Almost always the men who achieve these fundamental inventions of a new paradigm have been either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change.
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), pp. 89–90
Nothing in my resume suggests I have academic or relevant experience in higher education research or administration. Even if I did, it would not meet what insiders would consider adequate.
My educational background does not match that of the renowned and often-quoted Harvard economist David Deming or that of the many researchers who have published on this matter.
Yet there are times and topics where an outsider can add significant value to the discussion.
Sometimes outsiders can see things insiders cannot
Nothing in my background suggested I should recommend anything to a consumer goods company. Still, when I was 26 years old, I did just that. With my McKinsey teammates, I stood before the CEO of a very successful company. We explained how they could dramatically improve their marketing and manufacturing results. They changed, and the results improved.
For almost 40 years, I have helped transform companies.
In every case, we worked with savvy executives. Many looked at flawed information that required reframing. They looked at data and selectively focused on the pleasing parts. They ignored risks or negatives. Or they needed new interpretations to better understand the implications of information for their future.
My learning ground
I am an apprentice of thinking outside the box! I have seen so many insiders miss essential clues that I wanted to help by bringing a fresh outsider perspective to problem-solving.
My training started with McKinsey & Company, one of the premier global consulting firms.
My first manager, Shyam Lal, is brilliant. Throughout his career, he has delivered sharp insights to his clients. The partner on our assignment, Shyam Giridharadas, was equally astute and successful. These two set me on a path to explore unbounded and first-principles thinking for real-world transformation.
I was fortunate to meet the amazing Elizabeth (Liz) Haas Edersheim at McKinsey. We left McKinsey and built New York Consulting Partners (NYCP), focused on practical business transformation. I vicariously learned from Marvin Bower (the soul of McKinsey) and Peter Drucker (the Business Thinker) as Liz spent time with them for her books. She exudes brilliance.
After I left NYCP, I worked with a leadership benchmark: former McKinsey partner Stephen P. Kaufman. Steve reshaped electronics distribution and led Arrow Electronics (NYSE: ARW) to new heights as a global leader. Steve is a leadership savant and an outlier in many management disciplines.
So, I have apprenticed with some exceptional people.
Through the years we have worked together, we have made some remarkable transformations.
It all started with asking tough questions.
Those transformations all required looking at and understanding information differently than the typical observer.
How I got to higher education
It started in 2012, when our oldest daughter was considering college.
I was intrigued by a report that Peter Thiel had created a fellowship offering $100k for selected students. He offered recipients the chance to skip or leave college and build a startup or other project instead.
For the first time, I wondered if there was a fact-based critical analysis of college degrees.
I found the “college wage premium” research. Everywhere.
But it felt like making investment choices by looking at the revenue alternatives. Yes, by one later estimate from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, the median bachelor’s degree holder working full-time, year-round earns about 75 percent more over a working life than the median high school graduate who also works full-time, year-round, roughly $1.2 million more. But no serious investor would ever stop there.
Curious, I built my first spreadsheet model projecting the income for each alternative.
Taxes mattered, so I added them. Then I calculated the Net Present Value of the lifetime income after taxes and costs, which is what that future income is worth in today’s money.
The results surprised me. My first summary of my findings is in this post, published in 2013: Is a College degree really worth it?
I downloaded the Department of Education College Database.
Then, I built an online tool replicating the spreadsheet analysis. That early tool has since grown into the CollegeROI model.
I stopped further development when President Obama launched a new College Scorecard website. He advocated for more transparency and accountability regarding the value of higher education. This new approach gave me some confidence the College Scorecard would meaningfully highlight the college value question, making the wide variation in value more transparent.
As a consultant and an executive, I continued working on corporate transformations. Occasionally, I updated my spreadsheet model but only spent a little time on this.
In 2023, the Department of Education raised this issue again, piquing my interest. Its statements sounded exactly like those originally made when the Scorecard was introduced. I learned that opposition from colleges and their lobbyists, lawmakers and officials inside the administration had sidelined the federal college ratings plan that would have graded colleges on value and affordability. The 2015 Scorecard was the scaled-back tool that replaced it.
I felt compelled to redo my analysis with the latest available database.
Why I write about higher education
As I dug into the data, it became abundantly clear that we have an issue. We needed a deeper conversation about the value of college degrees. There were profound implications for students, their families, institutions, donors, and policymakers.
There are excellent fields of study and colleges to attend, and bad choices exist. A sentiment I often hear, that all or nearly all of these choices are good, is flawed. In my experience, that assumption leads many decision-makers to do much less due diligence on the right fit.
College was transformational for me. I started late, awaiting my USA residency visa in South America after high school. I could not meet our family challenges without working. So, with the help of grants and scholarships, I worked full-time and attended Baruch College full-time at no cost. At Indiana University, I completed my MBA with a paid scholarship and a stipend for teaching. Both degrees were summa cum laude.
Higher education changed my life. But that was long ago, and many underlying factors have changed dramatically.
About 19 million students were enrolled in American higher education in fall 2022. Many are overinvesting, and many are also underinvesting. Some will realize their dreams. Others will face years of financial strain. Some will also pull their supportive families into that strain with them.
Too many American families do not adequately understand their choice of college investment. College can be a better investment!
Additional acknowledgements
Our daughters Elise and Sara inspired this work as they set out on their college quests. The numerous debates we had benefited my thinking. We are blessed that they have made great choices.
My muse, best friend, and spouse, Leslie Jones Shivamber, has supported my obsession with investigating interesting topics. Such was the case with the exploration of college as an investment. She encouraged me and challenged me every step along this journey.
My great friends and colleagues Rick Krebs, Tom McKeefery, and Adam Schorr indulged me in reviewing the early material. They made many suggestions and helped me make this much better than it started. I am looking forward to their help in building a more practical guide for parents, students, counselors, and other stakeholders.
This work is better, thanks to my many supporters. There are too many to mention individually. Thank you all!
The mistakes and errors are entirely mine.
This thinking became the book We Need To Talk About Higher Education, where I lay out the full analysis.