[piano intro] - Hello, I'm Nido Qubein.

Welcome to "Side by Side".

My guest today once worked with Mister Rogers.

She now focuses on public policy issues affecting more than five million students attending this country's 1700 private colleges and universities.

Today we have the privilege of speaking with Dr. Barbara Mistick.

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Ashley HomeStore, this is home.

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[bright upbeat music] ♪ - Dr. Mistick, welcome to "Side by Side".

I'm fascinated by the fact that you actually worked with Mister Rogers.

And today you are the president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.

You must have always had love for education and somehow some way your path crossed with Mister Rogers.

- It did and it was one of the best chapters of my career.

I had this wonderful opportunity to work with Fred on a national science foundation grant looking at how curiosity can be a building block for science.

But before I got the position I had to interview with Fred and the day that I went for the interview with Fred, I'm sitting there, it was right before Christmas time and in the middle of the interview, he became King Friday and interviewed me as though he were King Friday.

- Even with his voice?

- In the whole voice, the whole character.

Fred was always King Friday in the neighborhood of make believe.

And so he went right into that and I knew that voice and the character 'cause my kids grew up on Mister Rogers- - This was an interview to see if you would fit to work there?

- Right, right.

- [Nido] I see.

- Yes, I was a seasoned professional, a professor at Carnegie Mellon.

- What did you do?

Did you stumble?

Did you laugh?

What happened?

- I just rolled with the punches which I think is often the best thing to do.

I enjoyed it, I answered his questions and we became great friends and I got to work with him through the end of his career and his time at Family Communications which incidentally was a PBS station in Pittsburgh.

- So now you are in DC doing the work of some 1700 independent colleges and universities and my oh my, what a difficult period the last few years have been.

What with pandemic and COVID and all the challenges that higher education has, you were the front line lobbying for, explaining, communicating about the essence of higher education.

Tell me what was the most difficult thing for you throughout that period of time?

- Well, this just came upon us so quickly.

The pandemic, all of a sudden.

It was the beginning of March, next thing you know, March 14th, 2020, we declared the national emergency for the pandemic and it was just astounding how quickly everything changed within the higher ed community.

First of all, in February, people were worried about getting students back from study abroad programs.

Then all of a sudden we were looking at closing down our campuses, sending students home, we had so much uncertainty about how the virus spread.

And so there was a lot of anxiety and a lot of concern about how almost every income stream for colleges and universities was deeply impacted at that time.

So our concern was about how we could help colleges and universities stay intact through the pandemic.

So I think there was a couple of wonderful things that happened, the community, the whole ecosystem, all of my colleagues, whether it was the community colleges or the land grant universities, we all really worked together- - You had a common cause after all.

- Absolutely, a tremendous common cause and a lot of impact across the entire nation.

And so working together, we were able to secure in three stimulus rounds, $77 billion for higher education which is more than was given to the airline industry.

So I think it gives you a great sign for the importance of education and the importance that Congress placed in keeping colleges and universities open through the pandemic and after the pandemic.

I think they knew they were gonna need us more now than they needed us even during the pandemic.

- Yes, of course.

And what happened in terms of these, all the challenges colleges went through, what has been the aftermath of all that?

Is it mental health getting to be a bigger problem with a bigger challenge with students who went through isolation for many, sometimes for a year or two, studying at home, staying remotely, is it that colleges used up their reserves and found themselves in dire need of additional resources?

What have you noticed as the impact of the pandemic, the aftermath of it all that we're feeling now that we're seeing now on college campuses?

- Well, it's a great question and it's complicated question because there are impacts for institutions as well as for students and for communities.

I think the silver lining to the pandemic for colleges and universities is the value of in-person education.

At the very beginning- - Residential.

- Residential, in-person, being part of a community, that's what students said they missed throughout the pandemic.

Right when the pandemic was starting, there were lots of news outlets doing interviews with us saying this is gonna be the end of the residential college.

We're all gonna be online now.

And students are just gonna be in their basement and do their degrees in a online format.

And that turned out to be so far from the truth.

And what students said over and over again was that they wanted to be on campus, they wanted to be part of a community, that interaction with their professors, the interaction with other students, that was so much a part of this foundational experience of higher education, it's not just the delivery version.

- So Maslow was right all along then, huh?

About belonging.

- Yes.

- One of the needs we all have as humans is to belong and- - And we're social animals, right?

- Yes, absolutely.

Have many colleges closed down or merged as a result of all this?

They've been trends of course going in that direction way before the pandemic clearly but have you seen any unusual trend that leads to the demise, the closure, or even sometimes the merging with some other institution for economic reasons?

- Well, there have been some mergers throughout the pandemic and there have been some closures but the number of closures and the number of mergers have not been any greater than they were before the pandemic.

So the pandemic hasn't really, it's not the reason for the difficulty that some institutions are having.

Most institutions that have closed or merged were in some kind of financial stress before the pandemic started.

The pandemic might have pushed them over that edge and into a different kind of relationship but I think that institutions haven't fundamentally changed, the number of institutions across the country.

So I think that difficulty is that institutions have changed throughout the pandemic and some had the resources to do that and some did not.

- And some have improved the way they do things, more efficiency, more productivity.

Tell me this Dr. Mistick, Why is it that public confidence in higher education has been diminishing?

For example, it felt 14% since 2020.

It used to be 69% believed in the value of higher education.

It dropped in 2022 to 55%.

What's that all about?

Is it really something happening in higher education or is it the perception thereof in society or is it the impact of social media or the delivery of education through many other avenues and vehicles?

- You don't like to ask simple questions, do you?

- I'm curious about all this.

- So this is complicated too.

In just in a recent study that was done by New America, 85% of Americans said that they really believed in the value of higher education, how important it was to have a post secondary degree.

I think that the public at large really understands that your income with a college degree is gonna be significantly higher than it is with just a high school degree.

As a matter of fact, I think just generally starting salaries with a bachelor's degree aggregate across the board, 65,000.

Starting salaries with just a high school degree, about 32,000, so it's a tremendous difference.

So people understand that.

What's really interesting in this latest study that was done was the trust and the faith in community colleges was about 85%.

The trust in faith in public colleges was about 78%.

And the trust in faith in private colleges was 71%.

So I think what you're seeing is that within the ecosystem, some of us have a reputation that somewhat different than other parts of the ecosystem.

So I think that is to us who are presidents and operators and advocates for higher education to find out how to really express the value of a degree.

- Is it about affordability?

I mean, there's so much talk about of course, debt, student debt.

So much talk about affordability that many people cannot afford to go to a university but community colleges can prepare him for all kind of trades and they tend to be much more affordable.

Do you think these are contributing factors?

And if so, how?

- Absolutely.

In a recent conversation I had with Secretary Cardona, our secretary of education, he said that what really bothered him on the road is he's talking to students is how many students say that they don't wanna go on to college because they're afraid of student debt.

And there is this perception, I think what you're looking at is two and a half years of discussion about waving student debt or abating student debt.

So we haven't charged students any interest and students have made no loan payments in two and a half years.

So you have this $1.5 trillion bubble hanging out there and students are nervous about it.

Right now, we're sitting here waiting for the Biden administration to decide what they're gonna do next.

Are they gonna continue to waive loan payments?

Are they gonna forgive loan payments?

So it's very complicated and of course, there are pros and cons about all of that.

- Of course.

I mean, there are many people who say, well, I worked hard, I paid my debt.

Why would we cancel for this one?

These are philosophical questions, of course, they lead to- - Well, it's very complicated because 2/3 of student debt out there is less than $25,000.

1/3 of student debt out there is less than $10,000.

So we get this idea, we have this perception that everybody's got $100,000 in debt and it's just- - It's skewed by graduate programs, is it not?

- It is skewed by graduate programs.

And it's also skewed by professional programs.

So people who do- - Medical, law, et cetera.

- Right, right, but those are not the folks that are defaulting on their loans.

So it is a complicated topic and I think right now what's really difficult is to decide whether there will be any forgiveness at all.

So, I mean, there's a lot of push but there's dialogue on both sides of the aisle of just about the things that you talked about.

We're looking backwards, from a public policy perspective, you know sitting in my chair, it's not a good thing to do public policy looking backwards.

You wanna do things looking forward.

- Sure, yeah.

Well, but what are we gonna do about affordability?

I mean, running a university today is more expensive.

Inflation not withstanding, by the way, it's more expensive.

It takes more money to provide residential facilities, higher skilled faculty, maintain and retain the level of services that are required for extraordinary education.

So what are we gonna do in this country about people who really can't afford it?

From my perspective by the way, I think government should step up in more ways.

I think perhaps foundations should step up in more ways but I really haven't done extensive research on what does that mean statistically.

What is your point of view?

- Well, if you look at what we spend on higher education as a percentage of GDP, we are way below- - [Nido] Minimum.

- Most other countries in the world.

So we've been very behind on this topic for a long time.

If you take something like the Pell Grant which is a grant that goes to low income students and helps them afford a college education, when it first started 50 years ago, in 1972, it covered 79% of the cost of attendance.

Today it's less than a third of the cost of attendance.

So while the government started to fund students, low income students into higher education, it's not kept pace.

So many people, the same people who answered the survey we were just talking about, 58% of them said that they think the government should do more.

And we've been advocating for doubling the Pell Grant because the Pell Grant goes to students.

It doesn't go specifically to institutions.

A student can take it to any institution.

They go to community college, they go to a private institution, a public institution, so the aid follows the student.

It's been a successful program, its means tested.

It's something that appeals to Americans across the board.

- Absolutely.

Your background fascinates me.

You went to undergraduate work at Carlisle College.

Then you received your MBA at University of Pittsburgh.

And then you get your doctorate in business at Case Western Reserve University.

You know something about business.

Clearly, you were an entrepreneur for 20 years.

You founded a company called Mobility Incorporated.

And then yet you find yourself today in advocacy for higher education day in, day out.

And by the way, along the way you serve as director of National Education Chapter for Women in Business and Pittsburgh's public system, public library system, and more.

You truly have a very colorful congruent, I believe with what you're doing now, a very colorful background.

Tell me how that helps you in your endeavors today.

- Well, I think having that kind of diversity across my career really makes it possible for me to look at problems at the complexity that we deal with today through a variety of different lenses and that really helps me.

I think that one of the most important things that you can bring to a career is an open mind, just a mindset that is open about the possibilities that are out there.

And in each of those situations, I've seen something that I really thought I could make an impact in.

Where I could see the problem that was there and maybe I don't know the exact solution at this moment but I know that I how to get there and I can understand the kind of collective action that it's gonna take to get there.

And I think that's exciting for me is to work with the 1700 private colleges in the nation and we work in a very interesting way.

We're a federated system.

So we work with presidents like you and others, 36 presidents in North Carolina, 1700 across the country.

We ask you to work with your elected official in your district because all politics is local, right?

You are a major employer in your community and if you have a relationship with your Congress person or with your Senator, that's really gonna make a difference.

So we try to amplify our voice in Washington with the voices of all of our presidents across the country.

We actually have private colleges in 396 of the 435 congressional districts in the country so that gives us a lot of standing in communities.

- And they acknowledge and understand the economic impact and the brain trust that brings into our community.

It strikes me though, I have to tell you, it strikes me that you work has gotta be frustrating.

Trying to persuade Congress to see it your way to continually put it on the front burner, to understand the challenges and problems higher education has, has gotta be a big task.

- Well, it's a one and done kind of opportunity when you're advocating for private colleges but it's so important.

I mean, I have had the opportunity sitting in your seat as a president to see how transformational the experience is for students.

- You were former president Wilson College.

- So I know how important that is.

And I know that what we need to do most is to have Congress understand how important that is.

We can't let the message get lost.

There's so much noise out there, it doesn't matter whether there are important issues every day, whether it's mental health or whether it's climate change, we have to make sure that the important issue of making access to higher education possible is always on the front burner and I enjoy that challenge.

- Yes, well, you believe in it?

- [Mistick] I do believe in it, I do.

- You started a company called Mobility Incorporated, it's a fascinating undertaking.

What is it and why did you do it?

- Well, the interesting thing about my career, one day I sat down and said, "Geez, there's gotta be a commonality "in all of these opportunities."

And I have essentially been in education my entire life but in different ways.

And when I started Mobility, it was really to provide access for handicapped children, mostly physically and socially, emotionally disturbed children to K-12 schools.

And it was a gap, it's a gap in the marketplace.

There were a lot of people providing school bus services but no one was really in that middle area.

So I saw it as an opportunity and I did that for a good number of years.

I grew my business from, I think I started with, I started in a garage like a lot of other famous entrepreneurs.

- Yeah, well, Apple computer was started in the garage.

- I started in a garage- - Thank God for garages.

- I know, I had seven vans in a garage and a mechanic.

And when I finally sold my business, I sold it to a company that's that you might know today for a student, it's a U.K. based company that is the largest pupil transportation carrier in North America.

- Were you manufacturing?

- No, no, I was providing ride share services to handicap children.

- Okay, so you were buying the material if you will and the resources and then providing transportation- - Specialized the vehicle.

So we would take a van and customize it to accommodate students who were in wheelchairs, students who had other kinds of- - And your company was doing the customization?

- I was working with a provider to do that and at that particular moment in time, there wasn't a standard for handicapped children.

And really, it was tremendously rewarding.

I think perhaps that's when I discovered how rewarding it could be to work with children and what a difference education could make.

- What a wonderful thing to do to help children in a very meaningful way.

And now you travel from coast to coast, obviously.

Border to border, to meet with some members of NAICO, National Association with Independent Colleges and Universities.

And as you look forward, what are the dreams that you have?

What are the hopes, what are the aspirations that are doable?

I like to say that they're not such thing as unrealistic dreams, only unrealistic timelines.

I assume you believe with me, your life certainly demonstrates that.

Your achievements demonstrate that.

What are the things that you look forward to and say, I believe, I hope we will someday do these things.

What are they?

- First and foremost, I really believe that the diversity in our higher ed ecosystem is incredibly important.

- And you define diversity as?

- The diversity of types of institutions.

So you have public institutions, you have private institutions, you have community colleges, you have this range of choices within the higher ed ecosystem.

- America's rich in that way.

- Very much so, we're the envy of the rest of the world.

Our higher education system is the envy of the world.

But we have to preserve that diversity.

And I think it's on each of us to make sure that that diversity stays within the system.

So that's so important in Washington- - So you're advocating that the future is better and richer for all of us.

For example, in North Carolina, we have 17 schools in the public system, university system.

I think it's 55 or so community colleges, 35 or 36 private, you're saying it's wonderful that we have these different systems, if you will.

And the diversity of the whole is significant for the good of the people?

- Absolutely because not all students learn in the same way.

And what's really interesting about the private sector is that we actually have 40% of the institutions in the nation.

There might be more public institutions, they might serve more students and they do.

- Their enrollment is larger for them.

- Their enrollment is larger.

So there are five million students in the private sector, in the independent sector and it's 40% of the institution.

So a lot of our schools are smaller and that gives students a different choice.

It's a different educational environment.

And that environment's been really important to a lot of students.

As a matter of fact, our sector has the highest graduation rates.

So 84% of students who go to a private institution graduate in four years.

In the public sector, that's about 70%.

In the community college sector, is about 20%.

So you have to look at the system overall, I think that this diversity, the competition within the system keeps everybody doing a better job, the public sector and the private sector.

And what I think we have to really guard against today is this idea that we could go to a free public college model and that would preclude so much investment in the private side.

And if you look at our nation, 1700 colleges, I can't tell you how many of those institutions are the center of their community.

They're the nucleus for a town, for a borough, for a county.

And they're a primary employment center for that community.

They're an intellectual center for that community.

I don't think we wanna lose that diversity but we need to think a little more deeply about it and we have to make sure that Congress understands how important it is to maintain that diversity.

- No question, I agree with you wholeheartedly.

High Point University and High Point North Carolina is the only university here.

Impact of almost a billion dollars a year, economic impact.

Hires 2000 people but it's not just in that, it's in the brain trust the university brings to a city.

And in North Carolina, across this state, it demonstrates that amply, that where there is a college or university, there is richness in culture, in arts, in faculty participating in all these boards, in students serving the committee and so much more.

Dr. Mistick, it's so wonderful to have you on "Side by Side" with me.

I honor what you do, I value what you do and I realize how cumbersome at times it is and yet how rewarding it must be when you achieve the goals that you set forth and when you meet the needs that colleges across America has.

Thank you for being with me today on "Side By Side".

- Thank you very much for having me.

[soft upbeat music] ♪ - [Announcer] Funding for "Side by Side" with Nido Qubein made possible by.

- [Narrator] Here's to those that rise and shine, to friendly faces doing more than their part and to those who still enjoy the little things.

You make it feel like home.

Ashley HomeStore, this is home.

- [Announcer] For over 60 years, the everyday leaders at The Budd Group have been committed to providing smart, customized facility solutions to our clients and caring for the communities we serve.

- [Announcer] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors locally.

Thanks to our teammates.

We are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.