Episode 100: The Future of Higher Education

Transcript

• [EPISODE]

  [0:00:07] BT: For five years, 40 hours, and 99 episodes, we've pulled back the curtain on all things admissions, sharing expert advice for your college journey.

  [0:00:16] BHA: Today, we're celebrating our 100th episode of College Admissions Insider. I'm Becca Haupt Aldredge from Bucknell University.

  [0:00:23] BT: And I'm Brooke Thames, also from Bucknell. In this very special episode, we're tackling our biggest topic yet: the state and future of higher education.

  [0:00:33] BHA: What better guest to invite than someone who's dedicated their career to championing lifelong learning? That person is John Bravman, who currently serves as the 17th president of Bucknell University. Welcome to the podcast.

  [0:00:47] JB: Thank you for the invitation.

  [0:01:42] BHA: 2025 marks your 15th year serving as Bucknell's president, which is far beyond the tenure of an average university president. What makes Bucknell the place you've chosen to lead for so long?

  [0:01:54] JB: Well, I have, I think, an unusual path to Bucknell's presidency. I'm a first-generation college student. I had no real exposure to college and university life growing up. My parents are first generation, were first generation Americans. All four of my grandparents emigrated. But I'm the first one to go away to school. I think I grew up in a family where it was expected that you would go to school, but there's obviously a big, big leap from that to being a university president.

  I spent my entire adult life involved with college. I was a college student for nine years as an undergraduate and a doctoral student. I had the great good fortune of joining the faculty where I went to school at Stanford University in California. And ended up not only getting three degrees from Stanford but joining the faculty and eventually, becoming involved with various aspects of management of the university.

  That prepared me, but I wasn't looking to change jobs. As is typical, Bucknell when they came time to find their next president, hired a search firm, and somehow, they found me. I came to Bucknell after doing a good deal of research. I was very devoted to the mission of undergraduate education, and I came to understand a bit, at least about what Bucknell was and is, and I thought this was an opportunity that was too good to give up. I put my hat in the ring, and here I am.

  I'm not the type of person who's looking to advance career by hopping around. And so, I think I've stayed at Bucknell, because that's partly an expression of my personality. But it's also, I think, what Bucknell needed — a long serving president. But I'm very privileged that I'm here and now starting my 16th year.

  [0:04:14] BT: As you hinted at there, your time at Bucknell is really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to your career in higher education, and I've heard you say that you've learned an invaluable amount from “being in college for 50 years.” Let's rewind to the start of that journey that you introduced there. Can you take us back to when you were applying to college? What made you want to pursue higher education in the first place? What do you recall about the landscape then?

  [0:04:36] JB: Thank you for that. There's probably too much to say there, but even though my parents did not have an opportunity to go to college, they wanted us to have opportunities that they did not have. In the end, my older brother and I went to college, and my younger sister chose not to. It was still very much that era. But we just grew up with the notion that it's probably the thing to do. But I really didn't know what I was doing.

  It's hard to imagine today what life was like before the Internet. Learning about college meant either reading about it in your high school library; we had a whole room dedicated to college catalogs. Or if you were lucky enough to meet someone and talk to someone. College counselors did not tour the country, going to high schools and things like that. It was all very, very different. The lesson actually, I would like young people who might be listening to this to learn is I probably learned, by far, the most important lessons in my life through failure and learning to deal with that.

  If you were growing up as I was in the 60s and 70s on the East Coast and you were interested in science and engineering as I was and am, what did you want to do? You wanted to go to MIT; great school. That's where I was going to go to school, if you asked me. I also had a friend, however, in high school who took a trip to California. I'd never been west of New Jersey. He came back with tales about the redwood trees, and the Pacific Ocean, and this place I never heard of called Stanford. Long story short, he desperately wanted to go to Stanford and did not get in, but I did. I wanted to go to MIT and did not get in, but he did. We had elaborate ideas about switching our names for four years and silliness like that. That failure, I will confess and I've told thousands of people over the last 50 years, that hurt a lot at the time. But Stanford was right for me, and I dealt with that failure and learned from it and others along the way.

  I think I fell in love with life of the mind, with college life, being involved with the young people and helping them grow and develop. I ended up with a whole career in higher education. September 18th, 1975 was my first day in college. That's 50 years ago now in a few months. I've actually lived on a college campus 46 of the last 50 years. So, this is my life. But I'm so thankful that I ended up having a life in higher education.

  [0:08:03] BHA: That's such a great message for our listeners, especially about failure. When so many of them have either their mind fixed on a particular institution throughout the search process, maybe this other path, or other direction that they're presented could work out in ways that they could have yet to imagine at that time in their search process.

  That's really the main goal of this podcast, to demystify the college process for families who may be navigating it for the first time. In what ways was your college experience shaped by being a first-generation student?

  [0:08:33] JB: I would say, it was shaped profoundly, in that I had no framework or context of anyone I knew to talk about college. As a result of that, I probably struggled a lot at times. I say "struggle," because again, I know for some students it's just easy. I long ago came to believe, however, if everything in life is easy, you're not trying hard enough. You're not aiming high enough.

  I struggled in college. I did not study in high school at all. I got one B in four years, in ninth grade art. It's funny how you remember these things, right? The important lesson is I never learned how to study, and that was not good preparation for Stanford University, even I'll say, in 1975, let alone today. So I really struggled academically at Stanford and almost decided to leave school. Almost was asked to leave school — you know what that means.

  Again, I found myself as with the rejection by MIT of dealing with the fears and concerns around failure or struggle. I tried to turn it into positive things to become more resilient, to look at the options I had to understand why I wasn't doing what I thought I would be doing, and to learn from that. I'm not here to say I did that anything like perfectly. In the end, I tried to take lessons from that. Here I am 50 years later as a great university's president.

  [0:10:47] BT: In that process of trying and struggling and overcoming those challenges, at what point did that crystallize into a love for higher education and a desire to dedicate your life to it? Can you tell us a little bit more about your career path and leadership path through higher ed?

  [0:11:03] JB: Certainly. It evolved over time, no surprise. I was getting my undergraduate degree in material science in engineering, which is not a field that's known as easily or well as, say, physics or chemistry. I struggled and succeeded and struggled and succeeded. Along the way, I'd say, the most important answer partly to your good question is I learned the value of mentorship.

  I ended up partly by happenstance, forming a great relationship with my undergraduate advisor. He gave me lots of great advice along the way. When I said to him, “I think I'd like to stay for a master's degree, but there's no financial aid for master's programs. There is for undergrad and for doctoral programs, but my parents can't afford this.” He said, “I want you to apply to our doctoral program, our PhD program.” I remember saying something like, “That's for really smart people. I'm not doing so great here, but I love it here. Do you think there's really a chance?” Well, he knew there was a chance, because he ultimately asked me to be his doctoral student. There's the whole, that's one little bit of mentorship and advising.

  I can tell you that same story in a different person five years later, at the end of my doctoral studies. My second advisor, who was in electrical engineering, an absolute giant in his field, I was talking to him about a new faculty line that was coming open in my department. I remember saying to him — his name is Jim Plummer — “Gee. I wonder who's going to get that job.” He looked at me and he said, “John, I want you to apply.” I said, “Jim, that's crazy. Stanford professor? That's for brilliant people. That's not for me.” “I want you to apply.” These two men who happened to be my advisors with whom I had a wonderful mentoring relationship, took a little chance and said, “I really want you to do this.” I've never forgotten that. Never. I've always tried my best to be that role in the right way for both people I work with and for students that I advised.

  In the end, I was at Stanford for 26 years on the faculty, nine years as a student, a doctoral student. Had lots of advisees, undergrad and graduate students. Then in 2010, of course, is when Bucknell came calling. It was those and many other experiences that I think prepared me for the work I do now with a fantastic team of colleagues. There's many other nuances along the way, but I have to say, again, learning from failure is, for me, the most powerful set of lessons I've ever had.

  [0:14:01] BHA: You've undoubtedly seen a lot of shifting sands throughout your career since that time. As University President, you've steered an entire institution through some of those changes. How would you say higher education has evolved since you've been at Bucknell?

  [0:14:15] JB: The changes in higher education are hotly debated and enumerated differently by different people, and journals, and things like that. I think there's a general understanding that higher education is at an important point in its trajectory in this country and probably around the world. I've been very clear that one of the things that concerns me most now is the diminishing public support for higher education and contemplating the reasons for that and what we can do about that. They're not nearly as simple as many people would have it be.

  There's clearly a sense that the cost of higher ed, the complexity of what we do and the demands that we are expected to fulfill as an institution has grown to such an extent that it feels like you're constantly meeting many people's aspirations, and goals, and needs, and many others almost at the same time — and by default, leaving others behind. Of course, that's never our intention. I believe very deeply ever more so in higher education and our mission to prepare people for the next 60, 70, 80 years of their life when they graduate.

  I think challenges have always been there, but they do change in character over time. The one that worries me the most right now, at least, is what appears to be a pretty broad-based decline in public support for higher education.

  [0:16:18] BT: On the admission side, what is the most significant thing that you're seeing?

  [0:16:22] JB: Well, it starts with just the raw number of high school seniors in this country starting this year. I believe that 2025 was the peak year of high school seniors in the country. That number is just demographics. The birth rate declined starting 18 years ago and continued to go down. Over the next, let's just say, on the order of two decades, we're going to see a material drop in the number of high school seniors.

  We also know that the possibilities of students who don't choose college, who choose an alternative pathway, may also go up, partly because of technology — or maybe, powerfully so, because of technology, and AI, and all that. There's those two forces combining [in a way] that we cannot take for granted at all that the pool of students interested in Bucknell, or anyplace, is not going to have an effect on what we do.
  [0:17:49] BHA: While there's no right answer, or solution to these dilemmas facing the future of higher education, we institutions look to the university president to help guide us and steward us through some of those changes. What are you viewing as a top priority for institutions moving forward?

  [0:18:07] JB: I think we cannot ever give up on our historical mission of a broad, what we call "liberal arts education." This is the life of the mind. This is what prepares you for changes that I think will be coming ever more frequently in our graduates' lives in the 60, 70 years after they graduate. That is a bedrock principle. At the same time — and knowing that that contributes to careers — I think we also have to be more intentional and acknowledging of what the marketplace expects us to do in terms of, let's call it "career preparation."

  I very often say, it's not about that first job, it's about a career — and it may be now about careers. That actually speaks, ultimately, to the great strength of an undergraduate education that has breadth, as well as depth in it, and that's what we seek to offer at Bucknell. There's no guarantees. There's no recipes. And so, I think we need to help our students understand the secular changes in the world and how actually what we offer here is amongst the best preparations you can have for that changing world.

  [0:19:28] BT: When it comes to Bucknell, not only weathering some of these shifts and transformations into the future, but succeeding and setting students up to succeed, how are you and other leaders across the university positioning Bucknell to tackle these head on?

  [0:19:44] JB: Well, my university address, which was given just a week ago from when this is being recorded, I talked exactly about this. I said, "Our job is not to survive. That's not a question, thankfully, for Bucknell. Our job is to thrive. And we will not thrive, unless we help our students thrive in a changing world. That to me is a very compelling motivation for what we must do in terms of maintaining some things the way they are and changing other things.

  It's well known that universities don't change typically very quickly, and that has been a great help to responding needlessly to faddishness. It's very clear to me also that the world is changing in a way that we have to alter some of the things we do, some of our motivations. The happy news is that's not new. That's never been new. This is a variation on a theme. Not a whole new direction for Bucknell.

  We talk on campus a lot now about being nimble. We talk about dealing with change. In my addresses and statements and what have you, most of which are public, I talk about things as explicitly as market forces. I understand that many people in education have not really thought about it that way before, or don't want to. My job as president is to tell the truth and to say, these market forces, we cannot by any means ignore. But we don't have to fundamentally change who we are either.

  [0:21:43] BHA: No one confronts challenges, let alone challenges to this scale and scope without optimism that there's a solution on the other side. Do you have a vision for what you hope colleges and universities look like in the decades to come?

  [0:21:57] JB: Well, you're certainly right: if you're not optimistic, this is not the job for you. I am very optimistic. As I said earlier, I've spent my whole career in higher education, and that's no accident. I've seen it changing lives again, and again, and again. I've also said that there's an element of faith in higher education, and faith is a belief in things you can't see or prove. Every once in a while, we see a bit of the future that we helped create.

  I'm a scientist and engineer and sometimes people say, “Oh, you're an engineer. What do you build?” I say, "Well, yeah, I'm an engineer, but I'm also an academic. What I build: I build young people. And I build young people for a changing world." That of course, takes vast teams of people, faculty, and staff, but we're building young people to become the best version of themselves they can possibly be. A big part of college, especially a residential college, is discovering yourself, but also building yourself, and confronting failure, confronting opportunity and learning things that you couldn't possibly imagine.

  [0:23:34] BT: It's clear to me, and I hope for our listeners that you're not just optimistic, I mean, even in that phrase, I build young people. You truly believe in the persistent value of higher education. That's been a force in your life and a force in your career. In this future world that we're talking about, how can we work to preserve that value? Or how might that value need to shift for the better?

  [0:23:56] JB: I think it will shift. I'd rather use a word like "evolve," because it has. I think we need to remember that Bucknell University was founded, first of all, as the University at Lewisburg. It had a mission that is really quite different than it does today. We were an early adopter of having women here, and we had African-American students much earlier than many schools. In many ways, those are just signposts of a willingness to change. In my lifetime, I think it was 1980, was the first graduating class at West Point and the Naval Academy that had women. To me, that's part of my lifetime. I know to students today, that's ancient history. But that, again, tells you large-scale changes are possible and are needed in higher education.

  Our job as educators is to debate and argue and fight about when, and, where and how. But we will continue to evolve to balance as best as we possibly can, who we are, what we do, why we do it, and how we do it, and who pays for it with a changing set of constraints and contexts that the marketplace provides us.

  [0:25:32] BHA: You've done this quite a bit throughout this episode and very well, but we like to invite our guests to speak directly to the prospective student, or family who might be listening to this episode, or sharing it with someone in their life. I want to invite you to speak directly to those folks who might be questioning college, or have even lost a bit of trust in institutions. What do you want them to leave this episode with?

  [0:25:54] JB: I might give an answer that some people [think], “Gee, why did he say that?” I'll say that college is not for everyone. Bucknell is not for every college student. That's impossible. But I, even more powerfully, would say, "Make sure you've done as much work and homework as you possibly can to understand why you may or may not feel a certain way.

  Clearly, the historical precedent suggests that going to college, and getting a high school and then a college degree, makes a difference in huge numbers of people's lives. That doesn't mean it's right for everybody, but the burden is on someone who says, “Ah, we've passed that period of time.” No.

  My whole set of colleagues here, we build young people, colleges across the country, high schools across the country, they're building young people for very good purposes. I would ask you to ask yourself why you think that's the case. There's no right or wrong answer. But my experience is you can be a trendsetter by bucking history. But if you do that, make sure you have good reasons why. I think most people will continue to conclude that as much education as you possibly can get, you will have a better, richer, deeper, more fulfilling and rewarding life than if not. It's not for everybody, but we will give you opportunities to grow in ways that I don't know how you can match them away from a college experience.

  [0:27:36] BHA: President Bravman, we want to thank you for being on this episode with us. You've left our listeners with lots of insights and lots of inspiration from your story and lots of hope for the future of the work that we do and why we do it and who we serve.

  [0:27:49] JB: Well, thank you very much for the opportunity. I’m always glad to talk about college and Bucknell. Thank you.

  [0:27:55] BT: Thanks to everyone out there for listening. If you're a fan of the podcast, please take a moment to rate, subscribe and share this episode with the students and families in your life.

  [0:28:03] BHA: You're invited to follow Bucknell on all your favorite social media apps. Just look for @BucknellU on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok. You can also follow our student run Instagram account, which is @IAmRayBucknell.

  [0:28:17] BT: Until next time, keep on reaching for your dreams and your dream school.

  [END]