Eloy Ortiz Oakley of the College Futures Foundation on the Power of Community Colleges – Transcript

Kirk: [00:00:00] Welcome to, let’s Hear It.

Eric: Let’s Hear. It is a podcast for and about the field of foundation and nonprofit communications produced by its two Co-hosts, Eric Brown and Kirk Brown. No relation.

Kirk: Who else said Eric. And I’m Kirk.

Eric: And I’m Eric. The podcast is sponsored by the College Futures Foundation. Which envisions a California where post-secondary education advances equity and unlocks upward mobility now and for generations to come to learn more, visit college futures.org.

Kirk: You can find, let’s hear it on any podcast subscription platform.

Eric: You can find us online at, let’s hear@cast.com. You can find us on LinkedIn and yes,

Kirk: even on Instagram. And if you like the show please rate us on Apple Podcasts so that more people can find us. So let’s get onto the show

and we’re back. Welcome in. You found us. We found you. We’re here, we’re together. Once again, it’s, let’s hear it. We’re none of those things and [00:01:00] across from me virtually. That I could see is the shining, smiling face of dead, Mr. Brown. Hey, Mr. Brown.

Eric: How you do the moist, shining, smiling face? I we took a little time off this summer, I think for It’s true to allow everybody to rest.

Oh boy. Because this summer, nothing happened.

Kirk: Oh

Eric: man. And it’s been very quiet and everyone’s just been sitting on the beach. With a book, isn’t that right?

Kirk: I’ve been locked in a closet, rocking back and forth. But yes, nothing happened. It was very relaxing. It’s all been fine. It’s all gonna be fine.

Eric: And as it happens, I was in a closet, my mother’s closet, conducting an interview with Eloy Ortiz Oakley, the president, and CEO of the College Futures Foundation.

Kirk: Oh my goodness. And this is a good one. Oakley, thank you so much for coming on. Let’s hear it. And we’re going to school. We’re going to school. You’re gonna school brown because this is and this is a very insightful and interesting conversation, so set it up. Before you get into it though, go check out the rant podcast.

Yeah. ELO’s podcast, [00:02:00] another podcaster, kindred spirit. So please go check out the rants. That’s, I think I know you talked about it a couple times in the conversation, but I wanna. Flash that right up front.

Eric: Absolutely. Also, I would like to issue a disclaimer. Are you ready for me to disclaim? Go ahead.

People might recognize that the College Futures Foundation is a sponsor of this podcast, but for the record, I have been trying to get the CEO of the College Futures Foundation on for a really long time, e even Eloy. Predecessor, Monica Lozano, before they were a sponsor of this thing. And then when Eloy came in and because of his community college background and I have a particular feeling about community college, yeah.

Then I got very excited. So this is purely a coincidence, people, and I really hope that you believe me ’cause it has the added benefit of truth.

Kirk: It is such a great conversation. Let’s listen. We can come back. So this is ELO Ortiz Oakley from the College Futures Foundation on, let’s hear it.

Great conversation. Let’s listen and we’ll come back.

Eric: Welcome to, let’s Hear It. My guest today is Eloy [00:03:00] Ortiz Oakley, the President and CEO of the College Futures Foundation. Now Eli is the former chancellor of the California Community College System, so yay. Region emeritus of the University of California.

You were 10 years, you were a regent appointed by Jerry Brown. No relation. Let’s see. Eli was senior advisor to the Secretary of Education. Miguel Cardona. I so many more education things that it would use up half the episode just listing them, but more things. Eli is also the host of the Rant podcast, which is a weekly podcast focused on pulling back the curtain on the American higher education system and breaking down the people, the policies and the politics.

I would say that more than anything, if I can offer this as my own observation, you’ve just been a true champion for equity in higher education, which has informed your work every step of the way. Eloy, I’ve been so eager for this conversation. I’m so grateful for you for coming on the show. Thank you.

Eloy: Absolutely. It’s great to be with you, Eric. Great to be on your podcast and just looking forward to the [00:04:00] conversation.

Eric: Me too. First of, and I have to give my own whatever community college bonafide days. I am a absolutely super duper proud. Graduate of Monterey Peninsula College where I received my aa all right, and was able to transfer as was my wife to the University of California at Berkeley.

And those two years at Monterey Peninsula College set me on the course where it’s why I’m sitting in my mother’s closet doing this podcast interview with you today, but it’s community college has changed my life. I was. All in the wilderness or out at sea, or use your metaphor of aimless. And they brought me in and I’m just so grateful for this system.

But I’m also grateful for the opportunity that provides, not just for me, but for so many other people. And I know that you are also a community college graduate. I am. Can you just talk about how your own journey [00:05:00] has informed all of this Incredible. Education work that you have done over the years.

Eloy: Thank you for that intro, and thank you for talking about your community college experience because it is such a transformative experience that we don’t talk enough about throughout this country.

Community colleges are the backbone, the primary mode of entrance into post-secondary education for so many Americans throughout the country. And as you mentioned, I’m proud to be a community college product. Golden West College in Huntington Beach, California. My story is like many stories. I didn’t go to college right outta high school, even though I was, I played little football recruited by schools like Pitzer College and the Claremonts, which recruited by Brown University, but I didn’t know what that all meant.

I didn’t know how I was gonna make it work. I didn’t do it. I stayed back, wound up joining the Army, spent four years serving in the Army. Don’t regret that. Don’t regret that decision for a second. It was a great opportunity for me. Then when I came back. I was raising a family. [00:06:00] I was working. Then I finally figured out that I needed to get into college in order to improve my life and improve my kids’ lives.

I just happened to drive by Golden West College. I happened to stop. I picked up a class schedule, and guess what? Here I am today. It’s the beauty. You think about it. No other system of higher education in the world allows somebody to just walk up. Pick up a class schedule and enroll in college. That’s the beauty of the community colleges throughout the country, and that’s informed my life work since then because I am just one of millions of stories that are similar.

People just looking for an opportunity, finding that opportunity on a California community college campus or community college campus throughout the country. Then turning out to do wonderful things in their lives because of that experience.

Eric: And obviously after that you, did you go to Irvine, is that right?[00:07:00]

Eloy: Yes. So I, from Golden West College, I transferred to the University of California Irvine. I got a bachelor’s degree in environmental analysis and design. Don’t ask me how I picked that major. It picked me and was working at the Coast Community College District. The district that is has Golden West College in the district.

One thing led to another. Before I knew it, they encouraged me to go get my graduate degree. I went to the School of Business at UCI got a second degree, an MBA. This time I started working in administration and one thing led to another. I got great opportunities along the way. Always felt that my journey needed to be about highlighting the journey of many of their students like me, talking about the value of community colleges, the importance of transfer, the importance of creating a seamless pipeline that really values the kinds of learners that go through that pipeline.

So [00:08:00] that’s been what I’ve been doing ever since. Along the way, I got a chance to work at several community colleges, became president of Long Beach City College. I got the opportunity through Governor Jerry Brown to become the chancellor of the California Community Colleges, and along the way he appointed me to the uc Board of Regions.

So it’s been a great ride ever since.

Eric: We’ll stay on community colleges for a little bit, but we’re gonna get into a whole business of higher education, which is so complicated. I think getting controversial. Higher education can be controversial apparently. It’s

Eloy: what’s controversial. It

Eric: has become

Eloy: because it is a business.

Eric: It is a business and community college is also. They have something of a stigma for some people. Oh, I don’t want them to go to this lesser place. And then who knows what’s gonna happen? Or they may stall out their. Although for me and for a lot of other folks, it was the only option, but for many people it’s a great way to learn who you are.

It’s a great way to explore things that relatively with [00:09:00] low lower risk than you come to Pitzer and your parents are paying whatever they pay At the Claremont Colleges, how have the community colleges worked on developing and understanding among their whatever customers. About the value and benefits and the opportunities that community colleges offer.

Eloy: So I’ll give you two answers to that. And there are a few others, but I think of two primary answers why there’s this stigma around community colleges. Some people call it a 13th year of high school. We’ve had TV shows made out that poked a little bit of fun of community colleges, although I thought it was a.

And hasn’t been until recently, hasn’t really been until President Barack Obama began to highlight community colleges that things started to turn around. There’s two primary reasons I think, that we find ourselves in this situation. One is [00:10:00] the colleges themselves, administrators, and the faculty are a product of a higher education system across this country.

That prides itself on selectivity. That prides itself on rejecting more students than it admits. And it infuses individuals who come to the institutions that they’re special because they got into a flagship university, an Ivy plus university or college. And so there’s this mentality. And then when they arrive at community colleges.

They carry that mentality forward and then they feel they’re less than their other higher education counterparts. This is common throughout higher education. Community colleges compare themselves to the next rung up on the ladder of higher education. State regional universities like the California State University system, them compares themselves to an R one university.

R one universities compare themselves to other R ones that [00:11:00] have bigger endowments, and it goes on and on. We have this perception of value in America that the most rejected institutions that allow the most resourced students in are the best. And so that bleeds into a community college, which has no entrance requirements, no admissions requirements.

I literally walked on campus and enrolled in college. And so if you think about that, is part of this. Psychology in America that if you’re an institution that allows just anybody to walk in, you must be low quality. You must not be at the same standard as an ID plus, which is completely ridiculous because the rigor of the instruction is as good, if not greater.

At a community college, the work that faculty have to do at a community college, they actually have to teach. You think about when you went to university, how [00:12:00] many faculty you actually saw versus teaching assistants. Faculty at community colleges know their students, know their challenges and actually teach and get them into the ballpark so they can show up at home plate and be able to play.

So that’s a primary reason. And the other is just this, the under-resourced nature of community college that’s in America. I’ve had the privilege working at or serving at the most resource public institution in California, and the least resource institutions in California, public institutions in California.

And it is true that, the students in need, the resources the most, get the least. And that’s just a function of the way we think about, again, the value of higher education and how policymakers, voters think about it as well. It’s begun to change. I credit President Barack Obama for highlighting community colleges when he lifted the Americans College Promise Initiative.

And community colleges have become a better, [00:13:00] have been highlighted as a greater and greater value today than ever before. And I think that’s gonna continue into the future.

Eric: This notion of selective universities, which makes my blood boil. ’cause they’re not selective what they are. As you said, they’re exclusive and they’re exclusionary.

What they’re telling so many people is you don’t belong. And under this mantle of being selected and this notion of elitism is one of the things I think certainly you’ve been working on it, and anyone who’s been working on equity throughout the nonprofit world has been looking at how do we create a new model, a narrative around what it means to belong.

And certainly at community colleges, you’re literally, you are accepted. We accept you for who you are, what you’ve done. We understand that you’re working probably several jobs. We’re understanding that many of you have families, you’re coming back from some from the army, for example, or other things in your lives, and now we’re gonna try and fit [00:14:00] all this in.

That’s an incredibly powerful set of skills that you need in order to be able to navigate that. And yet what we say is, so if you didn’t go to some four year Ivy League University, you can’t apply to this job, or we’re not going to look at your resume as closely or those sorts of things. Trying to create this narrative around inclusion and belonging feels what’s right up the alley of community colleges for people who are really, are working so hard to.

Deliver on the American dream. This American dream.

Eloy: Exactly.

Eric: I also, if I could do a little bit of editorializing, I think our own foundations and institutions and businesses have to model that as well.

Kirk: Yes.

Eric: Is we have to look for people who come from these experiences. ’cause they’re problem solvers, they’re jugglers, they got plates spinning.

They’re good at stuff,

Eloy: they’re great at stuff.

Eric: And. Whether their parents could send them to Yale or not is not the point.

Eloy: Yes. And our institutions, particularly our foundations and again, that I have nothing against [00:15:00] all my colleagues that went to Heavy Plus Institution, but we tend to replicate, that, that same mindset because that’s where we’re looking for candidates for our work.

And those experiences are further and further removed from the experiences of the people we’re trying to help on the ground. I think we need to always have a balance of ensuring that we’re having people come from the the highest level of institutions in the country, but also the highest level that have the diversity that we seek and diversity of individuals that we are trying to help as organizations.

Eric: Okay. So now having been in the belly of the beast, if you wanna call it that, as a chancellor of a community college. Board of Regents and then running the community college system in California. Now you’re at College Futures Foundation. Floating above the trees a little bit you can see across the expanse.

Yes. And you have these resources to try and try new [00:16:00] things to put your thumb on the scale, if you wanna call it that. Where do you see the opportunity for philanthropy to play a role in bringing about. I would say change in how we think about higher education and how it, and the value that it provides to students and their families.

Eloy: So the first thing I’d say is you have to begin the work understanding and having an appreciation for humility. An organization like mine, we are California only grant making organization. We. Provide grants somewhere in the range of 20 to 21 million depending on how the market’s doing in any given year.

When I was changed to the California Community Colleges, the California Community College budget was north of $8 billion. So even if I commit $20 million to the California Community Colleges from my organization, that is a drop in the bucket. So it’s a drop in the bucket of how we think about using money [00:17:00] to influence change.

So the way we’re approaching the college futures is this is understanding our role and where we can have impact and where we think we can have impact is how we think about changing the narrative. About what post-secondary education should be all about. What we, how we change the perception about value.

For example, we recently published a report called Golden Opportunities, which measured the return on investment on all 292. Title Four eligible institutions in California, and it showed what you’ve already mentioned, which is community colleges regional four years, like the California State University system.

Campuses do a great job of returning on investment for learners and their families. That’s the way that we are thinking about it. We’re also highlighting leaders that are doing the heavy lift on the ground. Moving the needle in terms of changing the perspective of their campus. [00:18:00] Highlighting not only attaining a degree or a credential, but ensuring that degree in credential connects to economic mobility.

That it actually lifts those learners that we’re doing what we need to do to connect learners to jobs, good paying jobs. So it’s about how we as an organization and how philanthropy can influence. Those actions can in, can create a new set of incentives. And we do that by highlighting leaders. We do that by publishing research, by publishing reports.

We also do that by trying to influence the way policy makers think about value as well. And so philanthropy needs to work together. On those fronts. No one philanthropy has enough money to do, put the dent in seg their education that we all. Even organizations like the Bill and Melinda Great Gates Foundation, great organization, huge number of resources, they can’t do it alone.

So we have to work together and [00:19:00] figure out what each other’s role is, how we can be most effective, but at the same time, understanding that we are all working together and all trying to connect our goals together to advance this notion changing the way America thinks about. Value in post-secondary education.

Eric: This question of value is really important. We’re gonna get to that right after this break with Eloy Ortiz Oakley of the College Futures Foundation. Be right back. You are listening to, let’s Hear It, a podcast about foundation and nonprofit communications hosted by Eric Brown and Kirk Brown. If you’re enjoying this episode, you may just be a rule breaker.

Tune in to Break Fake Rules, a new limited series podcast with Glen Gall, CEO of the foundation. Hear from leaders in philanthropy, nonprofits, government media, and more to learn about challenges they’ve overcome by breaking fake rules and which rules we should commit to breaking together. We are also sponsored by the Conrad Previs Foundation.

Check out their amazingly good podcast, and [00:20:00] we’re not just saying that. Stop and talk. Hosted by Previs Foundation, CEO. Grant Ola. You can find them at stop and talk podcast.com. And now back to the show. Welcome back to, let’s Hear, my guest is Eloy Ortiz. Oakley, the CEO, or President, CEO of the College Futures Foundation, and we’ve been talking about value in higher education and also the role of philanthropy.

Okay. First I wanna get back to philanthropy. It seems to me, as someone who’s com looked at, Phil, been in and around philanthropy for a really long time, that education feels like almost the hardest thing. To do philanthropy around, as you mentioned, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, they famously went down roads that proved to be too difficult to navigate.

And small schools and high schools, they realized that wasn’t quite right and other various other things that and you can look at Mark Zucker, Reagan and Newark and like people think that it’s easy to do philanthropy around [00:21:00] education. It turns out to be phenomenally hard. Why is that?

Eloy: Because at the end of the day, higher education is about people and culture.

It’s one thing to change a business process to create greater profits by lowering costs in a business or increasing sales in higher education. It is literally about changing the way educators think about their job, their roles, how they were taught to teach, what they were taught about learning. And introducing different ways of looking at how to support learners.

So you’re and our institutions are part of a history that’s a couple of centuries old. We inherited our higher education system by our colleagues in Europe. There’s a huge British influence in the way that we think about higher education. So removing all that culture, all that history. Takes [00:22:00] time and philanthropy, and I don’t wanna pick on any one philanthropy, but I think they normally begin with the premise that we can change this in over five years, maybe 10 years, and it proves to be more difficult.

So in the example of Bill Mon Gates Foundation, I think they were remarkably successful beginning to change the narrative. They just didn’t know that’s what they were going to try to do. These collective efforts over time have an impact. We, you and I today are talking about value. That conversation began years ago and has taken time to, to work itself through and getting people to understand what we’re trying to say, getting people to, to change the way they think about it.

And then once that happens, then policymakers begin to make changes. Leaders begin to have a different perspective about what it means to lead an organization, and then you begin to see the change. So it’s a much longer horizon than most philanthropy are [00:23:00] comfortable with, but that’s the reality of how you change big culture, latent organizations like we have in higher education.

Eric: There’s this debate going on right now, and it’s as hot as it can be about this, what this notion of value. For higher education, should we just be training people to get a job or are we just a jobs factory in higher ed or, and whatever happened to the love of learning and the under and learning to learn and this ability to just get information or knowledge, and maybe that’s good enough and given the high cost, given the time and the effort and the energy that you have to put in to achieve a degree, for example.

Where do you see the balance being struck? What is the role of these institutions and what should we as a society, and what should philanthropy as an institution be doing to try and get it right?

Eloy: So first of all, we, an educators [00:24:00] should be listening to the learners and poll after poll survey. After survey, Gallup does a survey, America does a survey.

Lots of organizations do survey of learners. Year after year, learners are saying the same thing in greater and greater numbers. They see higher education as a means toward improving their economic and social mobility. Inherent in that is having that education allow you to enjoy a better career, enjoy greater wages, enjoy a greater lifestyle, so that’s inherent.

We can pretend that doesn’t exist in higher education. We can pretend that at our own peril because learners today have more agency than they ever had, and they’re voting with their feet. Enrollment decline is a real thing. Private nonprofit colleges and universities across the country are closing in greater and greater numbers.[00:25:00]

We see enrollment decline across the country. A big reason for that is learners questioning why they should go. Because it’s not, the value proposition isn’t clear. The cost is high, and for them it’s too much risk. We, as educators need to think about what the learner needs. We as educators know that they’re the greatest value of what we offer them.

Is this opportunity to learn more about themselves, to become better citizens. Is this hard to do all that if you don’t know how you’re gonna make rent? If you don’t know how you’re gonna pay for your next meal, if you don’t know if you’ll ever have the transportation you need, if you’ve got parking tickets piling up, you don’t know how you’re gonna pay for all this.

It’s hard to be an active citizen when you’re poor and starving. So that is the reality of learners today, and we as educators owe them the [00:26:00] chance to improve their economic mobility. At the same time, offering the opportunity to continue to learn over time, continue to come back to us so they can become more holistic citizens of this country and enjoy the benefits of Fuller life because of all the things and all the benefits that higher education brings to them.

But at the end of the day, they’re coming to us for a reason. And the reality is almost all of our institutions market. If you come to us, you’re gonna have a more prosperous life. So we have to put our money where our mouth is and actually deliver that.

Eric: It feels to me also like we’re at this moment of like complete revolution in education.

You’re on the, you’re trustee of the Western Governor’s University, which has, you have a hundred thousand students, 200,000 some.

Eloy: It’s a big number.

Eric: It’s a non-campus. Universities, students from all over the world, that feels like a [00:27:00] pheno, like an astonishingly democratic style of providing education with that has great benefits and has trade offs as well.

For sure. But that’s, and then there’s University of Arizona, which is everywhere. Every, everywhere and everywhere. And then you’ve got these old style brick and mortar. Less progressively designed or whatever, more classical places that feel to me like they’re increasingly elite. And perhaps increasingly marginal to the broader question of how do I get an education that provides for a value for the time and the effort and money that I’m putting into it.

Where do you see do, where do you see it shaking out and what are the implications of that?

Eloy: So we have operated. A narrow band of the spectrum of higher education. We have operated historically that on this notion that [00:28:00] if you’re 18 to 24, that’s the window where you have a chance to go to college, do your thing, live in the dorm.

You already go to the football game. That’s not the reality for the majority of learners in America. That’s a minority, but we have this. Strange, nostalgic notion that’s the way it should operate. First, as I said, that’s not the reality. The majority of learners in higher education today, over 60% are working learners.

They can’t afford to have a full-time residential experience on a college campus. Two, the demand for skills and degrees in the workforce has increased over time. So you see a lot of adult working learners now seeking higher education, needing to access higher education. ’cause perhaps they didn’t have a great experience at 18 and 19.

They couldn’t afford to go. They had a [00:29:00] family, whatever the case might be. And so the implications are that we are heading toward a point where one learners, anybody in the workforce has to reskill and upskill consistently, constantly. So having access points to post-secondary education, regardless of where you are in life, is where we’re heading and that’s where we should be heading.

So in the case of Western governors using university, it is appealed to working learners. People who are already working, who need that next step. It’s a great opportunity. Campuses like Arizona State University have tried to democratize access to their campus by you have limitations when you’re a brick and.

What a SU has done is gone online use technology to reach more learners. And so that has to be where we go because we need to increase access to higher education, not decrease. We [00:30:00] can’t be about just the few and the fortunate going, we have to create a system where anybody can go regardless of where they’re at in life because we know today.

That if we want to maintain a livelihood, a good wage, we’re gonna have to continue to gain active education and skills throughout our lifetime.

Eric: So what role does government have or should we then make it easier for those types of institutions to provide that type of education? Or do we leave it to the marketplace to.

Let it all shake out the way you think, the way we hope that it will.

Eloy: It’s a little bit of both. Government, rarely, ever nor should it lead innovation. Innovation should come from the ground up, from institutions, from organizations, from third party intermediaries. And then I believe the role and government should be to open up the door to innovation, put guardrails and ensure that the consumer is protected.

In this [00:31:00] case, the learner. That’s the role of government. Role of government shouldn’t be to come up with the innovation because that’s not what they’re suited for. The role of government should be to encourage innovation, to focus innovation, and to ensure that innovation is leading to the kind of outcomes we want for society.

Not just enriching one company or another, but actually. Providing a benefit to the learners across this country. So that’s the way I look at it. Not to plug the podcast, but had a great conversation with the undersecretary, James Qua, about this very notion about what is the role of government. It’s one of the season two episodes, but it is, there is a friction point right now.

How much innovation should the government allow and how should it protect consumers? And we’ve gotta find a better balance.

Eric: We’ll, don’t worry about plugging the podcast. We will do it liberally in our end. Communications around this. Just with the last couple of seconds that we have left, what gives you hope?

For the future? Things [00:32:00] are changing, many of them for great reasons and in great ways. What are you most excited about?

Eloy: What gives me hope is the way that this younger generation thinks about life, things about work, things about what matters. Very different than my generation. I’m right at. The early years of Gen X, I spent my life mostly surrounded by boomers and my kids, where every generation below that, except for the last few, but generation, thinks very differently about why they should go to college.

They wanna go to college to improve themselves, not to do it just because somebody’s telling them that they have to do it. When they arrive at Collins, they expect something in return for their investment. So they’re not shy about asking for something of value, and they are, their view of life is much more expensive than my generation’s life.

[00:33:00] So that’s what gives me hope. And I think if we could create opportunity for them to get access to the education that they desire, country’s gonna be in good hands.

Eric: That’s a great way to go out, and not to sound like one of the muppets in the balcony, but yeah, the kids today are not shy.

Eloy: Not at all.

Eric: Eloy Ortiz Oakley President, CEO of the College Future Found Futures Foundation.

Check out the Rant podcast, which is really terrific. Thank you so much for your time today. Thanks for this great conversation. I really loved it.

Eloy: It’s been great being with you, Eric, and thanks for the opportunity.

Kirk: And we’re back. I also think we need to note in his many gigs he’s also coming off.

A stint is the chancellor of, he’s the California Community College Chancellor was for a number of years too.

Eric: Yes. I thought we mentioned that. If we didn’t, then we should have.

Kirk: Yeah. Okay. Okay. Fair enough.

Eric: Yeah, and which is where my particular interest focuses, because I do believe having gone to community college after having [00:34:00] wasted away in the wasteland of post high school life for eight years, and I, they took me.

I belonged. I was accepted at community college and it allowed me to. Build a life. And so the democratic nature of that institution in particular is something that is near and dear to my heart, which is why I really wanted to talk to Eli, who was the chancellor of the California Community College and the largest community college system in the country, arguably the most successful and the most excellent.

And I certainly experienced the benefits of its excellence. So I also wanted to really put a point on that because it is such an important aspect of. Higher education at life after high school, college. Call it what you will.

Kirk: So I love that part of this conversation that it was so personal for you in terms of your personal experience.

So talk about that. Talk about how you found your way to community college and you, there was a very just beautiful description of [00:35:00] community college, but also some really interesting comments. And I heard a little, I heard the volume turn up a little bit when you were talking about these other institutions are not just selective.

They’re exclusionary and community college is standing in such a different way, talk about this, talk about your own journey to community college. ’cause I loved hearing about that Eric, and I don’t know that we’ve ever talked about that on the podcast before.

Eric: Oh I’ll try and tell a short story.

I was, I had left Hollywood after having flamed out there. I was, I am a multiple hassman for people who dunno me well enough. I was in Monterey, California because it was the nicest place. I could think of within a one day’s drive of Los Angeles to be really depressed in Uhhuh. ’cause I knew I was gonna be very depressed having left my career.

And I was sitting in the fog in Monterey, which is a place I really love. And I, you in a revelation I just decided to enroll at community college and to see if I could make something out of myself. My mother said, yeah, you’re making a horrible mistake. I think I might’ve told you this story before.

Because she wanted me to go back to Hollywood, but let’s not talk about my mother right [00:36:00] now. I’m really mad at you for bringing that up, Kirk. Oh wait, sorry. Anyway, so I signed up for a full boat of four classes in community college in my first semester, and I loved it. And I really felt like I was it, the people there the professors, everything, the students, it felt like the place where you can make your life.

And anyone is welcome you, you automatically are accepted into your classes to learn. And that was the first step for me in the rest of my life. And I graduated with a associate’s degree two years later, as did my wife. We both were lucky enough to get into uc, Berkeley, and we. Studied there and we felt like we were very special.

And the fact that we got there, we never ever, in acry years, in the Beilin years would we have gone, been able to get in if it hadn’t been for our time at Monterey Peninsula College and that was. It was just an extraordinary, it’s a democratic education. We’ve got those lower division classes that usually [00:37:00] there’s 9,000 people in a great big lecture hall or an arena or something like that.

We had, I had 20 in my intro to PoliSci class. My professors were people I knew. My history professor. I still visit him 30 years later in Monterey. And we have lunch or we have dinner and we hang out and we talk about important things and that connection that I have to that place. We’ll take, I will take it to my last breath.

And I will think about

Kirk: that. And Eloy shares this experience, right? Eloy talks about that. Yeah. Same. But the same thing. Just walked in and I’m like, oh my goodness. And Eloy say, where else in the world could you have this experience? You just walk into community college and that puts you on a trajectory towards these incredible.

Accomplishments. And Eli gives us a little snippet into this really challenging thing where we’re using these very scarce philanthropic resources to try to inform change and improve enormous systems. His aside about the scale and size of [00:38:00] the California community college system. I know it’s like more than $8 billion per year.

Pretty big in terms of its total scope. And so that he’s deploying, what did he say, roughly? 20 million, 20,

Eric: 21, something like that. Yeah.

Kirk: Dollars from the from the foundation to actually create change in that. And

Eric: for all of higher education in California, he’s, they’re not just funding community colleges.

They’re funding the narrative around. What it means to succeed about what? What it means to have access about how do we create a more equitable system for higher education for people in California.

Kirk: All of it. It isn’t that a tip, by the way, in terms of strategic Yeah, resource allocation and how you can create.

Turn your philanthropic dollars into something greater than the one you might think. But where did, where’s the intervention? They invest in the narrative side of it. They invest in the storytelling. Among other things.

Eric: Among other things. But yes, very important. Totally. Which is why Eloy is an interesting guest for a communications podcast.

Totally. Every people was like, oh, you’re just talking about higher [00:39:00] education. But what we really are talking about is how do you tell a story? That engages. Audiences and shifts systems. And in this instance, we are talking about it in the context of college and what does it mean to succeed and what does it mean to belong and what does it mean to exclude or be selective about your yeah.

Choices. And I think that’s such an important way of thinking about the stuff that we do. If you’re in the nonprofit world, so much of it is about trying to figure out how to make a fairer better system for everybody at the, I think at the center of that is education. We all understand how important, how powerful an education is, and I think we also acknowledge that those resources are not fairly being distributed, and that’s such an important part of.

All of our work, and that’s why I thought that this would be a great example for how do you talk about communications in the context of social change and in this instance around [00:40:00] college.

Kirk: And it’s funny, that stigma that you talked about, that community colleges, they can feel that less than they carry the mentality because they’re open and they accept everybody.

It’s. So I’ve had my own little first person experience of this recently. I took my daughter who’s way too young to have wanted to do this. We did our first ever college tour this summer. Whoa. And and it happened because she declared outta out of the blue, she declared she wants to go to college outside of California.

And as when you’re raising kids in California, it can be very hard for them to acknowledge that there’s any other part of the country. So once you say, okay, I want to be outside of California, what, where, what does that mean? It’s the whole rest of the country, right? Yes. So you gotta start, you gotta start.

Sort it out. So we did this little tour. We saw these different schools. We were in the Mid-Atlantic, New York in, area. And I ran, I encountered for the first time that sense of selectivity. Yeah. As you walk across these campuses and you’re like, oh, our admission rate is X percent. And it’s 20%, it’s 15%. It’s. And you just get that, you get that feeling around, oh, who’s in, [00:41:00] who’s out? And all of the schools are gorgeous. They’re beautiful. After a time they all kind of start running into each other. But then this notion of separateness and how, okay, if you get through these doors, you’re gonna have this separate and this unique experience.

I was thinking that contrast with the community colleges is, and how inviting they are. Yes. Is this a weird expression of transparency almost? It’s like opening the doors literally Yes. To education. It’s not, you’re not in that special little, temple on the hill. It’s actually, no.

This is something that’s gonna be accessible, important, and it’s gonna help people as Eli talked about. Start materially improving their lives as they have the experience of getting this educational experience. Oh,

Eric: totally. And these colleges and universities say, welcome to our gated community, where almost nobody belongs.

Exactly. We keep out the, if you need to riff, we keep out the schmos and the schmucks, but you, maybe you are good enough, maybe you’re good enough to come in and, oh, and by the way, it’s gonna cost you. 70, $80,000 a year. Oh [00:42:00] man, you’re gonna be saddled with debt unless you’re lucky enough to be wealthy enough to have your parents pay for it.

That is a crappy way to run a railroad. It is a terrible lesson or message that we send to society, and it’s just it’s infuriating. And the community colleges, of course, are the antithesis of that. Come here, right? Learn. We will help you. And you won’t have, it won’t have to spend nearly as much money with any luck at all.

You will graduate from your first two years of college without any debt or with minimal debt. You’re gonna have a leg up on. Future, and frankly you’ll be able to transfer to other places. And the fact is that my diploma says uc, Berkeley on it. It doesn’t say with the poor schmuck who spent two years in the bad place.

I don’t know. So in that sense, whatever, but the point of it is I probably wear my community college credentials because I think that they say something about. Who I was and [00:43:00] how I worked and that kind of stuff. And it’s true, but we don’t make that a source of pride for people. We, these institutions are saying those schmos who go to the community colleges are less than you are.

You’re a special. That’s, we have to stop that. It’s just

Kirk: problem. Stop that and start emphasizing this other superpower that Eli mentioned almost in passing when he talked about the faculty at community colleges actually know their students and they actually teach. Yeah, so that’s the other part of it.

It’s like you get outta this selective rejective thing, which is the gateway to all future success, whatever, and then you actually get into this factory that. Treats you in a certain way, but you may or may not have access to even the faculty that are supposed to be teaching you. Depending you on the institution that you become part of the community college experience is different.

You’re actually gonna have real relationships with your faculty. Yeah. And the faculty are there because they wanna teach. That feels like that’s just an incredible superpower that runs throughout the entire community college system.

Eric: [00:44:00] And let me just pile onto my own previous rant, which is that our foundations and organizations and companies and everything else.

We continue to place a priority on the elite graduates who went to the elite schools that are promoting this very problematic narrative about who belongs and who doesn’t, and that has to stop. We have to start. Understanding that people who worked their way through college who didn’t have the opportunity to go some fancy place, but got a great education from professors whose names they know and they didn’t get taught by TAs who are still popping zits.

Like those people are great and they’re gonna make great employees, they’re gonna make great colleagues, they’re gonna make great grant makers. We have to start thinking about that in a completely different way. We have to build. A demand for students who receive the Democratic education. Yeah. And who can help us learn about ourselves [00:45:00] in more and different and useful and interesting ways.

Kirk: I got a very challenging question to ask you later about along those lines, but one of the really interesting exchanges you could, you guys had was about. How difficult it is for philanthropy to address education and I thought that eLO’s comments about that. What are you actually trying to change when you’re actually changing something?

Air quotes, you can’t see my level, my air quotes hands, but when you’re changing education, you’re changing everything. You’re changing how educators think about. Their roles. You’re thinking you’re changing people and culture and we’ve worked in and around projects that are trying to do things related to improving and changing educational outcomes.

And I have to say I don’t know how you address anything that’s more difficult than changing education because it feels like you’re pulling on so many strings and you guys talked about some of the major. Philanthropic initiatives that have taken big swings. And I thought the Elio was actually very generous and correct too when you talked about Of course.

Yeah. Actually, maybe the tricky part is our thought process around timeframe. Sure. On this needs to [00:46:00] change. You’re not gonna, you’re not gonna change the stuff in five years but what do you think about that notion that education may be one of the most intractable, one of the most difficult things for philanthropy to actually.

Have real impact with, what do you think about that?

Eric: I didn’t mean to pick on Gates or Zuckerberg, for example. But there were just example. Those were examples of these very visible and public attempts at strategy and enormous

Kirk: investments too. Let’s be honest, that’s why we’re talking about it.

Eric: That didn’t prove out. But I do think that like much philanthropy, and I think Eli mentioned this as well, the ideas come from the bottom up. And some philanthropy comes from the top down and oh, oops, it didn’t work. So I do think that there are so many opportunities for Phil, for philanthropy to learn what, what works along the way.

I think shifting a big system is always a challenge, a massive challenge. And that can be systems in anything around poverty, around education, around health, you name it. But the trick is always in [00:47:00] philanthropy, how do we make our dollars go as far as possible? What can we learn and how do we share what we’ve learned so that we improve systems that governments take up the opportunity and we move from there?

And that is just the big question, the great big. Existential questions about philanthropy and I think it is a particular challenge for education just because the system is so diverse. Yeah. And so large and very contextual and it’s very hard to make great big pronouncements about something that has so many components.

Kirk: It makes me wonder too, if the whole concept of a go-to market strategy should become more central to philanthropic grant making when you think about trying to change systems at scale. So my. What I’m thinking of here is, and this is true in so many domains that we touch, it’s, I’ve seen it in education, I’ve seen it in the major environmental issues we touch.

So there’s a big emphasis within philanthropy ’cause you’re looking for system leverage. You’re looking for places where you can make get a lot of, outcome for your dollars invested. So where you go to policy, let’s get some policies changing, right? And so you get the policy thing to change.

And I remember we were [00:48:00] working on years ago on some education stuff involving changing educational standards around the country. And it was succeeding, like there were 40, 50 states, that adopted these standards. But there was no follow on support for actually addressing the fact that thousands and thousands of people across all these different school districts were gonna be.

Affected, and that’s from the parents to the students, to the, the guardians, to the educators, to the administrators. And I remember reflecting back to the folks that were investing in that work saying, so you’ve succeeded. You’ve created 50 states worth of policy outcomes, which means you’ve spread one inch of gasoline across this entire country, and now your opponents are throwing matches, just waiting for something to catch.

And sure enough, they finally threw some, threw enough in that something caught. And I think that’s. There’s something, and I, it just makes the project harder when you think about, okay, we’re gonna get the policy changed, but then how do we come immediately behind that and deliver all the resources required to actually carry the policy through?

But it almost feels so we talk about if you’re running a, if you’re running a, some kind of organization, instead of 20% on communications and [00:49:00] 80% on air quotes, the work, it should be 80% of communications and 20% of the work. I wonder, if you’re running these initiatives aimed at grading policy outcomes, it’s whatever you spent on getting the policy.

Prepared to be prepared to come behind that, like at 100 x maybe 100 times on. Okay. Now we have to serve as the steppers and the, the shepherds and the stewards and the midwives for birthing this policy because it feels like so often that’s what happens. We get, we went on the policy and then we get that crazy.

Back and forth because we don’t put enough behind getting the implementation stuff done. What do you think about that?

Eric: First of all, I don’t want any shepherds birthing anything unless it’s sheep, but that’s okay. I’ll, I will stand behind your metaphor. And it sounds to me, Kirk, that you might be talking about the common core.

I wasn’t gonna use the words. I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna, is it possible? I don’t

Kirk: wanna pick any fights. I’m not gonna, I wasn’t

Eric: gonna

Kirk: use the language.

Eric: All right. I called it out Anyway, the point is that policies don’t like to stay changed.

Kirk: Yeah.

Eric: And winning, winning your victory is we have a tendency to get to declare victory and then move on to the [00:50:00] next thing when we realize that we have to keep those policies changed.

And that’s a challenge. And you’re right, it is a, it is both a rhetorical challenge and a political challenge and a movement building challenge. And it’s all of those things and you just have to stay in it. And one of the real I think the. Great foundations are the ones who are persistent. They stay with the work for long periods of time, and they anticipate all the problems that might arise, and they’re aware, they’re there to defend them.

So that’s part of it. It’s not just communications, but communications is really important and you wanna be able to build a narrative where people understand and have a similar feeling about the good thing that you’re doing, a similar good feeling about the good thing that you’re doing.

And that’s hard.

Kirk: Eloy, who is clearly a profound thinker and an excellent communicator, used one of my favorite words on the podcast, which is humility. Gotta be humble, said. And so here is my challenging question for you, uhoh, given your shared experience with [00:51:00] Eloy and having gone to community colleges, having such a transformative and foundational experience, part of your own experience.

Should all foundation presidents, every single one of them be required to attend community college? Should it be a requirement to be in the role? And I say that very knowingly, knowing the fairly elite pedigrees of some of the folks you’ve hung around. And I agree, like truly genius, luminary people.

And yet. Is this element, the humility, the sort of groundedness that would come from that experience. Because I have to say in my own ex, in my own experience around this, there is so much depth of knowledge and understanding about what’s actually happening in the world that flows through our community college system.

And I thought it was even interesting ELO’s comments about, we’ve gotta listen to learners. And learners are viewing education as a means to improving lifestyles, getting better wages, seeing it as that stepping stone into improve economic mobility, let’s make sure we’re addressing that.

What do you think [00:52:00] about requiring every foundation president in the United States of America to attend community college? Discuss,

Eric: Okay, Kirk, there you go again. In the words, actually in the words of a non-elite college. Graduate president. There you go again. Uh, that’s a reference that very few people will get, I hope.

Yeah, I

Kirk: know exactly. We’re dating ourselves and then some with that one.

Eric: But I do think clearly not, but I do think that what we, my, my other rant holds, which is that we have to begin to recruit. Yeah. More, far more aggressively from the non-elite places. Yeah. The people who actually had to, struggle and fight for their education who got it in a more democratic way.

I think that’s really helpful. They bring perspectives into the work that other folks may not, and I do think that we ought to. Have a much better understanding of what community colleges are, how what, basically, what a democratic education is. [00:53:00] Yeah. And to promote that and also to really try and engage more people to come into our organizations who understand that because.

They’re just gonna bring so much to it. And, present company excluded. I don’t know that I brought anything to the enterprise because of my community college background, but I think that I have a, an understanding and a connection with this kind of education and with the people who are my classmates and my teachers that maybe I wouldn’t have had if I had gone to an elite university.

And, did what I did

Kirk: Look the major emphasis of this whole enterprise has been about inclusion and belonging. And it is interesting when you think about that exclusionary reject this sort of notion that it’s, the more rejecting it is, the better it is, right? So in theory, none of us are good enough.

That’s what that system says. None of us are good enough. Yeah, that’s right. But the community college system says, actually no, we’re all good enough. And not only that, we’re all worth it. It’s worth it to take the step, these steps together. So I would argue Mr. Brown, that actually that, that, [00:54:00] that background has brought an enormous amount to this podcast, your career and all the things you care about.

A again, Eloy Ortiz Oakley, thank you so much for joining us. And can we pitch again, the rant podcast, check out the

Eric: Ran. I love a rant. Check

Kirk: out the rant. It’s it just great conversations. And by the way, e clearly. Clearly after your heart when he describes the rant as a weekly podcast full focused on pulling back the curtain on the American higher education system.

Yeah. And breaking back people, the people, the policies, and the politics. So yeah, go check out the rant and, but Eric, what a great conversation. And oh my gosh, Eli, thank you so much for joining us on the Terry deck. That was really awesome to listen to. It

Eric: was great, Kurt.

Great to see you again.

Kirk: Good to see you again. Welcome back for the summer. Everyone hang on the next few weeks and months promised to be. It’s gonna be fine. It’s all gonna, don’t worry.

Eric: It’s just gonna be fine.

Kirk: It’s all gonna be fine. Thanks everybody. We’ll see you next time and let’s hear it. Okay everybody, that’s it for this episode.

Please let us know if you have any thoughts about what you heard today or people we [00:55:00] should have on this show, and that definitely includes yourself. And we’d like to thank

Eric: our indefatigable producer, Harper Brown,

Kirk: John Ali, the tuneful and inspiring composer of our theme music, our sponsor. The Lumina Foundation, and please check out Lumina’s terrific podcast, today’s students tomorrow’s talent, and you can find that@luminafoundation.org.

Eric: We certainly thank today’s guest, and of course, all of you,

Kirk: and most importantly, thank you, Mr. Brown.

Eric: Oh no. Thank you, Mr. Brown.

Kirk: Okay, everybody, till next time.