dude guy, we should be studying a guy, should we should pay to, but is he really that good? Uh, isn't there some, the law of diminishing returns ought to be applied? We don't need a thousand papers a year on Shakespeare. Maybe we need 10 or 20, uh, but we don't need a thousand.

You know, it's interesting because, you know, one of the big stats that you mentioned in the book multiple times is that basically only 40% of full-time college undergraduates actually graduate within six years.

Mhm.

Or what I?

Six, a little bit higher than that, but.

Oh, no, first, I think maybe it was six.

Yeah, I had it wrong. Let me just reset this. So, one of the major themes of your paper is that only of, excuse me, one of the major themes of your book is that only 60% of undergraduates actually graduate with a bachelor's degree in four years. That means 40% either don't graduate or they graduate in six years plus. And right now, student debt per per student when they graduate from university is something, uh, about $39,000. So, if students actually graduated, as you're mentioning, in three years, four years, hell, even five years, that student debt would be lower. But one of the main things that I noticed when I was in university is that the university is not set up for students first. It's set up for faculty, admin, professors first. And I remember that I was in school for an extra semester because I had quote unquote core classes, and you would have like say three or four classes that you have to take, and they're offered at the exact same time at the exact same semester. And the, so which means that if you have three classes that are the exact same time in the exact same semester, that's three separate semesters, and really, it's actually three separate years because it might be only be offered in fall seme. And this is done on purpose. This is not like it just happens to be this way. Like this, the school, the university could change it. They are purposely trying to keep students in school longer. It's not like this is accidental. This is set up for the professor. It's set up to make more money. I didn't know any student that graduated in four years because this, the fact is these classes have conflicting schedules. There's no reason for this. The fact is, like you mentioned, there's so many buildings that are going unused a big chunk of the year. You have all these, uh, complexes for sport programs where they're barely used. I mean, why do we have a couple classes that essentially f your schedule, you know, for your four years there?

No. Uh, you should be a president. You should be Secretary of Education. Although I gather maybe we're, that's another issue, too. By the way, I, uh, I once said, we, uh, uh, that's getting away from your point, but I, but it is a point we could talk about later. Um, absolutely. Uh, colleges are run for the benefit of the faculty, or, or for the benefit. It's bigger than the faculty. Used to be the faculty. Now it's the, the, let's call it staff, that includes faculty, but increasingly it's not the faculty, it's the administration. It's, we're running them for their benefit. I mean, from their point of view, what am I trying to accomplish in life? I'm trying to make life as, as, uh, comfortable as I can for myself. My job as comfortable as I can. I want high pay. I want low work. Uh, I don't want to be a hassle. I want to do what I want rather than what I'm, what someone else wants. I don't want to teach freshmen. Uh, so we'll hire, uh, grad students to, or adjuncts, uh, to hire the freshmen, sophomores. I want to, uh, uh, do obscure research that I think is kind of cool, and I want to do it only 10 hours, 12 hours a week. 12 hours, 15 hours a week with teaching. I want to spend 30 hours a week, 30 weeks a year, 900 hours a year. Half of the law, what does a lawyer work? What does a dentist work? What does a doctor work? Double that, at least. And we put up with this stuff, and, uh, the colleges, uh, are paying for that, or will be paying for that. They are paying for beginning to, and I think they will more. I think a lot of them are just going to go by the wayside, and good riddance. Uh, and I say that sadly. I mean, this is my lifetime. This is what I've been doing my whole life. And, uh, it's a shame because, uh, we have, uh, uh, we are hurting people, uh, in order to enrich ourselves. Uh, I'm here, I am. I, I'm 84 years old. I'm sitting in an office, and I would be here, by the way, if I weren't doing your show. I was here. I was working on a book. I'm writing a book at my age. I'm not going to make any money off it. I probably won't even live to see it done. But that, my job is to work. My job is to do research or to teach. And I'm going to have a student come in this afternoon, a student, a sophomore at my university, who wants to come in and talk about stuff. So I'm doing that. I'm not getting, I'm not even getting paid for it. I'm doing it just because it's what I should be doing. We don't have much of that kind of stuff anymore. We used to. The, so the dedication of people has, uh, towards, uh, achieving a, a noble goal has declined, I think. So, I'm sorry I'm yelling and screaming, but that, that's what I do.

Basically, again, let's go back to the title of your book, Let Colleges Fail: The Power of Creative Destruction in Higher Education. And I bring this up again because in your conclusion, you talk a little bit about artificial intelligence, AI. And I think we all can agree at this point that we're going to have massive changes coming up in the next decade. Now, what those changes are, we don't know. But the fact is, I think, you know, the, the per, the, a lot of these white-collar jobs that you used to go to college for, the quote unquote, as you mentioned earlier, was the knowledge economy, the knowledge work. Well, a lot of that can be outsourced to AI. You know, maybe the mechanic, the plumber, the electrician, the diesel mechanic. A lot of those are not going to be outsourced. You're already seeing a lot of men skipping college, going to more vocational schools, things like that. How does artificial intelligence actually play into college? How does that factor in majors, all that stuff? And could this be kind of a good thing as well? It goes back into that creative destruction where you, I mean, colleges have to change because they will be wiped out with just a massive shrinking with way less dollars coming in from the government and and student tuition, etc.

Yeah, I think you're, this is the ultimate question for the next generation. Uh, how are colleges going to react to all this? I, I, I'm, I'm going to answer your question, but I'm going to use a little historical analogy because I am a student of the industrial revolution. Uh, that's what I taught, uh, economic history. And when we went through the first great technological changes that brought about, made us move from being poor people to rich people worldwide, the industrial revolution that started in England has spread now pretty much over the whole world. Who were the winners and losers in this industrial re, revolution? At first, there were, most people were in the long run winners, of course, but there were losers, uh, people who ran, we, uh, uh, weavers and, uh, uh, uh, people who, uh, spun yarn and we, we, cloth lost because machines were doing what they used to do. And so we had technology, namely machines, replacing, uh, manual labor. And so the big losers were those kind of people. The professors, even in those days, or the doctors, those days, the more sophisticated people had more education didn't lose. In fact, if anything, they gained because there were more people who got rich from, uh, these new inventions, and they funded professorships, and, uh, people, uh, uh, started living longer because we did more research and so on. A lot of good things came out of it. But today, these new, the AI stuff, for the first time, for the first time in human history, is attacking the brains. It's attacking the people who, uh, got what they got by going to college. So AI isn't going to wipe the colleges totally out. I think, uh, by the way, uh, some people go to college to learn, uh, to be, uh, ministers and priests, and AI does not substitute for the Bible. You know, I, uh, AI, there are a lot, there are occupations, AI doesn't draw, uh, beautiful paintings. Uh, there are a lot of, there are occupations where colleges have provided a role in education, uh, where maybe AI doesn't work. I, I could see AI perhaps becoming a great musical composer. I mean, music being composed by AI. So, even in the arts. But so, this is the challenge, and I think, uh, uh, colleges, I think, univers, I think universities, uh, who depend on public support should, uh, expect reductions over the years because I think we're going to find other things that we need to spend money on. There are more and more people like me who are million years old and who require walkers and, uh, uh, have to go to the doctor three times a week, and this is expensive. When the ratio of workers to old people to workers is dramatically changing. In 1950, we had six, this is I call this West Virginia PowerPoint, six, we had six, uh, working-age Americans for every older person over 65. Now, we have almost, it's getting down to three. It's not quite there yet. We, we have fewer and fewer young people to take care of an aging population because we have low birth rates and so on. Low immigration. Immigration were, uh, is a could be a factor in this, but it hasn't been as, as it should be. So, we have this problem. So, we have all these problems, and that means higher education, I think, has got a pretty bleak future. And, uh, maybe if it reduces its size by 25% or 50%, it, we, there will be people who always want to go to college to learn how to, uh, do things that are not AI-related. Maybe, as I mentioned, uh, paint, uh, you want to be a painter, uh, you go to college, maybe, uh, even in 2050, but things have got to change. So, we're in for a, a rough period. It's depressing, isn't it? It really is.

Today's guest has been Richard Veter, who is the author of the latest book, Let Colleges Fail: The Power of Creative Creative Destruction in Higher Education. So, Richard, just two final questions. One, where can people find your book? That kind of information. And secondly, leave us with a final thought, either related to this podcast or something that we didn't talk about that you want to kind of leave us with a final thought on.

Well, I'm thinking about the second one, but the first one is easy. My book, uh, is available in some very large bookstores, but most people would buy it. Uh, I, I know for example, it's for sale on Amazon, just to pick one. I, I've told Barnes & Noble sells it, sold by the standard book sellers. They sell, sold. It's, uh, I, I couldn't tell you how much it is, but it's under $30. I know that. My final thought is that, uh, the world is changing, and higher education has to change with it. Uh, and that, uh, the forces, let's call it, of the market, the market forces that lead people make decisions of what are they going to do with their lives, how are they going to spend their money, those market forces are working against higher education now. So, higher education has to adapt, adapt, and it has to adapt rather radically. Uh, and, uh, so, some, some people will have to lose their job, some people will fail, but it will come about eventually.

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