Is College Right for Everyone? | Dr. Bill Pink

- [Nar­ra­tor] We believe and have always believed in this coun­try that man was cre­at­ed in the image of God, that he was giv­en tal­ents and respon­si­bil­i­ty and was instruct­ed to use them to make this world a bet­ter place in which to live. And you see, this is the real­ly great thing of America.

- It’s time to dis­cov­er what binds us togeth­er. And find­ing it has the pow­er to trans­form our world. That’s what I believe. How about you? Well, hel­lo every­one. I’m Doug DeVos. And wel­come to ​“Believe!” Today we have a great oppor­tu­ni­ty, a live oppor­tu­ni­ty, with my friend, Dr. Bill Pink. Bill is the cur­rent pres­i­dent of Grand Rapids Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege, and is tran­si­tion­ing to a new role here pret­ty soon as the pres­i­dent of Fer­ris State Uni­ver­si­ty, also a great uni­ver­si­ty here in the Michi­gan area. And so we are just excit­ed to have this chance to talk with him. We were talkin’ a lit­tle bit about his bas­ket­ball his­to­ry. He’s in the Hall of Fame and dif­fer­ent places. So he’s got a great, amaz­ing his­to­ry, but he’s a fab­u­lous friend. And the top­ic we wan­na go through today is talkin’ about col­lege. Is col­lege right for every­one? What is his view? What does he believe about the work he’s been doing? And he’s worked in many uni­ver­si­ties around the coun­try. He’s had an incred­i­ble career. And we can talk about that a lit­tle bit. But the ques­tion is for us, you know, is it right for every­one? How do we think about, or what do we believe about this jour­ney that, I hate to say, chil­dren make as they tran­si­tion to adult­hood? And what do they need to do to go for­ward? Because there’s a lot going on in this space right now. There’s a lot of con­tro­ver­sy. There’s a lot of dis­cus­sion. There’s lot of focus. And there’s been, in recent years, a bit of a down­turn. So some peo­ple are choos­ing not to seek high­er edu­ca­tion. But there’s a lot for us to go through. So Bill, thank you. I should say, Dr. Pink, thank you for com­ing here, my friend.

- You say Bill. And Bill is fine, Doug. You’re Doug. You’re a friend. Please call me Bill.

- All righty. Absolute­ly. Well, we’re just so grate­ful that you’re takin’ the time to join us here. And just tell us a lit­tle bit about you. Let’s start with you first. And how did you find your way? You know, you talked bas­ket­ball a lit­tle bit, but how’d you find your way to this posi­tion that you cur­rent­ly have in Grand Rapids right now?

- Yeah, so first of all, I’m hon­ored to be a part of this, Doug. I’m hon­ored to be on this live ver­sion. That is so cool for me. And so thank you for that. Also, so with me, you wan­na start off with the bor­ing part of our time togeth­er. So let’s talk about me. So for me, this has been, the way I describe it is that it’s been a jour­ney that has had God’s foot­prints all over it and His fin­ger­prints, both foot and fin­ger, because of how we believe that He has led us. And I say way ​“we” because my wife is such a big part of this whole sto­ry for the last 20 plus years. And so my jour­ney was through high­er edu­ca­tion and start­ed out very much on the sports side, bas­ket­ball. I mean, my goal in life was to be a col­lege bas­ket­ball coach. And played col­lege bas­ket­ball. And I want­ed to be a col­lege bas­ket all coach one day. And I thought maybe one day I could aspire to do that. Found myself the first day out of grad­u­at­ing from Okla­homa Chris­t­ian Uni­ver­si­ty, found myself a head bas­ket­ball coach at the junior col­lege that I had played at a cou­ple years before. So here I was, first year out, liv­ing in the dream that I thought would take years to get to. So head col­lege bas­ket­ball coach. I would nev­er trade those days for any­thing. But the thing I quick­ly learned is that there are lev­els of dif­fi­cul­ty when you are only a cou­ple years old­er than your players.

- Yeah.

- ​‘Cause, you know, just grad­u­at­ing from col­lege myself, now here I am coach­ing col­lege guys. And so that was an inter­est­ing thing. I then went back to Okla­homa Chris­t­ian after head coach­ing three years. Went back to Okla­homa Chris­t­ian, back to Okla­homa, and start­ed workin’ on a mas­ter’s degree while I was assis­tant coach at my alma mater. And I was teach­ing ele­men­tary school at the same time. All those. When you’re sin­gle, Doug, you remem­ber, when you’re sin­gle, you could do all those stuff.

- Do all of it. Absolutely.

- Did­n’t mat­ter. You could stay up doin’ all that till 11 o’clock and get up at 7:00 the next morn­ing and do it all over again. And so I spent the next three years doing that, assis­tant coach at Okla­homa Chris­t­ian. And I will tell you real quick what that day was like for me, again, sin­gle, livin’ in Okla­homa City. Get up in the morn­ing, go to school, teach school, teach an ele­men­tary P.E. class. And you can’t get bet­ter than ele­men­tary P.E. When the kids hug you, it’s sincere.

- That’s right.

- You some­times won­der, right?

- Yep, yep, yep, yep.

- When a third grad­er hugs your leg and says, ​“Thank you, Mr. Pink,” you know that there’s sin­cer­i­ty there.

- Yeah, that’s great.

- So it would start out teach­ing school, leave school, imme­di­ate­ly go straight to bas­ket­ball prac­tice. So leave the ele­men­tary. And also taught mid­dle school for a while. Go to go to Okla­homa Chris­t­ian, do prac­tice, have prac­tice, and get through that with our play­ers. I would leave prac­tice. And at this time, Okla­homa Chris­t­ian had just stood up a brand-new fit­ness cen­ter on cam­pus. It was like, ​“Wow, here’s an idea. ​“What if a col­lege had a fit­ness cen­ter on cam­pus?” So the fit­ness cen­ter was right out­side the gym. I would leave prac­tice, go into that fit­ness cen­ter. And I was the night­time man­ag­er of the fit­ness cen­ter till 10 o’clock, which, shut it down at 10 o’clock. And then, you know how it was back in your mid, late 20s, you leave work and prob­a­bly go to Taco Bell and get some­thin’ to eat before you go home. And I can’t do that any­more. And then get up and do same thing over again while I was work­ing on a mas­ter’s. Fin­ished the mas­ter’s, had a phone call from a friend of mine in Port­land, Ore­gon, who was at a col­lege that was a Chris­t­ian col­lege that just opened up and had just reopened as a Chris­t­ian col­lege. And he said, ​“Bill, I want you to come to Port­land, Ore­gon. ​“I want you to start the bas­ket­ball pro­gram for me.” And so again, when you’re sin­gle, you can say yes to things and be gone tomor­row if you need­ed to. So said yes to that, moved to Port­land, start­ed up a bas­ket­ball pro­gram. The col­lege was Cas­cade Col­lege, right in the mid­dle of Port­land. Start­ed the bas­ket­ball pro­gram. Was direct­ing ath­let­ics for ​‘em a bit. And had this real­iza­tion that if I did­n’t quit coach­ing bas­ket­ball, I would nev­er get mar­ried. I would nev­er find a wife. Because for me, and I know a lot of peo­ple have fig­ured it out, but Doug, I could­n’t fig­ure it out. I could not fig­ure out how to not be mar­ried to one or the oth­er. ​‘Cause at that point in life, I was mar­ried to bas­ket­ball. I mean, it was 12 months a year. It was prac­tice. It was games. It was recruit­ing. It was scout­ing. Bas­ket­ball camps in the sum­mer. I was mar­ried to bas­ket­ball. And there’s no way I was gonna fit anoth­er per­son into that life and be able to do it jus­tice. So that’s where I got this bug for admin­is­tra­tion. And so left Port­land, went back to Okla­homa, and became a fac­ul­ty mem­ber at Okla­homa Chris­t­ian at that point, and start­ed in workin’ on the doc­tor­ate degree. And at that point met my wife. And it’s so fun­ny, last sev­er­al days peo­ple asked me how did we meet. I was teach­ing the sin­gles class at church.

- Oh really?

- And that’s where I met my wife.

- That’s where you go to meet your wife, right?

- Why did peo­ple talk about meet­ing a wife in a bar? I mean, I met my wife at church.

- There you go.

- I was teachin’ the class, and there she was. So any­way. That’s how God works. So we got mar­ried. I did a short stand at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Okla­homa, after I fin­ished the doc­tor­ate, in wom­en’s bas­ket­ball. It was cool to get back into ath­let­ics at the Divi­sion I lev­el at a Big 12 school. That was so fun. But then did that for a cou­ple years and then real­ized I real­ly want­ed to be back on the aca­d­e­m­ic side of things. So tran­si­tioned back to uni­ver­si­ty there. Was asso­ciate dean and then became a vice pres­i­dent at a insti­tu­tion down there, Okla­homa State Uni­ver­si­ty, Okla­homa City cam­pus. And that’s when I heard about. I had some friends. I was three years into the job. Had some friends send­ing me these posi­tion announce­ments about a provost posi­tion at a Grand Rapids Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege in Grand Rapids, Michi­gan. Well, they were send­ing this to me because my wife grew up in Michi­gan. And peo­ple knew that at some point I want­ed to get her back to Michi­gan. Because her par­ents were get­tin’ up in age. My par­ents had both passed away. And so the goal was to try to get her close to close to home. So when we saw Grand Rapids and saw that posi­tion, applied for it, was a final­ist for it. The pres­i­dent at that point was Steve Ender. And Steve, after the inter­view. Thought I’d knocked it out. I thought I did well. Steve said, ​“I don’t want you for the job.” He said, ​“I wan­na cre­ate a posi­tion for you.”

- Oh, okay.

- ​“I wan­na cre­ate this posi­tion ​“of vice pres­i­dent and dean of work­force devel­op­ment,” he said, ​“because we need to have a bet­ter han­dle ​“and an ele­vat­ed voice in our com­mu­ni­ty. ​“We’ve had this strong pres­ence. ​“We need to ele­vate it.” So we said yes to that, and we moved here. Steve Ender, bless his heart. I won’t call him a liar. But he said at that point that he prob­a­bly still had about three or four years left in him as pres­i­dent. ​“Then, Bill, who knows what could hap­pen?” And about eight months lat­er, he announced his retire­ment. And that he was done-

- He set you up for this, did­n’t he?

- I guess so. I guess so. It was a dirty plan. So there was no way I was­n’t gonna apply for the job. For one rea­son, I felt like I was ready, and it was some­thing I’d aspired to. But then two, I was­n’t sure if some­one new would still wan­na have this vice pres­i­dent posi­tion of work­force devel­op­ment. So applied for it. Was blessed to get that posi­tion. And it’s just been a great, great ride ever since then. This has been a great place for us to be.

- That’s great. Well, thank you for shar­ing that sto­ry, because I think it’s so impor­tant. Some­times it’s easy to think some­one’s in a posi­tion and it just kin­da hap­pened, but until ya know their sto­ry and all that you went through and the deci­sions you made in your life to get here, you know, to learn what ya’ve learned, to have that expe­ri­ence to land in this sort of spot. One oth­er ques­tion before we dive into edu­ca­tion a lit­tle bit. And I always think this a bit too, because being in ath­let­ics, and espe­cial­ly coach­ing, even coach­ing. I did some Lit­tle League coach­ing and Rock­it Foot­ball stuff. The lead­er­ship lessons you learn play­ing a sport and coach­ing a sport. How do you see them trans­lat­ing into your lead­er­ship posi­tion that ya have now?

- So I’ll tell you, Doug, the book I plan to write after all this is over-

- I’m gonna write this down. Okay, here you go.

- After all this is over.

- Bil­l’s book.

- Yeah. The book I plan to write is what I call heads-up lead­er­ship. And it’s what I learned from ath­let­ic that for me has trans­lat­ed over just to lead­er­ship. And what I mean by that. So when I was a bas­ket­ball play­er in high school and in col­lege, I would get so tired of my coach yelling at me when I drib­ble to keep my head up. He was right. But I’d get tired of it, ​’cause I always want­ed to look down at the ball, you know, make sure. All coach­es would always say, ​“Keep your head up. ​“The bal­l’s gonna come back. ​“When you throw it, it’s always gonna come back to you. ​“So why you lookin’ down there?” Well, the rea­son why they would tell me that is because when I have my head down, I can still main­tain, I can main­tain a drib­ble, and I can main­tain what’s hap­pen­ing. But if I had my head down, I do not see what’s ahead of me. I do not see that team­mate comin’ open. I don’t see that per­son break­ing. I don’t see that defense shift­ing. With my head down, I can’t see that. But when my head is up, I can be more cre­ative at what we’re gonna do. Because I’m not just main­tain­ing, I’m look­ing to progress the ball. And I’m look­ing to cre­ate, I’m look­ing to inno­vate. So I call it heads-up lead­er­ship. In that, I like to ask orga­ni­za­tions and ask peo­ple how many oppor­tu­ni­ties, how long in the day, how much of your day? You can look at your cal­en­dar to deter­mine it. How many of these are heads-up activ­i­ties ver­sus heads-down? A heads-down activ­i­ty is what we have to do to main­tain the orga­ni­za­tion. It’s the stuff I have to do to sit down and bud­get, and sit down and some of the things, the dai­ly grind. It’s the dai­ly grind. How much that day is spent with my head down? Not say­ing that’s a bad thing.

- Right, right.

- But if you see that you are so heavy as a leader with your head down, then that’s telling you why you may not be advanc­ing the orga­ni­za­tion as well. Because all you’re doing is main­tain­ing it. If your head is up. The con­ver­sa­tions, the meet­ings, and the things I have on here that are heads-up. It’s when, yes­ter­day, when I met with folks from the John Ball Zoo to talk about part­ner­ship. What does that look like? How does the col­lege work with you on that? It’s when we are hav­ing those kind of con­ver­sa­tions. It’s a board meet­ing at Tal­ent 2025. It’s a board meet­ing with West Michi­gan Works! It’s a con­ver­sa­tion with Doug DeVos. Because what it does for me is that it helps me advance my col­lege. And so those are heads-up oppor­tu­ni­ties. So my chal­lenge to peo­ple is how much of that time do you spend with your head down, just main­tain­ing? But how much of it do you spend your head up, cre­at­ing and inno­vat­ing? And so that for me has been my biggest les­son, aside from just how you coach a team. If your lead­er­ship team is your team, how do you get the most out of the tal­ent that they have? How do you moti­vate them? How do you encour­age them? How do you work close­ly with them so that they know how to get their job done? And how do I sup­port that? And so those are the lessons for me. And the third thing I’ll say to that that can be a good and bad is how com­pet­i­tive it makes you. I have this, because of what I went through in high school and col­lege and ath­let­ics, there’s just this com­pet­i­tive streak that’s there. And Doug, I try to chan­nel it a bit. I mean, but it’s there. It’s just there. Because I want my-

- You wan­na win.

- Orga­ni­za­tion. Yeah. I want us to be the best. I mean, I wan­na work with folks. I wan­na do all we can to col­lab­o­rate. ​‘Cause I don’t think we can get it done well with­out col­lab­o­ra­tion. But at the end of the day, when it comes to GRCC, I want GRCC to always be in con­ver­sa­tions when it comes to this com­mu­ni­ty. I always want peo­ple to say, ​“What does GRCC think about that?” I always wan­na be in those con­ver­sa­tions. And so I think that’s prob­a­bly the com­pet­i­tive side of me, and I just have to make sure I con­trol it every so often.

- Well, well said. And you know, I’m sure you think about that. And for me, I can remem­ber so many times when I was heads-down. And I’ve had advice from boss­es and oth­ers to say, ​“You got­ta talk to some­body else here. ​“I know you’re doing your own thing. ​“You’re in your own lane.” And there’s a time for that, as you say. But there’s also time to step out, take risks, do some­thing new. That’s where the cre­ativ­i­ty comes from.

- Well, because when I look. We were in Chica­go this week­end. So anoth­er sto­ry. My daugh­ter and my best friend from col­lege, my old room­mate, my team­mate, best man at my wed­ding. He and his daugh­ter. His daugh­ter is in her ear­ly twen­ties. Grad­u­at­ed, is doing good stuff. Back at Christ­mas, his daugh­ter and my daugh­ter. Lydia, she’s 19. They con­vinced us through a Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion. This was at Christ­mas. Through a Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion, Doug.

- A Christ­mas presentation.

- And I mean, it was total­ly out of the blue. ​“Hey, Dad, we sit down, we got some­thing to show you.” So the whole pre­sen­ta­tion was givin’ us the rea­sons why they are great daugh­ters and why we should take them to an Elite Eight bas­ket­ball game dur­ing March Mad­ness. Because we all get into March Madness.

- Oh sure.

- So it’s Decem­ber. We have no idea who’s gonna be in the game. But they knew it was in Chica­go. So McK­ay­la said to her dad, ​“We could fly up. ​“We all dri­ve from Grand Rapids to Chica­go. ​“And who­ev­er’s play­ing, we’ll get to see ​‘em.” So if there’s noth­ing else this job has taught me, Doug, it has gave giv­en me the abil­i­ty to be able to lis­ten to peo­ple and know what we need to do and to be able to say, ​“You know, I get it, ​“but here’s what we need to do,” to be able to gra­cious­ly tell peo­ple no. I was so ready to do that. And Eddie says, ​“Yes.” And so he says, ​“Yeah.” I have no choice now. I got­ta say yes, ​’cause I’ll be the bad guy if I say no. So on Sat­ur­day, we drove around to Chica­go. We saw the Kansas-Mia­mi game at the Unit­ed Cen­ter. And as you look at that, to your point of what you were say­ing, as you look at that game, and as you see. I mean, it always kin­da takes me back a bit to the days that I played. And you see all of what’s goin’ on. You see that not only the coach, but tru­ly the point guard being so impor­tant. The point guard is in that very space that you talked about. If he does­n’t take a risk, they will nev­er be able to tru­ly get ahead. And so his risk-tak­ing are some of the pass­es that he makes. His risk-tak­ing are when he decides, ​“You know, I think I can go around this guy.” And those kin­da things, those are the deci­sions that the risk you take, when it pays off, you end up win­nin’ the game. And so I think in our spaces, we have to do that as well.

- Heads-up.

- Heads-up leadership.

- Heads-up. Heads-up lead­er­ship, I like it.

- Who­ev­er’s lis­ten­ing, and you take that idea, if I see that book that you put out that’s called ​“Heads Up,” I will say, ​“Good job. I’m glad I can help you.”

- Well, you know, as a Pur­due guy, I’m gonna try to avoid talk­ing about March Mad­ness this year.

- I would too if I were you.

- Yeah, yeah. Just did­n’t work out the way we thought. St. Peter’s seemed to have St. Peter on their side-

- I guess so.

- In some way or some­thin’ there, unfortunately.

- I guess so. I mean, while I was so hap­py for St. Peter’s, love to see the under­dog, I hat­ed to see ​‘em go out the way they did. I mean, Car­oli­na did­n’t even make a game of it. But yeah, you see sto­ries like that, it’s refresh­ing. Even, man, when they beat your own team.

- Even when they beat your own team. But I’m still a boil­er­mak­er. I’m still cheerin’, and there’s always next year.

- Good. There’s always next year.

- There’s always next year. I’m a Lion’s fan too. So.

- Oh, Doug.

- It’s about determination.

- Resilience.

- Focus, resilience, deter­mi­na­tion. You just got­ta keep believing.

- That’s awe­some. That is awe­some. As a Dal­las Cow­boy fan, okay.

- Okay, all right.

- We’re not in that great posi­tion right now either.

- We can always com­mis­er­ate about that.

- Yes.

- Oh gosh. Well, thanks, Bill. I mean, just so impor­tant for us to get to know you. So let’s dive in a lit­tle bit, talk a lit­tle bit about school. You had a life, a career in edu­ca­tion, teach­ing, even in sports, you’re teach­ing, you’re coach­ing, you’re lead­ing. Talk about, is col­lege right for every­one? We say that some­times in our busi­ness, you’re ask­ing peo­ple to have be an entre­pre­neur, have a busi­ness on their own, it’s avail­able to every­one, but is it right for every­one? So talk about that a lit­tle bit. Help us under­stand your thoughts on that.

- So there’s two things I would start off with. Num­ber one, the vision needs to get. And this is such what I call pink opin­ion here. But the vision is a way-

- That’s what we’re here for.

- The vision needs to get away from the idea of the path­way. The vision, in my mind, gets to what I call a high­way. And here’s why I say that. You have to pro­vide high­ways for our cit­i­zens. And so the rea­son I say high­way is because, excuse me, when you see so many peo­ple these days, path­way says, ​“Here’s the way. ​“That’s it. Stay on the path.” And if you get off the path, you seem to be a fail­ure. Oh, you got off the path. No. If you look at it from a high­way per­spec­tive, there are on-ramps and off-ramps. And some­times indi­vid­u­als have to get off the high­way for what­ev­er rea­son. And the high­way, in this case, being edu­ca­tion. So I’m on that high­way. And some­times I have to get off because life hap­pens. And some­times it’s a job. Some­times it’s the fam­i­ly. Some­times a com­bi­na­tion of all the above. That I have to get off the high­way. What’s gonna mat­ter is how we encour­age the per­son, ​“If you got­ta get off the high­way, ​“let’s make sure we help you ​“in terms of what­ev­er that rea­son is.” And maybe it’s a great rea­son. It does­n’t mean it’s a bad thing. It’s part of the ques­tion you’re ask­ing about, ​“Is col­lege for every­one?” Because some­times I got­ta get off over here, because it’s a cer­tifi­cate I just fin­ished, and I’ve got this job, and I’m doing X, Y, and it’s work­ing well. But if I’m going to do some­thing else with this, if I want to do some­thing else with it, I’m gonna have to get back on that edu­ca­tion high­way. Okay, here’s the on-ramp. Let’s make sure the on-ramp is smooth, they see where at, and it gets ​‘em back on the high­way. And they’re gonna get off and on, more than like­ly. When I was in col­lege, it was sole path­way focused. You know, ​“Are you gonna go to col­lege, get your degree?” I mean, that’s all it was for us.

- Right, right.

- That is such a dif­fer­ent nar­ra­tive now. When you think about peo­ple who take gap years, when you think about peo­ple who fin­ish a cer­tifi­cate or an asso­ciate, and they’re done for a lit­tle while, come back lat­er. You think about the ini­tia­tive we have right now in the state, the whole Michi­gan Recon­nect. That’s for peo­ple who are 25 and old­er. And I mean, the def­i­n­i­tion real­ly speaks to it. ​“I’m 25 or old­er. ​“I have some or no col­lege, and I don’t have a degree.” They’ve been on the off-ramp. They’ve been over here doing life. And so what Recon­nect is about is if you wan­na get back on the high­way, here’s an avenue to get back on there. It’s those kin­da things I think we have to focus real­ly hard on. Because the data still shows us that any­where from 65 to, I’ve even seen up to 75% of the jobs that are avail­able and going to be avail­able in the very near future, by 2025, will require some type of post­sec­ondary cre­den­tial. Now, it did­n’t say a bach­e­lor’s degree, did­n’t say a doc­tor­ate, did­n’t even say asso­ciate degree. A cre­den­tial. So the mis­take I think we have made, if that be the case, the mis­take I think has been made is we have this nar­ra­tive that’s in either/​or. I think we have to get out­ta either/​or think­ing on this. And we got­ta get into both/​and. Because, just because this young man or this young woman is in a skill trade, they come out, they’re here. Let’s just get very much local. So they’re at GRCC. They go to the M‑TEC. They don’t even come. They want the M‑TEC 18-week cer­tifi­cate in weld­ing. Okay. That per­son, instead of telling them, ​“Well, you’re just gonna have that weld­ing cer­tifi­cate. ​“There it is. You got it done. ​“Go, go.” And great jobs. And that’s very true. Great jobs. Instead of leav­ing them and drop­ping ​‘em off there, what’s impor­tant to me that we are doing is that we are telling them, okay, sev­er­al things. Num­ber one, ​“Con­grat­u­la­tions. ​“You fin­ished a cre­den­tial. ​“You got it at the col­lege. ​“So this is lev­el of work ​“that is going to get you a real­ly good job. ​“But you fin­ished it. ​“You are prov­ing that you can get in a class, ​“you can learn, you can achieve, ​“and you can move on to what­ev­er that next is.” So the key then becomes, ​“You did that. ​“If you choose.” I mean, ​’cause you have an awe­some job oppor­tu­ni­ty. Again, it’s a high­way. You have an awe­some job oppor­tu­ni­ty over here. Five of ​‘em are lin­ing up to hire you right now. You go to work. I can almost assure you, that’s just what our envi­ron­ment is right now, I can almost assure you that any of those five com­pa­nies, if you so choose, will pay for you to come back to col­lege. So at what­ev­er point you’re ready, let’s come back in. Let’s work on that asso­ciate degree. Because that weld­ing cer­tifi­cate you have, we actu­al­ly have an asso­ciate applied sci­ences in weld­ing. You can actu­al­ly have an asso­ciate degree in your craft. And by the way, that insti­tu­tion that’s right there in our build­ing at the ATC, Fer­ris State Uni­ver­si­ty, they actu­al­ly can take you on, and you can get a bach­e­lor’s of applied tech­nol­o­gy. Your empha­sis is in weld­ing. So it’s not a either/​or for you. You can actu­al­ly get that cre­den­tial if you so choose. So I don’t think that the ques­tion is as much of a either/​or, you know, ​“Is col­lege right?” I would say from what I’m under­stand­ing of the data, I would say a post­sec­ondary cre­den­tial is prob­a­bly need­ed these days. You know, entre­pre­neur­ship, we can talk about that. There are peo­ple who want to go down that road. I think that’s awesome.

- [Doug] Sure.

- The hard part about that, the data real­ly plays against you on that, you know, as far as up and run­ning. We got­ta real­ly wrap a lot of sup­port around you to get you at a point where you’re thriv­ing as a busi­ness. It’s not easy. You know that bet­ter than anybody.

- Busi­ness star­tups are hard, brutal.

- It is not easy.

- Bru­tal.

- So that’s awe­some. But what can we get you along that path so that we are con­nect­ing you to the knowl­edge base and the peo­ple that can help you get there? And so I’m a believ­er that we have to get out of that either/​or propo­si­tion for peo­ple to tell ​‘em, ​“You can either do this over here, this skill. ​“You either can go there, or you can go to col­lege.” You can be a part of both. Because the choice you now have is now you have option. If you choose to get that, which many peo­ple do, you got that cer­tifi­cate, you’ve been workin’ over here for 10 years, you’re weld­ing, you’re machin­ing. You are doing this job, and you’ve been knockin’ it out­ta the park. I just wan­na make sure you know that if you so choose, you can tru­ly still advance that edu­ca­tion plan that you had. That to me is important.

- There you go. Well, there you go. And that’s a great illus­tra­tion of heads-up think­ing, because you’re think­ing beyond the tra­di­tion­al box of this path­way. And I do tend to get frus­trat­ed some­times where, okay, so you have to do this, and you have to go to col­lege. You have to this, and you have to go to col­lege. The val­ue of work in this process of grow­ing up and liv­ing has a tremen­dous val­ue. And you seem to be find­ing a way to con­nect­ing that to the edu­ca­tion space so that you’re going in par­al­lel. And I love your high­way high­way illus­tra­tion. So I’m gonna ask you a ques­tion or a cou­ple top­ics raised and ask you to go from there. So one of the issues with tra­di­tion­al col­leges is cost. And I’ll go back to Pur­due again, where they’ve done a great job of just say­ing, ​“Tuition is tuition. ​“We’re not rais­ing tuition.” They haven’t done it for years. So cost is an impli­ca­tion. But beyond that, it was the risk and the inno­va­tion to think that way to say, ​“We’re just not gonna esca­late costs.” But you’re doing the same thing. You’re risk­ing and inno­vat­ing to say, ​“Hey, don’t just come here. ​“Okay, go to work. ​“It is a high­way. ​“It’s okay. I’m not gonna try to trap you.” So how do you see apply­ing that inno­v­a­tive think­ing to high­er ed? And do you see that hap­pen­ing through­out the indus­try, if you will. Because some­times I won­der if peo­ple see it.

- What I found out, Doug. And I will tell you that. Here’s how I found this out. Let me give you what I found out, then I’ll tell you how. What I found out. I’ve been preach­ing the ser­mon so much about the val­ue of com­mu­ni­ty col­leges when it comes to this very thing. Nation­al­ly, the val­ue of com­mu­ni­ty col­leges. And I’ve been for years say­ing, ​“This is the work com­mu­ni­ty col­leges do. ​“Work­force devel­op­ment, we do this work. ​“We do this work. ​“And we part­ner with, we do all these things.” Had a moment of real­iza­tion. And it was about three years ago. And your broth­er may remem­ber this. And I even told him about this lat­er on. So your broth­er, Dick DeVos, was talk­ing to me one night. He said. And this was when Sec­re­tary DeVos was still in place. And he said, ​“Bill.” I remem­ber it was at a din­ner. Saw him, ​“Hey, how’s it going?” and every­thing. He said, ​“Hey, by the way, just want you to know, ​“Bet­sy is con­cerned about com­mu­ni­ty col­leges. ​“Because what she’s hear­ing is that,” and again, her per­spec­tive was the nation­al per­spec­tive. I’ve got the West Michi­gan per­spec­tive. Real­ly strong on the GRCC per­spec­tive, right? He said, ​“What she’s hear­ing from com­pa­nies ​“is that com­pa­nies are telling her ​“that their local com­mu­ni­ty col­leges ​“are either hard to work with ​“or are not work­ing with them. ​“And she’s con­cerned. ​“What do we do about that? ​“And she’s real­ly, real­ly con­cerned ​“about what she’s hearin’ from these com­pa­nies.” And I said, ​“Dick, let me.” I said, ​“I’m sur­prised. ​“Let me get you some infor­ma­tion. ​“Let me get you some infor­ma­tion ​“on what we do and every­thing.” I left that con­ver­sa­tion. And it was a very good con­ver­sa­tion. It was just, you know, as Dick is always real­ly good at, just say­ing, ​“Hey, here’s some­thin’ that is happening.”

- Right, ​“So here’s what I’m hearing.”

- Yeah. And so I left that con­ver­sa­tion, got to the office next day, and I’m going, ​“Okay, here’s what I need. ​“I need to get all this data ​“on what we do as far as the hun­dreds, ​“hun­dreds of com­pa­nies we work with.” Because when I heard that, I was like, you know, ​“Who’s she talkin’ to?” You know, I was sur­prised. So we go into this exer­cise of accu­mu­lat­ing data to send to the sec­re­tary, right? ​“Here’s what we do.” And I mean, I’m blessed at the insti­tu­tion that I am, because it was just a good, robust list of part­ner­ships, and here’s how many, and appren­tice­ships, and here’s what that pic­ture looks like. And Doug, it dawned on me as I was send­ing that, I thought, ​“Bill, what you’re find­ing out ​“is not every com­mu­ni­ty col­lege ​“in this coun­try is doing this.”

- Right. Right.

- And then as I start­ed pay­ing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent atten­tion at some of the con­fer­ences that I attend that are around com­mu­ni­ty col­leges and work­force devel­op­ment and edu­ca­tion. As I start­ed pay­ing a lit­tle more atten­tion, what I start­ed notic­ing, it seemed like the same com­mu­ni­ty col­leges were always in the room. The same ones. The ones that were doin’ the work. And so the thing about that is not every school, not every com­mu­ni­ty col­lege, is in that space. Thank good­ness I think a lot of ours in Michi­gan are. I think ours do a real­ly good job at that. But the key then, I say all that to say the key is if col­leges. And in this case, I’m a believ­er that in this day and time that we’re in, this has to be done at the uni­ver­si­ty lev­el as well. Which is real­ly stand­ing up stronger in the space of indus­try part­ner­ships, part­ner­ing with indus­try, part­ner­ing with com­pa­nies. And the com­pa­nies need to be big, mid, and small. We got­ta have all ​‘em at the table. I think some of our small busi­ness­es have unfor­tu­nate­ly been left out­ta some of these con­ver­sa­tions. One of the soap box­es I’ve been on late­ly with some of these, my local-

- I like peo­ple on soap box­es. That’s good.

- But I feel like, in some con­ver­sa­tions, we’ve left them out. And so how do we expect them to thrive if we’re not invitin’ ​‘em to the table? And so the more that high­er ed is what I call dis­man­tling the ivory tow­er, that peo­ple no longer see this unreach­able enti­ty known as the uni­ver­si­ty. That’s where high­er ed is gonna have to get to. And I think insti­tu­tions like Pur­due, which say, ​“You know what? ​“This is our tuition. We’re not rais­ing it. ​“Because here’s our mis­sion.” And it has that lev­el of focus. Insti­tu­tions that are bring­ing com­pa­nies and busi­ness­es, both local and nation­al, to the table to say, ​“So what is it we need to do for you? ​“How do we get that done for you? ​“Is it being done fast enough for you? ​“Do we need to rethink what that mod­el looks like?” And the insti­tu­tions I see that are real­ly hav­ing some inter­est­ing per­spec­tives on that are the ones that I see that are just knockin’ it out of the park. You got­ta rethink all this. And if we’re not in that space of tru­ly part­ner­ing with our com­pa­nies and our local busi­ness­es and all of our local com­mu­ni­ty-based orgs, if we’re not doin’ that, we’re gonna miss it. And hon­est­ly, what’s gonna hap­pen is what we see hap­pen­ing, which com­pa­nies are start­ing to say, ​“Well, heck, if I can’t get it from the col­lege, ​“I’m just gonna stand up myself.” And so you have com­pa­nies that say, ​“Yeah, we got our own lit­tle train­ing thing, ​“and we give them a cer­tifi­cate ​“that says, ​‘Hey, you did it.’ ” You know, it does­n’t have any kind col­lege bear­ing to it, but it does­n’t mat­ter. ​“You got the skill that I need it. ​“I’m payin’ ya 18 an hour. ​“So here it is.” And that per­son goes on about their busi­ness, and we nev­er get the chance to engage, because we don’t have the rela­tion­ship with the company.

- Right. Right. Well, you know, you’re talk­ing, you’re hit­ting on a few things, and I’ll get to being com­pet­i­tive. You wan­na win. So you’re doing some­thin’ dif­fer­ent, you’re doing some­thing new. Part­ner­ing. And I think there’s a lot of the dis­cus­sion about how to cre­ate val­ue in the mar­ket­place. Because, you know, a cre­den­tial, a degree on its own, may or may not have val­ue. There’s too many sto­ries of peo­ple who got a degree but did­n’t use it or did­n’t think about how they were going to use it going for­ward. So that ele­ment of con­nect­ing with the next step or being part of this devel­op­ment process. And maybe I’ll end and ask you to elab­o­rate on this piece. ​‘Cause when you talk about a high­way and on-ramp and off-ramp, you’re accom­mo­dat­ing a per­son­’s life, but you’re also telling them a mes­sage that res­onates with me. ​“You can do it.”

- Yes.

- ​“You can do it. ​“You com­plet­ed some­thing, go here.” You’re now build­ing suc­cess on suc­cess. Is that how high­er ed cre­ate can cre­ate val­ue rather than a being an ivory tower?

- I ful­ly, ful­ly agree with that. And also under­stand­ing, in my small way of think­ing, that high­way per­spec­tive, that high­way frame­work, Doug, that only suc­ceeds if you have more than just the high­er ed insti­tu­tion involved. And here’s what I mean by that. So it’s a high­way. And this is kind of some of the con­ver­sa­tions we have here in our com­mu­ni­ty. If you don’t have, aside from high­er edu­ca­tion in this case, if you don’t have K‑12 involved, if you don’t have our busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty involved, if you do not have our com­mu­ni­ty-based orga­ni­za­tions involved, this does­n’t work well. Because when the per­son gets off this off-ramp, for what­ev­er rea­son, I need sup­port sys­tems to be there for them to help them in what­ev­er it is, rea­son they got off. Because in some cas­es, they got off for good rea­sons. In some cas­es, it’s not so good. Life happens.

- Some­times life’s not so good. Tough.

- And so how can we set a frame­work? And I like to call it a com­mu­ni­ty ecosys­tem that allows peo­ple to be able not only to know where those sup­port sys­tems are, but know how to access them. And some­times the sup­port sys­tem is, ​“I just need to find out more ​“about how to take care of my kid. ​“Because if I’m gonna get back on this high­way, ​“I got­ta have child­care. ​“I got­ta have some­one help­ing me in that regard.” Or for some of our stu­dents at our school, some­times it’s, ​“I just need to fig­ure out how to get my car fixed. “ ​‘Cause I can’t get to ya if I can’t dri­ve to you.” And hon­est­ly, when­ev­er life hap­pens, we’re the first thing that goes. They drop us. Because you got­ta take care of your fam­i­ly. You got­ta take care of all these oth­er things. ​“School can wait,” is how they see it. And I get that. So I think you you’re exact­ly right, that it has to be this dynam­ic of mak­ing sure that what­ev­er is there in high­er edu­ca­tion tru­ly has rel­e­vance. ​‘Cause I think one thing you’re tap­ping on there, Doug, is that what­ev­er that cre­den­tial is that I talked about ear­li­er, if that cre­den­tial, if I tell you, ​“Yes, we got five stu­dents ​“that just fin­ished their cer­tifi­cate in machin­ing, ​“and they’re gonna come to your com­pa­ny, ​“and they’re gonna be machin­ists.” They all five go to you, and you’re look­ing at ​‘em, and they get on them, and they have no clue what they’re doing. You’re say­ing, ​“Okay, wait a minute. ​“What did you guys learn? What did they teach you?” ​“Well, they taught us A.” ​“Well, okay. We have X. ​“And every­one else has X. ​“A was 10 years ago.” If the edu­ca­tion itself isn’t rel­e­vant, that’s a prob­lem as well. And I think that’s one of the issues that you’re tap­pin’ on there. That if you have folks who are spend­ing a whole lot of mon­ey, a whole lot of mon­ey, and fin­ish­ing with these cre­den­tials and going into the work­place ill pre­pared, then we have wast­ed their mon­ey and we wast­ed their time. And unfor­tu­nate­ly, his­tor­i­cal­ly, you from time to time see that hap­pen. If you can’t come out­ta the ivory tow­er and say, ​“How do we mix so much with indus­try ​“that we know exact­ly what you need?” That’s been the pow­er of com­mu­ni­ty col­leges, is that that’s the work that we do. You have the indus­try at the table sayin’, ​“Here’s what that needs to look like.” ​“Okay, we’ll build it that way.” Now the per­son walkin’ out of our doors are gonna go to you, and this is exact­ly the skillset you need.

- Yeah. Yeah. Well, you spend a lot of time talk­ing. I’ve read some of your pieces with you talkin’ about being rel­e­vant and being responsive.

- Those are my two words.

- You know, rel­e­vant and respon­sive. We talk about that in busi­ness too at Amway all the time. Are we rel­e­vant for the gen­er­a­tion that’s com­ing up? Are we rel­e­vant for the mar­ket­place that’s devel­op­ing? Dive a lit­tle deep­er in that. How do you make sure you stay rel­e­vant? And how do you take an insti­tu­tion like a Grand Rapid Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege, 100 years old. Big, old, estab­lished insti­tu­tion. How do you keep it responsive?

- So the first thing that was real­ly job one in that, Doug, was the first day that I addressed the cam­pus as their pres­i­dent, is when I start­ed talk­ing about being rel­e­vant and being respon­sive. So the first thing there. I say that because I think the first thing is the aware­ness that you make sure is out into your col­lege com­mu­ni­ty. I had to make sure that that col­lege was aware of the need and why that was need­ed. Why do we need to be rel­e­vant? Why do we need to be respon­sive? They need­ed to hear their pres­i­dent say, ​“If we do not stay rel­e­vant and respon­sive, ​“we could go away. ​“We may find our­selves done.” I don’t care how long you’ve been here. If you aren’t seen as an insti­tu­tion as being rel­e­vant to the edu­ca­tion you pro­vide, is rel­e­vant to your com­mu­ni­ty, as I say, you stay rel­e­vant to your stu­dents, that what they’re get­ting is tru­ly a rel­e­vant edu­ca­tion to their future. You stay rel­e­vant. You got­ta stay rel­e­vant to each oth­er, to keep each oth­er account­able and be rel­e­vant to each oth­er. My skillset needs to com­ple­ment yours, and we need to be able to do that in a strong way. I always give the exam­ple. When’s the last time you saw a Block­buster Video store?

- That’s right.

- They’re gone. I mean, I think there was one more left in Iowa, and I think it’s shut down. And why? Because they did­n’t stay rel­e­vant. This whole thing of stream­ing start­ed com­ing at ​‘em, and they decid­ed that keep­ing over a thou­sand stores that had a disc of a movie on there, they decid­ed they were gonna be just fine. ​“This whole stream­ing thing? ​“No, we’re fine.” What they found out is that was­n’t the thing that peo­ple said, ​“Here’s what we need.” And so their rel­e­vance dimin­ished quick­ly. I can’t remem­ber last time I saw a film that has Kodak on it that I would have to take to the store to get devel­oped. You don’t even see the word Kodak around any­more. I remem­ber growin’ up as a kid, that was what, Kodak Auto­mat­ic, that’s it.

- Every­thing.

- But what hap­pened to Kodak? Do they still exist? Yes. But are they still in that busi­ness? No. What hap­pened to them? Dig­i­tal cam­eras. Did you keep up? Did you stay rel­e­vant? If you do not stay rel­e­vant, you go away. Because peo­ple quit using you. Because you’re no longer pro­vid­ing what they need in real time. And so uni­ver­si­ties and col­leges can be in that same boat. If we’re not deliv­er­ing it in a rel­e­vant way, and if what we’re deliv­er­ing is not rel­e­vant to the indus­try that our stu­dents are try­ing to get to, com­pa­nies will say, ​“Well, we’re not deal­ing with GRCC any­more. Stu­dents will say, ​“I’m not going there.” And so we dis­ap­pear. And I hon­est­ly, I think it was. So I think it’s kin­da hard when you tell your peo­ple, ​“We can dis­ap­pear,” espe­cial­ly an insti­tu­tion. ​“We don’t have to be here if we’re not doing the work.” And the respon­sive­ness of it says the same thing. If it takes us, if it takes us six months to buy a pen­cil. And we’re known for that in high­er edu­ca­tion. We’re slow. Com­mu­ni­ty col­lege tends to be a bit faster. You know, I remem­ber being in four-year schools and now get­tin’ ready to go to one, you know, some­times we’re too slow. And that speed has had to pick up. Because the respon­sive­ness of how we respond, how fast we respond, and what we respond with. And so I’m a deep believ­er that if high­er ed is not in those two spaces, we’re not think­ing of how we stay rel­e­vant and how respon­sive we are to the envi­ron­ment we’re in, we will go away like any­one else. I don’t care how long you’ve been here.

- Well. So let me maybe test that a lit­tle bit. There’s so much invest­ment in high­er ed, from the gov­ern­ment, from pri­vate fun­ders, alum­ni. There’s so much invest­ment. There’s so much pas­sion around it. Can it real­ly go away? I think there’s a few that have gone away, but can it real­ly? And how long could it exist in this maybe non-pro­duc­tive space, just kin­da hang­ing around, you know, doin’ good stuff, but maybe not being rel­e­vant and respon­sive. Help me under­stand how you see, if you will, the high­er ed indus­try. And are they gonna be more rel­e­vant and respon­sive, or are some real­ly gonna fade away?

- So here’s-

- Do you see that?

- So here’s some of the def­i­n­i­tions there of what going away looks like. So some­times going away is what you see with insti­tu­tions that are no longer with us, for what­ev­er rea­son. And there are many rea­sons. So some­times you tru­ly see them dis­ap­pear. But a lot of what I mean when I talk about going away is when your num­ber. And it becomes very, very obvi­ous. And I know some insti­tu­tions this way. Your enroll­ment starts going from your 15,000 to your 12,000 to your 10 to your 8. And it’s over time. The idea of becom­ing irrel­e­vant is not always as fast as what we saw with Block­buster. It’s a slow death. With insti­tu­tions specif­i­cal­ly, it’s a slow death to where an insti­tu­tion whit­tles its way down. And you see this when you see arti­cles about, you know, ​“At one point they were at 20,000 peo­ple, 20,000 stu­dents. ​“What they are now, they’re at 7,000.” I mean, we see those kind of data. It’s this dwin­dling down to where tru­ly you’re no longer all that rel­e­vant. And the peo­ple who are com­ing to you. And you’re right. There are prob­a­bly still some good things that are hap­pen­ing, right?

- Sure, sure.

- But there are rea­sons why that hap­pens. There are rea­sons why you see that. And it’s not always that stu­dent dis­in­ter­est. Some­times it’s because stu­dents are say­ing, ​“Well, this is what I get if I go there. ​“But this school over here, I’m see­ing, my good­ness, ​“their grad­u­ates are doing X, Y, and Z. ​“I’m not see­ing that over here.” And so stu­dents are gonna vote by their enroll­ment. And so that irrel­e­vance I talk about is how an insti­tu­tion dwin­dles down to where it’s no longer a part of the rel­e­vant con­ver­sa­tions any­more. When I said ear­li­er about GRCC always wan­tin’ to be at the table. When you start hear­ing and you no longer hear those four let­ters, that’s when you start to think, ​“Okay, wait a minute. ​“What’s going on here?” And so that’s that decline that I real­ly think about. And hon­est­ly, on that, Doug, I think that, you know, data, data still are very strong when it comes to, if you look at the cross-sec­tion of data over time. And it gets to some of those con­ver­sa­tions about high­er edu­ca­tion, val­ue of. We still see the data that talks about earn­ing pow­er, what peo­ple earn who have a high school diplo­ma and that’s it. High­est achieve­ment, asso­ciate degree, bach­e­lor’s degree. You see those. And the data still show pret­ty strong that that goes up at each lev­el. So we have to con­sid­er that data as we then over­lay with, ​“Yes, but who are the insti­tu­tions ​“that are tru­ly doing that rel­e­vant work?” That’s why I love high­er ed. ​‘Cause I love to get at an insti­tu­tion and say, ​“All right, how do we get at that? ​“How do we get at it to where?” And, well, what the goal has been at GRCC since I’ve been there, the goal has been, how often are peo­ple telling me, ​“Bill, I saw GCC in the paper. ​“I saw that you guys are doing this. ​“I saw that you guys are doing that.” The com­mu­ni­ty needs to know what your insti­tu­tion is doing, and they need to feel good about their insti­tu­tion. And that’s been our goal for the last five years, is to have the mes­sage out there. Because I guar­an­tee you, if some­thing goes south at the col­lege, you’ll see it.

- They’ll know about that.

- You’ll see it then. So if that’s the case, then let’s make sure that when the good things are hap­pen­ing, that the peo­ple in our com­mu­ni­ty under­stand, ​“Here’s what your com­mu­ni­ty col­lege is doing.” And that’s been our goal and been our focus.

- Yeah, absolute­ly. Well, in the time that we have left, as we kind of wrap things up here a lit­tle bit, tell us a lit­tle bit about your thoughts on what’s heads-up lead­er­ship look like for Bill Pink here in this next chap­ter. You know, we’ve talked about GRCC a lot. You’re mov­ing on. We’ve talked about high­er ed in gen­er­al. And I so appre­ci­ate and respect your rel­e­vance, respon­sive­ness, need, and the part­ner­ships. Because you’ve led that. And there’s been a great his­to­ry of those before you at GRCC who have done that as well. But I’m sure that’s what Steve saw on you. And that’s why he tricked ya a lit­tle bit into being here and being part of this.

- Yeah, that’s a good one.

- So what’s heads-up lead­er­ship look like for you as you tran­si­tion to a new role? But you’re still gonna be workin’ with GRCC or oth­er com­mu­ni­ty col­leges. You’re still gonna be workin’ with indus­tries through­out the state of Michi­gan. You’re still gonna be doin’ that. But how does it look like? And maybe you can kin­da land a lit­tle bit on that one.

- Yeah, so I will tell you, Doug, it’s part of the excite­ment about this posi­tion and going to Fer­ris State, is that it’s nice to be able to go to an insti­tu­tion that real­ly is stand­ing in that space pret­ty well. My goal now, what that heads-up lead­er­ship means, sev­er­al things. Here’s what’s on my mind. Num­ber one, it’s time to make sure that our state. Now that I’m at a larg­er uni­ver­si­ty and no longer a com­mu­ni­ty col­lege. At the com­mu­ni­ty col­lege, it was impor­tant that the com­mu­ni­ty knows what the insti­tu­tion is doing and is capa­ble of doing. With Fer­ris State, it’s impor­tant that our state knows. So you’ll start in see­ing this statewide per­spec­tive of mes­sag­ing that says, ​“Here’s how we do it. ​“Here’s what we do. Here’s the his­to­ry. ​“Here’s how we get it done.” You’ve got­ta tell those sto­ries. You’ve got­ta tell stu­dent sto­ries. You’ve got­ta help peo­ple under­stand, ​“Here’s what hap­pens when you come here.” And so part of that first thing is to just start in on what that looks like and what that needs to look like. But there’s also a nation­al per­spec­tive with Fer­ris State. Fer­ris State has a doc­tor­ate of com­mu­ni­ty col­lege lead­er­ship degree. It’s a doc­tor­ate degree. Com­mu­ni­ty col­lege lead­er­ship. Doug, that thing needs to get blown out all over the coun­try, even larg­er than it is right now. I mean, it’s in sev­er­al places in oth­er parts of the coun­try. My goal is to blow that out even more. Because we’re talk­ing about lead­er­ship. And we’re talkin’ about lead­er­ship at com­mu­ni­ty col­leges. And let’s just be hon­est. In the envi­ron­ment we’re in right now. I wrote arti­cle sev­er­al weeks ago. I talked about, for com­mu­ni­ty col­leges, this is our finest hour. Where the oppor­tu­ni­ties. And the com­mu­ni­ty col­lege is right now the high­er ed dar­ling here in our coun­try. And so the arti­cle was, ​“We have to lever­age this. ​“I mean, we have to lever­age this time. ​“You won’t see a bet­ter time ​“than there is right now of oppor­tu­ni­ty.” Well, the sec­ond part of that con­ver­sa­tion that I did­n’t write about is, what does that mean for high­er ed as far as uni­ver­si­ties are con­cerned? How can this become a real­ly good hour for them as well? Right now, as we’ve been talkin’ about, there are some peo­ple who look exact­ly oppo­site to the uni­ver­si­ty than they do the com­mu­ni­ty col­lege right now. ​“Com­mu­ni­ty col­lege is a route. ​“Don’t go and spend all that mon­ey on the uni­ver­si­ty ​“because that’s just.” So how do we take that nar­ra­tive, shift the nar­ra­tive, at least for one institution.

- Yeah, right.

- I can’t con­trol the oth­ers. But I can do one. How do we take the nar­ra­tive for that and help a com­mu­ni­ty, a state, a leg­is­la­ture see a dif­fer­ence with the insti­tu­tion that you’re at. That to me is always my objec­tive. How can peo­ple see that you’re dif­fer­ent, and dif­fer­ent in a pos­i­tive way than what­ev­er their neg­a­tive expe­ri­ence was? And so to me, that’s a fun thing to get your hands wrapped around and for me to get to work on, is to take that and say, ​“How do we blow this out ​“to where Fer­ris State Uni­ver­si­ty ​“will be seen as the place for us?” You know, ​“What does Fer­ris State think about that? ​“What are they say­ing about that?” That’s the goal there. And you only do that by mak­ing sure that peo­ple under­stand how good you are and under­stand how open you are to bring­ing them in and say­ing, ​“How do we help you? ​“How do we admin­is­ter to your needs?” And that’s when the head is up. Because now you’re lookin’ up. Now you’re see­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ties rather than stay­ing down and just main­tain­ing. That’s gonna be the fun part about that job.

- That’s great. That’s great. Good for you.

- Every com­mu­ni­ty col­lege stu­dent in this state ought to be com­ing to us after they’re done. That’s the idea. If you’re a com­mu­ni­ty col­lege, you ought be comin’ to us. Because we have some­thing for you that will advance you bet­ter than any­one else. That’s that mes­sage there. That’s not com­pet­i­tive or anything.

- Yeah. Well, it might have a lit­tle bit. It might have a lit­tle bit of that, sort of an over­tone. Well, that’s what you’re sup­posed to do. You’re the pres­i­dent of the col­lege now, so.

- They’re not pay­ing me to advanc­ing any­one else’s col­lege or uni­ver­si­ty. They want me to advance that one.

- [Doug] Advance that one.

- And that’s what the plan is.

- That’s how it goes. We love all the teams in the com­pe­ti­tion, but we still wan­na win.

- Yes, yes. But at the end of the day, that stu­dent that’s stand­ing out there lookin’ around say­ing, ​“Where do I want to go next?” I want them over with me.

- With you. Absolute­ly. Good for you. Well, Dr. Bill Pink. Bill, my friend, thank you for your heads-up lead­er­ship. Thank you for your heads-up rela­tion­ships and part­ner­ships that you’ve built through­out Grand Rapids. And it’s just been an hon­or to work with you in that capac­i­ty. And I look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing to work with you in your new capac­i­ty. And I just thank you for tak­ing a lit­tle time to share what you believe, what you see, and the depth of your belief. You’ve lived this world. You see it. And your desire to win by being rel­e­vant and respon­sive. I love it. So Bill, thank you so much for your time.

- Doug, I’m hon­ored. Thank you.

- Great. And thank you all for join­ing us on this episode of ​“Believe!” Dr. Bill Pink, what a great friend, what a great con­ver­sa­tion. And we’ll look for­ward to see­ing y’all soon.