In this episode, Jeff Selingo and Michael Horn interview Harrison Keller, president of the University of North Texas (UNT), about eliminating credentials that don’t align with the needs of the workforce. For every undergraduate and graduate program, UNT assesses how quickly students break even on their investment, the cost of offering the program, and the extent of student demand. Doing so allows UNT to phase out less lucrative degrees and target support to students in critical but underpaid fields, such as social work and teaching.
As technology is rapidly evolving, Keller also emphasizes the importance of “durable skills,” those that “help folks adapt to new technologies, to learn new things quickly, to be resilient, and to be able to think critically about how you use these technologies.”