Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. Well, the
Speaker 1: two thirty year old Bowden College counts in a ray
Speaker 1: of influential figures among its alumni, from Netflix founder Read
Speaker 1: Hastings to poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. And as this elite
Speaker 1: liberal arts college really looks to the future, Tim, it's
Speaker 1: enlisting the world's most valuable company, Apple in its mission
Speaker 1: to create digital equity across the student body. Clayton Rose
Speaker 1: is president of Bowden College. He joins us on the
Speaker 1: phone from Brunswick Main. Mr President Clayton, how are you.
Speaker 1: I'm very well, Tim. It's great to be with you
Speaker 1: and Carol today. It's great to be with you as well. Um.
Speaker 1: So I'm not going to hold it against you. I
Speaker 1: went to Colby College, but I think we should get
Speaker 1: that out there, you know, right at the beginning, because
Speaker 1: we have this like rivalry. At least at least you're
Speaker 1: not from Bates. Okay, that's all I can say. Um,
Speaker 1: but it's pretty remarkable what you guys are doing at Bowden. Uh.
Speaker 1: The Digital Excellence commitment provides every student with a thirteen
Speaker 1: inch MacBook Pro and I had many and an Apple pencil. UM.
Speaker 1: Talk to us about how this partnership came to be well,
Speaker 1: We began working with Apple in in earnest a few
Speaker 1: years ago before the pandemic um UH with respect to
Speaker 1: technology on campus and how to think about the future
Speaker 1: of the use of technology and higher education. During the pandemic,
Speaker 1: we made the decision to provide every one of our
Speaker 1: students and any faculty member that wanted one with an
Speaker 1: iPad pro and a pencil UH. And we did that
Speaker 1: UM during the academic year when a number of our
Speaker 1: students were operating remotely and many of our classes were
Speaker 1: operating remotely, so that every single student would have access
Speaker 1: to precisely the same hardware and be able to experience
Speaker 1: software in exactly the same way UM, and that faculty
Speaker 1: would be able to rely on very good technology to
Speaker 1: be able to deliver their classes and to work with
Speaker 1: their students in real time, and for the students to
Speaker 1: work with each other in study groups and offline and
Speaker 1: so forth. And that that proved to be a very
Speaker 1: powerful tool for making sure that we were able to
Speaker 1: deliver a great education during the pandemic. Last, I want
Speaker 1: to jump into where we have some time with you. Now,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do some news in a few minutes and
Speaker 1: we'll come back with even more time. But I'm wondering
Speaker 1: why Apple and rather than a less expensive provider of PCs,
Speaker 1: because when we talk Apple, we're talking premium products here.
Speaker 1: I guess I would turn to the old phrase that
Speaker 1: you get what you pay for. It's Apple has built
Speaker 1: fantastic products, both in the notebook version and in the
Speaker 1: iPad version, and they do different things, which is why
Speaker 1: we're providing our students with both of those tools UH
Speaker 1: and the pencil as well. UH. Also the ability to
Speaker 1: provide the kind of software that we need to offer
Speaker 1: our students to be able to have the educational experience
Speaker 1: they have both general UM productivity software but also very
Speaker 1: core specific software across the range of disciplines really drove
Speaker 1: us to Apple. I would also say that UM the
Speaker 1: UH in addition to the quality of the product, the
Speaker 1: service relationship that we have with Apple was also very
Speaker 1: important to us to make sure that students would have
Speaker 1: little if any downtime. If UM, they know something got broken,
Speaker 1: they needed to get something repaired, and so forth well,
Speaker 1: and this really gets into something we talked about here
Speaker 1: UM Clayton a lot at Bloomberg about inequity of access
Speaker 1: or just inequalities that are out there as well. What
Speaker 1: were you seeing that was potentially holding back some students
Speaker 1: because they did not have that same access. Yeah, thanks
Speaker 1: for that, Carol. UH. The issue of access and opportunity
Speaker 1: is a central part of our mission, and we can
Speaker 1: spend some time if you want, talking about our financial
Speaker 1: aid program. But to the to the question you asked,
Speaker 1: what we were seeing is that students would come to
Speaker 1: campus with a wide variety of hardware. Everyone would a row.
Speaker 1: I've pretty much everyone would arrive with some kind of
Speaker 1: a laptop or tablet. But the wide variety of laptops
Speaker 1: and tablets, the wide variety of the quality of the age,
Speaker 1: the power of the memory UH was making it increasingly
Speaker 1: difficult for our faculty to be able to rely on
Speaker 1: the ability for our students to be able to do
Speaker 1: the work UH in a way that UM was going
Speaker 1: to provide them with an excellent education. And many of
Speaker 1: our students who had UH lower quality and older products
Speaker 1: were not able to do the same kind of things
Speaker 1: in the same way as students who had the very
Speaker 1: best products for us. We really came to realize, and
Speaker 1: this was driven home during the pandemic that to be
Speaker 1: able to deliver the education that we want and act
Speaker 1: and to prepare our students for the digital world that
Speaker 1: we're going into, they all need to be working off
Speaker 1: of an excellent hardware platform and have access to excellent
Speaker 1: software and to be and to and to have a
Speaker 1: kind of homogeneous experience, to be able to all be
Speaker 1: working with the same tool UH. And that that that
Speaker 1: drove us. Otherwise, you've got students who are who are
Speaker 1: operating in a very different, lower quality environment, and we
Speaker 1: were seeing that this is for us table stakes for
Speaker 1: a great education. Sit tight for a second. I'm Clayton.
Speaker 1: We're gonna do a little bit of news and as
Speaker 1: you know, a lot going on in the world, and
Speaker 1: they will come back and continue the conversation. We are
Speaker 1: talking with Clayton Rose. He's President Bowden College, on the
Speaker 1: phone from the school at Brunswick, Maine. Trile Master Tim
Speaker 1: Stanovick here. We are talking with Bowden College President Clayton Rose.
Speaker 1: He's on the phone from Brunswick, Maine. We've been talking
Speaker 1: about UH, their plan to give all students a suite
Speaker 1: of the latest Apple technology and access to a full
Speaker 1: range of software to really smooth out the inequities when
Speaker 1: it comes to an inequities of access when it comes
Speaker 1: to technology and tools. Clayton, UM, glad you're still with us.
Speaker 1: Tim and I were talking in the break about the
Speaker 1: cost of this to you guys and where the money
Speaker 1: specifically is coming. Um. Was it a gift from a donor? Like,
Speaker 1: how are you doing this? So this, UH, the funding
Speaker 1: for this GARLD will come from our operating budget. We
Speaker 1: concluded that it was so important that we do this
Speaker 1: that we needed to make room in our normal operating
Speaker 1: budget um to cover the cost of doing this. So
Speaker 1: it's not a specific gift, it's not a limited time UM.
Speaker 1: My guess is that we'll have UH donors who find
Speaker 1: this interesting and we'll be able to help us over time.
Speaker 1: But UM, out of the box here we're covering out
Speaker 1: of our operating budget. Well, okay, will it Will it
Speaker 1: lead to an increase in tuition costs going forward? No,
Speaker 1: We're very disciplined about our our our budget, so we
Speaker 1: make choices about what's important and this is very much
Speaker 1: at the top of the list and some of the
Speaker 1: other things that we might not have done. We'll get
Speaker 1: too later. But um, but work our way into the
Speaker 1: budget later. Can you give us an idea of how
Speaker 1: much it costs it's costing for student? Sure, it's it's
Speaker 1: been reported that this per student that have to do
Speaker 1: the math. But the total program on an annual basis
Speaker 1: is about a million and a half dollars. So if
Speaker 1: we divide that by the two thousand students, I don't
Speaker 1: know my calculator, and it's higher math, so I'm going
Speaker 1: to miss onthing. I mean in the greater scheme of
Speaker 1: operating expenses, it's it's it's not really really significant right now.
Speaker 1: A million and a half is real money. But that's
Speaker 1: that's correct. Our our operating budget is about a hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty million dollars in a given year. Um and uh.
Speaker 1: And again, this is such an important part of ensuring
Speaker 1: that all of our students receive a great mode and
Speaker 1: education that you know, it's it's it's hard to argue
Speaker 1: that we shouldn't be doing it. So real money, but um,
Speaker 1: but manageable in the context of the budget that we have.
Speaker 1: An incredibly important in terms of our priorities. We did
Speaker 1: the math calculator, Thank you so much for app seven
Speaker 1: fifty dollars per per student. Um I get it though,
Speaker 1: because we don't do an interview Clayton, where somehow it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter what industry you're talking about, what leader you
Speaker 1: are talking to, that somehow the conversation gets back to
Speaker 1: technology in some ways. And so um, I get it.
Speaker 1: I get it where you come from. Yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 1: the combination of the of the notebook and the iPad
Speaker 1: is really quite powerful, and it's very interesting. When we
Speaker 1: first started, we were thinking about either or and we
Speaker 1: came to the conclusion that what you really need is
Speaker 1: to put both of these tools into our students hands.
Speaker 1: They do different things, they complement each other in very
Speaker 1: powerful ways and turning in terms of the teaching and
Speaker 1: the learning that we do here. And it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: what discipline, right, you're saying, every student gets this. If
Speaker 1: that's exactly right, it's really interesting. I mean, you can naturally,
Speaker 1: your mind naturally moves to stem oriented kinds of and
Speaker 1: quantitatively oriented kinds of fields. But in art as an example,
Speaker 1: one of our proposals from one of our faculty is
Speaker 1: to a craft on the iPad a three D version
Speaker 1: of an object, and then to create that object in
Speaker 1: a three D printer that we have in our our
Speaker 1: our department, and then to make a clay model of
Speaker 1: that and to imagine these, um, the sculptures that they're
Speaker 1: doing in different media. UM, it's it's really interesting. Our
Speaker 1: theater and Dance department learned over the course of the
Speaker 1: pandemic that the camera and the editing tools provide very
Speaker 1: powerful compliments to the work that they do on stage.
Speaker 1: And they're continuing to do that now that we're back
Speaker 1: in person and doing all of our work together as
Speaker 1: we've traditionally done. Hey, languages, we don't how much time
Speaker 1: left and I want to make sure we get to
Speaker 1: everything that we want to talk about. The performance of
Speaker 1: bode in Colleges endowment has been absolutely remarkable, according to
Speaker 1: day in the Bloomberg terminal, fourteen four point five percent
Speaker 1: annual return over the last ten years UM beating out
Speaker 1: only well not evenly beat not even beating out, but
Speaker 1: tied with M I T for for number one according
Speaker 1: to data in the Bloomberg. Are you able to do
Speaker 1: this program because of that that performance of the of
Speaker 1: the endowment, well, that certainly helps Tim. The endowment has
Speaker 1: done incredibly well over the short, medium and long term.
Speaker 1: And we've been blessed with great people on our investment
Speaker 1: department and our investment committee, And we have amazing alumni
Speaker 1: and parents that give to the college. Our participation rate
Speaker 1: for our annual funds from alumni is among the very
Speaker 1: top in the nation. Uh. And so we're we're really
Speaker 1: very fortunate tests Uh. You know, a great endowment and
Speaker 1: and folks that support us on an annual basis and
Speaker 1: in an endowed basis. So we need to ask you
Speaker 1: about Russia. Uh. And this is certainly as you could
Speaker 1: understand as a news organization, global news organization, just really
Speaker 1: as a global citizen, our focus on and I'm sure
Speaker 1: you have in your student body has as well. What
Speaker 1: are you hearing from our What are the conversations you
Speaker 1: all are having at Bowden surrounding the Russian invasion against Ukraine,
Speaker 1: especially as we're seeing companies push back, nations push back increasingly.
Speaker 1: I'm also curious what your student body is saying. So
Speaker 1: I think the the most honest thing we can say
Speaker 1: right now is that we're all taking this in and
Speaker 1: trying to understand what's going on um UH, and we're
Speaker 1: we're approaching this from perhaps the three different directions, Carol.
Speaker 1: The first is, in particular order, UH, the the educational aspect.
Speaker 1: On last Friday of several faculty or experts in various
Speaker 1: areas that relate to this held a teaching that was,
Speaker 1: as you can imagine, incredibly well attended by members of
Speaker 1: the community, and I suspect we will continue to do
Speaker 1: these over time. The second is that UH, we've we're
Speaker 1: putting together through UH work in our student affairs and
Speaker 1: with others, opportunities for students to come together in groups
Speaker 1: to talk about how they're processing all of this is
Speaker 1: an incredibly challenging thing to understand on the back of,
Speaker 1: you know, being in a kit pandemic and with a
Speaker 1: number of the other things that have been going on
Speaker 1: in the world. And then the third is that we
Speaker 1: UH for students that UM require, we have individual outreach
Speaker 1: and and UH and conversations with our deans and so forth.
Speaker 1: It's a small call which we know everyone. We paid
Speaker 1: deep attention to how everyone is doing. So there's the
Speaker 1: intellectual academic engagement, there's the group and the collective community
Speaker 1: coming together, and then there's individual outreach that we do.
Speaker 1: All right, yeah, no, UM, and we really appreciate you
Speaker 1: weighing in on that and and just so much more. Listen, Clayton,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. Hope we can reach on you
Speaker 1: again in the future, and good luck with the program.
Speaker 1: Clayton Rose, he's president of Bowden College, on the phone
Speaker 1: from Brunswick, Maine. I know, I don't want to sound
Speaker 1: like an old man here, but Carol, you and I
Speaker 1: were talking during the break and I said to you,
Speaker 1: you know, I graduated from college in two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: not that long ago. It was a big we got.
Speaker 1: We didn't have WiFi on campus until the summer between
Speaker 1: my junior and senior year. And it's pretty remarkable to
Speaker 1: see the way that technology has just transformed education so quickly,
Speaker 1: and I think increasingly you do see the technology community
Speaker 1: reaching out, UM and educational institutions really understand the importance
Speaker 1: of kids having technology in their hands. It's just the
Speaker 1: way we operate and making it each wall is really important.
Speaker 1: You're smiling. Why, It's just I can't believe everything's getting
Speaker 1: an iPad. It's pretty incredible. All right, have a safe
Speaker 1: and good evening, everybody. This is Bloomberg,