Host 1 (2:25)

Tell us, take us back three years and what happened because we've been kind of assumed now is it two and a half years with AI, but tell us what happened three years ago.

David Marcheck (2:34)

So I'm not a techie person. But we had the president of Google, Kent Walker, who basically said that AI was going to be as profound as fire or electricity. And I said, well, that seems like a strong statement, but Even if it's 0.1% true, it's big. Then we had a fellow named Brett Wilson, who's a CEO of an AI venture capital firm. And a student raised his hand and said, am I going to be replaced by AI? And Brett said, you likely won't be replaced by AI, but you could be replaced by someone who knows AI if you don't. So at that moment I said, we need to infuse AI into everything we do to prepare our students for an AI workforce. And we've done that over the last three years.

Carol Massar (3:16)

So what does that actually look like in the classroom?

David Marcheck (3:18)

So when you start at Kogod School of Business, if you're an 18 year old, the first day is you do.

Carol Massar (3:25)

Undergrad and graduate, undergrad and grad.

David Marcheck (3:27)

The first day of orientation, we tell you you're going to use AI every day. Most students were prohibited from using AI in high school, but they did it anyway. So we want to teach students how to use it properly. We actually start by teaching what's wrong with AI before we teach them what's right with AI and, and then over the four years, or if you're getting an mba, we want them to learn how to underwrite an investment, how to do fundamental research, how to develop a marketing plan, how to learn to negotiate, all using AI because they'll be expected to use AI in the workforce.

Host 1 (4:01)

That's what we keep hearing increasingly is the people who know and understand how to use it as a tool will really do well going forward. Okay, so talk to us a little bit more though about. Because I think one of the things that we're playing around with, David, is that we use it too. And then it's like, okay, but then we kind of check it out because we just don't totally trust all of it. So tell us how you guys teach that aspect of it, like what to trust, what not to, how do you fact check some of this information that comes across still?

David Marcheck (4:34)

So we have a professor, Ed Wassell, who teaches advanced data management, data analytics. His whole class is used to show how AI comes up with wrong answers, incorrect information. So he has students analyze data sets, come up with predictive analytics, and he shows that AI makes mistakes all the time. That's as valuable as learning what's right with AI. So AI can be a powerful tool, but you need to be Skeptical. You need to test it, you need to probe, and you need to be able to shape it to produce the right answers.

Carol Massar (5:06)

You know, I want to talk about your background a little bit and then talk more about AI and perhaps why you approach it this way. You have a really interesting background, lawyer. You served in the Clinton and Biden administrations in very different capacities. You did more than a dozen years as a managing director and member of the management committee at Carlisle. You've written a book, co authored a book on presidential transaction transitions. You don't have the traditional background of a dean, like traditional academic background of a dean.

David Marcheck (5:33)

I also had poor grades and was not the best student that wasn't in.

Carol Massar (5:37)

The bio that I read, so. But I'm glad you're bringing us that color. How does that perhaps make you think differently about the workforce and what they need to be prepared to do once they leave the academic world?

David Marcheck (5:50)

So I had the best boss ever who actually hosts a show at Bloomberg, David Rubenstein. David also was probably the least likely person to run a private equity firm. He had no private equity background. What I learned from David is surround yourself with people that are better and smarter than you in each of their areas and empower them and you can do anything. So what, what we're basically focused on is ensuring that our students are prepared for the AI workforce. The AI economy, which is changing rapidly. Stanford just put out a study that shows that AI exposed jobs for 22 to 25 year olds are shrinking between 13 and 20%.

Host 1 (6:31)

It's terrifying.

David Marcheck (6:32)

It's a very hard time. My daughter graduated last year. It was very hard for her to get a job. We see it every day. And so what we're trying to do is make sure that our students have a leg up when they apply for jobs. Which means you need to have the fundamentals of a business. Education, marketing, accounting, management, finance, et cetera. Plus know how to use AI in everything you do. And we're also doubling down on what used to be considered soft skills. Communication, teamwork, the ability to think on your feet. Those skills are more important today than in an AI economy. Look at your jobs. You have to think on your feet every day. React to news from Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Just but having an entrepreneurial mindset and being able to think and create is essential for today's economy.

Host 1 (7:23)

How do you as an educator, but also somebody from the business world think about how important it is though when somebody their first couple of jobs or their first job out, they're learning so much the Learning curve is so much, but it teaches their brain to think in maybe different ways that they maybe didn't get when they were at university or at college. And so I'm just wondering, like, are we cutting that out of younger generations, that ability to mess up, learn? I learned so much from mistakes I made in kind of my first couple of jobs. And I'm just wondering, are we getting rid of that?

David Marcheck (7:59)

So I think we are getting rid of that in some ways because AI will replace some jobs. In my view, it's incumbent on universities and educational institutions to be able to foresee that and to give students the skills that you may have learned in your first job. We're trying to give them those skills at the university through, in classroom and out of classroom experiences. So we have a lot of competitions for students to learn how to pitch where they have to answer questions on their feet. Yeah, we have investment clubs where students are investing actual money and they need to present and defend and investment ideas. The ability to give a pitch, to communicate orally, to work in teams, is as important as ever.

Carol Massar (8:43)

How do you have to think about the admissions process differently as a result of what happens now or what you want to have happen in a school.

David Marcheck (8:51)

Right now, traditionally, and maybe this is why I wasn't a great student. A teacher stands in front of a classroom and communicates, disseminates information which a student absorbs. And then the student is assessed on how good they are by how much they can retain and regurgitate. AI replaces all that you can get, any piece of information at your fingertips. So now the best students are going to be ones that are most curious, that have an entrepreneurial mindset. They're going to be able to take risk, they're going to figure out stuff on their own. And so we're looking for that in the admissions process.

Carol Massar (9:26)

You know, it's funny, Carol and I talk about this a lot because one of the things that we found these LLMs are so good at is if you prompt it properly, it can essentially write you a paper to answer a question in that a teacher. I mean, I'm not giving anyone any news here that they don't already know.

David Marcheck (9:41)

And students are way ahead of us.

Carol Massar (9:42)

Students are way ahead of us here. I mean, for me, as somebody who graduated from what, like 20ish years ago, this is like, kind of crazy. But I think back to my own experience in college. I went to a liberal arts school and some of those aha. Moments that occurred for me were like, late at night when I was trying to write a term paper or trying to write some sort of analysis of a book I read. And those are the moments that stuck with me. Those are the moments where I learned how to make those connections. Do we lose the ability to make those connections because of this technology?

David Marcheck (10:11)

I don't think so. I think it actually aids you. So you were probably a better student than I was. But when I was writing an essay, I had a hard time figuring out topic sentences, structuring an essay, structuring an argument. AI can help you do that. It's a collaborator. And so those aha moments are still there. They're just different. Also, the ability to work in teams is going to be much more important today than it was when we were growing up. And I have students come to me all the time and say, boy, this teamwork is hard. This one student is a show off. This one doesn't do their work. This one has views that I can't understand and they don't change. And I'm like, welcome to the real world. I have that every day in my job and I've had it every day in my job for the last 40 years. So teaching students not only the fundamental basic skills that you learn, reading, writing, reasoning, plus AI skills and these soft skills, which I call power skills, that's the future of education in my view.

Host 1 (11:12)

But are we also losing though, the ability of people kind of struggling, David, through something and like maybe having to work a little bit hard and understanding the idea that, okay, maybe spend a little bit more time with it, dig a little bit deeper, I don't know, look at some different sources and like, figure something out versus going like, I'm blown away by some of the stuff that you get off of ChatGPT and other. Other chatbots, if you will. And I'm just kind of wondering, are we losing something?

David Marcheck (11:39)

Maybe they're still struggling. But let's say I were a 22 year old and I wanted to be your research assistant. You would expect me to be able to find any piece of information at my fingertips any day and deliver it to you. You'd expect me to have much more advanced skills today than if I were applying 20 years ago, or in my case, 40 years ago. So it's just a different type of struggle. And the students today need to learn how to do the stuff that's required in an AI economy.

Host 1 (12:10)

Can I ask you about teachers, how they've had to rethink how they teach? Because that's something you guys have had to deal with as well.

David Marcheck (12:16)

That is A great question. Faculty traditionally are very resistant to change. We have faculty that have taught the same thing over and over again. We've actually created a very entrepreneurial culture among our faculty, where we started with a few early adopters, then we had some others that we dragged along. Today, 90% of our faculty are infusing AI into that classroom. At the end of the spring semester, it was 50. So over the summer, there was just a cultural change where everybody said, the parades leaving, I either need to get in front of it or I'm going to be left behind.

Carol Massar (12:49)

We're speaking right now with David Marchik. He's the dean of the Kogod School of Business at American University. He's also formerly of the Carlyle Group and served in the Clinton and Biden administrations. Just a headline crossing the Bloomberg terminal, Carol. As you mentioned, President Trump said the US Struck a second vessel ferrying drugs from Venezuela, showing his determination to proceed with an aggressive strategy that's ratcheted up tensions with the country and prompted questions about its legality. We're monitoring this story for developments. We'll let you know if President Trump makes any comments on it.

Host 1 (13:21)

So what do you think, David, is constructive for we as communicators and having guests and we're talking about. I feel like every conversation somehow, you know, all roads lead back to AI.

Carol Massar (13:31)

Are you trying to get him to give us advice about how we prove ourselves? No, no, because I would be open to that, too.

Host 1 (13:36)

I'm just thinking about the smart way to deal with it because I think it's really easy to get caught up in the exuberance around it. There's so much spending that's going on, and we're trying to. Like, we even today did kind of a reality check about where we are in AI.

Carol Massar (13:48)

Like, it's kind of a wild world where we're talking about $200 million salaries for people who are poached and brought to meta platforms for a specific technology.

Host 1 (13:56)

Just trying to understand what do you think is constructive based on kind of the experience you have had reorienting your approaches there.

David Marcheck (14:04)

So I think what we're seeing is a technology revolution in a much more abbreviated version than we've seen it before. And it's the fastest technology ever to be adopted. So ChatGPT has acquired the same number of users, you know, five times as fast as Netflix or Amazon, 20 times as fast as Facebook. So when the mobile revolution took place, which we all lived through, it took 30 years for us to really use the phone for everything. AI is Changing that in a matter of months. So I do think this is a transformational change that we're seeing. It's going to change everything in the economy faster than any technology change that ever has happened.

Host 1 (14:46)

Do you think we know if yet it's good for the economy?

David Marcheck (14:48)

I don't think we know. I think there's big pluses and I think there's big minuses. My view is that there will be winners and losers and my focus is taking care of the students that are at my school to help them prepare.

Carol Massar (15:02)

Well, let's talk a little bit about the outcomes that you've seen thus far. You're really still early into this experiment through three years ago, as Carol mentioned, was when you set out to become the first AI, first business school in the country. What can you tell us about graduates who are finding full time employment on the undergrad side then also on the MBA side?

David Marcheck (15:20)

It's helping them, it's helping them have a leg up and be more competitive. One of the things I'm most excited about this year is we're offering an AI minor to non business schools. So let's say you're a student that wants to go to med school. You've done what traditionally a student does, taken a bio degree, you have some labs, you're applying to med school. If you have an AI minor, you're going to be much more attractive because AI is going to transform health care more than perhaps any other field.

Host 1 (15:45)

Right.

David Marcheck (15:46)

If you want to be a policy major and go work for a United States senator and that senator or the chief of staff says, okay, you're a policy major from a good school and you have an AI minor, I know you're going to be able to do research for me for any hearing, for any questions, for anything. I need to know much faster. And you're gonna be able to analyze data much better than others. So I think it's a huge leg up for both business students and non business students.

Host 1 (16:14)

Do you ever envision a class where it's just someone talking to like ChatGPT or whatever version might ultimately come out? Like you just think about the like we always talk about a great conversation, how much we can learn. I think learning to ask the right questions. But I think about that back and forth.

Carol Massar (16:29)

I think Duolingo CEO has said AI.

David Marcheck (16:31)

Could replace teachers, AI could disintermediate the whole education system. Okay. And we're experimenting. I'll give you an example. We have a professor named Tommy White. He runs our entrepreneurship program. He's incredible. One of those popular professors. He created a class this year using all AI to create the class. It has no books, no reading. The only assignments are prompts. Prompts plus teamwork. We'll see how it goes. Will it work? I don't know. But we're trying, so maybe. So maybe. I mean, we're experimenting. And that's one of the things that we've done to create this AI first culture is we've told our faculty it's okay to fail because nobody really knows what's going on or what we're doing because it's so new. So try something. If it doesn't work, try something else.

Host 1 (17:21)

Really interesting stuff. Hopefully you'll find some time to come back to us and continue this conversation. I would love it. Love, love, love. Maybe we talk to some students at some point.

David Marcheck (17:29)

That'd be great. We have some incredible students.

Host 1 (17:31)

Yeah, I think that would be a lot of fun.

Carol Massar (17:32)

Can we get get on the road? Go to dc?

Host 1 (17:34)

I'm happy to do that.

David Marcheck (17:36)

Come teach a class.

Host 1 (17:38)

Try that. Good stuff. Thank you David.

David Marcheck (17:41)

Thanks for having me.

Host 1 (17:42)

Really appreciate it. David Marczyk he is the Dean of the Kogat School of Business at American University. Really fascinating conversation. If you missed any of it, please be sure to check out our podcast. You can download it a little bit later on. Pinpointing the genetic changes that predispose us to disease Identifying the roots of mental illness. Treating congenital anomalies even before birth At Boston Children's Hospital, we're investing in children's health today to ensure the well being of adults tomorrow. As home to the world's largest pediatric research enterprise and more than 260 specialty programs, Boston Children's education is where the world comes for answers. Learn more@bostonchildrens.org.

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