00:04>> Thank you so much Rick for being here
today.
00:07As you can see we've got a lot of really
interested people in the audience here for
00:11the first view from the top of the year,
so thanks to everybody for being here.
00:16You and I had a chance last week to grab
coffee and I walked away from that
00:20conversation feeling really excited about
what we were gonna talk about here today.
00:25I think you've got an incredible story to
share about leadership at Yale,
00:29which I'm sure everybody's heard of.
00:32Then going into your recent transition to
Coursera,
00:34which is one of the most buzzed about
companies in education today and, and,
00:39lastly, your thoughts on leadership
generally and
00:42advice that you have about lessons you've
learned from your career and
00:45thoughts you'd have to share with our
student community here.
00:50So I'd love to get started by stepping
back to 1993,
00:54to when you were first appointed president
of Yale.
00:58And, in a lot of ways, this was a little
bit of a turnaround situation.
01:02You had a very signficant operating
deficit of about $20 million.
01:07>> Seemed like a lot at the time.
01:08>> A lot at the time, a lot now.
01:11You had strained relationships with the
faculty and I think there were a lot of
01:16questions at that time about where Yale
was going in the future.
01:19So how did you step into that role as
president?
01:22What were your priorities as you thought
about your strategy to
01:25address these issues?
01:27>> Well, you know, looking back, it was.
01:30it's surprising to see that, the, the, the
major initiatives that I
01:34laid out in my inaugural address turned
out to be the things that occupied me for
01:3820 years, so it, some of it was not rocket
science.
01:42Some of it was pretty obvious.
01:44We, we had a really terribly crumbling
physical infrastructure.
01:48Most of Yale was built in the inter-war
period, between World War I and
01:53And in collegiate gothic style.
01:56And had not been touched since 1945, so,
or 40.
02:00So there was basically massive amounts of
02:04investment needed to bring the
infrastructure up to decent condition.
02:08And that, that sort of decaying look of
the campus.
02:12And the problematic nature of the city of
New Haven,
02:15which at the time was very high in
unemployment and
02:17the whole central business district,
essentially one third vacant.
02:22Where the crime was, was rampant at an all
time high.
02:25All of these things were causing us to
lose market-share.
02:28For the best students in, in higher
education.
02:31And so Yale was, you know, at edge of the
best in
02:36the world but it risked falling out of
that very top tier of universities.
02:41And so, investment in both infrastructure
and the city were just
02:45looming large as powerful things that
needed to be addressed.
02:49And then there were a couple of things I
saw at that time,
02:52that were longer term that turned out to
be major themes.
02:55One was internationalization, as Eugene
laid out, and thank you,
02:58by the way, Garth, for that generous
undeserved introduction.
03:01But one was internationalization because I
03:05just thought the world was changing and
globalization.
03:07People weren't using the word yet in 1993.
03:11But but, but the phenomenon was, was
clear.
03:15I mean, we needed Tom Friedman to give us
the words, but we, but
03:18we had the song somehow.
03:21then the other was redressing the balance
of Yale's strengths and weaknesses.
03:25That is, we had we were in danger of
becoming so tilted towards the humanities,
03:32the social science and the professions and
weaker and weaker in science medicine and
03:39engineering that I felt we needed to sorta
put more balance into that mix.
03:44A lesson, by the way, which Stanford
should learn in the other direction.
03:47>> If you want my advice.
03:51So, so those were the, those were the big
themes.
03:53And the first initiative.
03:54First really major step we're taking
toward urban citizenship in New Haven,
04:00which was a, a major project.
04:02>> And tell us about that.
04:03What did you learn about working with the,
the, the city at that time and
04:08also pitching that to your board and
trying to get buy-in for that effort.
04:12>> Yeah, the board was there.
04:13Because the board was very nervous about
the,
04:16the, the, the sort of reputation of New
Haven as a dangerous place, and so
04:20they were entirely on board with, with
investing significantly in the city.
04:26It was more a question of selling the, the
faculty and the and,
04:29and the local constituents who felt you
know, if Yale starts spending money to
04:33help fix New Haven this was like pouring
money down the drain.
04:36And, and so we didn't start by spending
money.
04:39We started by, by doing other things.
04:43It, we had a 200 plus year history of town
gown rivalry, ill will.
04:50Yale had, was this rich ivory tower
institution in a poor and declining
04:54industrial city that, you know, that had
been a prosperous industrial city, but
04:57it was, was in, was in a great decline as
the manufacturing industry went away.
05:02Shirt-making industry went to the south.
05:04The munitions industry at the end of the
Vietnam War basically shut down.
05:07And there was nothing left.
05:09Really nothing left literally.
05:12So so we had to we, we, we needed to.
05:17We, you know, we knew we, economic
development was gonna be a major theme.
05:20But we couldn't just jump into that.
05:21We were just, we were not trusted.
05:23So the issue was winning the bona fide's
of community leaders.
05:27Of the political apparatus and
05:29of the other community organizations in
the neighborhoods and in the clergy who
05:34have important political influence
particularly in the black community.
05:36So we, we, we set about it by with
volunteerism and really mobilizing.
05:43The, what was already happening,
05:45but organizing it in much more systematic
ways.
05:49So basically, I made, I had every dean of
every school rec, you know,
05:53told that it's part of your job
description to have urban outreach and
05:57to get your students and faculty involved.
05:59So the drama school is doing improv
theaters in near by neighborhood and
06:03the forestry environmental studies schools
planting trees and
06:06creating pocket parks in neighborhoods,
and, and we could go on and on.
06:10All kinds of, of initiatives on parts of
of students and faculty.
06:14And, and after a couple years that, it
really helped, we, we were really kind of,
06:19beginning to win the hearts and minds.
06:21Hey, Yale's different now, it's really
engaged in helping the city and
06:24then being a participating citizen.
06:26And then it was only at that point that
the mayor came to me and said, you know,
06:32we need to fix the downtown and the only,
the only entity in the place with cap,
06:36with the capital and the vision and the
self-interest to make that work is Yale.
06:42So, with my blessing, go ahead and buy
downtown, and redevelop it.
06:46And I mean, that was amazing, just from a
historical point of view,
06:49that we had that opportunity.
06:50But it worked out really well.
06:52And we've got great retail.
06:53Great, great food, you know,
06:55really terrific restaurants in the
downtown New Haven now.
06:58It's actually, truthfully, I hate to say
this, but
07:01it's actually nicer than Harvard Square.
07:02>> [LAUGH] We won't compare.
07:06But you know, I think one thing that you
were saying Rick,
07:09that you know, this, this idea of how you
work with the faculty at your school.
07:15>> I think is really interesting.
07:17Faculty are, are, generally tenured.
07:19You can't fire them.
07:20You can't force them to do what you want.
07:22So, how did you go about creating a vision
and
07:26getting them to, to really have a
consensus on that?
07:30>> Well this, it, all, all, this is all
true for
07:32almost any constituency where you need
their support.
07:36I mean, this would be true to any of you
who are leading organizations and
07:38you wanna keep the, you know, your senior
staff with you,
07:42you wanna keep the employees with you.
07:43Basically, a leader needs to articulate a
vision.
07:47He needs to be clearly and coherently
articulated.
07:51It needs to be tested with key people at
07:54the beginning before it's widely
communicated.
07:56But then it's communicate, communicate,
communicate.
07:59I mean it's just getting the message out
and, and going and
08:03patiently talking about it with skeptical
audiences.
08:06Answering questions.
08:07Being, being open and responsive to
suggestions and change.
08:12But also not yielding on the core vision.
08:15one of the great things about faculty is
they're basically rational.
08:18And, and even though they're very
independent.
08:21And so, persuading is possible, actually.
08:24>> Mm-hm.
>> If you have,
08:25if you, you know, if it's a compelling
argument eventually, you'll win.
08:29And, and, that, I think that's, that's,
that was the way, you know, for
08:34things like, you know, investing in the
infrastructure, you know, investing in
08:39the city and internationalization, all of
those strategies.
08:44Really became I think a pretty common
consensus with time,
08:48patience, explanation, lots of meetings
with groups to talk it through.
08:52>> Hm, the on, on the topic of
internationalization.
08:56You did face some push back on the
decision by the University to
09:00open a campus in Singapore in partnership
with the National University of Singapore.
09:05There was a lot of question around whether
Yale should be partnering with a country
09:10that had some questionable stands on human
rights in,
09:15in conflict with the way Yale felt.
09:17[CROSSTALK] And so how did you make that
decision to really put
09:21yourself behind that decision, when you
knew there was going to be public outcry?
09:27>> Right, well the si, so the initiative
to start a liberal arts college in
09:31Singapore came very, you know, rather late
in my presidency.
09:34We started talking about it in spring of
2009 after I'd been in my position for
09:42And and it was, it was a kind of
09:45a capstone of a major effort to do a lot
of other things, globally.
09:49Lots of exchange programs.
09:51Research facilities in China, all kinds of
other things have preceded this.
09:55So, the actual internationalization battle
for hearts and
10:00minds within the university had already
been won.
10:02What, what hit the nerve of some of our
faculty, and
10:05I, I hate, leaders will always say this.
10:08But it was a really small minority of
people who were
10:11really exorcised about this.
10:12The majority, as one, as one of my key
advisors,
10:16one faculty member I've greatly respect
said to me about this before it blew up.
10:22He said you know the thing is you've got
15% of the people wildly enthusiastic
10:27about this and 5% are, are just really
upset about it.
10:31And the remaining 80% actually don't know
or care or just totally indifferent.
10:35He said, what you have to avoid is a
situation where the 5% somehow get
10:40an issue where they can bring, where they
can persuade the 80%.
10:43Well that was so pressured because it
turned out to be what happened.
10:46The, the, the fa, the, these faculty
members tried to pass a resolution
10:51that said we, you know, we support full
human rights in Singapore.
10:56Well, who's gonna vote against that?
10:57Right?
So it wa, it wa,
10:59it was, it, it, it was not that they
censured our doing.
11:02And it was not a vote of no confidence in
our doing it.
11:04It was very clever, and, and you know, so
we took a few lumps in the press on this.
11:09Let me tell you why this is such a great
idea though.
11:13Asia is crying out for
11:14the kind of critic pedagogy that focuses
on critical thinking.
11:19You know, China trains e, enorm, enormous
numbers of engineers and
11:25we, and Americans worry that they're going
to eat our lunch some day because of this.
11:28And they look at us and they say, but
11:30all the innovation in the world is coming
from the United States.
11:35They have a very different method of
educating people.
11:38They teach people to think for
11:39themselves, to be independent, to question
the teacher.
11:42To, to speak up in class.
11:45We need more of that.
11:46And so the Chinese were kinda begging me
to do this.
11:49To set up a liberal arts college within
China.
11:51I thought that was an environment where it
just wasn't ready for, for this kind of,
11:56of really free, free ranging intellectual
battles and questioning authority.
12:01But Singapore frankly for all the
reputation of it of the,
12:05they're trying to maintain a kinda tenuous
hold on a, on a, on what is a peten,
12:10you know, what is essentially an island,
multicultural island in the middle of,
12:15you know of a, a very dif, a very
different, you know,
12:20ethnic pu, composition of Malaysia and
China nearby.
12:25You know, yes the government has been
authoritarian in many ways and
12:29the freedoms that we that we would like to
that we enjoy are not
12:31present entirely there.
12:33But the universities that have always been
in Singapore are kind of
12:36oasis where the rules are different.
12:39And where free speech goes on.
12:40Where academic freedom is practiced and
friends of ours said,
12:44look this, if you are negotiating an
arrangement with the Singaporeans
12:50you can trust them to abide by the,
they'll do, they'll be straight.
12:53If you write it down in contract, they'll
honor it.
12:56And so we wrote, we wrote a great contract
which essentially protects it
13:00academic freedom on the campus.
13:04It doesn't protect students who wanna go
march on the public in the public
13:07square downtown because that's not allowed
in the city.
13:10We have to have a permit.
13:11But, but we can we have them define our
campus as an indoor space.
13:17So it was one was one [UNKNOWN] And just,
13:20just a few weeks ago there was an there
was a good example of this, a film,
13:26with, with this politically, critical of
the, of the ruling party,
13:31was released in Europe, and it was banned
in, for public exhibition in Singapore.
13:38But before the public ban occurred, we had
already assured,
13:41been assured by the government.
13:44That yes, consistent with,
13:46with our understanding, you can show this
on your campus.
13:49So, so we're, I think we've negotiated a
pretty reasonable arrangement, and
13:53by the way, the, it's an incredible, the
students we're getting are amazing.
13:58The curriculum is a prescribed curriculum
that in the first year,
14:02that compares Eastern and Western
intellectual traditions.
14:05In social thought, in literature.
14:09And looks at comparative social
institutions.
14:11It's really a radically different kind of
curriculum.
14:15And we're u, it's all small classes.
14:16All 15 or to 18 students at most, and it's
going great.
14:22>> I wanna go back to-
14:23>> Asia in a little bit once we move into
your time at Coursera,
14:27because I know that's a big, a big market
for
14:30you there as well, but after 20 years at
Yale, you ended up retiring in 2013.
14:36That didn't last very long.
14:38>> First course I ever flunked was
retirement.
14:40So, so I'm curious, you,
14:42you went from Yale where you had almost
$20 billion endowment and
14:4712,000 students to Coursera where you have
$85 million in venture capital.
14:53And, nine million users at this point?
14:56I don't know what the-
14:58>> 10, 10 million users at this point, so
growing exponentially.
15:01That's a, that's a huge change for you.
15:03What made you think, Coursera's the next
step for me?
15:06>> Well I didn't think it when I, when I
left Yale I as president I, I was out
15:11here, visiting as a, a, visiting professor
in economics at, over at [UNKNOWN] and
15:16kind of thought I'd construct a life with
a portfolio of things to do.
15:20Like maybe some, maybe go back, do some
teaching.
15:23Either it's Stanford or Yale or maybe half
and half and, and, then,
15:27then I would you know be on a couple of
boards and
15:31do some public service commissions and
studies and things like that.
15:35So I, I, you know I could see a pretty
full life ahead, but
15:39then I somehow just you know.
15:42Ran into the folks at Kliner-Perkins and
and was convinced you know go,
15:48go, go take a look at this, and
15:50I went over to and signed on as you know
to be a consultant essentially.
15:54Come a week, a month in the last spring
semester, and and I I basically
16:01got seduced in you know, they basically
pitched me on actually we could you know?
16:04We have wonderful co-founders.
16:05They're Stanford professors.
16:07They're brilliant imaginative innovative
but
16:09it we could use a CEO to help take this to
the next level.
16:14And I must say it's more consistent with
what I've been doing for
16:18the last decade or even, even 12, 14
years.
16:22Then I would have initially thought,
16:24that is, I've, the big focus on
internationalization, one of, a-
16:28and, also Yale did play an early role in
online education.
16:32We, we started, with Stanford, as a joint
venture Stanford offered Yale.
16:37We did a little startup in 2000 called
AllLearn.
16:40That was an aesthetic success but a
financial flop.
16:42We had the wrong market.
16:44We, we, we, you know, that's one amazing
thing about technology.
16:47We just sort of, just, we, we, we're
stumbling like every,
16:51all people at the beginning.
16:52And we thought this was really for our
alumni.
16:53Well, that's much too narrow a market
segment.
16:55So Yale, Stanford, and Oxford were putting
on these great courses targeting their
16:59alumni just we just weren't getting
enrollment and sustaining it.
17:05But then in 07 we started with open
educational resources and like M.I.T.
17:08we put a large number of our best courses
on line but
17:12not interactively not like Course Sera.
17:14Not like the current moot.
17:15There was just a camera in the back of a
classroom you know capturing the lectures.
17:20And that was, that was great, it got a lot
of viewership, but, nothing like Coursera,
17:25I mean when Coursera and
17:27Udacity and edX started to operate you
could see that the world had changed.
17:31Internet bandwidth now supported large
scale interactivity.
17:37And it, it's, so, this is,
17:39this is an amazing opportunity to
democratize higher education.
17:42I mean, the reason I'm doing it is not,
not the reason that most presidents and
17:46provosts will tell you that they're doing
it.
17:48Most of them will tell you the main
reason, the main thing that's in it for
17:51me is I can improve on campus teaching.
17:53Gotta get all this data on what works and
what doesn't work, and
17:55I can use it at home.
17:57But, to me, that's like saying the
automobile, when it was invented,
18:01was a good tool for going to the grocery
store, you know.
18:03I mean, it's, it's, it, it misses the
point that, that, that the,
18:07that the scale, itself, is unbelievably
powerful.
18:11And, the idea that a single Stanford
professor, a single Yale professor,
18:15would teach a class, one class for ten
weeks, or eight weeks, and
18:19teach more students in that class than
they would teach in the 30 or
18:2240 year teaching career at home, is
amazing.
18:25It's taking the resources that we, that we
Universities invest in,
18:30great teachers developing their careers,
becoming masters of a subject,
18:34becoming experts and giving that expertise
to the world for free.
18:37I mean, it's truly revolutionary and, and
that's what's exciting about it.
18:42>> It, it is very exciting, but how, how
are you thinking about the research, Rick,
18:45that shows that the primary users of,
18:48of MOOCs at this point are college
educated white males?
18:52That, that sort of is contrater,
contradictory to the goal that you have to
18:57provide access to millions of, of users,
and learners worldwide.
19:01So how are you and Coursera thinking about
that issue?
19:05>> The we are doing all we can to
19:09promote outreach to the populations that
normally wouldn't have access to this.
19:16But th, that is to say,
19:17sort of naturally you'd expect highly
educated, affluent people later in life.
19:22To, to, to sample these courses.
19:23That's sorta obvious, you're all gonna do
it when you're, when,
19:27when you're looking for
19:28something interesting to do when you're 50
years old, you know, apart from your job.
19:32The but the, but the but, but there's, you
know, a couple of things.
19:38So you, it's not surprising there's
penetration there.
19:39But there's a su, an amazing amount of
penetration elsewhere.
19:43I mean, what does it mean to be, to have a
college degree if you're,
19:48if you're from a developing country with
low per capita incomes it prob,
19:52it doesn't mean the same thing in terms of
what you've been exposed to.
19:56As if you've gone to an Ivy League school,
or Stanford, or, or,
19:59or a, a first-rate institution in Europe.
20:02I mean we are giving a lot of value to
people, even if they're college
20:06educated in places where what they got in
college is nothing like what you all got.
20:13T, two is, we are using various tools like
20:16creating live learning hubs in US
embassies around the world.
20:21so where people who don't have the
bandwidth can actually come and
20:25get access to it, and, and, have, have
sort of mentored discussion groups.
20:30The state department is very excited about
this as an outreach, as a way,
20:35of, of, of getting to people in Africa and
the Middle East.
20:38And that's so that's underway.
20:41It's going to spread and
20:42also cellphone technology is getting
bandwidth and it's getting better and
20:47better in developing countries and we're
now optimizing for mobile use.
20:52I mean originally we, well originally four
months ago we, we put, we put ,.
21:00The videos on, on mobile applications.
21:05And now we realize, people are using it.
21:0830% of the, of our, of our viewership is,
or, of our, of our students are now
21:12accessing via their iPads or their tablets
or their phones.
21:16And so now we're developing by the middle
of next year we'll have completely
21:20Every, everything you can to do on a
computer,
21:22you'll be able to do on the phone.
21:24>> How are you thinking about who your
main customer is, because you've got
21:28the Universities on the one side that are
putting their content up on your platform?
21:32>> Right.
>> You've got the students who are using
21:35it, and you also have the business
community where you have an opportunity-
21:38>> Definitely.
>> To provide.
21:39Support in terms of credentialing.
21:41>> Right.
>> So how are you
21:42thinking about those various strategies?
21:45Are you sorta executing on all of those at
this point or
21:48do you believe like Steve Ballmer does
that you need one strategy and
21:51you need to do it really well?
21:52>> Well we couldn't succeed by ignoring
all three pieces of that,
21:59That is we obviously need to appeal to
the, we have to optimize for
22:04the learner experience that it has to be a
really attractive presentation of
22:10the material has to be something people
wanna re-engage in after they try it.
22:14So that's, that's just product design and,
and good pedagogy and
22:18using the research from all the data to
make the user experience better.
22:23We have to please our partners because
our.
22:25As this is Coursera specific now because
you wouldn't have to go to this way, but
22:29our niche in this market is aggregating
content from great Universities.
22:34Many of the other people in the online
education space are using faculty they
22:40hire freelance, which are largely from
industry, not from Universities.
22:46for sorta business skills training, that's
probably a pretty successful model.
22:49That's basically what Udacity is doing.
22:51They're, they're focusing narrowly on the
tech sector.
22:54Hiring industry people to teach courses on
tech skills.
22:58Our, our niche and our asset is
relationships with now 128 Universities.
23:03We're the best in the world.
23:04And I think you know, it makes us
different.
23:08It, it makes the average quality of what
we do way higher, I think,
23:11than any of the competitors, and, and so
we're, we need to keep the partners happy.
23:16And then the business community comes in
because we need people to recognize,
23:20I mean our monetization strategy is
basically education's free.
23:23But if you want verification, a verified,
you know, you want your identity verified.
23:27And getting certified as having completed
the course satisfactorily that
23:32costs $50, basically.
23:34And we are now discounting the price in
some of the developing countries.
23:38And to do that you need, for that to be
something people
23:44want to pay for when it's also free you
need the business community to recognize.
23:49Some of these courses, about half of our
courses are, build skills.
23:53The other half are general education
courses.
23:55At least those half of the courses that
the business community says, oh, yes,
23:59we want people who've taken your data
science specialization, or
24:01we want people who have studied Android
programming on your, on your platform.
24:08I wanna make sure to spend some-
24:09>> Yeah.
>> Time, Rick,
24:10on the fact that you went from really
leading a room full of PhD academics,
24:16to looking out at a room full of MBAs and
product engineers, right?
24:21So how has your leadership style evolved
since, moving.
24:25From a very traditional University into a
start up where you're not
24:28only dealing with a different type of
employee but you're also dealing with two
24:33founders who are still very involved with
the company.
24:39>> It's, there's, it's different, that's
for sure, but but as a general.
24:47As a general matter, there's a lot that's
in common in any leadership position, and,
24:52and I said it, you know,
24:54having a vision, communicating it clearly,
picking the right people,
24:58putting them in the right jobs, enabling
them, not micromanaging them.
25:03You know, those are all lessons that are
very very general.
25:09you know, running Coursera's sort of more,
a little more, it's somewhere in between.
25:14It's sort of what, more like running the
economics department than like running
25:16Yale because it's a, it's a, it's a
smaller population of people.
25:21In the economics department, we had about,
my time, about 50 faculty and, and.
25:26And 30 or 40 staff, so it, it course, a
little bit smaller than Coursera.
25:30But, and so, you know,
25:31you have all hands meetings, you deal with
the whole population.
25:34You didn't do that in a big organization
like Yale.
25:36So you need to have you know, that ability
to listen and
25:40process and or, organize people, delegate
tasks to the right people.
25:45All that's the same.
25:46What's kind of different.
25:48Is the speed of the,
25:50of the required speed of decision making
in this in this internet environment.
25:55I mean, we're in a brand new start up
business were
25:58constantly testing and iterating.
26:00We have to do our product development
rapidly.
26:03Put something out there,
26:06try it, do some testing, improve it,
constantly were just working relentlessly.
26:11Day and night to make the product better
and better.
26:14Make it build new features make them make
them work.
26:18That's just relentless effort on a time
scale of
26:21just higher pressure than your used to in
the University setting.
26:25And then there's questions about making
strategic choices.
26:28You know they're coming at you all the
time.
26:31And just as they are in the University.
26:32But in the University you know everybody's
used to.
26:34Oh let's talk about this for three months
before we decide.
26:36I mean it just th, there's not that sense
of urgency or
26:39well resourced you basically the business
of daily education and
26:43research is gonna go on no matter what the
President does.
26:46And, and so it's different.
26:47But in the, in the small company in a
highly competitive environment where we're
26:52charting new ground.
26:53You have to be prepared to react more
quickly and,
26:55and and actually that means be prepared to
make a few mistakes.
26:59Because you can't get everything right
without a lot of deliberation.
27:03So you, you take some risks.
27:05But that's what makes the world
interesting.
27:08>> Can you share any of those risks that
you've taken that haven't gone so well?
27:14>> Well we haven't made any of those bad
decisions since I've been there.
27:18>> But there were some made earlier.
27:20[LAUGH]
>> Why even ask?
27:21>> No, I, I I I think, I think there that
we,
27:29we have we have tried to, to work with our
partners, the Universities.
27:35To, to, to renegotiate certain aspects of
our arrangements with them and
27:41we've run into situations where they've
been very adamant about maintaining one or
27:47two of the terms in our original agreement
which I fully understand why it recog,
27:51why it recognizes their interests but on
the other hand.
27:55You know, it's not, not consistent with
sort of, internet norms.
27:58We, we're an internet company, and there
are, there are how, what happens.
28:05Here's a good example.
28:06What happens, this is one we just had a
hard time.
28:08We, we would like to do more to
essentially be able to take down.
28:14Comments on this, on our, in our
interactions on our forums.
28:19When, if, they start to get harassing or
threatening or, or, or are, we've
28:24had some, there are some bad actors, we've
had incidents that are bad incidents.
28:30You know, and, the University perspective
is that we don't take anything down,
28:34we just, we just, you know, we, we, we, we
and certainly it's my policy at Yale,
28:38if, you know, hate speech is responded to
with more speech.
28:44You're basically, you, you tea, use it as
a teaching moment.
28:47You tell the community, this is
inappropriate.
28:50But we're, we're not gonna, we're not
gonna take it,
28:51you know we're not gonna take it down.
28:53But we're, but we're gonna tell you,
28:54we think this is inappropriate and here's
why.
28:58The internet's not like that.
29:00All the big social media places you know
are taking stuff down all the time.
29:05And, and, you know, so getting,
29:07the Universities really aren't ready to
accept that.
29:09They want, they want the University kind
of rules to govern them.
29:11They don’t want an, of Coursera, taking
anything down without their involvement.
29:16And so we made em, we made kind of a
mistake reaching for this, I think.
29:20But, that we backed off and.
29:22Okay, we won't do anything without talking
to you first, but it's just the way,
29:25it's kind of give and take, you see, in
these kinds of situations.
29:30>> You've got a room full of potential
entrepreneurs here,
29:32as well as, people who have a real passion
for education.
29:36So, outside of what Coursera is doing,
what do you see,
29:40as the biggest opportunity for disruption
in education today, and what
29:45advice would you have for the students
here on how to pursue those opportunities.
29:51>> Well doing, yes this,
29:53this new technology does have the
potential to disrupt higher education.
29:59But I think actually-
30:00The near term phenomenon, the phenomena
for
30:03the next decade won't be that universities
as we know them disappear,
30:07it'll be that universities actually have
their impact amplified.
30:11And, and, and become more important to
society by
30:14virtue of having even more people you
know, that they're engaged with.
30:18So that's one thing.
30:20But what, but what in, what in ed tech?
30:22I mean, you know, the promise that ed tech
is
30:25going to deliver miracles has been around
for a long time.
30:29I remember when I started teaching as an
assistant professor at Yale,
30:34all the excitement about what Carnegie
Mellon then called programmed learning.
30:39That, you know, we're going to replace
lectures entirely with
30:42computer drills that are actually all
print based, but
30:45due to this basically take you through
material in a programmed way.
30:49And if you get a wrong answer here, it
leads you to this branch, and
30:52you get the following material, and
30:54if you get a right answer it goes to this
path, and, it, that never happened.
30:58It's still a good idea.
31:00I mean, a modern version of this would be
an idea I had a Yale actually that we
31:06couldn't get high school teachers to
accept which was we wanted to do a,
31:10have Yale Press do a really first-rate
Chinese language,
31:14you know, teaching Chinese to English
language learners.
31:16And my idea was gamify it.
31:17You know, it was basically have, have
voice recognition technology, and
31:23have, and have you say something, you've
confronted an obstacle, in,
31:26in a game you know ,and, and
31:29you have to communicate the words orally
and the computer would fix it.
31:32I thought that would be a great way to
teach, you know, to teach language.
31:37The high school teachers we consulted with
didn't even want to touch it, so.
31:42It's gonna be a long time before there's
really revolutionary disruption in
31:46traditional education.
31:47In the meantime, all this stuff added
around the edges is gonna, like,
31:51like moves for university level stuff.
31:53And like the Khan Academy in material and
other things that focus more on K to 12.
31:59I think it's going to be greatly enriching
for people.
32:01It's gonna make their lives better.
32:04I think it'll, I think it's creating great
social value.
32:07I mean I'd encourage you to think about
you know,
32:09joining a startup and try to help build
something.
32:12The idea that we're gonna completely
disrupt the educational system,
32:16as opposed to just reaching more people
who are outside it, or
32:20improving the experience of those who are
inside it is probably just a little early.
32:25Well I've been speaking a lot here and
asking you a lot of questions, Rick, so
32:28I want to make sure to open it up to our
audience and
32:31we have two mics that will be passed as
well as our hashtag gsbvftt.
32:38So we'll be alternating between questions
from the audience here and
32:42questions that Ryan will read from
Twitter.
32:46So, Brian, do you have one ready to go?
32:51So we've gotten a few questions from the
audience on on Coursera and
32:56on your role at Yale.
32:58>> Mm.
>> And one that keeps up
32:59that you might have an interesting
perspective on is,
33:01what's your pitch to colleges or
universities?
33:03Is it solely about amplifying the message
of universities?
33:08How do you deal with the threats they,
they perceive Coursera or
33:11MOOCs having to the traditional model and
is there a, a place for a sort of a moral
33:17responsibility of universities to provide
education to the masses?
33:21>> Yeah, so that is, I mean, the, the, the
scale that this offers has been my,
33:26my principle pitch to universities.
33:29And it's actually a har, it's actually a
kind of a hard sell.
33:32I mean it's not, it's, it's.
33:33[COUGH] I, I think part of what I, what I
have to do personally is, is to,
33:38is to carry that message.
33:40I mean I, I think that it's the, and, and
33:43one of the advantages of having been a
university president and
33:46dealing now with university leaders is I
do have some credibility.
33:50So people are kinda surprised when I say
my first, you know, the first,
33:54the first thing about this is not
improving on campus teaching although it,
34:00it's great for that and will help you do
that.
34:04If that's what you focus on,
34:05you're sort of missing what's really, what
really matters.
34:07So I have been pushing primarily the
notion that
34:11this should redefine the mission of
university.
34:14Our mission, the mission of the university
in,
34:16if you go to most people's missions
statements, will have something to
34:19do with the creation and the dissemination
of knowledge.
34:23Okay, so we create knowledge through our
research.
34:26We disseminate it through our publications
and teaching.
34:29But we publish to increasingly small
audiences.
34:32You know, I mean, many professionals
publish their articles and
34:35are read by, you know, 100 people in their
field.
34:37And that's pretty good.
34:40We disseminate it through teaching.
34:43And the teaching, in many places, like
GSB, is wonderful.
34:46But how big are the classes?
34:47And how many students do, does a professor
reach?
34:50This offers a op, you know, you know on
average maybe 100 or
34:54200 students a year is the, is the contact
a faculty member has.
34:59And with the Coursera of course you reach
tens of thousands.
35:02And, and that's revolutionary I think, and
it gives the university
35:08a chance to make a difference to wor, you
know global development.
35:12To, to give economic development
opportunity to people all over the world.
35:16And to give life long learning opportunity
to those who you know,
35:20don't need the economic advancement, but
just are curious.
35:23Just want to learn more, want to grow.
35:25So it's an amazing, I think it's amazing.
35:27That is basically my pitch.
35:28I mean, yes, we'll support your on-campus
with classrooms.
35:33It's, yes we'll give you data.
35:35You can figure out which questions in your
quizzes are, are not working.
35:40And you can improve your lectures that
lead up to those questions.
35:42There are a whole lot of things we can do
that way.
35:45And yes we can generate revenue for you,
but frankly, we think we can at least, but
35:50frankly that revenues not, the scale at
which we can do that is not gonna be
35:54a game changer for 128 different
university departments.
35:58We had even if we were distributing half a
billion dollars,
36:02that's not a huge number for universities
you know to have so.
36:07I think it's mainly the,
36:08it's mainly think about about what, what
is the social role of the university?
36:12And technology has enabled universities to
move beyond the education of
36:17the elites of highly selected elites, to
the, the, the world.
36:22And I think that's incredibly powerful.
36:27A question from the audience.
36:31>> I, I'd love to ask about challenging
decisions you had to face kind of at
36:34the end of your time at Yale.
36:36you, you sorry I'm, I'll stand up so you
can.
36:38>> Oh yeah thanks.
>> You were one of
36:39the hardest things you had to deal with at
the end of
36:42your tenure at Yale was expanding the
residential college system.
36:45And obviously running into the financial
crisis.
36:48The the economics of that became
challenging.
36:52>> It was really rumored that one of the
other view for
36:54the top speaker's offered a very large
gift in order to, you know, name one of
36:58those colleges after that person, and it
was rumored that Yale turned that down.
37:04I realize that that conversation is
probably confidential and
37:06don't want you to have to delve too much
into that.
37:08But can you talk a little bit about the
challenge you have as an executive
37:12between profitability and kind of
organizational values and
37:15how you think that situation potentially
exemplifies that and how you
37:19think about that at Coursera as you
obviously deal with a number of, kind of,
37:22important morals and values in education
but also needing to drive profitability?
37:31So you know, we, we, we have, have.
37:33We put a lot of money into our facilities
and it's only after we
37:36get half mostly renovated that we decided
expansion would be a good idea.
37:42You know, if you know the Yale system we
have these very, particularly since
37:46they've been renovated, amazing facilities
to house undergraduates that are.
37:52That create social environments and
37:54great communities and have amazing you
know, facilities to support that.
37:58We wanted to build two more.
38:01It was high, high on the agenda right
before the crisis hit.
38:05And along with a lot of other capital
projects that we
38:09just basically froze at that point.
38:14I, I won't confirm or deny the, the rumor
you heard.
38:17But I will say this, I think that, so we
basically committed,
38:21decided at the time of the financial
crisis that if we were going to go
38:25forward with colleges, we're going to have
to raise 100% of the money.
38:28We, we, we, that we going to have to be
essentially an all cash transaction.
38:32We weren't gonna take new debt to finance
the new colleges.
38:35And we would have to absorb the
incremental operating cost and
38:39We would have to have enough, you know,
projected future surplus so
38:43So all, it was, it we were not gonna rob
anything existing in order to,
38:51There's no question that had we wanted to
allow
38:57donors to name these colleges, we probably
could have raised a substantially greater,
39:01we, we, we're, you know, we're naming
towers and, and courtyards and entryways.
39:07But the, the names of the Yale colleges,
you know,
39:10originally were selected by the Yale
Corporation to honor, you know,
39:14important founders of the university or
great Yale, you know, Yale-worthies.
39:19Great, great, great citizens and
39:21contributors to public life or
intellectual life who came from Yale.
39:25And my board did not wanna name a college
for a donor.
39:30And I, I, I have to say.
39:33I, I ha, I was very ambivalent actually on
that subject personally,
39:37because I really wanted to see this
project go forward and
39:40we have lots of things named for donors
at, at, at, at Yale, but
39:44I, I saw the argument and I, and it was a
pretty overwhelmingly I mean the,
39:48the Yale Corporation which is a small,
very highly deliberative body.
39:54Was pretty strong about this.
39:55And so we had to disappoint at least one
prospective donor, who,
40:00who would have, who would have done this.
40:03I maybe, I guess, didn't answer it.
40:04The general question is yes, there's
always a tension between values and prac-,
40:11But I, I have to say, at an institution
like Yale, the choice comes down on
40:16the side of values way more often than
not.
40:20And, and and actually I would say this
40:25is probably more salient for all of you,
take it out of the Yale context.
40:29I mean, one of the things I always ask
myself.
40:34It whenever we had a tough issue,
40:37any, any tough issue was what is the right
thing to do.
40:40I mean that is you can make all kinds of
expedient arguments on one
40:45And it's the temptations when you're
running a big institution like Yale.
40:50Because it is so much in the public view
and so
40:52much of what you do is scrutinized by so
many different people there is always
40:57a temptation to say, oh, this is one we
can sort of hide.
41:02We don't have to deal with it.
41:03We can shove it under the rug.
41:05You can't, you just can't.
41:08nothing gets shoved under the rug, I mean
basically, you have to assume.
41:13I, I, I live my life like I had to assume
that everything I did or
41:17said could appear in the New York Times.
41:19I mean, it, you just, you just, you can't
hide anything.
41:23So you might as well live by your values
because in the long run,
41:26that's the best way to live.
41:27>> Could you respond to the second part of
the question.
41:30>> Yeah.
>> Relating back to the-
41:34>> Yeah you know I still, I still, I still
feel that way,
41:37it's just, it's a little it's a it, it
the, the profit motive, it,
41:42it means that one of your objectives at
least is, you know, to make something.
41:48You gotta be sustainable, you've gotta
bring your terms to your, to your owners.
41:53that's, but that's a value that also has
to be weighed against the mission.
41:58>> You know, you know,
41:59we haven't decided if Coursera to become a
B corporation, but it, a, a company like
42:03Coursera is certainly a candidate for that
because we do have a mission, which is to
42:07deliver you know, to deliver universal
access to the world's best education.
42:12And we all believe in it and we wouldn't
have had, we wouldn't have succeed in
42:16getting the great employees that we have
managed to attract without that mission.
42:20If we were just another tech start up
with, you know,
42:23that wanted to make a lot of money.
42:25I don't think we would have done, we, we,
we are competing with Google and
42:29Facebook for engineers.
42:31Some of our senior execs have left
companies like Google, Facebook, Netflix,
42:37So, you know, they're not there,
42:39they're really not there because they
think we're going to get rich.
42:42I mean we may all get rich, but that's not
why we're there.
42:46We're there because we think this is a
important issue.
42:51A question from this side?
42:54>> Going back to the theme of universities
[INAUDIBLE].
43:33So, let's start with why you should still
pay.
43:38I, I, I paid two years of actually more.
43:41My, my daughter took an engineering degree
too.
43:44So and I paid a lot of undergraduate
tuitions at Stanford.
43:48Four you know, three times four.
43:54The and, and and it's still worth it
because what you get in
43:59the live experience with such amazing
fellow students and, and
44:04with the live contact with mentors and
professors.
44:07It, it, we're not gonna be able to supply
that on the internet anytime soon.
44:12I mean what where making available and
democratizing is essentially the content.
44:16So if you wanna master content the, the,
coursera is a great tool.
44:20I, I if you wanna, you know, really do a
deep dive
44:27into forming relationships that are going
to mean something to you for a lifetime.
44:32To learn all the soft skills, and, and,
and interpersonal skills, and
44:37skills of leadership, and fellowship, and
teamwork that you need in life.
44:41There's nothing like these great
universities.
44:43There's just no experience comparable.
44:45It's a, this is an immersion experience
with a lot of brilliant people, you know,
44:49who have enormous potential to do great
things in the world.
44:52And you get to benefit from it.
44:54It's worth many times what you pay for it
actually.
44:59I, I don't think, you know, GSB is [LAUGH]
Is going down,
45:03down any time soon to the internet.
45:06I'm not worried about that.
45:09So I think the, you know, I think things
are re, I think it can be reconciled.
45:13Now the, the, the question does come up,
45:15what hap, but what about the experiences
that really aren't like this?
45:19So, what about, what about second tier.
45:22Third tier institutions that basically
aren't residential.
45:26Aren't, don't have communities.
45:28People commute in to to a community
college, take a course and they go home.
45:33I mean, could the internet, you know.
45:36Could, could a Coursera replace that?
45:37I think the answer is yes.
45:40it could become a cheaper, more effective
way.
45:43The so to learn, to learn what students
having that kind of experience can learn.
45:48So there, yes it will have caused some
kind of disruption and
45:51there will be some dis some dis relocation
of of students towards
45:57just getting credentials online rather
than getting degrees.
46:01How massive a change it will be over what
time frame I'm, I'm my guess is.
46:07over a [LAUGH] long time frame rather than
a lot sent over a short one.
46:13>> Another question from Twitter.
46:15>> sure.
This one's from Gabe Alazondo, and
46:17it touches on something you just mentioned
a little bit.
46:20>> Right.
>> That the disruption of higher ed is
46:23going very slowly, and you've seen that
over time.
46:25Is the main missing ingredient the student
interaction that you just spoke about?
46:30And if so, how do you feel about sort of
hybrid models like the Minerva project or
46:34other companies that might be
46:36trying to combine mass education with
those student student engagement models?
46:42>> Well, Minerva's not a good example,
that's ultra small scale.
46:44That's not, so that's a that's a
different, that's using both online and
46:49and live methods for a very highly
selective group that's.
46:54I think different the I think yeah the
missing pieces so
46:59far are not for it's, it's the it's the
network effects of bringing everybody
47:04together into one physical location that
which is both peer to peer learning and,
47:10and learning social skills.
47:12And it's also critical thinking because
the classroom experience which could be
47:17replicated online I think with live video
chat but
47:20that would have to be small scale.
47:22I mean you, you I don't think you could
have 2,000 students online and
47:26do the, do the kind of critical thinking.
47:30Tool development that's sort of the, the,
47:33the questioning, the forcing you to defend
an argument.
47:35I mean, that's very personalized.
47:37And it works very well in a 15 person
seminar.
47:39It works even better in an Oxford tutorial
but, but
47:43these are not the things that, that the
internet can replicate.
47:48So it's, so it's a number,
47:49you know it's the re, it's the, it's the
whole residential on campus experience.
47:53It's a big part of it and and it's the
intimate contact with faculty and
48:00it's and it's the highly interactive
classroom.
48:04all, all of those are ingredients of what
you get in the, we,
48:06we are not delivering now.
48:08I think technology can deliver some of
that but not all of it.
48:15>> Sorry, can you stand up and.
48:19>> When you mentioned the [UNKNOWN] having
companies hire people that have done
48:24some of the courses that you-
48:28Is there any help that you can give to for
example emerging?
48:41Are you, the question is how do you help,
how can you help companies in emerging
48:45markets to, to, to decipher what are the
courses that might be valuable to them?
48:50And, yeah, yeah, the.
48:54This is a work in progress, but it's
something we're very mindful of.
48:58And so yes we've talked to a bunch of
large
49:03global companies who employ people around
the world, and try to elicit from them
49:09what kinds of courses are valuable, what I
expect will happen hasn't happened yet.
49:14But I, I'd love to see, actually on our
site, a kind of posting that,
49:20you know, Price Waterhouse Coopers
recommends that's a global company,
49:26it has over a million employees
world-wide.
49:29Recommends these five courses, or these
ten courses; these would be useful to us,
49:34I mean and I I and I you know we've had
conversations with some of
49:37the corporations about this and I think, I
think we'll get there in the next year.
49:41Probably have some of that and that will
be a helpful guide.
49:44Basically allow companies to to
demonstrate you know
49:47indicate what courses they they want.
49:49Obviously they can do it in their job.
49:54So but you know actually posting guide
post on our site would actually
49:58have externalities because of the P.W.C.
says this is a valued course for us.
50:02A smaller accounting firm in you know in
Latin America could could look at that and
50:07say yeah that that makes sense to us too.
50:12>> Well, we're about to run out of time
Rick, but
50:14I do want to end with one question that I
think will, will speak to a lot of
50:18people in the audience because it's on the
GSB application.
50:23And that question is, what matters most to
you and why?
50:27>> I'm tempted to say that the Giants win
the World Series.
50:30[LAUGH] Because I'm a lifelong fan.
50:32[SOUND] But that's, that would be
frivolous.
50:38[LAUGH] When I got appointed exceed, a
little side line,
50:42when I got appointed president of Yale I
was asked by the New York Times,
50:45is this the most exciting day of your
life?
50:48And I responded no, not as exciting as
when the Giants moved to San Francisco.
50:52I was eleven years old.
50:55My wife almost killed me with that remark.
50:58>> I mean the birth of our children, you
know, I mean.
51:03[LAUGH] There are some things more
important.
51:08[LAUGH]
>> But what matters between, I, I,
51:12you know, it, it, it may sound trivial and
trite and
51:16it can be said by many people, but making,
making a difference in the world.
51:20I mean doing, I, I come out of you know, a
tradition.
51:24I had a mother who raised me to sort of
understand you know.
51:30You're a person with a good mind, and
51:32you have an obligation to, you know, to
make a difference in the world.
51:36I mean, do something of value to others.
51:38So, I'd say that's what matters to me.
51:41>> Well, thank you so much, Rick.
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