← Going Big! with Kevin Gentry
Going Big! with Kevin Gentry
Rethinking Higher Education with Dr. Joshua Hall (West Virginia University)
00:55:27
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- [00:00]
Dr. Josh Hall
If you're smart in West Virginia, what are you told to do? Be a doctor, be a lawyer, be an engineer. That's it. Like, nobody's thinking about going into business or supply chain. What's supply chain? Supply chain is extremely important. Or professional sales or fundraising. I mean, there is so many areas of the world that all students aren't exposed to, and it's our job to expose them to it. And then you give them the opportunity through experiential projects to really not only show what they can do, but find their way.
- [00:32]
Kevin Gentry
Well, welcome to the Going Big Podcast. I'm your host, Kevin Gentry, and this is the place where we celebrate bold moves and big ideas. Each week, I sit down with inspiring leaders, entrepreneurs, and change makers who are making a significant impact in their careers and in their communities. Whether you're looking to level up your leadership, pursue your passion, or just get inspired to take your next big leap, this is where those stories come to life. Now, if you're listening on iTunes, YouTube, or anywhere else you tune into podcasts, be sure to hit that subscribe button so you'll never miss an episode. Now let's dive in to what it means to truly go big.
- [01:15]
Well, welcome to another episode of the Going Big Podcast. I'm your host, Kevin Gentry, and my guest today is Dr. Josh hall, who is one of the most innovative and entrepreneurial business school deans in the United States today. Josh is the Mylan Pushkar Dean of the John Chambers College of Business and Economics at West Virginia University. And as you're about to see, in my judgment, Josh is a visionary leader. He's a strategist and a successful fundraiser. But he's doing things that matter, not just for his students, but also for his community and, and I would argue for our society much more broadly as well. So, Josh hall, it's great to have you on the Going Big podcast.
- [02:02]
Dr. Josh Hall
Well, thank you very much, Kevin. That may be very uncomfortable. I like to say I like hiring people who work hard and have low self esteem, so compliments like that certainly make me uncomfortable. I'm so glad to be here with you. I'm a big fan of the Going Big Podcast and just grateful to that you're having me on.
- [02:22]
Kevin Gentry
Well, there were a couple fans of yours, more than a couple, who reached out to me and said, you've got to have Josh on. And the more I dug into what you've been able to achieve, the more enthusiastic I was about having you. You're a great fit for the theme and objectives of Going Big, but to Kind of get us started. Is my understanding is your academic work really began on what drives prosperity, what drives human flourishing? And so my question is, was there something that you encountered in your work or in your life where you just sort of saw in a startling way where some communities flourish and others just kind of get left behind? Was there something that you experienced or saw that kind of became that Road to Damascus moment that helped you understand what are those drivers of flourishing?
- [03:16]
Dr. Josh Hall
Yeah, Kevin, it's funny, as you're going through your economic education, I think the best teachers put examples out there for you. And I was fortunate enough at Ohio University, where I did my undergraduate, to have a lot of people who really cared in the classroom. And one faculty member of mine, Lowell Galway, he brought in photos of a trip he had made to China. Sometimes I forget the exact year, but they were building a road using no machinery basically at all. They were just tamping down gravel by hand. And he used that to illustrate kind of capital and lack of capital. And we're substituting a lot of labor for that. And little did I know that came from a Milton Friedman kind of story that he was able to live. And. And then when I came here at West Virginia University, professor of mine Russ Sobel, who I ended up writing my dissertation under, he would always show in his intro class a business Mead Westvaco. So Mead Paper, Westvaco, because they had merged with the West Virginia company and their factory, their facilities is on the Maryland side of the border, like literally right across the border. And he said, why is the West Virginia company in Maryland? And it's because West Virginia, Virginia has an inventory tax. So if you're a company like Mead Paper, you're going to deliver a lot of paper back to school time. But you want to smooth your production. Well, you don't want it in a state like West Virginia because you're going to pay more taxes than you otherwise would have to. And so it's those types of examples that got me really thinking about the policies within a border really can impact the quality of people's lives.
- [05:11]
Kevin Gentry
Well, you know, that particular topic, I think has gotten a lot more attention in recent years. There's certainly been a lot of conversation about people moving from northeastern high tax states to low tax states in the Southeast, or moving away from California to some of the Rocky Mountain states that have a different business environment. And there's that kind of thing about Vancouver, Washington and Portland, about how people straddle the river and go avoid the sales tax in one state and the income tax in the other and these sorts of things. But we see it in countries as well. And people clearly flee or boat with their feet and leave countries to countries that have greater economic opportunity. What are some. How did your interest in this lead to helping us all understand this better? Because I really do think I'd say in the last two decades, people broadly understand this competition between opportunities and places of less opportunity more than they used to.
- [06:12]
Dr. Josh Hall
Yeah, it's both fascinating where the profession of economics has gone on this. Right. I used to, when I taught, principals would show an image from a textbook, a very famous textbook from the 1960s. And it showed the USSR passing us sometime in the mid-80s because of Greater planning, improved planning, more emphasis on capital rather than other types of investment. And for me, our study of economic freedom or the institutions of prosperity has kind of stopped a lot of that. At the same time, we're learning so much more. So I used to be a co author on something called the Economic Freedom of the World Index. I became a co author just because I happened to be good friends with Robert Lawson, who was one of the co authors, founding co authors, along with Jim Gortney, the late Jim Gortney of Florida State University. And because it was a passion of mine and it was at that time a lot of work to put this together. It was ordering books and hand typing in data for 162 countries. Maybe I'm dating myself when I say that, but that's what the grind was. But we learned a lot. And I think if you look at policies across countries, the most extreme, destructive policies that people thought were good ideas, we don't see those anymore. If you go back at one point, there was, I think, something like 12 countries that had marginal income tax rates over 70%. Or we thought we had to have really high inflation to combat unemployment. Those types of policies we don't see as in vogue anymore. And so I think the economic education has fixed a lot of that. We've been able to convince kind of economic elites, central banks, and you can see that in the Economic Freedom of the World index. We see marginal tax rates coming down, we see price stability, we say low and not very variable rates of inflation across countries. And some of the more extreme regulations have come down. What we're seeing erosion of, interestingly, is in kind of rule of law, respect for property rights. And the frustrating thing for me on that is changing a marginal tax rate is convincing, like changing a line on a piece of paper. How do you change people's beliefs in the value of respecting what's mine and what's thine. That is a much more difficult thing to unwind. If we do see a degradation in that across the world.
- [09:00]
Kevin Gentry
All right, lots more to get into then. I don't want to leave the sort of beginning part about economic prosperity which the map of the world, I think that you all developed that showed the relative economic freedom I've saw in so many people's homes and things. People love to see that and make the of kind comparison. And it used to be said, well, look, of course these countries that have lots of resources are going to do well or though they have these long histories, it's not a surprise that Western Europe, the United States, Canada, England, Australia, New Zealand are prosperous. But Joel pointed out, no, look at Chile, look at different other countries in Africa or certainly now in Eastern Europe since the fall of the Soviet Union, did that in and of itself spark greater interest in those kind of unlikely countries that got people's heads scratching like, okay, what can we learn from this?
- [09:56]
Dr. Josh Hall
Yeah, we've also, we set a kind of generation of grad students kind of looking at those anomalies and better understanding them. You know, a good friend of mine who is a business school dean, Scott Boulier, he wrote his dissertation on Botswana, which is a very important sub Saharan African success story. And so, you know, I think. And also the Economic Free and the World Index is co published by between Cato Institute in the United States, the Fraser Institute in Canada and member institutes around the world. And one of the interesting things about it is a lot of countries would come in and ask us or ask the Fraser Institute to do an audit to look at their policies. What are the things that they can move where they can improve upon their economic freedom as a kind of driver of economic prosperity. Now, economic freedom isn't a panacea. It can't fix everything, but it creates a condition where we can begin to have entrepreneurship. People have the freedom to try to serve others through the marketplace. And that's when you begin to see that economic progress in flourishing.
- [11:12]
Kevin Gentry
All right, well, I don't want to lose sight of what you mentioned about the erosion of rule of law and some of our rights to free speech, free expression. But just let's talk a little bit about you and how you got to this. Did you always want to be an economist? Now, my understanding is actually you thought maybe you might be a hockey coach or, or a high school social studies teacher. How did it get to the point that you want to devote all of your professional life to economics?
- [11:41]
Dr. Josh Hall
Yeah, it's funny, I like to think I was a successful teacher of your large intro lectures because I struggled so much with that. I went to college because that's what it was expected to do. Both of my parents were teachers in the Cleveland public school system. And so I went there and I was thinking, I'm going to be a secondary ed teacher, I'm going to coach hockey. I had coached in clinics. I liked working with people. I liked helping seeing them develop. But somebody told me the hardest school, the hardest college to get into at Ohio University once you're there is the College of Business. So you should start in the College of Business and then go elsewhere if that's what you really wanted to. So that sounded smart. I sounded like, okay, I'll do that. And so I'm taking the kind of pre business curriculum and one of the classes was Intro to Economics. And let's just say the way it was taught just didn't resonate with me. I had Intro to American government at 8am across the hall. I would go to that every day. And I would not go to the Principles of Economics after a while and I got a C minus in it. But you had to take Macro. And I got very lucky to have a gentleman named Richard Vetter for Principles of Macro. He himself, he wouldn't call himself a macroeconomist, but anybody who's seen him on TV or C SPAN knows he's engaged in the real day to day of economic policy. And he's a fantastic lecturer. And I said, I don't know why I'm here at college, but I know I like this guy's classes. And this is what I imagined college to be. And I got very fortunate in that. Even though it was a 300 person class, he always wanted to know students. And so if you scored the top three on an exam, he would take you out to lunch and get to know you. And that just kind of began a relationship where he took an interest in me. And I slowly started thinking, maybe I want to teach, but not at the undergrad level. Maybe I want to teach economics because as soon as, you know, they do that review of economic microeconomics at the beginning of Macro, like two weeks of review. And I was like, why was that other class so hard? Everything just fit into place. And I realized this is the way I think about the world and I want to learn more about it.
- [14:10]
Kevin Gentry
Well, Richard Better was a legend. I mean an institution, just an amazing force. And you know, so often in these interviews I find out that it was a mentor or two or three, especially a teacher that was just a significant influence that just took somebody from a particular path to jolting them into something new. How important was Richard to not only your career path, as you've said, but just even how you think about the role of a teacher or a mentor in your own work today?
- [14:43]
Dr. Josh Hall
I just think that he's an individual. I think he retired for the second time a few years ago, but still had. He had two books out in the last five years looking at higher education. And I think it's. It's a couple things. One is he didn't shy away from teaching. The reason we're here is to teach. Second, he didn't let the class size be a limit on getting what he needed out of teaching, which is being that spark for a young man or woman.
- [15:14]
Kevin Gentry
Right.
- [15:15]
Dr. Josh Hall
Being there. Because here's the thing, Kevin, I think many of us struggle with at our larger state universities is to really be a mentor, to give not only positive advice, but harsh criticism that sometimes is necessary. You have to know the student as a person, because then it resonates with them. If it's just somebody at the front of the classroom who barely knows my name, what sort of feedback, how is that going to hit that young person? It's not going to hit at all. And it's because. And I saw Rich firsthand because Ohio University has something very interesting. If you're a distinguished professor, you get to an award and a scholarship to anybody, a full ride to any student of your choosing. It could be the hardest working person. It could be the smartest person. And I was privileged enough to see him have to correct some of his scholarship students and to see the immediate attitude adjustment in that young man and young woman was amazing. And that just kind of stuck with me about the type of professor I want to be. But also the investment you have to make as a faculty member to create the conditions where you can have the impact on a young person's life.
- [16:33]
Kevin Gentry
Well, thank you. I like to ask this question when it comes up among guests, about what advice you would give. Now, first of all, to say, particularly a young person, but really anybody at any stage in life about seeking mentors. I mean, did you seek Richard Vedder or did you just win the draw by getting in his class? Do you have advice on how a mentee should think about their role in trying to advance themselves, advance themselves intellectually in whatever manner, through a mentor?
- [17:10]
Dr. Josh Hall
Yeah, it was pure luck. I'm a big Pearl Jam fan, and he shares the same name as. As Eddie Vedder, the lead singer, Pearl Jam. And it was three to five in the afternoon, two days a week. So it hit all the spots. And so, you know, there is a role for serendipity. But I think, you know, what I've learned over the years is those type of mentee mentor relationships come out of your as a potential mentee, just thinking about how you can provide value to others. And I don't mean that in a transactional way, but it feels good when you reach out to others or let them know that, you know, I mean, I sent you an email when I saw Scott on and said, I really just enjoyed that podcast and your line of questioning and that taking the time to make public what is in your head is often a start to a great mentee mentor relationship. Because all of us have that in us. We want to see others, hopefully we want to see others succeed. But it has organic. And for me, it always starts with kind of wanting to provide some small piece of value to other people.
- [18:31]
Kevin Gentry
Well, I think that's such an opportunity for so many of us to learn how to apply this. But you're right, I mean, I've just been enormously fortunate to have people just kind of fall into my life that became important mentors. I didn't even know to seek them out. I wish there was just a perfect path that we could all take to improve ourselves through this. But I always look for these lessons. Our friend Tyler Cowan, sometimes he'll tell me about some very high level connection he has and I was like, how did you make that connection? He goes, well, they emailed me and I didn't know them, but they sounded smart. So we just started emailing each other. I guess everybody has it in a different way. All right, I now want to move to your being dean. And this is where a lot of the lessons for going big come from. Now, economists are often analyzing institutions and sort of casting judgment on institutions about how they operate. But you're now operating within an institution. How does that change your perspective or how did that change your perspective?
- [19:36]
Dr. Josh Hall
Yeah, you know, this is a question I get asked a lot because economists are, are not in all business schools, right? Roughly half of econ departments are in arts and sciences, so. So, you know, not the economist is business scene is somewhat rare. I think about this as is, there's a lot of naive mistakes you can make.
- [19:58]
Kevin Gentry
Right.
- [19:58]
Dr. Josh Hall
Deirdre McCloskey, very famous economist in her Principles or intermediate micro textbook, talks about the middle man and says, look, we see all this bureaucracy and we think, oh, we don't need that. We can just get away with, get rid of that. But we have to ask ourselves, what purpose is that middle person serving? What purpose is that bureaucracy serving? So I probably have about 2/3 of my college are faculty and the third are staff. And that's a pretty high ratio compared to other colleges in the university. But we're a business school and we sell ourselves on student placement. So we need center for Career development people and we have professional advisors and everything. So I would say I wanted to cut bureaucracy. And it is not as easy as you think from the outside when you think about all the stuff you do. So you have to listen and say, well, what are you doing? How are you doing it? Okay, that's very important. Now I better understand what you do in your role. That being said, I think institutional analysis has been very helpful in my job because you think about how do I align the structure, internal structure of the organization with the incentives people face. And I came into this role and I was talking to one of my department chairs and I said, why do you use 11 business law adjuncts for your business law classes which all of our students have to have to take? And he said, well, you know, I'm in Discipline X. I would rather hire somebody full time in Discipline X than in business law. So when I come to the DNF for a position, I'm going to ask in my discipline. And I said, I get that you're being entirely rational, but that's not good for our students. And so what I did was I created a department called General Business. We have a general business major. It's kind of undecided business. And so I moved business communications, business ethics, business law, and some of our outreach people who serve our land grant mission in there. And I said, now you be the best version of those things that you can be. And it's really worked very well insofar as I put an associate dean who is in charge of our undergrad education in charge of that department and so kind of better aligned all incentives. And so I'm always looking for institutional solutions to persistent problems.
- [22:41]
Kevin Gentry
All right, well, that said, looking back in your time as dean, was there a decision that you now regret because you didn't apply this institutional analysis in the right way or you were missing something or if I could put you
- [22:59]
Dr. Josh Hall
on the spot, I know I've made a lot of mistakes. I will say I think the key, before giving into specifics, I'll just say the key always is I taken from Vernon Smith, you do small Scale experiments. If they don't work out, you can go back. And one is, I tried to come up with. We had a persistent problem of units departments overusing our kind of central stack, our center for Career. Everybody wanted all their time and not leave anything to anybody else. And so I started instituting a transfer pricing system. Okay, you're going to pay for this much hour of our communications team. And, and anyway, it was a billing nightmare. We were spending more time trying to, trying to, to, to bill units. And, and so it was one of those cases where you had to use kind of old school regulation. Just saying, no, you're going to be limited this way rather than trying to use the price system.
- [24:00]
Kevin Gentry
All right, well, you tapped Vernon Smith's notions of making small bets, small experiments, but you went big in 2022 when you were able to secure a very significant big gift, a $20 million gift to create the Kendrick center for an Ethical Economy. What were you offering in terms of vision or I don't want to say promise, but you were able to enlist the Kendrick families support to this big vision. What did you lay out in a big way that you think earned their confidence?
- [24:43]
Dr. Josh Hall
This is the whole reason I became dean. So I was working on this and another major gift as a department chair of economics. We were going to move the new regulatory research center from St. Francis University here. And as well as this Kendrick center gift. And I was worried about lack of stability at the top, slowing things down. And so when I was asked to be dean, I said, well, I'm not sure I want to do that job, but I'm sure I want to keep these conversations going. And so I said yes. And really the proposition. Ken Kendrick is a native West Virginian, Bluefield, West Virginia, which is in the southern part of the state. And if you've seen West Virginia on 60 Minutes lately, it's that southern part of the state. And Ken said I had to leave the state to have my career and I don't want that. People want to leave, that's fine. But I want to give young men and women in the state the opportunity to stay in the state. And so we kind of put together a proposal that we thought would work along with. He's a very evidence based person. So we're checking along to see if it works. But it's kind of a three legged stool. But the ultimate belief is an understanding of economics and ethics as well as the problems and opportunities in the state of West Virginia are a way to change the trajectory of the state. So you know, we're our. Our per capita personal income is about 85. It's below 85% of the U.S. average. And it's been that way for a long time. And so people come to West Virginia University, they get educated, they leave the state. How do we change that? So Ken's investment in the university it creates gives 225 secondary ed teachers in the state of West Virginia a master's degree in economics taught by Kendrick center faculty. They go back and they teach in their schools. It's completely online degree. They teach in their schools where we can spread out principles of economics to all the high schools. Because right now it's really our three big population centers. But how do we reach the kid in A Bluefield, West Virginia? One of the highest DF withdrawal rates at WVU is Econ 201. You show up on campus and you gotta take this very abstract course. And so by getting in the high schools, those students can show they can do well and come to Morgantown and succeed, because only half our high school graduates go on to any type of college in the state. And then finally, it creates a minor in business ethics and prosperity that we choose 40 of the best and brightest West Virginians at WVU. It has a kind of. They take these courses together, almost like a fraternity. And the idea is they get to know each other both within cohort and across years. They take excursions around the state to better understand the problems and opportunities. And if they stay and work in the state for two years after graduation, we give them a $20,000 check. So now there's a lot of stuff that goes around that we don't want these young men and women taking a discount. So I've raised separate money to have a kind of bespoke internship program where we're trying to create great opportunities for them in the state. But this is a really big push, to use a phrase, to really kind of change the trajectory of the state in the long term.
- [28:35]
Kevin Gentry
Wow. Well, the business ethics program that you've developed is now considered one of the top programs in the country. And my understanding is you were starting at essentially zero. You had to put together something very quickly. What insights can you share from that experience that we might benefit from?
- [28:59]
Dr. Josh Hall
Yeah, it's luck and kind of knowing people, Kevin. But it really started with that creation of the general business department. Ethics was in a different department, and so we created a separate department, and then it became a place with the Kendrick Center. Dr. Kate Johnson, who I had hired to teach economics here and helped me put this Together, along with one of my advancement people. She directed the center and she knows kind of everybody. And her husband is Dr. David Schmitz, who's a top ethicist himself. And so if you want to say our Moneyball strategy is, let's take business ethics, something that typically is done by people without ethical training, their management professors or economists, or somebody who kind of wades into that area, let's go out and get some great ethicists. And we can pay more because we're in a business school, our salaries are higher, and they'll be delighted to be here because ultimately, people who are interested in idea, like being around a community of scholars. And so if you get the right people at the beginning, right. It's like when Vernon Smith and his team moved to George Mason University. Other people wanted to be there because of that. And that's what we've seen. Just kind of a snowball effect. It wasn't any part of the plan, but we now have three of the top or top young people in the world who study different aspects of the philosophy and ethics of money, cryptocurrency and finance. And so it's a great fit for the business school, but it's also a great fit for the Kendrick center and our entire business ethics group.
- [30:55]
Kevin Gentry
You mentioned your friend Scott Bowyer. I had him as a guest several months ago, dean of the business school at University of Wyoming. But together, these are small states, but state universities. But you all are really innovative and indeed, I think, transformational in the kind of leadership that you're offering. And I think, you know, I also had Dr. Michael Crow, the longtime president and certainly the most innovative university president in America, Arizona State University, on this as well. His point, when I described him as so innovative and transformational, he said it was a low bar. There just aren't that many that are focused in this way. So I'm going to ask a question of you that I asked Scott and ask him, how do you feel about higher education today? I mean, there are a lot of people who are challenging and just raising the question, is it worth it? Are there alternatives? What should we be thinking? How do you think about higher education and the future of higher education?
- [31:59]
Dr. Josh Hall
So much to unpack in there. It really is a great question, Kevin. I would begin by saying I'm very fortunate. I don't think I could be a dean elsewhere. Look, I'm not saying things could happen. I could be let go and I have to go out and get a job elsewhere. But to me, the land grant mission just resonates with me as a person. I'm from Cleveland. I did come here to do my PhD and had the opportunity to come back and work here. But we serve the 1.8 million residents of West Virginia and that's an enormous responsibility. But. But it also is a great opportunity because of what we mean to this state and its people. We can do things other folks can't. So a great example of it is our state legislature changed state law to allow our students in accounting as an experiential part of their class. They do actual audits for the state of West Virginia. So they sign a non disclosure agreement. They get in one class, they get purchasing card data, they use their data analyt skills, look for fraud, they make a presentation to the state auditor that then gets further follow up by the professional staff. And then there's something called the small government monitoring project where our students go out and perform yearly audits of water utilities and things like that. So as somebody who believes deeply in, you know, you ask where's higher ed going? You know, we're stuck in that 120 credit hour model for an undergrad degree. There's been some movement towards a 90 credit hour. But if I think about in an AI world, there's still a need for education, but we're coaches and mentors and you can't scale that. That's hard to scale. So what can you do? You can right now get through as many credits in other ways as possible. We see that already with students coming in with a year done of AP and dual enrollment credit. And then you give them the opportunity through experiential projects to really not only show what they can do, but find their way. If you're smart in West Virginia, what are you told to do? Be a doctor, be a lawyer, be an engineer. That's it. Nobody's thinking about going into business or supply chain. What's supply chain? Supply chain is extremely important. Or professional sales or fundraising. I mean there is so many areas of the world that all students aren't exposed to and it's our job to expose them to it and tell them you might have a facility in this. When I was at Beloit College, I had a young woman who was not a great student. Let's just say I think she was like a 2.3 GPA. But she, she and I had a reading group where we had Smith and Hayek. And she came and was diligent and, and I was like, I'm trying to connect this person to whom I had in class and, and we had a guest speaker, Peter Klein of Baylor University out and somebody, their slide opened up at dinner and I invited her out and she was the best listener and question asker I have ever seen out of a, out of a student. And I said, you know, you should go volunteer in the, in the college's advancement office. And that led to a very successful career in arts fundraising. And she had never thought of it before, but I think those types of things, you need very close individual contact with students to really. And a desire to see that and point them in the right direction.
- [35:56]
Kevin Gentry
Well, maybe this is in a similar manner, but you mentioned data analytics, you mentioned artificial intelligence. My understanding is that you were going into those areas for wvu, AI, Data analytics and the future of work before anybody really else was. There's some talk about it. What did you see there that you wanted to apply there? You're speaking that to some degree already. But what helped you get drive that
- [36:26]
Dr. Josh Hall
I have a great faculty member and department chair named Brad Price. Brad is a self proclaimed good old boy from a holler in Boone County, West Virginia that happened to get a PhD in statistics and got the opportunity to come home and show that Appalachia can be a tech heavy place. And so he built our business of data business data analytics program, which is now our applied AI and data analytics program. Our undergrad degree in applied AI and data analytics, our undergrad, we have a master's in cybersecurity business cybersecurity management. You know, his belief and his whole reason he got into this was to show that we can build a tech oriented culture in Appalachia. And so everything I've learned has come from Brad and his belief that we can, we can get those things done here. And then it's a matter of, you know, those type of things. There's no, you know, if you go to a Drexel university that has a great co op program because you're in Philadelphia, nobody's. We have very few public. I think we have two publicly traded companies in the state of West Virginia. We don't have any large firm, very few large firms. So there's a lot of small and medium sized companies that need help. What better way to give them help but put our students on it? And so in that applied AI and data analytics curriculum, you're working on client projects all the time. So we can serve our land grant mission. Our students can learn very valuable skills and more importantly from a talent development perspective for those firms, they begin to see I can kick this tires on this young man or woman, because I'm working with them a whole semester, because I'm their client. And then I realized, hey, yeah, I don't need to hire somebody with two years of experience. Because here's the thing, if you hire someone with two years of experience, that student's gone. They're moving to Pittsburgh, they're moving to D.C. they're moving to New Jersey or New York. You need a hire right out of. Out of college.
- [38:44]
Kevin Gentry
Well, okay, I'm intrigued by what you've done, what you're doing, just as I was intrigued by what Scott Boyer is doing at University of Wyoming. Is there some kind of, sort of secret sauce, some kind of insights we could draw from this? For those listening that want to just say, going to give up on higher education, give up on so many of these things where you both have things going on that's really special. What can we take from this? Give us some advice, some kind of insights from this, that it's not just that you all were both lucky and fell into the right place at the right time and had the right teacher, et cetera. I'm going to get to some setbacks in a moment. But what can we take back, take from this in terms of insights?
- [39:29]
Dr. Josh Hall
Well, I think there's lots I don't like in higher education. Even things you may be necessary. Right. Like, I think a lot of students ask about rankings under our previous president, Gordon Gee. Gordon Gee didn't believe in ranking because you do things for rankings that are not in the best interest of your students. And, you know, we are, we are an access institution, the sons and daughters of West Virginia who meet the requirements we feel are necessary in order to get out of here in four years. Hey, come on in. And I'm not saying it's wrong, but I'm saying I would have a hard time working at an Ohio State. You're the land grant, you're the flagship, and it's harder than ever to get in there right now. Obviously, it's a numbers game with them. They have to say no to folks. But for me, I can get up every day and knowing, obviously we're not a great fit for every single student, but I think we provide tremendous value to the students who come here. And I think that's what Scott and I have in common is it's about the value you're going to provide the others for the students, for their tuition dollars. And sometimes it can be very expensive, but you're in a program that provides a lot of value. Right. If you come out of our business cybersecurity program or our Master's of Science of Industrial Relations and Human Relations. You know, you can easily be making six figures with a one year, maybe $30,000 investment. It's not a bad ROI, right? So as long as we are focused on that, I think higher ed is going to be just fine. Now there's going to be a shift, right? Because what happened, we all got kind of lazy and fat on the kind of demographic boom. It's easier to grow and prosper in a growing market. And now we're on the downside, the so called demographic cliff. And some institutions have already closed. I think more are coming. And in some sense though, I think if you look at it, you know, what is being lost here? I think the only thing that's being lost is the great diversity that is US Higher education. Have you heard of Deep River College, Kevin?
- [42:03]
Kevin Gentry
No.
- [42:03]
Dr. Josh Hall
It's this two year school in Northern California has three faculty members, one who always rotate out. They stay in a house with the students, they all work a farm, they live together. But the young men and women who go there all transfer after their two years, like Ivy League schools or Berkeley or whatever. And that was a combination of philanthropy and a desire to do higher education differently. And that's the only thing that I. Because we need more experimentation in higher ed. That's Michael Crow's greatest strength, is being able to experiment in higher ed. And we're losing a lot of that diversity. That was a strength of the US
- [42:48]
Kevin Gentry
well, appreciate your focus on discovery and experimentation and just how that leads to innovation and what you've produced in the process, because it's a far better alternative to the narrative that's out there about what higher education is today. Well, you've painted a wonderful picture, a very encouraging, optimistic picture. I'm guessing it hasn't always been a straight line to the top. What tell us about some of the setbacks or disappointments that sometimes stand in the way. I'm going to guess sometimes you've wondered, you know, is this all worth it? Or wow, that. That didn't really quite go the right way.
- [43:24]
Dr. Josh Hall
Yeah, I could think of a handful. One started, you know, so after I took Richard Vedder's course and I talked my way into taking some of his senior seminars in American Economic history and European Economic history, because I said, I don't know what I'm doing here, but I know I liked your classes. And he said, I'll wave you into those classes. And somehow I came out with a. A minus or something. I was a business econ major. That's just only important because it means that my advisor was in the business school, was an economist, was in the business school. And I said to him, I think I want to be a college professor. And that's when he gave me the world needs ditch diggers 2 talk. He said, the reference from Caddyshack, he said, I went to the University of Chicago, I had three Nobel Laureates on my dissertation committee, and I'm at Ohio University. You got a B plus in my class. Where are you going to go that you're going to get a job? At the time, that was very difficult to hear because I didn't know what I would do because I thought, this is where I'm going to take what I valued out of coaching and wanting to be a high school teacher and translate it. And I couldn't go talk to Rich Fetter. This is before email. I might even been before voicemails on the campus phones. And unbeknownst to me, he had done time as a department chair and had a sabbatical. So I didn't see him until I was a senior. And I just ran into him in the hallway. I mean, I would go by his office like every three weeks because, like, I need his mentorship. And, and, and I finally see him and he said, he said, oh, hey, how are you? How have you been? I said, where have you been? And, and because of that, I end up doing my master's degree at Ohio University with him. And he got me my first job for the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress. And that was another setback because I moved to D.C. it was a setback, but I learned what I didn't want to do. I did not want to work kind of in politics. I like policy, but I don't like politics. And so even though it was very frustrating two years for me, the nice thing about working for the Joint Economic Committee is you only had given a two year appointment because it changes to the Senate. I worked on the House side. And so those were two very big setbacks. I will say the hardest thing, though, was convincing my wife we should move to Morgantown, West Virginia, and I should pursue my PhD. You know, telling your spouse, like, hey, I know we're doing quite well financially, but I think we should go live on $13,000 was a hard thing. And, and I am so very grateful that she believed in me. And when people ask me what she does, I said, whatever she wants to do because she invested in me. And it paid off very well, well,
- [46:32]
Kevin Gentry
there's so much talk about how we learn from the setbacks, learn from failure, learn from mistakes. Doing a lot of different stuff helps us understand what we don't want to do. Those are some great examples. Well, looking back at that C minus student and now what you know today, what do you think he didn't understand then about what success could be that you now see today, I'd say two things.
- [46:57]
Dr. Josh Hall
How every experience you have is building you. You're building reps, you're building repetitions that will carry with you no matter what you do. I worked in a, I was very fortunate, maybe unfortunate, some other, some people too, to start working at a restaurant at age 13. And as I said, I told my students, I said, you know, I'm very grateful that my interview was two questions. It was, do you own a white shirt and black pants? Yes. Can you work tomorrow from 4 to 1am and I turn to my mother and I say, will you drop me off and will you pick me up at 1am and. And she said, yes. And I learned so much in that job. And I'm very grateful for my parents, my mother in particular, and I'm very grateful actually for the owner of that business because on the very first day she said this one server, Susie. Susie has never had a walk in on a Friday and Saturday for the last 25 years. Watch Susie and figure out why. And I did. And I learned a lot about how to serve other people. Susie knew everybody's name, she knew their dogs names, she knew what they liked. She would advocate to keep things on the menu for them, you know, and she'd tell you, and this was back when people smoked, she said, after dinner, so, and so is going to want the ashtray right away because they're going to light up a cigar. And you know, and she just made everybody feel special. And those are, those are skills I use in my job today as well as work ethic and everything else. And I think that's, I talk a lot to parents. So one of the things I fundraised a lot for Kevin is what we call fellowships. Fellowships are really endowed, paid work opportunities either for the college or for clients in the area in West Virginia. And when donors ask me, why fellowships, why not scholarships? And I said, we're a relatively inexpensive university, especially if you're in state. And then we have something called the Promise Scholarship in West Virginia. You meet certain requirements like a 3.0 GPA, 22 ACP. You get the promise. So you might have $1,000 of tuition a year. The real cost is everything else. And I don't want that young man or woman. You know, a lot of parents say, I don't want my kid to work. I want to focus on their studies. You know, 15 hours of class and, you know, and maybe an hour outside of class, there's still a lot of free time to not do good things. And so I believe in the benefit of work for not only earning your keep, but learning about yourself. And so we've gone from like 16 of those to 43 of those. I have 3,100 students, so it's not enough. But I think that's what I would tell that young person is the more you can be out there in the serving others through the marketplace, through your philanthropy, you're going to learn more about yourself and what you're going to be happy with in your work career.
- [50:27]
Kevin Gentry
You're here. That's great advice. All right, well, we need to bring this to a close. We are having this conversation in the summer of 2026, when America is celebrating its 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Here are my last two questions for you, Joshua. Given your experiences, given your perspective, given your academic work, given all these different things, first of the two questions is, what concerns you most about the future of this experiment in America? And based on all your work about flourishing, where are you most concerned for the future?
- [51:12]
Dr. Josh Hall
I think, Kevin, I would have said a couple years ago, I would have said the thing that concerns me the most is that decline in the rule of law and property rights. But I think particularly in the US Context, I mean, I grew up in a time of Tip o'. Neill. All politics is local and in some sense that grounded politicians, they had to take care of their constituents. And yes, I could engage in national debates and things, and I feel that social media has changed that dynamic. Now everything is national and our political class, but also the people just who engage in good governance locally are more worried about that than what's going on in their own community. And so kind of that de Toqueville idea of America, it feels to me like it's weakening. I hope I'm wrong on that, but that is something that worries me. I think things that don't worry me pretty much are, I think demographic cliff, the rhetoric around higher education, it is something to be combated, but at the same time, a lot of people. Bryan Kaplan often makes the argument that the return on higher ed is great for those who finish. For those who don't, that's a real problem. And I think that's something we haven't wrestled with enough. It doesn't mean that we have to force everybody to finish. But the real consequence, the real cost, the real issue in higher ed is those non completers and the debt they've incurred in many cases. And that's the thing that bothers me the most.
- [53:06]
Kevin Gentry
All right, well, you know where this is headed for the last question because we want to leave on a positive and encouraging note. This is the Going Big Podcast. What encourages you most about the future of our country and this experiment. Oh, this experiment in self government and everything else that's associated with it.
- [53:24]
Dr. Josh Hall
You know, it's the, it's the young people. The greatest part of working in higher ed is the students. And I mean, as a dean, I have to go out of my way to get to know students, but I get to know students and we had a scholarship that let's say we could not give adequately to the terms of a funder and we were able to, through building a lot of trust, change some things with with her and award in a way that was to what her original intent was and sitting down and breaking bread with those two students we have award to and her and just to see the look on her face, but more importantly, get to see them with zero coaching. Just want to be in that moment and be grateful for what she had given them and allowed for them to happen. Their career. It just made me very positive for not only the future of West Virginia, but the future of America. And what we're all here to do as educators is really to leave things better than we found it.
- [54:31]
Kevin Gentry
Well, Dr. Josh hall, it's great to be with you again. It's great to have you on the Going Big Podcast. We appreciate all that you're doing and we'll look forward to having you back in a couple decades to tell us about your newest innovations.
- [54:42]
Dr. Josh Hall
Thank you very much, Kevin. My pleasure.
- [54:45]
Kevin Gentry
Thanks for tuning in to the Going Big Podcast. I hope today's conversation left you feeling energized and ready to tackle your biggest goals. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review on iTunes, YouTube or wherever
- [54:58]
you listen to podcasts.
- [54:59]
It really helps spread the word and it gets these inspiring stories out to more people. You can also find more content, resources and updates at our website, goingbigpodcast.com Remember, the only limits are the ones you don't challenge, the limits that you impose on yourself. Keep pushing, keep growing, and above all, keep going big. See you next time on the Going Big Podcast.