Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Matt Skogan was working on Wall Street eighty hours a week,
Speaker 2: making good money, happily married a small town boy from Michigan,
Speaker 2: made good. When he began to have a change of heart.
Speaker 3: I went through a period of my life, a mini
Speaker 3: existential crisis. My dad died in twenty thirteen. He had
Speaker 3: a cancer called multiple maloma. He was only sixty and
Speaker 3: then just two years after that, my mom passed away
Speaker 3: from a different kind of cancer. She had breast cancer.
Speaker 3: And it kind of sent me into a period of
Speaker 3: life where I just felt like, I love my work.
Speaker 3: It's interesting, it's intellectually stimulating, I love the people through
Speaker 3: my work. But I also felt this sense of like,
Speaker 3: I'm at the end of the day, I'm showing up
Speaker 3: to work every day to help a bank make more money.
Speaker 3: I went through a season of pretty intense like prayer
Speaker 3: and discernment and just kind of feeling like I think
Speaker 3: I'm supposed doing something else.
Speaker 2: Scogan was on the board of the small Christian liberal
Speaker 2: arts school he'd gone to as an undergraduate, a place
Speaker 2: called Hope College on the shores of Lake Michigan, and
Speaker 2: just as his life was turning upside down, the school's
Speaker 2: president announced he was leaving. Scogan says that when he
Speaker 2: heard the news, he had an intense feeling that this
Speaker 2: was a job he was supposed to do. He thought
Speaker 2: of the Mark Twain quote, the two most important days
Speaker 2: in your life are the day you're born and the
Speaker 2: day you find out why. Scogan had no academic experience.
Speaker 2: He was a ridiculous long shot, but slowly he inched
Speaker 2: forward in the process, and as he did, he realized
Speaker 2: that if it was actually going to happen, if he
Speaker 2: were really going to be the president of a college,
Speaker 2: he couldn't do what every other president was doing.
Speaker 3: I had a couple of pretty formative experiences. There was
Speaker 3: a moment when I was on an airplane on a
Speaker 3: business trip and I was flying back to New York
Speaker 3: from California, I think, and we were flying into JFK,
Speaker 3: and I'm like half asleep on the airplane, and the
Speaker 3: pilot comes on and he says, we're at thirty three
Speaker 3: thousand feet and we're beginning our descent into JFK. Thirty
Speaker 3: three thousand at the time was the price of Hope's tuition,
Speaker 3: And I just got this visual image in my head
Speaker 3: of thirty three thousand going to zero. And then it
Speaker 3: was three weeks later and I was having dinner with
Speaker 3: a friend and we were just talking about life, and
Speaker 3: I told him that I was thinking about applying for
Speaker 3: this job, and he asked me about home college, and
Speaker 3: he asked me about what I saw is the challenges
Speaker 3: in higher ed and I've of course mentioned the cost,
Speaker 3: and he just very flippantly and without thinking, he said, well,
Speaker 3: no one should have to pay for hope. And then
Speaker 3: he repeated it, no one should have to pay for hope,
Speaker 3: and he meant it as a joke, I think, and
Speaker 3: we both laughed. But as I was laughing, like I realized, dang,
Speaker 3: he just said something profoundly true. No one should have
Speaker 3: to pay for hope.
Speaker 2: My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to U Revisionist History,
Speaker 2: my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. Over the years,
Speaker 2: on this podcast, we have talked about the strange goings
Speaker 2: on in higher education, ridiculously fancy amenities, the elsat the absurd,
Speaker 2: US news rankings, multi billion dollar endowments. This episode is
Speaker 2: about a very different kind of strange goings on, Matt
Speaker 2: Skuggan's radical experiment Nobody should have to pay for Hope.
Speaker 2: Hope is in a little town called Holland, just west
Speaker 2: of Grand Rapids, which is called Holland because Dutch immigrants
Speaker 2: settled there. The area still has a lot of tidy
Speaker 2: Dutch practicality. The big local employers are the furniture makers
Speaker 2: Herman Miller and Haworth. The campus is right in the
Speaker 2: middle of town, a big, beautiful church at the center.
Speaker 2: I got a campus tour from a towering Nigerian student
Speaker 2: with the magnificently Nigerian first name of Mark Marvelous. I
Speaker 2: sat in a campus coffee shop listening to a high
Speaker 2: spirited back and forth that began with the movies and
Speaker 2: ended with scripture. The school was having a day long
Speaker 2: conference to explain to the community what they were trying
Speaker 2: to do. A student spoke first, a young woman named Madison,
Speaker 2: a little nervous in front of the crowd. She'd made
Speaker 2: some of the art hanging on the.
Speaker 1: Walls around the room.
Speaker 4: Hi.
Speaker 5: Everyone, good evening and thank you for attending what I
Speaker 5: believe is a wonderful artistic representation of Hope Forward as
Speaker 5: not only a vision but a reality. My name is
Speaker 5: Madison and I have the honor of belonging to the
Speaker 5: inaugural Hope Forward cohort.
Speaker 2: Hope Forward was the name Skogan gave to his experiment.
Speaker 2: Madison had made a print of a willow tree that
Speaker 2: she said symbolized what the school had done for her.
Speaker 5: Because of this gift, I feel free to pursue any
Speaker 5: area of study without the burden excessive debt. This means
Speaker 5: I am free to care about my community here and
Speaker 5: later because I am and will be passionate about what
Speaker 5: I do.
Speaker 2: Then the writer Mitch album came to the podium. Album
Speaker 2: was actually the reason I was there. He emailed me
Speaker 2: out of the blue one day and told me about
Speaker 2: what was happening in Holland. He drove over from Detroit,
Speaker 2: where he lives, and kicked things off with a short
Speaker 2: talk about why he's a Hope College believer.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I guess I'm here in multiple capacities. I'm sort
Speaker 6: of like a parent and proud to be And I'm
Speaker 6: going to share with you for a couple of minutes
Speaker 6: how that came to be and why I do believe
Speaker 6: that this model works because I have seen it in
Speaker 6: action many times in my life, and in fact, the
Speaker 6: latter part of my professional life has kind of been
Speaker 6: dedicated to this.
Speaker 2: The model he was referring to was President Scogan's hope forward,
Speaker 2: his grand experiment.
Speaker 6: So honestly not been that charitable a person in the
Speaker 6: first part of my career, not because I was against it.
Speaker 1: I think I was just like many young people.
Speaker 6: I was very wrapped up in my own success, of
Speaker 6: my own ambition, and then I got involved with some
Speaker 6: of you were probably aware with an old professor of
Speaker 6: mine who was dying from lu Gerrig's disease named Mary Schwartz,
Speaker 6: and I visited with him every Tuesday.
Speaker 2: Tuesdays with Maury was album's most famous book. It came
Speaker 2: out in nineteen ninety seven. It's one of the best
Speaker 2: selling memoirs of all time.
Speaker 6: I noticed that when people would come in and visit
Speaker 6: with him, very quickly the conversation would change. They would
Speaker 6: come in trying to cheer him up because he was
Speaker 6: dying from this terminal illness, but within a couple of
Speaker 6: minutes he would start asking them about their work, their
Speaker 6: love life, whatever, And an hour later they'd come out
Speaker 6: in tears and they'd say, you know, I try to
Speaker 6: cheer him up, but next thing I know, I'm talking
Speaker 6: to him, and he's asked me questions, and then he's
Speaker 6: really asking me questions, and I'm really then and as
Speaker 6: I'm I'm crying, I.
Speaker 1: Tried to cheer him up. He ended up cheering me up.
Speaker 1: He ended up comforting me.
Speaker 6: And I asked him finally, after witnessing this so many times,
Speaker 6: I don't get it. You know, like you're the one
Speaker 6: who's dying. Why don't you just say, let's not talk
Speaker 6: about your problems, Let's talk about my problems. And he said, Mitch,
Speaker 6: why would I ever take from people like that? Taking
Speaker 6: just makes me feel like I'm dying. Giving makes me
Speaker 6: feel like I'm living. It's a profound little sentence and
Speaker 6: also rhymes, so it's easy to remember. Giving makes you
Speaker 6: feel like living. And I have never forgotten that moment,
Speaker 6: nor have I ever forgotten that sentiment.
Speaker 2: A small Christian college, a student talking about a willow tree.
Speaker 2: A best selling writer of inspirational books, introduces the rhyming
Speaker 2: catchphrase giving makes you feel like living. If the cynic
Speaker 2: in you is bubbling to the surface right now, I
Speaker 2: understand because these aren't the kinds of things we expect
Speaker 2: to hear on college campuses. What about the fancy new
Speaker 2: building opening, the expansion of the endowed prestigious center for
Speaker 2: this and that, the glittering credentials of the incoming class.
Speaker 2: But by the end of the evening I kind of
Speaker 2: wished every school sounded like this. Imagine that you had
Speaker 2: never heard of higher education before, you had been living
Speaker 2: on a desert island somewhere, and suddenly, once you finished
Speaker 2: desert island high school, your parents decided what you needed
Speaker 2: was an American college degree. So you show up on
Speaker 2: this thing called a campus and you ask your hosts
Speaker 2: what am I to you, and they say, we think
Speaker 2: of you as a student kind of, but also as
Speaker 2: a customer, because this whole thing is going to cost
Speaker 2: you a lot of money, and we need to get paid.
Speaker 2: How much you ask, well, it depends like whether you're
Speaker 2: good at things like fencing or rowing and how much
Speaker 2: your parents make. But chances are you'll have to borrow
Speaker 2: a lot to pay for your education. So you say, oh,
Speaker 2: so I'm really like someone with a big mortgage. I'm
Speaker 2: a debtor, and they say sure, but once you've graduated,
Speaker 2: we're going to call you every year to ask for
Speaker 2: donations on the grounds that you are now a member
Speaker 2: of our community. Your head is spinning at this point.
Speaker 2: Oh really, what are those donations for. Well, it's for
Speaker 2: this thing we invented called an endowment, which is a
Speaker 2: big pile of cash that sits with a money manager
Speaker 2: in New York, which we use as a symbol of
Speaker 2: how important we are. So you say, wait, I'm a student,
Speaker 2: a customer, a debtor, and an investor in a Wall
Speaker 2: Street hedge fund. Are all businesses in the United States?
Speaker 2: This complicated? And they say, no, just higher education. This
Speaker 2: arrangement struck Matt Skogan as deeply weird. He was a banker.
Speaker 2: He came from a world where financial arrangements had precise
Speaker 2: definitions gross sales, net revenue, IBITA earnings before interest, taxes,
Speaker 2: and amortization. He was an outsider to this world. He
Speaker 2: didn't think like a college president. He doesn't even look
Speaker 2: like a college president. He was thirty nine when he
Speaker 2: was hired, but looks even younger. I'm short and skinny.
Speaker 2: He's shorter and skinnier. He has red hair and oversized
Speaker 2: ears and looks and this reference would be lost to
Speaker 2: all of you under the age of fifty A little
Speaker 2: like Ron Howard in Happy Days Later when we were
Speaker 2: chatting with a group of students. I asked what they
Speaker 2: call him.
Speaker 3: The summer I got here, I started saying, you should
Speaker 3: call me Matt because my name is Matt. And then
Speaker 3: there was like an intervention. The dean of students came
Speaker 3: and a couple other people came into my office and
Speaker 3: they said, you can't have the students call you by
Speaker 3: your first name. It's disrespectful to the office of the president.
Speaker 3: So I said, okay, so they call me presidents go
Speaker 3: again to my face, they call me who knows what
Speaker 3: they call me? Yes, daddies, Yeah, daddy, Sco.
Speaker 1: Again, Sco daddy.
Speaker 2: There aren't a lot of Sco daddies in the ranks
Speaker 2: of America's college presidents. When they picked you, was there
Speaker 2: a sense that they were taking a chance.
Speaker 3: Yes, well, there was definitely, since they were doing something unconventional,
Speaker 3: so they were hiring a young non academic, But it
Speaker 3: was coming from this premise of the board wanted to,
Speaker 3: you know, a recognition that something needs to be done
Speaker 3: in higher education. We need to try something different, and
Speaker 3: so they hired me and basically said you can do
Speaker 3: anything you want except the status quo, Like we're hiring
Speaker 3: you to do something different.
Speaker 2: He took the job, moved into a big house near
Speaker 2: the church in the middle of campus, and started going
Speaker 2: to the cafeteria and talking to students student, customer, debtor,
Speaker 2: investor what effect he wondered did this have on them?
Speaker 3: And I have a handful of questions that I love
Speaker 3: asking students. I like asking the same questions over and
Speaker 3: over again because I get compare and contrast answers. And
Speaker 3: one of the questions I always ask is what do
Speaker 3: you want.
Speaker 1: To do after you graduate? And I always use the word.
Speaker 3: Want, And what I get often as a response is
Speaker 3: what I want to do is different than what I
Speaker 3: feel like I have to do. And I'll get students
Speaker 3: say I want to do Doctors without Borders, or I
Speaker 3: want to do teach for America or the Peace Corps
Speaker 3: or some ministry. But I've got fifty thousand dollars of
Speaker 3: student loan debt, so I'm going to become a whatever
Speaker 3: consultant to pay off my student loan debt, and then
Speaker 3: I'll pursue the impact I feel like I want to have.
Speaker 2: It seemed to Scogan that you can't do both. You
Speaker 2: can't ask a student to engage in the pursuit of
Speaker 2: truth and at the same time have them wake up
Speaker 2: in the middle of the night with a sense of dread.
Speaker 2: Hope has an accounting program, and Scogan was a big
Speaker 2: fan of accounting, but he felt the way things were
Speaker 2: accounting would always win out over philosophy, which didn't seem right.
Speaker 1: I actually think.
Speaker 3: Students don't come to college with a life plan. They
Speaker 3: come to college with questions, lots and lots of questions
Speaker 3: about their purpose. And it might be the case that
Speaker 3: studying philosophy or studying the classics is precisely how you're
Speaker 3: going to find your purpose. And yet if you're coming
Speaker 3: with fifty thousand dollars of debt, you might get skewed
Speaker 3: into or you might get you might feel nudge into
Speaker 3: studying accounting, and therefore maybe miss maybe miss something that's
Speaker 3: in your purpose.
Speaker 2: Okay, back to your college search. After Desert Island High,
Speaker 2: you come to America, and what you discover on your
Speaker 2: college tour is how strangely similar a lot of colleges are.
Speaker 2: William's College looks like Amherst, which in turn looks like
Speaker 2: William and Mary, which looks like a smaller version of
Speaker 2: the University of Virginia. Everybody wants to be the same thing,
Speaker 2: the same look, and the same business model, find as
Speaker 2: many full paying students as they can and charge you
Speaker 2: as much tuition as they can get away with. Why
Speaker 2: are all the colleges the same? My dad taught at
Speaker 2: the University of Waterloo in southern Ontario, and they had
Speaker 2: what they called a co op program, with a college
Speaker 2: arranged with local employers to hire students join their off term.
Speaker 2: Everybody was on co op. To give you a flavor
Speaker 2: of how it works, I asked a student named Spencer
Speaker 2: who just graduated from Waterloo to give me a break
Speaker 2: down of his finances. This is what Spencer told me.
Speaker 2: Total for year costs tuition plus room and board were
Speaker 2: a hundred and twenty two thousand dollars. In that time,
Speaker 2: he did six co op terms working with a government
Speaker 2: organization and several firms in his field, and they paid
Speaker 2: him a total of eighty one thousand dollars. So his
Speaker 2: overall cost out of pocket for getting an engineering degree
Speaker 2: was forty thousand. That's not bad. Plus, and I'm quoting
Speaker 2: here from his email, I'll add that a good thing
Speaker 2: is that the majority of my classmates were graduating with
Speaker 2: a job lined up due to the co op program
Speaker 2: and industry connections. Now, do I think co op programs
Speaker 2: could work everywhere and solve every problem? No, of course not.
Speaker 2: But the University of Waterloo has been running this program
Speaker 2: for almost seventy years. It's a huge success. You would think,
Speaker 2: wouldn't you that versions of the idea would have spread
Speaker 2: everywhere by now that every school that has a problem
Speaker 2: with students graduating with lots of debt, which by the
Speaker 2: way is nearly every school would have experimented with ways
Speaker 2: of connecting with local businesses to give their students work
Speaker 2: experience enlighten their debt burden. Has it happened?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 2: Why Because college presidents have their heads in the clouds.
Speaker 3: If you kind of look at the trajectory of higher education,
Speaker 3: it's just not going to end well. This trajectory of
Speaker 3: like tuition goes up by three to five percent every year,
Speaker 3: it's just not going to work. And so this sense
Speaker 3: of like somebody has to do something at the end
Speaker 3: of the day. The thing I love most about this
Speaker 3: place is our name Hope. Hope by definition means that
Speaker 3: we believe problems are solvable, and that's what we try
Speaker 3: to prepare our students to be Hope bringers, people who
Speaker 3: go out in the world and run toward not a way,
Speaker 3: but run toward the biggest challenges they can find. And
Speaker 3: that's why we exist. And we felt like and the
Speaker 3: board felt like, who better than a place called Hope
Speaker 3: to run toward this big societal challenge which is the
Speaker 3: funding model of higher education.
Speaker 2: So Scogan made a radical decision, Let's make it so
Speaker 2: students don't have to think about money at all during
Speaker 2: their four years of college and put in place a
Speaker 2: pay it forward model. Will you give back to the
Speaker 2: college after you've graduated. That's the program that Scogan calls
Speaker 2: Hope Forward. To apply, you write an essay describing an
Speaker 2: area of hopelessness to which you want to bring hope.
Speaker 2: They started small. After the first two years they have
Speaker 2: a total of fifty eight students in the program. The
Speaker 2: goal is to enroll one hundred freshmen annually within the
Speaker 2: next few years and keep the program growing until it
Speaker 2: covers everyone.
Speaker 3: And you don't pay anything. You don't pay anything for tuition.
Speaker 3: Sign We call it a covenant. It's basically a commitment.
Speaker 3: I sign it on behalf of the college and then
Speaker 3: the student signs it, So we're entering into this sort
Speaker 3: of covenantal relationship, not a transactional agreement. It's not a contract,
Speaker 3: it's not a legal contract, but it's this relationship with
Speaker 3: mutual commitment. And the commitment we're making as an institution
Speaker 3: is we're saying we're going to give you a great
Speaker 3: education and then launch you into a life of impact afterwards.
Speaker 3: And the commitment the student is making is they're going
Speaker 3: to take their education seriously and then they're going to
Speaker 3: give something to the college every year after they graduate.
Speaker 3: We don't specify an amount, we don't suggest an amount,
Speaker 3: nothing like that, because we want it to truly be
Speaker 3: a gift, a gift that's given out of generosity, and
Speaker 3: we don't want it to feel like it's a different
Speaker 3: flavor of a student loan bill. Like we're trying to
Speaker 3: move away from a system that's based on bill paying
Speaker 3: and replace it with a system that's based on gift giving,
Speaker 3: so that the relationship with students is not a transactional
Speaker 3: one at all, but rather a relationship based at its
Speaker 3: core around generosity and gratitude.
Speaker 2: The math behind it pay it Forward system is, to
Speaker 2: say the least daunting. Problem Number one is the transition period.
Speaker 2: A school like Hope takes in about fifty five million
Speaker 2: dollars intuition. If you say to your students, don't pay
Speaker 2: anything until later, then you have to come up with
Speaker 2: fifty five million dollars every year until the pay it
Speaker 2: forward money comes trickling in. If Hope Forward covered everyone,
Speaker 2: the school would need about a billion dollars to handle
Speaker 2: that transition period. Problem number two is what happens after
Speaker 2: the transition period. How do you know that Hope Forward
Speaker 2: graduates will give back an amount equal to the cost
Speaker 2: of their education? Scogan freely admits he doesn't.
Speaker 3: Some may give far less than that, some may give
Speaker 3: way more than that. I think that's another reason why
Speaker 3: we decided to not put a specific amount on it.
Speaker 3: If we say you've made a commitment to give, and
Speaker 3: we suggest this amount in order to pay off what
Speaker 3: you would have paid through tuition, well then people give
Speaker 3: that amount, presumably. But by not putting an amount, some
Speaker 3: people may give way more than they would have paid
Speaker 3: through tuition, and others will give less. And I think
Speaker 3: what this model does is it gives us as an institution,
Speaker 3: we're highly incentivized to help our students be successful. The
Speaker 3: more successful they are, the more opportunities they'll have to give.
Speaker 3: And likewise, for our students, you know, it's kind of
Speaker 3: like the onus is on them when they're in their
Speaker 3: earnings years. Then it's up to them to determine how
Speaker 3: important their education was in launching them into their career,
Speaker 3: and they're sort of then paying them what they think
Speaker 3: this was worth. And it's you know, I think it's
Speaker 3: up to us then to make the education so valuable
Speaker 3: that they're grateful for it after they graduate.
Speaker 2: You are stealing into the unknown.
Speaker 1: Oh totally.
Speaker 2: Is Matt Skogan crazy? Maybe, But I have to say
Speaker 2: that I'm an optimist on Hope Forward. First, I think
Speaker 2: that Scogan is right that the success of the program
Speaker 2: depends on the school convincing its graduates that their education
Speaker 2: was worth something. Although it's early, the evidence so far
Speaker 2: is encouraging. The students admitted into Hope Forward as a
Speaker 2: group have slightly lower academic credentials coming into the school
Speaker 2: than the rest of their freshman class, but after their
Speaker 2: first year they're outperforming their non Hope Forward peers. There's
Speaker 2: something different about your attitude towards school once you're inside
Speaker 2: the gratitude generosity loop. Second thing, most of the students
Speaker 2: at Hope grew up in the church, and this is
Speaker 2: how a church works, right. You don't pay church tuition
Speaker 2: at the door. Sometimes churches encourage you to tithe a
Speaker 2: tenth of your income, but most times you just give
Speaker 2: whatever you can and the congregation and the preacher trust
Speaker 2: in God that whatever comes in from the offering on
Speaker 2: Sunday morning will cover the expenses for the rest of
Speaker 2: the week.
Speaker 8: I remember one of the things that presidents going inside
Speaker 8: was that we're trying to fund higher education than way
Speaker 8: that we fund churches, which is through craft funding, And
Speaker 8: I felt like that metaphor helps it make a lot
Speaker 8: more sense to me.
Speaker 2: I met with a group of Hope Forward students at
Speaker 2: one point. This was a sophomore named Olivia. Pay it
Speaker 2: Forward made sense to her conceptually, the.
Speaker 4: Maybea the church is like you give what you can
Speaker 4: when you can, and you give because you want to
Speaker 4: and because you believe in the mission of the church.
Speaker 4: And I feel like that's a really great metaphor that
Speaker 4: helps me understand like what we're doing here and want
Speaker 4: a purpose of it is. So it's the same idea.
Speaker 2: Madison was part of the group too, the same Madison
Speaker 2: who spoke with the Mitch album reception.
Speaker 9: I feel like, once you're given someone's generous towards you,
Speaker 9: it is so much easier to be generous towards others.
Speaker 9: And that's also how I think of God's love. When
Speaker 9: I experienced God's love through other people, it's so much
Speaker 9: easier for me to share that love, like with some
Speaker 9: other people, with other people. And I just feel like
Speaker 9: it's the whole thing. Is can be that it's meant
Speaker 9: to be contagious, So generosity is easier when someone has
Speaker 9: shown generosity towards you.
Speaker 2: Third thing, and maybe the most important thing, Why do
Speaker 2: we assume that giving out of the spirit of giving
Speaker 2: is hard? This is a little bit of a tangent,
Speaker 2: but those of you who are regular listeners to revisionist
Speaker 2: history will know the special antipathy I have for Princeton University,
Speaker 2: a school with eight thousand, four hundred and seventy eight
Speaker 2: students and an endowment of thirty six billion dollars. Princeton's
Speaker 2: endowment is so large that in nine of the last
Speaker 2: eleven years, its investment earnings had been greater than its
Speaker 2: entire operating budget to give you a flavor of this,
Speaker 2: and forgive me because this gets me so riled up.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty one, Princeton made a three point seven
Speaker 2: to seven billion dollar return on its endowment, but the
Speaker 2: school's annual budget was just under two billion, meaning they
Speaker 2: could cover all their expenses just on the check they
Speaker 2: get at the end of the year from their wealth
Speaker 2: managers on Wall Street and still have two billion dollars left.
Speaker 2: In the previous episode, I handed out the first of
Speaker 2: the Revisionist History Prizes, which honor extraordinary performances by elite
Speaker 2: college administrators. The inaugural prize was the George Santo's Memorial
Speaker 2: Award for Egregiously Deceptive sell Promotion, which went to Columbia
Speaker 2: for their brazen manipulation of their US News rankings. Well,
Speaker 2: I have yet another prize to award, the Perpetual Motion
Speaker 2: Award for the school that comes closest to running on
Speaker 2: its own power forever, and the clear winner here is Princeton.
Speaker 2: I did a little blog post about this, and let
Speaker 2: me quote from myself here. Princeton could let in every
Speaker 2: student for free. The university administrators could tell the US
Speaker 2: government and all of its funding agencies. It's cool, we
Speaker 2: got this. They could take out the cash registers in
Speaker 2: the cafeteria, hand out free parking to all visitors, give
Speaker 2: away Princeton sweatshirts on Nassau Street, and fire their entire
Speaker 2: accounts receivable staff, and their entire fundraising staff. Tomorrow, they
Speaker 2: could say to every one of the hard working professors
Speaker 2: on their staff, you never have to spend even a
Speaker 2: second writing a grand proposal. Again, free at last, Free
Speaker 2: at last. But here's the thing. Even though by any
Speaker 2: rational measure, Princeton no longer needs to raise any more money,
Speaker 2: the alumnia of Princeton still give money to Princeton. A
Speaker 2: higher percentage of Princeton graduates give money back to their
Speaker 2: school than any school in the country. A Wall Street
Speaker 2: guy named James Ya, in fact, just gave Princeton so
Speaker 2: many millions of dollars that Princeton opened a brand new
Speaker 2: residence hall called, wait for it, Yay College.
Speaker 10: Yay College will help advance the expansion of the student
Speaker 10: body so that additional high achieving students will realize the
Speaker 10: benefits of a Princeton education, enhance the diversity and vitality
Speaker 10: of our campus, and go on to contribute to society
Speaker 10: after graduation.
Speaker 2: This is complete gibberish. The sense of community that a
Speaker 2: college gives to its students has nothing to do with
Speaker 2: the architectural design of the dorms. This is the way
Speaker 2: the Four Seasons talks about a new hotel. But here's
Speaker 2: the thing. Mister Yea, a very very smart man who
Speaker 2: graduated with a physics degree from Princeton and went on
Speaker 2: to make many, many billions on Wall Street, believes it
Speaker 2: to be true. So true in fact, that he got
Speaker 2: into his Bentley, loaded up the trunk with coals and
Speaker 2: drove them down I ninety five to Newcastle. And if
Speaker 2: you don't understand that reference, may I refer you to
Speaker 2: mister Google. My point is, we have plenty of evidence
Speaker 2: that smart people will give huge amounts of money to
Speaker 2: their alma maters for the stupidest of reasons. Why do
Speaker 2: we find it hard to believe smart people will give
Speaker 2: small amounts of money to their alma maters.
Speaker 1: For the best of reasons.
Speaker 2: Or, to put it a little more charitably, maybe Mitchabolm
Speaker 2: was right. Giving makes you feel like living. Matt Skogan
Speaker 2: was sitting in on my meeting with the students he
Speaker 2: didn't speak until the very end.
Speaker 3: There's this Lylan Matthew whit says, freely you have received,
Speaker 3: not freely give. And this is where I think there's
Speaker 3: this crazy sense in higher education where most people know
Speaker 3: that not everyone has access to a great education, but
Speaker 3: there's this sense in which it must be the case
Speaker 3: that ultimately those who do get access to a great
Speaker 3: education somehow deserve it, like this meritocracy. And it just
Speaker 3: feels like that's like meritocracy gone totally off the rails.
Speaker 3: At the end of the day, a Christian does believe
Speaker 3: that anyone deserves a good life, like if we really
Speaker 3: got what we deserve, we'd all be s crude. A
Speaker 3: Christian believes that anything we have that's good is a
Speaker 3: gift of unmerited favorite from God. And I think what
Speaker 3: you're hearing from these students is like this profound sense
Speaker 3: of we're ready to just live into that. I heard
Speaker 3: somebody once to describe generosity as this mindset of circulation,
Speaker 3: like you take a book out of the library and
Speaker 3: you know it's not yours. You're just going to read
Speaker 3: the book, and then you're going to give it back
Speaker 3: to the library so that somebody else could read it,
Speaker 3: And I think that's the way a Christian ought to
Speaker 3: think about everything we have, everything we own, like God
Speaker 3: gave us stuff just so that we could circulate it.
Speaker 3: When God God blesses Abraham and the Old Testament, and
Speaker 3: he says very clearly why he blesses Abraham. He says,
Speaker 3: I've blessed you so that you can be a blessing.
Speaker 3: And I think that's the way Christians out of you.
Speaker 3: Everything we have, like everything we have is this unmerited gift,
Speaker 3: and then we're just gonna radically give it to the
Speaker 3: world so that we can be a blessing with the
Speaker 3: ways we've been blessed. And I'm putting words in your mouth,
Speaker 3: but I feel like I heard that from your stories
Speaker 3: in a pretty powerful way. You guys are amazing.
Speaker 4: Thanks.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 2: By way of contrast, is a passage in the commencement
Speaker 2: speech of the President of Harvard Jue Faust in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2: She has the entire graduating class in front of her.
Speaker 2: Her goal is to give them words to inspire them
Speaker 2: on their journey into the greater world, and then she
Speaker 2: starts listing the unprecedented headwinds at Harvard. The institution had faced.
Speaker 2: As it sought to educate the very best and the brightest.
Speaker 7: We have faced a political and policy environment increasingly hostile
Speaker 7: to expertise and skeptical about higher education. The unprecedented endowment
Speaker 7: tax passed last December. Will we estimate impose on us
Speaker 7: elevee next year equivalent to two thousand dollars per student?
Speaker 2: Holy Toledo, they have dared to tax our fifty six
Speaker 2: billion dollar endownment. I don't know under the circumstances. I'd
Speaker 2: rather ride with Skodaddy. I want to play for you.
Speaker 2: The end of Mitch Album's speech at the Hope College reception.
Speaker 2: He stood at the front of the room, slight and unprepossessing,
Speaker 2: big head of black hair, casually dressed. People are standing
Speaker 2: and milling around and eating canopies. And he starts to
Speaker 2: talk about how this whole idea of giving makes you
Speaker 2: feel like living, taught to him by Maurice Schwartz, slowly
Speaker 2: took over his life. He started a scholarship fund that
Speaker 2: grew and grew, then a charity to work with the homeless,
Speaker 2: and then finally the project that has occupied him ever since.
Speaker 6: And in two thousand and ten, h I heard about
Speaker 6: the earthquake in Haiti, and I'd never been to Haiti,
Speaker 6: probably couldn't find it that easily on a map.
Speaker 2: He heard that the earthquake had destroyed an orphanage, so
Speaker 2: he got on a plane and flew to Haiti.
Speaker 6: And what I saw there will never leave my mind.
Speaker 6: I'm sure many of you remember that earthquake. It was devastating.
Speaker 6: In forty five seconds, it killed nearly three percent.
Speaker 1: Of Haiti's population.
Speaker 6: Of its population, can you imagine in America that would
Speaker 6: be about nine million people dead and left about ten
Speaker 6: percent of its population homeless.
Speaker 2: The orphanage was in ruins.
Speaker 6: And the toilets were a little bit more than holes
Speaker 6: in the ground, and just behind them were fields. Prior
Speaker 6: to that were fields where kids would use rocks to
Speaker 6: bang on other rocks so that the rats would run
Speaker 6: away if they had to go to the bathroom at night,
Speaker 6: and then they would use the rock for toilet paper.
Speaker 6: So we had our hands, our work cut out for us,
Speaker 6: and I began to go back with some guys from Detroit,
Speaker 6: and we had an idea to fix the place up.
Speaker 1: Now. The thing is what stuck with me the most, with.
Speaker 6: The kids, the kids that were there and their smiles
Speaker 6: and their joy, and their faith and their belief that
Speaker 6: things could get better. Those kids were the reason that
Speaker 6: I came back and came back, and came back and
Speaker 6: came back. Every single month since February of twenty ten,
Speaker 6: for the last thirteen years, I've been in Haiti at
Speaker 6: that orphanage, and we began to build it up with
Speaker 6: guys I brought down from Detroit again. All I did
Speaker 6: was ask they didn't have to pay anybody. They all
Speaker 6: came as volunteers, and we built the first kitchen and
Speaker 6: the first showers and all things that didn't exist there before,
Speaker 6: and we began to grow. We got bigger, and we
Speaker 6: got bigger, and we got bigger.
Speaker 2: One of America's most successful writers has been going to Haiti,
Speaker 2: a place that the rest of the world has all
Speaker 2: but given up on. He's gone every month for thirteen
Speaker 2: years with a group of his friends from Detroit, driving
Speaker 2: back and forth from the airport in an armored car.
Speaker 2: Because much of the country is controlled by criminal gangs.
Speaker 2: And why does he keep going Because he discovered quite
Speaker 2: by accident, that giving makes you feel like living. When
Speaker 2: album heard about Matts Coogan's experiment, he told some of
Speaker 2: the students at his orphanage about it, and they applied
Speaker 2: answered the same essay questions as everyone else.
Speaker 6: Our kids, with these new facilities have learned from the
Speaker 6: very beginning that they are there to help one another,
Speaker 6: and so we found it funny when in the application
Speaker 6: process they ask what is your community involvement? And the
Speaker 6: kids who filled out the application said, mister Mitch, you know, like,
Speaker 6: what are we supposed to put? What does this mean
Speaker 6: community involvement? And I said, well, what do you do
Speaker 6: for others? And I said, let's talk about what you
Speaker 6: do for others, And fifteen minutes later we were still
Speaker 6: listing things because every day our kids take care of
Speaker 6: the other kids. Our kids are there big brothers and
Speaker 6: big sisters. They are their sources of carrying and food
Speaker 6: and cleansing and washing and feeding and dressing and taking
Speaker 6: to school and watching out for one another. And we
Speaker 6: go out into the community and help with the streets.
Speaker 6: Or when we used to be able to travel around,
Speaker 6: our kids would go to a place where they had
Speaker 6: premature babies were born and they would hold the babies
Speaker 6: because nobody ever held these children and they had no
Speaker 6: human contact. And our kids, most of whom have no parents,
Speaker 6: come from places where in many cases we have to
Speaker 6: invent birth certificates because we literally don't know where they
Speaker 6: came from, how old they are, or who their parents are.
Speaker 6: And these kids are holding other little babies to make
Speaker 6: them feel welcome in the world. I have seen their
Speaker 6: ability and their desire to give back, so when they
Speaker 6: filled out that application, it was easy to say what
Speaker 6: they've done for others.
Speaker 1: All of our kids know.
Speaker 6: They don't even have to agree to it, because it's
Speaker 6: part of our DNA that when they're done with college
Speaker 6: and we send all of our kids to college or
Speaker 6: a graduate school. Our first one just got accepted to
Speaker 6: medical school last month.
Speaker 1: And we're going to have our first doctor.
Speaker 6: So if you can be like Jewish dad, proud of
Speaker 6: a Haitian doctor, there we are and we find money
Speaker 6: to pay for it. But they know that the first
Speaker 6: thing they do when they graduate is they come back
Speaker 6: to the orphanage and they work for two years giving
Speaker 6: back at the orphanage from the place that gave to them.
Speaker 6: That is the concept, that is the concept of hope forward.
Speaker 6: So our kids were living this concept. They hate to
Speaker 6: break it to you, met, but it ain't original. Our
Speaker 6: kids have been living this concept from the very beginning.
Speaker 6: And speak of kids, I can't see so well, but
Speaker 6: you may have noticed some of those pictures.
Speaker 2: A little earlier on the screen behind album was a
Speaker 2: series of photographs. There were two teen girls together, and
Speaker 2: then a boy, and then another teenage boy flexing his muscles.
Speaker 6: All of them last June graduated from our school and
Speaker 6: what is always the best moment that we have at
Speaker 6: our orphanage. And all of them now are right here
Speaker 6: at Hope and they're in this room right here. They're
Speaker 6: already gonna kill me for showing those photos, so I'm
Speaker 6: not gonna make them come up and be acknowledged in
Speaker 6: the front. But they're here, Samenza and Kiki and Teta
Speaker 6: and JJ and if we have any luck, we'll have
Speaker 6: two more or maybe even three more coming here next year.
Speaker 2: So is Matt Skogan crazy? I don't think so. I
Speaker 2: think everyone else is crazy for giving up on the
Speaker 2: idea that giving makes you feel like living. I wish
Speaker 2: you could have been there in that room listening to
Speaker 2: Mitch Album and Madison and Matt Skogan and all the
Speaker 2: other revolutionaries in Holland, Michigan who believe that gratitude and
Speaker 2: generosity can help us rebuild what is broken.
Speaker 6: So we're very proud to be associated with a program
Speaker 6: that is embodying the very belief that we teach at
Speaker 6: our orphanage to have faith eighty orphanage, that you are
Speaker 6: responsible for one another in this world.
Speaker 1: And from the.
Speaker 6: Minute our kids arrive, they know that somebody has taken
Speaker 6: responsibility for them, and from the moment they leave us,
Speaker 6: they know that they have to take responsibility for somebody else.
Speaker 6: That is a good circle and we're proud to be
Speaker 6: a part of it.
Speaker 2: This episode of Revision's History was produced by Bend, Daph
Speaker 2: Haffrey and Leeman Gistoo. This is actually Lee's last show
Speaker 2: with us, as she's moved on to the world of
Speaker 2: audio fiction. If you want to hear one of Lee's
Speaker 2: great accomplishments on Revisionist, check out our Little Mermaid series. Lee.
Speaker 2: We will miss You. Jacob Smith, Kr Powell make up
Speaker 2: the rest of our producing team. Our showrunner is Peter Clowney.
Speaker 2: Original scoring by Luis Garra, fact checking by Kishelle Williams
Speaker 2: and Tali Emlin, mastering by Flon Williams, and engineering by
Speaker 2: Nina Lawrence. Additional recording by Jonathan Fagel and Ben Ugama.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to Matt Skogan, Jason Cash, Mary Remen Schneider,
Speaker 2: and everyone who welcomed us at Hope College. I'm Malcolm Glaba.