The Rant Podcast
A bi-weekly podcast focused on pulling back the curtain on the American higher education system and breaking down the people, the policies and the politics. The podcast host, Eloy Ortiz Oakley, is a known innovator and leader in higher education. The podcast will not pull any punches as it delves into tough questions about the culture, politics and policies of our higher education system.
The Rant Podcast
Navigating the Next Four Years with Michael Itzkowitz
The pursuit of higher education has always been seen as a pathway to success, but how effectively are colleges serving low and moderate-income students? In this episode, we engage with Michael Itzkowitz to unveil the California Mobility Index, a new tool that examines how various institutions rank in terms of creating genuine opportunities for their students. The Mobility Index serves not merely to illuminate which colleges offer the best return on investment but to challenge traditional perceptions of educational value.
As we navigate through this enlightening discussion, we discover how the index highlights institutions that are already making strides in advancing economic mobility. Most notably, it emphasizes the role of public and Hispanic-serving colleges in providing essential support to a wide array of learners and delivering impressive results when it comes to true value in education.
Throughout our conversation, we also tackle pressing questions surrounding the allocation of taxpayer funds and the necessity for effective government oversight of educational institutions. Given the dynamic landscape of today’s workforce, understanding which colleges are best suited to extend opportunities is vital for both economic growth and social equity.
Join us as we dive deeper into the statistics, share insights into the findings, and encourage listeners to think critically about their own educational journeys. We invite you to reflect on what it means for a college to create real value and how the California Mobility Index can facilitate better decision-making for students and families alike. Don't miss this opportunity to broaden your perspective on higher education and explore paths toward equitable access to quality education. Be sure to tune in, share your thoughts, and subscribe for more discussions like this!
https://collegefutures.org/california-mobility-index/
https://www.theheagroup.com/
eloy@4leggedmedia.com
www.4leggedmedia.com
Hi, this is Eloy Ortiz-Oakley and welcome back to the Rant Podcast, the podcast where we pull back the curtain and break down the people, the policies and the politics of our higher education system. In this episode, we continue our conversation about navigating the landscape in the new administration. We're going to be talking about data data that reflects how much value colleges and institutions are creating for states like California. Recently, college Futures Foundation and the HEA group, led by Michael Litzkowitz, partnered again to launch what's called the California Mobility Index. The California Mobility Index can be found on the College Futures website at wwwcollegefuturesorg. I'll put the link to the CMI the California Mobility Index, in the description of this podcast. The California Mobility Index focuses on institutions that are creating the greatest value for low and moderate income students, and it begins the effort to create a new way to assess and to rank institutions and to give more and better information to consumers. So I'm excited to have this conversation with Michael Itzkiewicz he's back for the third time and we're going to be talking about how the CMI the California Mobility Index better reflects how institutions are creating value for Californians and how policymakers should think about focusing time, attention and resources on those institutions that create the greatest lift for Californians and create the greatest value for the state of California. And since we're talking these days about government efficiency, this is an excellent way to begin to get at where taxpayer dollars are going and who they're serving. So with that backdrop, please enjoy my conversation with Michael Itzkiewicz. President of the HEA Group.
Speaker 1:Michael, welcome back to the Rant Podcast. Nice to see you, lillard. Well, it's great to have you back, michael. This is your third time. You are now setting the record for the Rant podcast. You are the only person that's come back for the third time, so we're happy to have you back. And you're coming back because we have a lot going on. We're going to be talking about some new work that you've done for College Futures, about some new work that you've done for College Futures. But before we get into that, how are you doing and how are you surviving the chaos of the beginning of the year.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, when you're going through something, you try to focus on one day at a time. So I constantly try to focus on the next 24 hours, and the last 24 hours have been good. I'm confident this 24 hours will go well and I'm looking forward to our upcoming release.
Speaker 1:Well, so am I. Let's talk about that release. So College Futures has sponsored some additional work with you and your colleagues at the HEA group. At the HEA group, this time producing what is called a California Mobility Index. The California Mobility Index looks at all of the four-year institutions here in California and essentially creates an index based on your previous work that looked at ROI and tries to sort out which four-year colleges and universities in California are doing the best in serving low to moderate income learners. Tell us about that work. Tell us about the data set, how that data came together. Tell us a little bit about the work and then we'll get into some of the findings.
Speaker 2:Sure, well, it's the year 2025, as I remind myself, and I'm getting older, so I've been doing this work for quite a while now, and when I was previously, at some point in my life, the director of the US Department of Education's college scorecard, which is the largest education data set within the United States and one thing that we started.
Speaker 1:As of this recording, there was still a Department of Education, correct? As?
Speaker 2:of this. Well, I haven't checked this morning, but yeah, as of yesterday, there is still a US Department of Education, there is still higher education data and we still have information on outcomes. And one thing that we started to produce back in 2015, which carried its way through the last administration and the administration before that, was earnings information how well students are performing in terms of economics after they attend an institution or complete a college program. So I started to really dig into these numbers in 2019. And I was running all this data on how much our students are earning. It's the first time we've seen it. And then I had this great idea. I said it sarcastically maybe, but it's like okay, I have the information on the median student how well is the low income student doing Right? So I ran all this data and the numbers popped up at that point in time and I don't know who I was expecting, but it was schools that had the best ROI for low income students were places like Harvard, yale, princeton and the University of Chicago, and I thought congratulations, michael, you just recreated the US news all on your own computer. But then there was a number next to them and it was the percentage of low and moderate-income students who actually enroll at those schools.
Speaker 2:So I started to reevaluate higher education in general and what we think we know in terms of what we're told year after year through publication and publication. I was like what's really the meaning of higher education? Is it to recognize the few and the fortunate, or is it to actually look at those institutions that readily enroll a broad group of students, lift them up and leave them better off than the previous generation? So we did similar work in California. We looked at ROI for low and moderate income students, and California is a special and unique place, so it wasn't the Harvard, yale and Princeton all across the best ROI list, but there were a couple of institutions like that. But we decided to take a deeper dive into California and say, okay, what are these institutions? Where are the ones that are actually lifting students up the socioeconomic ladder? So that's what we've been working on over the past few months now and what we have recently released.
Speaker 1:As you mentioned, we're looking at how value is created for low and moderate income learners, and in the past, we've relied primarily on a ranking or a sorting system that looks at the most selective or, as some refer to, the most rejective colleges and universities in the country, and those colleges and universities were rewarded for being more selective and for having a wealthier student body and relying on the earnings of their alumni. In this ranking system and, as you mentioned, most people know that, as the US News and World Report ranking system, and particularly in this environment that we're living in now, people are asking a lot of questions about the value of their higher education. They're asking questions about the cost. What are they paying for? What are they getting in return? And, as you know, most Americans, most Californians, receive their higher education from broad access, primarily public colleges and universities across the country. This is where most Americans attend college and where most Americans have been expressing concern, and so, in California, the work that you've been doing has really been highlighting institutions that are creating the greatest lift or creating the greatest value for low and moderate income learners in California, and the way that you calculated it is you know those institutions that enroll a broad base of low and moderate income learners and we're just focused on California right now and because of cost, time to degree, other factors they're able to pay back the cost of that education in a relatively short time and so that creates the ROI that you've reported on in the past, the findings that you've highlighted in this California Mobility Index.
Speaker 1:Here are some of the highlights and tell me what popped out at you. What popped out at me is 87% of the top institutions that showed up in the index were from the California State University system, and I have to preface this by saying and repeating that this mobility index is only looking at four-year institutions. We will come back at a later time, later in the spring, do a report just on the two-year institutions, but this is just focused on the four-year institutions. So a large percentage of the top institutions were from the California State University system and, of course, as we know, there are broad access, regional, public four-year university system. Here in California, 95% of the top 20 institutions are public institutions and 95% of the top 20 are Hispanic-serving institutions and 95% of the top 20 are Hispanic-serving institutions. So, given all those elements, how do you explain some of these results and what, if anything, surprised you?
Speaker 2:The great thing about College Futures and the HEA group is that we're not reliant on selling ads, so we don't need to tailor our outcomes based off of what folks reference points are right. What we think we want to see looked at the outcomes and inputs of these students, plugged it in and got the results, some of which you just mentioned, and I think it's incredible in terms of it's the institutions that are serving just a broad group of students. Obviously, we're looking at low and moderate income students, but you can also see a lot of these are Hispanic serving institutions, like you said. So they're serving just a bunch of different kinds of students, offering them an affordable education and really offering them a strong earnings premium to where they're able to recoup these costs, oftentimes within one year. They're able to earn enough to just pay down or pay back these costs within one year of leaving the institution.
Speaker 2:The other thing that stood out to me is these are oftentimes bigger institutions just in terms of the broadness of students that they serve, the number of students that they serve, in comparison to what we think of what is the most prestigious or best institution within California.
Speaker 2:So you know, it depends how you look.
Speaker 2:Everyone you know, if you ask a college president which ranking do you like the best, they're going to say whichever one makes makes us the highest and that's totally understandable. But you know, we oftentimes focus when we think about this. It's it's we're focusing on this small group of institutions, you know, through our traditional news rankings that serve less than 1% of the population, news rankings that serve less than 1% of the population, for that 1% of the population they can also offer a great ROI. And for institutions that serve that very small proportion of low and moderate income students and do it extremely well, we recognize them for doing so within our ranking system. But in terms of just actually serving low and moderate income Californians and giving them and the ability to recognize the dream of moving up the socioeconomic ladder, it's these bigger, broad based institutions which maybe aren't readily recognized in traditional news rankings, but perhaps they should be and we should also think about the policy implications of what they're doing and what's worth scaling and expanding their reach throughout the state.
Speaker 1:I agree this gives us a lot to focus on Now.
Speaker 1:We all know that there remains a lot of imperfections in our public and private four-year university systems systems, but this gives us an opportunity to start to drive at policy initiatives, incentives, funding opportunities to reach those institutions that are creating the greatest value for the workforce.
Speaker 1:Because, regardless of how you feel about the words diversity, equity and inclusion and I know that's become three bad words in America these days but the point of the matter here is, in a state like California, or even a state like Texas or Florida, where you're at, or New York, or just about anywhere in the country, there is a growing, diverse workforce that needs to be educated, the talent needs to be extracted and connected to the demand for labor to keep our country and our states economically viable, and this is also a national security issue to ensure that people of all backgrounds have access to a great education, particularly today, for me and for us at College Futures, this is not about a philosophical argument.
Speaker 1:This is about an argument for greater economic security for more Americans. And so these institutions a lot of them are Hispanic-serving institutions, and so many of them exist in places in California that serve a very diverse population. So, michael, in your data and you look at this across states, across the country are there similarities to what's going on in other states, or are there some things that surprise you, that are different in California than other states?
Speaker 2:Or are there some things that surprise you that are different in California than other states. When I did look at this nationally a number of years back in a different way, I think that we've improved upon that and thought about ways to iterate based off of that. One thing that we did recognize is yeah, there are a lot of Hispanic serving institutions, or HSIs, that really rose to the top of the list. I think nationally, the top 10 were actually HSIs. I brought this information to my friend you know, Deb Santiago, who runs Excellencia. They provide a seal of excellence to HSIs, I think every year, and I showed her the information and she looked at it and she said well, duh, like we've known that for a very long time, but now we have the data to back it up. Right, you know. So it definitely serves that purpose.
Speaker 2:And nationally, something else that we saw is that these other kinds of institutions across the United States that were never to be seen on these traditional news rankings actually were shown to perform better than the ones that we normally think of. So, just as an example, nationally, we can see that seven HBCUs were actually in the top 100. Now, if you look at the US news, they're nowhere to be found. Right, we don't even think about them, or a lot of folks don't think that they are a top-ranked institution, but they've been doing the work for years. They enroll a broad group of students, they allow them to earn enough to pay down their educational costs and they're lifting these students up. So, like I said, we tried to do a similar tactic in California, where we can readily recognize these institutions. Just going back to your earlier point, all of this data comes from the US Department of Education.
Speaker 2:So the cost that students pay it's reported by institutions themselves. The earnings data it comes from actual tax records. It's administrative records. So it's oftentimes seen as the gold standard of earnings data because it's what people are actually making every single year. But we were able to look at 82 four-year institutions across California and in total they enroll nearly 800,000 undergraduate students per year. So that was kind of the scope of this study, which, in a state of California, we're able to have a rather large sample. So that's what we were looking at this time around.
Speaker 1:Let's contrast those top schools with some of the schools in California which most people typically think of as high ranking. So you have in California places like Stanford or Santa Clara University which are great schools. Don't get me wrong. I think they're excellent schools. They produce a great value for the state of California but they didn't rank very high in this index. Why does a school like Stanford or Santa Clara not rank as high as it normally would in some of the other ranking systems?
Speaker 2:Well, the first thing that we looked at, to your point, was the ROI that low and moderate income students get at each and every one of these four-year institutions. So, as some folks probably know, stanford has an amazing program for the low and moderate income students who get accepted and eventually enroll. Their tuition is essentially paid for. Accepted and eventually enroll. Their tuition is essentially paid for. The cost out of profit is almost non-existent. So they're going to have one of the best ROIs. In fact, in our research, they have the best ROI. It hardly costs anything to go for these students whose families are between $0 and $75,000. And the students are making over $100,000 within 10 years of entering the institution. So we recognize that and we basically give them 100% recognition. They are on top of the list.
Speaker 2:Now, that being said, we were interested in which institutions actually provide the best economic mobility.
Speaker 2:Now, for these few unfortunate students, there's 19% of low and moderate income students who attend Stanford, as an example these few unfortunate students, there's 19% of low and moderate income students who attend Stanford, as an example.
Speaker 2:So, for those 19% of students, they're going to have the best ROI, but the actual scope of their ability to offer economic mobility is extremely limited. Now they could do this, but what they're doing with the current students who enroll, it's just a very limited scope. So we take those two things into account and when you look at, we're giving them the highest rating for ROI. But then we have to take into account just the scope of the students they're serving and they go from number one in terms of ROI to, I believe, in the 30s, so they're kind of middle tier in terms of just pure economic mobility that they're providing within this study. And we've seen that through other similar types of institutions great ROI, amazing programs for low and moderate income students who enroll, but there's just not very many that go there. So the actual scope and ability of them to provide this with the limited students that they're offering this to is just lower than other institutions. And it's recognized through our rankings.
Speaker 1:So, as you said, stanford does a tremendous job for the students that enroll there and it creates great opportunities, but it's such a low concentration of the overall population of California, such a low concentration, especially for low-income and moderate-income learners in California, that, in our view, doesn't have the same economic impact for the state of California as the top performer in this index, california State University, los Angeles, a campus that enrolls a large proportion matter of fact, majority of low and moderate income learners and is much more accessible. So, in my view, what College Futures is trying to communicate here from a public policy perspective? From a public policy perspective, what are the institutions, which are the institutions that are creating the greatest economic value for the state of California because of the way that they're serving a broad swath of Californians? Asking, particularly in an environment like today, when we're talking about this every day, efficiency in government. Where do taxpayer dollars go? How do we get the most out of our taxpayer dollar? Well, in a state like California and my guess is in all 50 states ensuring that money goes to places that create the greatest economic value for a state and create greatest economic mobility for low and moderate income Americans, I think is a great use of taxpayer funds.
Speaker 1:Now let's talk a little bit about who's at the bottom of this list, and the one thing that surprised me about this is almost every public institution in the Cal State system, in the UC system and, by the way, there are a couple of UC campuses in the top 20. You have places like UC Merced, who just became an R1 institution and is serving a population there in the Central Valley, creating great economic mobility. You have an institution like UC Irvine, uc Riverside and UC San Diego is in that mix as well. So all these public institutions in combination with the CSU campus are creating great value.
Speaker 1:What I notice is At the very bottom of the public list was a campus in San Luis Obispo, cal State University, san Luis Obispo, and that surprised me. It surprised me because one it's a Cal State and that it is at the bottom of the list of all the publics surprised me, surprised me. So why would a public campus like Cal State, san Luis Obispo rank so low in comparison to the other public institutions? Michael, based on your analysis, there's a couple different reasons.
Speaker 2:You know, we do see a lot of the Cal States being extremely affordable for folks who enroll, especially low and moderate income students, and there's a number of different programs throughout California that support these students and enable them to ultimately enroll in these institutions. So it can be low risk in that way, but to the point you have to be able to earn enough to be able to ultimately pay down your educational costs. So, looking at these two things together, we looked at every kind of institution. You could be a for-profit institution, you could be a private, non-profit institution or a public institution. We didn't have any bias where we're trying to weigh the list one way or the other, but you do get certain instances where schools that don't fit your typical trend or mold either end up at the bottom or the top of the list. There are trends to your point. Like we noticed, a lot of private nonprofits were also overpopulated, the schools that did not offer a lot of economic mobility.
Speaker 2:One of the things that stood out for me was just the overall cost. It can be 10 times, if not 20 times, more expensive for these low and moderate income students in comparison to a lot of schools that were shown to provide the greatest economic mobility. I mean, I noticed that a lot of these schools were smaller. Number one they don't serve that many students, which I guess it's good that the ones that are providing the most economic mobility are actually enrolling the most number of students to begin with. But these institutions there's a lot of them that are over $100,000, if not even significantly more than that for these students to obtain a four-year degree. So just to think about a student whose family makes between $0 and $75,000 and tell them that they have to then fork up over $100,000 over a four-year period, it's going to be very difficult for them to climb their way up that mountain, even after they've gotten their degree and entered the workforce.
Speaker 1:You highlight something that we're also hoping happens with this data, and that is more and better information to the consumer, people making choices, particularly low and moderate income learners, first generation learners, who don't have all the information that most consumers in higher education have, helping them make better decisions, or at least better informed decisions.
Speaker 1:Certainly, if my child got an opportunity to go to Stanford for a free ride, of course I mean, that'd be a great opportunity for them, but there's also lots of nonprofit and for-profit institutions advertising to these same learners and helping them better understand the choices that they're making.
Speaker 1:I think, looking at the list and I'm not going to go into any great depth, but if viewers here look at that index and they look at the bottom of that index, they can see institutions that do market to a lot of low-income learners. I know several institutions here in Southern California that market to people who want to be in the entertainment industry or people who want to be in other types of industries, and they're at the bottom of that list because one, in many cases they haven't kept those promises the ROI hasn't been there and two, they're not serving those low and moderate income students well. So that's our other hope is that this data provides consumers a better opportunity to view these institutions and the choices they're making through a different lens. Now, this data that you're using to create the index, it's being made available publicly. What are some of the other uses that you can think of that people in California might be able to use this data for?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so to your point, like we have a website that we can direct folks through through the comments section where we're publishing all of this information.
Speaker 2:Like we've done with all of our other Golden Opportunities reports, we are making this data publicly accessible and available to folks. We don't think it's any good sitting on our hard drives. We want institutions, families and learners to have access to this. And I think, going back to your previous point, like this isn't the end of the college search for consumers, but maybe it can inform the beginning right, like it's a great opportunity to maybe add additional options that you hadn't previously considered. There are so many good options that are not on my TV. They don't have the advertising budget as a lot of these less good options, but they're great options. So we're hoping to encourage folks to readily consider those as additional places that might be an amazing fit for them, and what we're seeing through the data is it's an amazing fit for so many learners. To your other point, it's a good opportunity to maybe cross some more risky options off of your list.
Speaker 2:So a lot of times we go to college because it's close we go to the closest place or oftentimes it's because a family member went there. We don't know why. You know it's just. It's just our natural instinct. We know someone that went there, or it's within 50 miles of our house, and that's totally reasonable in terms of how we make decisions and we just need to understand that. But there may be other good options that you're not regularly considering. So we're hoping that folks begin to think about that.
Speaker 2:The other thing is just you mentioned the advertisements.
Speaker 2:The other thing is just you mentioned the advertisements and it's oftentimes institutions that aren't necessarily the highest performers that appear to have the highest advertising budgets.
Speaker 2:If you watched the Super Bowl recently, you may have seen, you probably saw a few of them, and if you're in higher ed, you probably notice them all over the place.
Speaker 2:So I hope that we're able to more readily recognize these institutions that don't have the biggest advertising budgets, but for them to enable themselves to say look how well we perform, here is what we did, here is what we're doing in terms of the scale of economic mobility that we're providing students, and we also hope that institutions can learn from each other, that policymakers can learn from institutions, and that we may find some scalable practices to be more effective and efficient and remain competitive within the US and global community. A lot of jobs are going to require post-secondary education throughout the next 10 years over 70% across the United States. There's a very broad and diverse group of people who live in California and we need to give each and every one of them options to succeed, and every institution of higher education needs to step up to the plate, learn from each other, work on continuous improvement efforts and continue to do so.
Speaker 1:I agree that many more institutions need to step up to the plate. So, Michael, let me ask you one last question as we begin to wrap up. This is a pass at the four-year institutions here in California. The index just focuses on public, private, nonprofit institutions that serve individuals going for a four-year degree. What will the next iteration look like as you look at the two-year institutions?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we took a stab at four-year institution. This is what folks normally think of when they think of college rankings, but we also know that the traditional student of yesterday, the 18-year-old going to college, is not necessarily your traditional student of today. They might be older, they might be returning students. There are a lot of folks who started but never finished college and what we've seen through our research is that associates degree-granting institutions can often provide an extremely quick ROI can often provide an extremely quick ROI. So we think it's critical within the state of California to look at these institutions less than four-year institutions, community colleges and such to think about. Where are these institutions that are punching above their weight, providing students with the best bang for their educational buck and providing them opportunity to enter and thrive in today's workforce? So we're going to be looking at two-year institutions across California within the coming months and we hope to have the next iteration of this available in the spring. So keep an eye out for that.
Speaker 1:Well, we certainly will, and maybe we'll have you back on to talk about that next set of data. So, michael, appreciate you. Coming back on to the podcast. I know you've got a lot going on in your world, so thank you for being a guest here on the Rant podcast. Again, always, thank you.
Speaker 2:Eloy.
Speaker 1:All right, everybody. You've been listening to my conversation with Michael Iskowitz, president of the HEA Group. Hea group and College Futures recently launched the California Mobility Index. We will put a link on where to find the California Mobility Index in the description of this podcast and, if you're watching us here on YouTube, hit subscribe, continue to follow us on your YouTube channel and if you're listening to us on audio, continue to follow us and find us on your favorite podcast platforms. Take care, everybody, and we'll be back to you real soon. Thank you.
