SPEAKER_00
Hello, and welcome to .edu, the higher education podcast from the American Council on Education. I'm your host, John Fansmith, Director of Government Relations here at AC, and I'm joined by my, I don't actually think we've ever co-hosted one of these, have we? Anyway, by my today's co-host, Sarah Spritzer, also a Director of Government Relations here at AC.

SPEAKER_03
We have actually co-hosted before, John. I'm so happy that you remember.

SPEAKER_00
Yeah, obviously it wasn't a very memorable episode. Well, anyway, Sarah, thank you for being here today. We have a whole lot of things to talk about, but it's all on the same theme, and it's the theme that I think basically everyone in American higher education is thinking about dealing with addressing right now, which is the impact of the coronavirus on campuses, what it means for our campuses, what it means for our students, what it means in terms of the federal policy that you and I spend so much time focusing on.

You know, first and foremost, just want to say to anybody who's listening to this, hope you are healthy and well. We certainly appreciate you taking some time with everything that is going on to check out this podcast and listen to us. It means a lot to us.

And certainly, somebody who works at AC, the engagement of our members, our members reaching out, sharing their thoughts or situations. It's been really pretty powerful and pretty impactful. So I just want to say thanks to all.

Sarah, how are you doing working from home? We have very similar situations in terms of our work from home set up, right?

SPEAKER_03
Yeah, except I seldom see your children running in the background. So I don't know how you're corralling them or how you're keeping them quiet. Maybe it's bribes, but the homeschooling working thing.

I've lost count of the days at this point.

SPEAKER_00
So this is our third week of homeschooling and we've worked out a really healthy formula of it's bribes mostly combined with threats. So it's we find those two things work together nicely. Yeah. Nice. I think they've both regressed about two grade levels in terms of learning at this point.

SPEAKER_03
Yeah. Unfortunately, they have been learning a lot about federal policy and how it relates to COVID-19 though.

SPEAKER_00
It's true. My kids will often say, why can't they have both grants and loans? That's right. But you actually bring up the thing that you and I have been spending a lot of time on it.

It's funny, but it's true. We've been working early mornings and late nights and long hours for the last few weeks. The federal government, as people know, has been looking at different ways to help not just higher ed, but all of America through a supplemental spending bill.

They just passed one that was signed until last Friday called the cares act. Sarah, do you remember what that acronym stands for?

SPEAKER_03
No, sorry. I know it has coronavirus in there.

SPEAKER_00
I was hoping you would make it seem like a quiz, but

SPEAKER_03
This C definitely stands for Corona coronavirus. Relief and Economic Security Act.

SPEAKER_00
Oh, that sounds right.

SPEAKER_03
Were you looking at something? No, no, but I've typed it so many times. I know all of those words fit in there somehow.

SPEAKER_00
Well, and it is a massive piece of legislation. It spends $2.2 trillion.

Like I said, it goes to all different areas. There's a lot to go over in this bill. And I think first I'll start by saying we won't have the time and we shouldn't spend the time consuming some great guests who will be joining us very shortly to go over other aspects of the coronavirus impact on higher ed, but I would recommend that when you look at this website for this podcast will be a lot of resources AC's website and the engage platform have tons of resources for institutions, not just on the federal policy side, but across a range of things.

We'll talk a little bit about that in a second, but probably the single biggest thing is there is $14 billion in the cares act specific to higher education. It's going to go out to campuses roughly $7 billion of that money. We'll go to campuses to help them with lost revenue with new expenses, pretty broadly available to help institutions stay afloat in a very difficult financial time.

The other half of that money is to be distributed by institutions to their students as emergency grant aid. And this can be used by students for a variety of purposes, housing, food, transportation, lost income, all sorts of things. I realize a way to help students who have been particularly adversely impacted by the coronavirus whether through economic circumstances or having to leave the physical campus and not having necessarily an easy or safe place to go to adjust to the new circumstances.

Sarah, were there any like particular highlights we think we should talk about before we.

SPEAKER_03
Well, I would just say that this bill, you know, it's a $2 trillion bill, and I think it's really focused on kind of the economic short term side. So there's some loan programs in there that some of our institutions may be eligible for that's really focused on kind of keeping payroll going for the next eight weeks. And it's really focused, I think, I'm kind of the next two months of the economic impact and john I know we're already starting to talk about kind of the next bill, which I think will be a little more longer term.

SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and we'll touch on that at the end of the podcast. I think the one other takeaway for our members, we have seen so many different accounts from presidents from institutional leaders about the, you know, they're really the gut punch financially that schools are taking by doing the right thing by sending students home by prioritizing the safety and health of their students and their staff. $14 billion is great.

It's fantastic. It certainly is going to help a lot of institutions get through the immediate short term. We know it's a fraction of what's actually needed.

So you mentioned there's another bill, hopefully we'll get that addressed. You know, people should know AC's team is working very hard on that but ACC was working very hard on a lot of different things at this point in response to concerns from our members needs of our members. And two people who are especially well equipped to talk about that are joining us today.

The first is Brad Farnsworth and Brad I'm going to very embarrassingly admit I don't know what your official title is do you want to tell us your official title is vice president for global engagement. Oh, thank you. And you know, the second person joining us is Robin helms and Robin again.

I'm not exactly sure what your official title is.

SPEAKER_02
Okay, it's a bit of a mouthful. It is deputy chief innovation officer and principal internationalization strategists.

SPEAKER_00
Well, thank you both for joining us. I know you heard Sarah and I complaining about what long days we're having I think it's probably maybe even pales in comparison to the time enough for you guys have been putting in but there's obviously a lot to cover a lot we're hearing I think maybe the obvious starting is what is AC and higher education community doing right now in response to the current virus.

SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I'm happy to kick it off in terms of and we can we'll talk a little bit about ACS initiatives as we go through the conversation. So that's sort of framing some of the issues certainly front front and center for a lot of our institutions right now is the distance learning piece institutions having made this pivot to closing their campuses. And we're reading all throughout the the news and then working with our campuses as well about the the challenges and the victories of making that pivot in a very quick fashion.

We did a webinar actually, it feels like about a year and a half ago now but I think it was actually maybe two or three weeks ago on this topic specifically this the swift pivot institutions were making and we had some some great speakers we had a provost, and then some distance specialists talk about how they were going about this. So just a couple of the takeaways that I would reflect on from that webinar again keeping in mind this was a couple of weeks ago, where this idea of we're talking about remote learning. We and our heads even going into that webinar had framed this really as online learning.

But one of the points that the provost to joined us made was that it's not just online. This is how do we work with our students off of campus, whether that's online, whether that's via cell phones, she even brought up that they were stockpiling stamps at that point for what if things have to go back and forth by mail. So all of the different ways all of the different about modalities of doing this.

I think institutions are figuring that out but really figuring out how to make this accessible for students.

SPEAKER_00
And that's really interesting and I should note, people might have already picked up on this if you've been listening to our previous podcast. AC is working remotely so we're holding this podcast via zoom. So that might explain some of the the less than Chris sound it's not Malcolm's fault Malcolm is amazing.

This is the new modality we are engaging in to get this out to you. But so Robin. I talked about the different modes the idea of hoarding stamps if you have to go back to mail and the lessons learned so can you talk a little bit more about some of those lessons that campuses are doing sort of broadly that we see applicable whether it's a community college or an R one or whatever else.

SPEAKER_02
Yeah, and actually to your point about maybe our audio is not as crystal clear as it might be is again somebody on the webinar talked about don't let the but perfect be the enemy of good. So realizing that we are in a situation where we're figuring this out together and we're making this work and in some cases we're sort of duct taping it all together. And being okay with that and and being patient with each other as we experiment and make this happen and I think we're doing that a C and we're really seeing campuses do that and come up with some just really innovative ways of going about this and supporting their faculty as they carry out this work.

SPEAKER_00
It's kind of a good point because you said some of these things have been emerging out of these discussions. Things that schools have learned as they made these. What was your some of the biggest emerging issue as.

So some move since educate.

SPEAKER_02
The, well, and it's interesting again that webinar these things that were a top of mine two and a half weeks ago I think we have moved on in terms of the conversation. One of the big things that's coming up so far. Right now I think is questions of assessment.

So how are we assessing students and their learning. What's fair to do that knowing that different students have different access to technology different students are able to complete their assignments to different degrees. So we're seeing a lot of conversations emerge about is it past fail grading for the semester is that what's really fair.

How do we make this equitable. I think to assessment of faculty so some of the conversations around the faculty are having teaching evaluations done and this is their first time teaching remotely and students don't think it's going so well is that going to impact promotion and tenure, for example, for faculty so thinking about the assessment piece from a lot of different different angles, I think is really important. We've seen also, you know the impacts on international students it's interesting this the whole COVID crisis kind of started as an internationalization and international education student mobility study abroad issue.

And then of course it became a lot broader, but those issues for particularly for international students are not going away. We're seeing students, for example, in this remote environment who have had to return home and can't access the technology so VPN connections, for example, are not working so students are trying to figure out institutions figuring out how to deal with that and again it's back to that it's not just online what are the different modalities that we can use as well. And I do think also we're starting to hear in that conversation, particularly around international education of the questions of what if international students can't come to campus in the fall.

Are they going to be able to participate remotely is that something that might be under consideration relaxing some of those regulations that might be something that Sarah can speak to, but starting to look ahead towards the fall semester as well. And I'll just put in one other issue that's emerging, you know, again, and just illustrates how quickly this is happening, sort of right when we feel like we have our heads around something at the zoom bombing. That's happening right now so there was an article in inside higher ed.

We didn't have that happen on a webinar at a C yesterday. So, we're figuring it out and responding but again to me it was just an illustration of every day, you know we sort of feel like okay we've, we've, we've managed this challenge but the next thing is coming down the pike as well.

SPEAKER_03
Robin that's a that's a really good point, especially with like international students and our domestic students as this goes on longer and longer we have more and more issues because I think our institutions are looking kind of to the summer programs, and what's going to happen with those. And then as you were saying to the fall programs and you know for international students, we have seen some flexibility from the State Department and from the Department of Homeland Security. So for instance state allowed, you know, international students for the purposes of their F1 visas to go to all online learning platforms, but where it's unclear if they're going to issue that guidance for the fall.

So that's something that we continue to monitor.

SPEAKER_00
And Brad, I was curious, Robin has been talking about the things that she's learned from the webinar she worked on. Are there other aspects of what AC and higher education community are doing now that Robin hasn't touched on.

SPEAKER_01
Well, I think Robin gave us a great summary but I'll just add a couple of points. I just first of all want to shout out to the give a shout out to the government relations team on this last theme. I'm really excited to be here at Sarah raised on really keeping the focus on visa policies and the adaptation of what historically has been a fairly fixed and rigid approach to visa regulation.

I'm really encouraged by this flexibility on the online enrollment issue and we have when we get later on in the program we can talk about some of the other issues that are going to come up particularly as students start to graduate in May. But I'll just add that that AC has a number of very strong partners in this. One of them is Southern New Hampshire University and our president Ted Mitchell and the president of SNHU Paula Blank have been working together to develop some programming to help institutions through this and to help them to get online quickly to design courses that are have historically been live and get and face to face and get them online.

So if you look for more resources on that in the near future, but they're very important partners aq the Association for College and University education and noodle partners which of course is the developer of our our engage platform have also been very active and at the end of the program I know we're going to post links all these organizations and make sure that you you have all the access that you need to that I just want to say again engage has tons of resources on online education. Robin put together a document specifically for her webinar and I've worked with Carly and others to develop a list of resources from other organizations so if you're not already a member of engage it's absolutely free it's open to everyone in higher education. It's a great resource.

Really quickly one other organization who's a very important partner and that's edu cause they've been keeping track of all the different vendors in this space that are offering special deals special discounts. Some of these are discounts they're offering to institutions these are the vendors that provide the backbone and the infrastructure for providing online education they're they're doing their best to help in this time of crisis and then also the Internet service providers we have a huge challenge with students getting access to to fast broadband and I think every local paper now has a story about a student who's parked in their car outside the drive the library or outside wherever they can get Internet access. This is a huge issue some ISPs are offering discounts and we're hoping working with edu cause we can we can move the needle on that as well.

SPEAKER_00
And I think that's it's such a great point and it's great that we have so many helpful collaborators that you know the fact that so many people and organizations have stepped up in this time. And I you know that last point about the access students have it. You know there's a lot of things that we've talked about on this podcast but the difficulty for institutions and trying to ensure that access education is equitable that it's students are appropriately served in ways that make sure they have equal opportunity with their fellow students.

And this is something we've never experienced before in American higher education so a lot of those issues we've had with equity and care for students and students well being in health are now confronting universities in an entirely different way. And I'm curious Robin in particular you know are there in all your conversations with campuses are these things that are coming up and where the campus is telling you.

SPEAKER_02
Yeah I think this this issue of well being is a really interesting way of framing it so thinking about physical needs thinking about the equity pieces thinking about mental health are all sort of encapsulated in that idea of well being and we did a webinar also on that again and have posted some resources on engage to Brad's point about the platform around that idea of well being and how are we keeping campuses it's not even campus well being anymore right it's our community well being because we're not all on campus and some of the things that came up in that conversation about a week and a half ago or two weeks where some of the physical challenges of distance to some of these very literal things of students not having access to food or a place to live and still figuring out those pieces as campuses pivot to being a remote community at this point. But then thinking more broadly about how students are engaged so once those sort of physical needs are met. How do they stay part of a community and recognizing that for some that really is their community I was really struck by a conversation I had with a colleague at Gallaudet University, which AC has worked with in our internationalization program and other other places but Gallaudet University is is really sort of they would probably call themselves first and foremost a community for death and hard of hearing students and those students don't necessarily have access to a community when they're home that that really brings that together and so I think that's one thing that really came out.

And the conversation on that webinar and as we're talking with institutions is how do you maintain that connectedness. Can you do that virtually and through other mechanisms at this point really seems to be front and center in that that will be in conversation right now.

SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and I think there's a lot of things. You know, building a community maintaining a community it's such a challenge in the best of times we're clearly not in the best of times. You know, one of the things that I think we never really thought about was how do you manage sort of the emotional health of students on the campus.

And I know you've done some discussion you discuss this with folks you've seen the reports you know how can an institution help their students navigate what's you know certainly not parallel time for the institution but in a way that's really impactful for students.

SPEAKER_02
Yeah, the webinar that we did had some great perspectives from sort of campus mental health professionals and we've got again some good resources on engage. One of the things that has really struck me lately in the conversations there's a there's a Harvard Business Review article going around that's framing emotions around this in terms of grief at the moment. So grief for lost graduations grief for lost study brought opportunities, and I was, I was tuning into a podcast by actually a high school and college classmate of mine who's now a Transmissional Life Coach in California and one of the things that he brought up is you know we're hearing a lot right now about this being the new normal.

And he said you know what, this is not normal at all. I think if we can acknowledge that this is this is a not normal, and we're going to grieve over the things that we're losing and frame it in that way and help our help our communities work through that and be understand that we hopefully will go back to normal and that this is not permanent. There may be changes but but not having the expectation that we just need to adapt and sort of carry on but really taking the time that we need again to acknowledge what we're losing right now and doing the best that we can and being resilient but but framing in that way seems to be resonating for people and I would say resonated for me, certainly.

SPEAKER_00
And that's true for, you know, we've been talking a little bit about students but that's true for faculty and staff and the way that institutions should approach their employees as well right is that I mean, you can talk a little bit more about how that differentiates in terms of, you know, your campus faculty and staff versus how you reach out to your students and address their needs.

SPEAKER_02
Yeah, and you know, as we should be off on our faculty and staff right now are focusing on how are we helping our students through this. But it brings to mind for me the views of what you hear when you're one of us on airplanes right now but when we are on airplanes. They put on your own air mass before assisting others right if those oxygen masks drop down from the ceiling with this idea that if our faculty and staff are not taking care of themselves and not sort of acknowledging their own processing of all of this and managing their energy levels they're not going to be able to really help our students through this.

So, so thinking through allowing space for the ups and downs I've been really struck myself I would say personally and in conversations with campus colleagues about how tired I am right now and just sort of dealing with all these things some of what you and Sarah talked about at the beginning of the podcast. My kids. I'm surprised my kids haven't run through here and we've only had one or two meltdowns today and that's pretty good so far.

So we're all managing that so I think, you know, recognizing that different people that we work with our colleagues have different obligations different situations outside of work and that's going to manifest in different ways, and recognizing that this whole thing is going to hit us at different points.

SPEAKER_00
I think that's great and really it's actually sort of reassuring to hear you say that and think about it I mean it's helping me sort of reframe how I'm thinking about what's going on with my life. And Sarah, there was something I know related to this about ways institutions can help the students that AC has been working on the policy side.

SPEAKER_03
On mental health. Yes. So one of the issues that we've found is that there's actually an issue with state licensing requirements for health care professionals, especially if they are trying to say you are the campus mental health counselor and you're looking to help students. If your student has returned home you may not be licensed to to actually provide services in the state where the student is so even if you could do it remotely.

The licensing requirement may stop you and so we joined with several other colleagues and associations and sending a letter to the governor's asking that states think about doing something to allow for flexibility, specifically to address this issue.

SPEAKER_00
That's great. And I know Brad there's some other things you're gathering some information from our colleagues that can help institutions start moving through, you know the stage we're now in into the next phase of wherever we're going.

SPEAKER_01
I'm trying to keep aware of all of the institutional surveys that are being developed and administered across the Washington higher education community. I, I'm not sure I've got it all but I'm doing my best to track it right now. The survey that's coming out right away and I just learned today is coming out on Monday is through the American College Health Association ACHA and this is the Association of health care professionals who do things like manage the student health care centers on our member campuses and so the idea there is to really do a climate survey of what's going on on and the purpose is to keep it really short.

And on the conference call today we agreed when I asked people to collect any data they don't already have at their finger tips they just don't have time to do it. So, the survey would be limited to maybe 10 or 12 questions, something that you can do really quickly and they'll, and they'll repeat it they want to get a baseline. I think everybody in the medical community feels like it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better so they want to set a baseline baseline in the next few days for what we're seeing.

A couple of the questions I think will be much broader and of great interest to the entire heart rate community not just medical practitioners. One of them for example is what is your greatest challenge on on campus and another one is what innovations are working. What do you see that's happening on the ground that could be could be shared with other institutions.

And I think we'll be seeing a survey come out from a CE we just started that conversation last week, but everybody's working in rapid response mode so I think our members see something coming out from AC fairly soon. And the survey from AC is there's particular focus it'll be on or we were thinking about really the leadership. So, so the president and and the vice presidents of institutions and and what they're seeing from from their point of view.

A big part of that is going to be financial impact and I know we've got that schedule for later on in the podcast, but when we get to it I can tell you a little bit more about what we've seen so far.

SPEAKER_00
And I'll remind people are listening that all the resources we're mentioning I know we're sort of checking a whole bunch of them off as we go along. There are a lot of things out there that are helpful for campuses all be posted on the website for this podcast. It can be found on AC's website on our gauge platform.

Sarah, we talked a little bit about the impact on international students in the difficulties of enrolled international students. I know you have worked a lot with both Brad and Robin on international education. Maybe you can kind of give a rundown about where that where the role of international education on campuses and these very difficult times and as Robin pointed out nobody can even get on a plane really so yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03
And I don't think, you know, looking back at when we started to deal with this in February we would have thought that we would have sort of arrived at this situation. And in fact, I can think back in February Robin and I've, and Brad were discussing the fact that our colleagues in Australia were in a tight bind because they had a travel ban, put an effect for Chinese students trying to return and obviously it was at the start of their winter semester and unfortunately there were students that couldn't return to their campuses and so we felt very lucky because of our calendar, our academic calendar most of our students were back before some of the travel bans went into the place. But then obviously when the crisis continued to grow.

There were a lot of things that happened you know some international students decided to stay here. I think some have been called back to their home countries. Obviously they're going on to online learning platforms.

Some of them have chosen to stay in dorms, even though the campuses have pretty much closed and I think our institutions are being are trying to be flexible on that to allow our international students to stay. But I'd say like a new issue crops up kind of every day and Brad and Robin and I are just in constant contact talking about these different issues as they arise one of the issues that we're having now is Brad and I were just talking we have a member institution that has a researcher who's trying to come from India and needs a visa to be processed and unfortunately all the consulates are closed. And so under under the existing travel ban, they should be able to get an expedited visa through especially because they are addressing research related to COVID-19.

There's nobody to actually contact right at the at the console.

SPEAKER_00
So into COVID-19 can't get here to perform research.

SPEAKER_03
It's more about yes it's it's trying to figure out who to actually talk to and then just multiply that by several thousand. And I think everybody's just trying to figure out and Brad alluded to the fact that state and DHS have really they have been pretty flexible. We're hoping that that flexibility is going to extend as we get closer to the summer.

Obviously, many of our international students right now are preparing to come here in the fall, hopefully right and what happens is your institution issues and I 20, which is the piece of paper that you can apply for your visa to come here and study, but with the consoles being closed. They can actually apply for for, they can apply for the F1 visa. And so we are, we are asking state for some flexibility to see if is there a way to waive the in person interview requirement for F1 visas.

Is there a way to start the process. So the consulates are closed. So yeah, I think with our international students, you know we're dealing with different issues every day.

And so, you know, Brad I know you've been talking to a lot of our institutions you've also been talking to some of our foreign partners, you know what are some of the issues that you're seeing come up.

SPEAKER_01
Sarah, obviously the the ban on travel has had a huge impact, particularly between the US and China. So, right now, if an American goes to China, they're required to be in quarantine for 14 days. So every institution I talked to has given up on any kind of live recruiting and finance all being done virtually at this point.

A tremendous concern about how you would apply for a visa when all the consulates are closed and current rules require a face to face interview. I will say that our colleagues at NAPSA have proposed an innovative solution which is there. There is the possibility that the Secretary of State can waive the live interview.

It's only a possibility that we have the community is raising it with the Secretary of State possibility of allowing an exception so that live interviews are not required. That would be a huge step. But the real the real early warning system in this business are the people who advise companies and the coaches who advise students in places like China and India.

And they're telling us that there's a lot of concern that that applications are down that we may be looking at a significant decline in and in the fall. One other thing really quickly and that's that's the issue of the harassment of Asian Americans and with what we estimate to be maybe 90% of students now off campus. There are some of this is not this isn't as prevalent as it was but San Francisco State University has a website where they're collecting incidents, not just international students.

This is all types of harassment against against Asian Americans. The numbers really are stunning and very disturbing. And so we have a lot of work to do on that one of our member institutions, University of Maryland Baltimore County just received an NSF grant to study the same thing to more systematically document and analyze these these various forms of discrimination so lots of challenges ahead.

SPEAKER_03
That's that's really helpful Brad. And I know Robin you work a lot with our institutions here in the states, who are looking, you know, who are looking to recruit those those international students and kind of planning for the fall. What are what are you hearing on your end.

SPEAKER_02
I would echo a lot of what Brad mentioned in terms of the immediate issues institutions are thinking about I was just on a virtual town hall hosted by the Association for International Education administrators or a a and lots of conversation around the support piece so thinking about recruiting students for the fall and and as we talked about what might be possible in terms of online learning if need be if these issues and everything continue to make this difficult, but also our current international students who are being harassed as well as being harassed or simply need that that mental health support need the access to the community that they're part of. So that's very much front and center right now and I think part of the conversation as well is study abroad for fall. So, pretty much everybody's canceled summer study abroad at this point those decisions have been made but now the questions are, what can we do in the fall, and how do we do the risk assessment around that when do we make the decisions about that.

I think those are still the issues that are really front and center, but I think what we're starting to see conversations about and I've definitely been thinking about a lot is the longer term impacts of this situation and and maybe some of the opportunities that come out of it. I did a blog post a couple of weeks ago called can internationalization survive coronavirus. And it was pulling on some data that I have from a joint study that we did with the Nessie project, the National Study on student engagement that found looking at some of their data on student learning outcomes and our data on institutional internationalization.

And we found that what really makes the difference in terms of students, global learning so gaining the skills and the knowledge that they need to operate in this increasingly interconnected world is what's happening on campus so how are we incorporating that type of learning into our classrooms without mobility happening at all necessarily. How are we relying on technology through coil collaborative online international learning and other modalities to bring those perspectives into the classroom. And how are we engaging our faculty in that work that's what really moves the needle on student learning.

So I think our institutions are going to be thinking sort of beyond mobility at this point what do we need to do when we're thinking about making students are globally competent in a world where student mobility is maybe in question certainly for the time being. I think it also highlights the need for interdisciplinary in many ways this idea that the whole covid crisis underscores the need for globally intelligent graduates and for some of the collaborative research that Brad has mentioned as well that that question about the Indian scholar not being able to come and study we need everybody around the world studying this to understand how this happened, not only from this sort of epidemiological standpoint but thinking about the communication between this what it would be so interesting to have sort of a joint project that's looking at how the virus spread and then how all the messaging spread around the world so I think that's opportunities for research collaborations and for our students to be looking at issues from different angles as well so I'm seeing the whole phenomenon as a global learning opportunity. I think will be very interesting and I think it's starting to become part of the conversations for the aftermath of all of this one hopefully the dust settles.

SPEAKER_00
And I think it's a really good shift in terms of thinking now a little bit about what higher ed looks like going forward and it's obviously very valuable to and Brad you know I wanted to just come back to you. You had mentioned that there was going to be or that there was a recent AC webinar on the financial impact for institutions and I just want to follow up with you and give you an opportunity to sort of complete that thought if you will.

SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so thanks john this was a webinar that was recorded yesterday. April, excuse me Wednesday on the first of April. And I'm not going to go into the details of speakers and things like that.

That's all again on on engage and it's completely recorded for those of you who are interested but I think that When we're thinking about we're looking at the way leaders are thinking about this crisis. They've got a range of extremely short term urgent logistical things to take care of on the financial side they've got to get refunds on housing. And students desperately need that so that they can make a down payment on an apartment or they or they can fly home.

Okay, I mean it just sounds really mundane, but it's a huge issue. You need you need those refunds to generate the cash so that you can you can pay for other things. And so that's, that's the urgent that's what has to be done tomorrow.

And then there's even slightly less urgent with us, you know what has to be done. And just the next few weeks and that includes planning for the summer. We're now thinking this is, you know, I haven't talked to anybody who's even considering any live programming over the summer.

And then, as to Robin's point we may be looking at going online in the fall as well. What would that look like programmatically and most importantly in this conversation financially and then and then most of our institutions fiscal years start on July one that's the typical beginning of an academic institutions fiscal year. How do you have a budget for this.

You know we were probably most institutions were probably in the middle of the budgeting process when this hit. So those are those are tomorrow next week and then I think in the longer term, we were really thinking now about how this crisis fundamentally changes the business model. What needs to change long term in terms of the mix of revenue sources, how we manage expenses, how we plan for the long term all of that is I think up for very intense discussion.

SPEAKER_00
And I think one of the things we've heard a lot from presidents in the last couple weeks to just to add to this which I think is a really comprehensive list of the challenges facing schools are significant concerns about enrollment about students who physically left the campus and maybe are not participating in online education were withdrawing from campus. The other thing is this hit right in the middle of the traditional admission cycle. And I think the presidents are looking at fall enrollments and I think they're very concerned about students level of comfort returning to a physical space, their ability to access and make decisions about where they want to go and their interest in doing that in the first place.

I think we could go on and on and on. There's actually a million different things we could talk about. And I want to be thoughtful of both of your time I know everyone has things they have to get back to whether that's professional or personal going on.

I think maybe has had any children run in during this recording so very good work team. Sarah just before we touch off. I think it'd be good to we mentioned that the being Congress passed the last supplemental signed into law last Friday, I think they began working on the next supplemental funding bill on Saturday.

What are you hearing what are the highlights or the things are members probably most need to know at this point about what's happening with that.

SPEAKER_03
And I think that probably that it's going to be another big bill. And I think that members are looking at what wasn't addressed in the third package, and also kind of looking at more long term things so we've heard a lot of talk going on about possible infrastructure programs. And I think that we're going to address kind of the needs of the business community and things that weren't addressed in the, in the third package.

So, you know, I think that everybody's kind of throwing out ideas right now.

SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and I think one of the things, and I mentioned at the top of the podcast that, you know, we are well aware that $14 billion is great it was a small fraction of what's needed. And so the same things on the K 12 side where they received actually slightly less funding than higher ed did so. I think we're hopeful that there's an understanding that education broadly, you know, K 12 schools are facing the same challenges about transitioning to remote learning that, you know, there is an understanding of the need that's out there and the importance of addressing it.

So we will obviously keep our members posted as to developments on that supplemental and will keep working. And again, I would reiterate to it has been tremendously helpful to us to hear from our members with the financial impact has been, and in particular, the willingness to reach out and let the members of Congress know the challenges they're facing. I don't know how many staff Sarah and I have talked to have said, Look, my boss, you know, was kind of thinking about this and kind of thinking about that and then he had a college president column and tell him, they're facing a 20% revenue loss over the next year and they might have to close programs they might have to close their doors permanently.

Those are the kind of things that, you know, cuts to the heart of it really lets people understand the dimensions of the problem facing so for those of you who are listening thank you and keep at it because it's tremendously helpful and and it's tremendously important. I think that's going to wrap it up for us today I want to thank Brad and Robin. You are amazing colleagues and amazing guests.

Thanks for coming on guys. Thanks for having me. Thank you.

And for those of you listening thank you as well for listening thank you for all you do for higher education these troubling times. If you want to subscribe to the podcast you can do that on Apple podcasts, Google Play Stitcher wherever you listen to your podcast. You can also and I'm going to probably mess this up because I don't have the text in front of me like I usually do.

You can find the website for the podcast at www.acenet.edu slash podcast and all the resources we mentioned will be posted there as well. Once again thank you all for listening hope you're safe hope you stay well and we'll talk to you again soon.

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